Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Epic Games Had a Wild Week

To say Epic Games’ approach with the Epic Games Store is ruffling the feathers of the PC gaming audience would be a hilarious understatement. The concept of games being exclusive to specific PC storefronts isn’t new; there were plenty of criticisms when EA, for instance, made all their games exclusive to their Origin platform. The fear involved how this would lead to a troubling precedent of third-party publishers creating their own platforms for their own games, which somewhat came to pass with Ubisoft games being best played on uPlay (though they’re still available on other platforms) and Fallout 76 only being playable through their new Bethesda Launcher (though that thankfully won’t be the case for future games).

The approach Epic is taking with the Epic Games Store, however, represents a huge escalation. It wouldn’t have been huge for PC gaming if the only exclusives the store contained were games like Fortnite; as in, titles developed by Epic, or published by them. But they’ve been making deals for temporary third-party exclusives since the store debuted in December, games that will only be on their PC store for a year to keep them off other storefronts — especially Valve’s Steam. It appears to be working out well for them, and it’s also enticing for developers and publishers when Epic gives them a bigger cut from each game sold. But several in the PC gaming world aren’t happy about this.

Epic Games was in attendance at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), where co-founder and CEO Tim Sweeney discussed and defended the company’s recent actions. Here, he claimed the Epic Games Store is actually making things better for the industry, thanks to the aforementioned larger cut for developers and publishers compared to Steam. He understands why the gaming audience doesn’t see it that way, and claimed this disruption is necessary to enable developers to create better games. There’s, uh, a lot of debate about this.

It’s good that the Epic Games Store is giving developers a bigger cut (they’re only taking 12 percent of the profits instead of 30 percent like Valve with Steam), which is the kind of disruption the PC gaming storefront landscape needed. But grabbing temporary exclusives is the kind of “disruption” many don’t like. There’s genuine concern that it could be a slippery slope towards other services like Steam and Origin also grabbing temporary exclusives, which would signal the complete end of the mostly-open PC market. It blows when you’re looking forward to buying a game on Steam, a service with a polished UI, only to find out that it’s been grabbed by Epic for a temporary exclusive on their store, whose storefront UI clearly in its infancy.

There was no way Sweeney couldn’t heavily delve into the act of securing temporary exclusives, and he made it clear that Epic has no intention of letting up. This is part of the “disruption” he mentioned, but this kind of wording has only further upset the vocal subset of PC gamers. Yet, it’s clear that’s only a “subset,” because this strategy is working out well enough for them to keep it up. They’ve announced a bunch of them recently.

One such title announced before GDC was Phoenix Point, a turn-based strategy game from the creator of X-COM that was crowdfunded on Fig. This move left several backers upset, particularly those who pledged money to help get it funded with the intention of playing it on Steam or GoG. Fortunately for them, they’re offering refunds for anyone who pledged for that purpose.

Several titles were announced at GDC. Two of them are big upcoming games: Obsidian Entertainment RPG The Outer Worlds (make sure to check out the responses on the tweet) and Remedy Entertainment’s Control. All of Quantic Dream’s most recent and previously PlayStation 4-exclusive games, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human, are making their way to PC as temporary exclusives. The games are coming to PC quicker than expected, as they just announced the plan to go multiplatform at the end of January, after Chinese company NetEase Games acquired a minority stake in the company. These deals show just how serious Epic is about keeping this trend going.

Notably, Sweeney said the store won’t accept “crappy games” or “porn games,” which could be a shot at Steam. Valve recently went through a fiasco with Rape Day, a game with a premise that’s as bad as you’d expect from the title. Despite themes involving glorifying rape, Valve had to be pressured into removing it from the service, and released a nonsense response about how it got on there at all. It’s clear Sweeney is hoping for Epic to avoid that, but we’ll see if that actually happens.

(Note: This is where snark-loving people ask why they’re letting Quantic Dream’s games on the service if they don’t want crappy games, since they’re very divisive.)

Whether Epic’s moves end up benefitting the PC gaming landscape in the long run remains to be seen, because there’s a much better chance of this leading to several other stores securing timed-exclusive titles for their storefronts. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, or it will be exactly the hellscape PC gamers want to avoid.