Epic Games' Tim Sweeney says the Epic Store will keep snagging exclusives
Epic Games Store will continue to sign and fund exclusivity deals with devs and publishers "regardless" of any previous commitments to Steam.
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic, has stated that the exclusivity deals and funding offered by the Epic Games Store will continue to roll out despite any "plans or announcements" that potential developers and publishers coming over to the platform may have made around Steam.
Sweeney chimed in with this tidbit on Twitter after being questioned about the statement that Epic Games Store head Steve Allison made during an Epic Store Q&A at GDC 2019.
"We don’t want to do that ever again," Allison said in reference to the Metro Exodus debacle which saw Deep Silver pull the game from Steam prior to release as it announced its timed-exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store.
Deep Silver honoured pre-order purchases made on Steam, but the sudden news ticked off the community, leading to the series getting review-bombed on Valve's platform.
Elaborating on Epic's position, Sweeney tweeted that Allison's GDC comments "prompted further discussions" inside Epic, "leading to the realization that these calls must be up to developers and publishers, and Epic wouldn’t tell them 'no' on account of existing statements made about Steam."
Epic Games Store exclusives include Remedy's Control, “several major PC releases” from Ubisoft, and upcoming Obsidian RPG The Outer Worlds.
Borderlands 3 fans also suspect that Gearbox has signed a similar deal with Epic, after spotting the Store's logo in a since-removed Twitter ad for the game that may have spilled the beans on the game's release date.
Sweeney didn't have anything else to say on the matter, but he puts the responsibility of platform-hopping onto the shoulder of the devs and publishers of the games, indicating that it isn't Epic's place to turn down anyone based on any plans they may have in the works with Steam.