Blizzard’s former Battle.net lead is moving his expertise over to the Epic Games Store to ‘elevate player,…

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What would it take to make you use Epic’s launcher? Free games? Even better revenue for devs? Or perhaps an experience that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out? Well, Epic’s already tried the first two, so now it’s onto the third as it hires a new VP to oversee and hopefully fix the storefront’s struggles.

Martin Keely is the new Epic Games Store VP and GM (via GamesRadar), replacing Steve Allison who left the company earlier this month to join Saber Interactive. Keely’s got seven years of experience under his belt with his last role being the SVP overseeing Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher—the only launcher other than Steam that doesn’t actively piss me off. Which is why I’m actually quite interested to see what Keely does with Epic’s launcher.

While working on the Battle.net launcher, Keely oversaw “growth and record results” and is now “excited to get started with the team delivering new capabilities that elevate player, creator, and developer experiences,” he explains in a LinkedIn post. “I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to play a role in shaping an open and sustainable gaming ecosystem.”

I wouldn’t say Battle.net is particularly innovative, but it’s easy to use and clearly organised. However, Battle.net does manage far fewer games on its launcher compared to the Epic Games Store, so the two aren’t easily comparable in that sense—there’ll undoubtedly be new challenges ahead for Keely.

Epic’s founder and CEO Tim Sweeny welcomed Keely and this next stage of progress for the Epic Games Store “as we head into the era of Unreal Engine 6 and Team Open linking up to make everything work across platforms, stores, engines, and ecosystems.”

Regardless of what the future will look like, this is a clear move by Epic to try to shake things up in an attempt to bring the fight to Steam and cement its place in the future of gaming. It’s too early to tell whether this shift in management will actually change anything for the better but it does seem like a step in the right direction.