The Epic Games Store is a hotbed of internet controversy. There’s a variety of reasons for that, but the largest reason is Epic Games’ strategy of buying third party exclusives to the storefront, something unheard of for this largely open platform in the past. Several high profile titles have been part of this, including Metro Exodus, published by Deep Silver. Now the owner of the publishing label, Koch Media, has signalled that’s not the end of it.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, Koch Media CEO Klemens Kundratitz praised the Epic Games Store and their new revenue split, something that the company and its CEO, Tim Sweeney, has used as a rallying tool against criticism leveled at the store. He said that he welcomed Epic’s business model and hoped to continue a strong relationship with them. He also said they were open to more exclusive deals down the line.
“As a company, we have to do the things we believe in,” he said. “We make mistakes as well but this wasn’t a mistake. We need to embrace a digital partner that offers a much more compelling rev share model than anybody else, and I think they act as a role model for us and for other digital partners as well — a 70/30 split is quite frankly anachronistic.
“We have many games on Steam, including many new releases like Iron Harvest. But I’m not ruling out to do an exclusive with Epic again.”
Not everyone else is as eager to get on the exclusive deals train, but it remains something that will likely continue happening at least for the next year or so. Epic has continued to snap up high profile exclusives from various ranges of the gaming spectrum and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.
