Adding Itch.io to the Epic Games Store feels very much like it was inspired by Inception. For those not in the know, Itch.io is an indie-focused app/storefront, where developers can sell their projects and/or games. Some of these are free, some are pay-what-you-want, others have a set price. It’s a really weird decision to make.  It cannot help but be a good thing for the smaller Itch.io app, in that more people will likely see the app via the Epic Games Store. 

The Epic Games Store still has a long way to go to catch up with Steam, but they’ve been putting in work, such as with their recent Social Update.

Seeing an app store within an app store is such a strange decision, with the Epic Games Store added Itch.io to its collection. As we said, it could be a huge move for the smaller app, and we hope it is. There’s no telling how this will work out. Will the Epic Games Store receive a portion of the proceeds of apps bought through Itch.io, or is this simply a way for Epic to help smaller developers out? 

Itch.io referenced this in a recent blogpost, and answered the important question of “Why”:

“They reached out to us a few months back about how they were exploring adding apps to their store. We thought it was a funny idea, but also a good opportunity to potentially expose a lot more people to itch.io, as the EGS has a pretty large audience.”

This isn’t even the only thing interesting (or weird) you can find on the Epic Games Store. You can download Spotify through it! If it had Spotify-integration, that would be rad, but instead, it’s just another place to download the Spotify app (which wasn’t really needed in the first place). It sounds like Epic Games Store just wants to add options for people to download a variety of apps like Itch.io, but it feels a bit random. We’ll just have to wait and see if there’s any kind of future plans or changes that come of this.

According to Itch.io, this is just another way for people to discover their app. There is always a chance that someone using the Epic Games Store app has no idea what Itch.io is, and they could find a variety of fun games, or interesting app projects within it. If it’s simply a way to bring viewership to smaller developers, good on Epic Games. We’ll just have to see!