Epic Games store, the bane of Steam’s existence, has grown in popularity quite a lot over the last year. There have been several exclusives on the store which has brought recognition to the digital marketplace. This exclusivity of games comes from some kind of financial transaction that takes place between the developers and Epic Games store. Meaning, Epic pays the devs some amount of money for some amount of exclusivity.
One such example is Remedy’s Control which launched on PC and consoles on August 27, 2019. It is still exclusive to the Epic store but we don’t know for how much longer. But, what we do know is that there was some monetary transaction involved between the developer and the store and according to a Tweet by senior analyst at Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad, Epic may have paid $10.45 million.
His Tweet reads, “Digital Bros, parent company of 505 Games, has disclosed that they received a payment of 9.49 million euro from Epic Games for Control. Which I would imagine is for exclusivity. 55% of that payment going to 505 Games”. He also shared a link to the full report which unfortunately is in Italian but according to Google translate, the two tables of interest can be deciphered. One of them lists the revenues of the different digital marketplaces as at 30 June 2019 while the other lists the gross revenues for premium video games. The former contains ‘Epic’ with the amount €9.49 million next to it and the latter contains ‘Control’ with the exact same amount.
Which means even before the release of the game, 505 Games – the publisher of Control – had made $10 million (€9.49 million). But how did Ahmad figure out it was for the exclusivity deal? Upon further Google translation of the report, it reads:
“the revenues deriving from the personal computer version of the video game Control were significant […] The game in different versions, for personal computers and consoles, was launched on August 27, 2019, but the contractual structure with the digital marketplace that required the exclusivity of the video game of the personal computer version has allowed the recognition of revenues already starting from this exercise”.
It’s safe to say that this kind of deal must be in place for other games on the Epic store as well but the amount would obviously vary.
So you can’t play on consoles?!
Yes you can but on PC, it’s exclusive to the Epic Store