Bringing The Division 2 exclusively to the Epic Games Store is a shocker on Ubisoft’s part, but there is more to come. In the announcement that they made regarding the game’s exclusivity to Epic’s storefront, they also confirmed that they will be bringing further PC games to the platform going forward.
Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney said, “As long-time fans and partners of Ubisoft, we’re thrilled to bring a range of awesome Ubisoft games to the Epic Games store. We aim to provide the most publisher-friendly store, providing direct access to customers and an 88 per cent revenue split, enabling game creators to further reinvest in building great games.”
Ubisoft’s VP of partnerships Chris Early added, “We entrust Epic to deliver a smooth journey for our fans, from preordering the game and enjoying our Beta to the launch of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 on March 15. Epic continues to disrupt the video game industry, and their third party digital distribution model is the latest example, and something Ubisoft wants to support.”
Now, the important thing to note here is that Epic Games Store exclusivity isn’t mentioned in terms of the other games. While we know that The Division 2 will be exclusive to the store, there is nothing in the press release that necessarily indicates or implies that future Ubisoft games may be exclusive to Epic’s launcher too. For now, those other titles still have store pages on Steam, so we can assume that they may come to Steam, too.
The other important thing the press release specifies is that these other games will be “in the coming year”. This means that Ubisoft’s upcoming games are the ones that may move over to the Epic Games Store (though nothing is really stopping them from putting older hits, such as Rainbow Six Siege, on the service either).
In any case, as I said earlier, this is a major coup for Epic. If they can keep Ubisoft’s games exclusive to their launcher on PC, they’re going to attract a lot of users very fast.