TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: Paradox Interactive deems 70:30 revenue split ‘outrageous’; Epic pledges crowdfunder refunds for Epic Game Store exclusives; and DJ Marshmello releases new album via mobile game ‘Marshmello Music Dance’.

Paradox Interactive deems 70:30 revenue split ‘outrageous’

Paradox Interactive’s executive chairman of the board Fredrik Wester has strongly criticised the 70:30 revenue split model employed by several retail platforms, including Steam, Sony and Microsoft, stating that the current situation is ‘outrageous’.

Speaking at a Gamelab panel last week, Wester hypothesised that the logic behind the current system was based upon the cost of physical distribution, which does not apply to digital software platforms. Furthermore Wester has praised efforts from alternative platforms like Epic Game Store to redress the 70/30 split, despite criticism of other aspects of its business model such as stocking exclusive titles, saying: "This doesn't cost anything. So Epic has done a great job for the whole industry, because you get 88%. Fantastic move. Thank you very much."

Epic pledges crowdfunder refunds for Epic Game Store exclusives

Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney has pledged to fund the cost of all refunds on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter which result from games being listed exclusively on the Epic Game Store. Sweeney announced the move on Twitter, following news that Ys Net plans to offer refunds to backers of their Shenmue 3 title that favour alternative platforms.

Sweeney also stated his intention of working with other stores to provide their users with keys for such titles, saying: “When future games go Epic-exclusive after offering crowdfunding rewards on other PC stores, we’ll either coordinate with colleagues at the other stores to ensure key availability in advance, or guarantee refunds at announcement time.”

DJ Marshmello releases new album via mobile game ‘Marshmello Music Dance’

American DJ and electronic music producer Marshmello has released his new album ‘Joytime III’ exclusively via a free-to-play mobile game ‘Marshmello Music Dance’, in conjunction with developer Gamejam. The album will be available for 24 hours before it is released in conventional music outlets.

Speaking on the significance of the collaboration in an interview with Pocketgamer.biz, Gamejam CEO Christian Calderon said: “Marshmello wanted to be the first artist in the world to launch in a game before releasing on music streaming platforms; we wanted to be the first game developer to partner with an artist well-known like Marshmello to make this happen. We started Gamejam to do collaborations like this.”