Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Says Steamworks API "Has Created a Real Problem for the Industry"

After the launch of Epic Games Store‘s self-publishing tools last week, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has claimed that Valve’s Steamworks API and its lack of cross-store functionality “has created a real problem for the industry,” accusing Valve of abusing its market power to encourage developers to ship games that are “broken” on other PC video game stores.

On March 9, the Epic Games Store finally debuted self-publishing functionality for the Steam rival store, allowing independent developers and publishers to bring their games to the store independently. Epic also reiterated its requirement for all games published on the store to support cross-store crossplay on PC, which Valve notably does not ask of games that are published on Steam.

In an interview, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called out Valve not only for this policy, but also for the fact that its free multiplayer Steamworks API does not function with any other PC video game store. Sweeney suggested that this is anticompetitive behavior on Valve’s part:

[Valve] have a classic lock-in strategy where they build these services that only work with [Steam], and they use the fact that they have the majority market share in order to encourage everybody to ship games that have a broken experience in other stores. And we were bitten by this early on with a number of multiplayer games coming to the Epic Games Store. Steamworks didn’t work on our store, so they had either a reduced set of multiplayer features or none, or they were just limited to a much smaller audience back in the launch days of the Epic Games Store, so you had a lot of multiplayer games that really felt like they were broken. And remember, Call of Duty went through a debacle launching on the Windows Store a while back in which you could only matchmake with other Windows Store players, and that is not how PC should work.

In other news, Epic’s free game program will continue throughout 2023, and 505 Games’ star-studded Crime Boss: Rockay City launches on PC on March 28 exclusively on the store (till June 2024, at least).

Source: PC Gamer