The whole issue of the Epic Games Store is quite the magnet for controversy. Ever since the company began its incredibly aggressive approach to buying exclusives for its storefront, it’s been a debate that’s raged (sometimes quite literally) over the past year. One company that seemingly won’t be participating in all of that is Bandai Namco, who says they aren’t interested in exclusive deals with the storefront.
In an interview with MCVUK, Bandai Namco’s Hervé Hoerdt said that while they were interested in putting their games on the Epic Games Store to a degree, they had no interest in doing so exclusively. He leaves the door open for something later, but as of now, he doesn’t see much common ground with that strategy, wanting to get their games out to as many people as possible.
“We cannot do everything and Japanese [companies] are not risk averse but we’re going slowly. So we have a full platform strategy. The main focus for us is the consumer and the brand. And for each brand we decide what’s the best way to satisfy the consumer and to engage the widest audience possible. So for instance, I don’t see any point of putting Tekken 7 on Epic Store. Epic is just another store. It’s fantastic, they have a lot of strength and [lots of] users, the business model is attractive to us because it’s more profitable but still, their interest is, if I’m correct, exclusivity. And this is not our vision. We want our content to be available for as many fans as possible. I don’t think we’ll deal with Epic in the short term, while we have this strategy. But of course, if they’re open, we’ll go there.”
Hoerdt is probably referring to the recent issue with the developer of DARQ, where his game was seemingly denied by Epic Games because he refused to release on the Epic Games Store as an exclusive, instead wanting to release on both EGS and Steam. Bandai Namco’s stance is similar to Microsoft, who said they were open to the idea of putting titles on the storefront but also dismissed doing so via exclusivity.