While Alan Wake 2 has been among the best games to have come out in the last few years, its PC release has undoubtedly been its poorest performer thanks to it exclusively being available on the Epic Games Store. Despite this, however, developer Remedy Entertainment has noted in a social media post that the horror title wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the deal signed with Epic Games.
The latest in a series of older posts discussing the Epic Games Store and Steam by, among other people, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry, and Larian’s director of publishing Michael Douse, Remedy has referred to Epic as being “an excellent partner” regardless of the game being unavailable on Steam.
“There would be no Alan Wake 2 without Epic Publishing. The publishing deal with Epic was very fair to Remedy. While these complex deals can often take even a year to reach their conclusion, and may not always be fair to the developer, this one was. And it only took months to get done. Epic Games was, and is, an excellent partner to us. Steam or no Steam,” wrote the studio.
As for the longer discussion taking place, it all started when Oshry revealed that games published by New Blood Interactive have been seeing spikes in sales figures after they were given away for free on Epic Games Store. He noted that sales went up by as much as 200 percent during these events. Sweeney acknowledged this, noting that “on some transactions, Epic wins. On more, Steam wins. But one thing is constant on every transaction: gamers and developers win by having more options and better deals.”
In further posts, Sweeney went into how Epic Games Store is roughly 55-60 percent the size of Steam in terms of monthly active users, and the company focuses on reinvesting its revenue to work with more developers. Alongside this, he also threw in a dig at Valve president Gabe Newell’s yacht purchase.
“The more telling number is monthly active users, where Epic Games Store is 55%-60% the size of Steam. We heavily reinvest back into engaging users through the Free Games Program, putting our revenue back to work for developers in a way that those yachts and diamond teeth don’t,” he wrote.
Responding to this, Douse offered his own two cents, noting that despite Epic having a large hand in funding the development of Alan Wake 2, the company did little to help Remedy’s own financial issues in light of Alan Wake 2 not coming to Steam.
“I understand Epic entirely funded Alan Wake 2 but this altruistic pro-developer talk doesn’t sit well when Remedy seemingly went into financial crisis because they couldn’t tap Steam for AW2 sales suffering potentially hundreds of millions in lost revenue,” he wrote.
“Ultimately the viability of the store sits on their ability to convert hundreds of millions of Fortnite players into mid-hardcore premium gamers, and I don’t see the Fortnite brand attempting to do that,” his posts continued.
Alan Wake 2 was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2023. For more details, check out our review.
