Fortnite is such an insanely massive hit that Epic Games is giving some of the money back

Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, is breaking tradition with pretty much every digital marketplace in existence by taking less than 30% of revenues on its Unreal Marketplace.

The platform, which allows Unreal Engine game developers to buy graphics, sound effects, coding blueprints, and more, will now offer an 88/12 revenue split. Epic is even applying the bigger payout retroactively to any developer that’s sold assets in the Marketplace since 2014.

According to VentureBeat, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney partially credits Fortnite, which made an estimated $318 million in June, for the new policy. “Thanks to both the Marketplace’s growth and the success of Fortnite, Epic now conducts a huge volume of digital commerce,” Sweeney said in a statement. “The resulting economies of scale enable us to pass the savings along to the Unreal Engine Marketplace community, while also making a healthy profit for Epic.”

Epic definitely did the Fortnite: Battle Royale thing to test and refine features for Unreal Engine for other developers to use, so it feels like it is almost embarrassed by the success. It’s super endearing.

— Jeffrey Grubb (@JeffGrubb) July 12, 2018

The more favorable revenue split could help Epic gain ground on rival game development toolmaker Unity, whose Asset Store hosts more than 36,000 assets and had more than 3,600 creators as of 2014, Ars Technica notes. Epic’s Unreal Marketplace currently has more than 5,000 products from 1,500 creators.