Earlier this week, I asked Epic CEO Tim Sweeney how Epic will decide what does and doesn't get to be published on the Epic Store. He began by explaining that the Unreal Engine side of Epic and the publishing side of Epic have "very different policies."
"The side of Epic that makes creative tools like the Unreal Engine available to everybody says that you can use our tools for creating anything that's legal, and we have no creative say in it—we can't veto, whether we find it controversial or tasteful or not," he said. "That applies to the Unreal Engine, because we see it like Microsoft Word. How insane would it be if Microsoft Word's EULA said 'you cant write this set of ideas in our word processing software?' We don't go there."
When it comes to what Epic itself puts into the world via the Epic Games Store, however, there'll at least be a sight check before a game is approved for sale. Sweeney said that Epic will apply quality standards "similar to what a movie theater might apply as to what movies they show."
"We'll have a quality standard that doesn't accept crappy games," he said. "We'll accept reasonably good quality games, of any scale, whether small indie games to huge triple-A games, and we'll take everything up to, like, an R-rated movie or an M-rated game. A GTA game would be fine to us, but Epic's not going to distribute porn games or bloatware or asset flips, or any sort of thing that's meant to shock players. The PC's an open platform and if we don't distribute it in our store you can still reach consumers directly."
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-epic-store-wont-accept-crappy-games-says-ceo-tim-sweeney/A "quality standard" implies, to me, that Epic will play every game that comes its way before approving it, which would be a gargantuan task. That's not the plan, though.
"We're not going to have something like the console certification process involved in releasing a game," said Sweeney when I asked how Epic would apply this quality standard. "But I think we'll be aware of the quality of what's submitted prior to making a decision to list it in the store—somehow."
"Humans can make those judgment calls, and they'll be pretty reasonable," he added.
