The latest Epic Games store exclusive is Ooblets, a charming blend of Stardew Valley, Pokémon, and Animal Crossing. It’s the latest in a long line of high-profile indies that have taken up that exclusivity offer, and the developers have gone into detail about exactly what Epic is offering to make the deal so attractive.
“Because Epic doesn’t yet have the same market share as their competitors,” the developers say, “they offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we’d be wanting to earn if we were just selling Ooblets across all the stores.” They also say “we got some cash money upfront from the deal so we can make the game we always wanted to with fewer compromises.”
We don’t have the exact details of the Epic deal on every game, but it’s a safe bet that this sort of guarantee is likely why exclusivity has been so appealing to titles like Phoenix Point and MechWarrior 5. If Epic’s able to guarantee a title’s sales projections across other platforms, then developers don’t have a material reason to fear any lost sales in the backlash – and news on Satisfactory sales suggest that games are still moving units on the Epic store.
The full blog post from the Ooblets devs is pretty jovial, recommending climate change and human rights abuses as more productive uses of your anger than PC platform exclusives.
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Ooblets still has a rough release date of ‘whenever it’s ready.’ The developers say “we’re not going to be perfectionists about our initial launch, but there’s still a lot of foundational stuff we need to sort out before we’re even ready for an early access launch.”