Epic CEO claims “The end of these ridiculous 30% fees is near”

Last week, we reported on a statement from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in which he explained why Fortnite is not available on the Steam Deck. Sweeney has since made his position even clearer, suggesting that Steam’s 30% fees are to blame.

In response to a Twitter post discussing the recent court win by Epic Games vs Google regarding android and the relatively closed nature of its app store, Tim Sweeney made an emboldened statement, saying:

“We’ll compete, and we’ll also put Fortnite on any serious store that gives all developers an awesome deal. Steam, Microsoft, OneStore, anyone: give all developers an awesome deal and we’ll support you. The end of these ridiculous 30% fees is near.”

This represents a rather different tone to that which Sweeney was presenting last week, where in response to the question “Why is Fortnite still not playable on Steam Deck?” Sweeney stated:

“If we only had a few more programmers. It's the Linux problem. I love the Steam Deck hardware. Valve has done an amazing job there; I wish they would get to tens of millions of users, at which point it would actually make sense to support it.”

While not quite an apples-to-apples conversation, Sweeney’s more aggressive approach to withholding Fortnite as leverage is interesting to see once again. Perhaps the recent boost in its popularity is the reason why?

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Sweeney’s statement? Do you agree? Is he going about it the right way? Let us know your thoughts below.

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