Epic Games has rolled out an update to its digital storefront that gives users the ability to view trending games, browse by genre or features, see what's on sale, what's been recently updated, and more. It also shared a look at some of the big new features in development, including a wishlist, continued improvements to the library view, and critic reviews on store pages.
The Open Critic partnership is interesting because Epic has been very careful about how it handles reviews on store page. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said last year that Epic was working on a review system, but that it would be opt-in for developers in order to avoid issues with review bombing. But some gamers, such as in this Reddit thread, believe that an opt-in system will enable developers to avoid valid criticism; integrating Open Critic reviews into its store pages will make it easier for users to figure out which games may be worth their time, but it doesn't address the core complaint that people, individually or in groups, should be able to use reviews to express their displeasure about whatever.
An Epic store wishlist will be nice, although speaking for myself I have no doubt that it will end up a forgotten litany of games I was briefly interested in before they were pushed out of my consciousness by the announcement of other games that also seem really interesting, so I'll add them my wishlist, and on it goes forever. As for the library views, Epic said only that it's "updating the visuals for the grid view to better align with the new presentation of games on the storefront," and make "multiple polish improvements" to the list view.
Epic has also made some behind-the-scenes changes to its store to better handle high volumes of traffic, added Thai language support, and has begun implementing 3D Secure in order to bring the EGS into compliance with European regulatory requirements.
