Spotify is now available on the Epic Games Store, signaling developer Epic’s ambition to turn what has until now been strictly a games store into a more general app distribution platform. The Spotify app can be downloaded for free from the Epic Games Store, as well as from the App Store, Google Play, or as a direct download for your PC or Mac.
Spotify’s availability on the Epic Games Store arrives now that Epic is in protracted legal battles with Apple and Google over the business models of each company’s respective app store. Epic has sued both companies for removing the mobile version of Fortnite, alleging antitrust violations and arguing that developers can and should be able and should be able to process and circumvent their own payments by giving 30 percent of all in-app revenue to the store owner.
The Epic Games Store is still a relatively new digital distribution platform and launched in December 2018 as a rival to Valve’s Steam. But from the jump, Epic offered more generous payouts to developers, taking only 12 percent of a developer’s revenue for its discount, rather than the 30 percent taken in many cases by Valve, as well as Apple and Google.
As of January, the Epic Games Store has more than 100 million users, and it is believed that number has increased, in part thanks to Epic’s plentiful sales and giveaways. (A GTA V May giveaway was so popular it resulted in a store outage of several hours.)
With the Epic Game Store’s growing user base, developer-friendly fee structure, and the fact that it now hosts one of the most popular apps in the world, Epic seems to be making sure that non-game developers will use its distribution platform as a viable alternative to other app- stores.