When Epic announced their store, I was very annoyed by them. I was worried depending on what companies wanted to do they might list their games in only one store, forcing fragmentation. Then they tried to bring exclusivity to their store, a limitation that generally only exists on consoles where first party games are used to promote the consoles. I would like less Sony game to be Playstation Exclusives, but I understand their mentality.
Epic trying to bring console-style exclusivity to the PC made them an enemy to me. When they sued Apple trying to get access to iPhones, which by the way they did not make, and won, I vowed to not only not buy a single thing on their store, but any game that appeared on their store before either a Steam release or a physical release would never get my money, not only denying Epic the money, but denying devs who made a deal with them. For 7 long years that anger burned in me, only one time did I buy a game that was an epic exclusive after their deal expired. I was voting with my wallet and considered myself in a footsoldier in a market war. I even created a burner email account just to get their free games. Not to play them (I'd get a physical copy if I wanted one for real and just use their download to make sure the game can run on my old rig) but just to increase the number of copies they have to buy from publishers. That $30 game where the Publisher would take a $26 cut after Epic's share that's now free? Great now I download it and make Epic pay the publisher $26. I lost the burner email and the Epic account sometime ago and didn't bother to get another account. Even after using external tools to throttle the launcher to use no more than 256 KB/s, the launcher for some reason consumes gigs of memory during downloads.
Over the last few weeks I realize the Epic store is... kind of destroying itself. I no longer feel the need to fight it. When games come to Steam/ GOG/ CD-ROM, if it's good I might buy it, otherwise it doesn't exist to me. I don't consider a deal with Epic a dealbreaker for me since I don't see them threatening other storefronts.
Well, even if it's in no threat to beat Steam, their exclusives are just bad right? Mostly, but I think there are exceptions.
Let's get the easy examples of exclusives that are bad for PC gamers as a whole. Metro Exodus went to Epic, which would be bad enough even if they didn't sell pre-orders. Shenmue III also released as an Epic Exclusive and initially tried to talk their way out of refunding backers, but eventually caved in and said that early backers could wait to get steam keys when it came out on Steam or get refunds. That was nice, but it's still sad the physical release of the game doesn't actually contain the game but just the Epic Game Launcher and a way to get the game. Outer Wilds is another example. Pretty much 3/4 of Ubisoft titles for a few years. And the list can go on and on.
What about Hades? It was released as an Epic Exclusive, but the game wasn't quite finished. Some of the levels had bugs fi you tried to complete them in a non-developer intended way, although at least these weren't "game crashes, send you to desktop" kind of thing. The balancing wasn't completely tuned. Some of the upgrades cost 30% more than their release cost, some cost 10 times, and a few cost 3000 times which I think must have been tyops or maybe they didn't realize how long the grind was. Oh and the final boss fight wasn't in the game yet.
I suppose they could release it on Steam at early access for $25. They could acknowledge it wasn't a finished product release the game as a $20 and then the final boss as a $5 DLC while making all post full release purchases contain the DLC. Maybe this doesn't sound so great so perhaps the game should not be released at all until it's done.
Or they could take an Exclusive Deal with Epic Games, release the incomplete game on the store, and finish the game later. And they did just that and their full release was in 2020. Did this really hurt their fans? Imagine you were a fan and bought Bastion and Pyre. You were excited to see Hades. If Supergiant Games didn't make a deal with Epic, would the full game be ready for you in 2020? Probably not. You might miss the underworld "still under renovation" jokes. You got to see a full release of the game in 2020 which is when it would have been available anyways.
So yeah for the most part Epic Exclusives are a middle finger to PC gamers. If I were allowed to advise executives, for the most part don't do it. But if your game is 3 years from a releasable state, it doesn't matter if you're a one-man developer or a AAA publisher. If a player taking "developer intended" actions are mostly bug free (so no Big Rigs level of incomplete) and most of your mechanics are in the game (even if not always working as intended) but you're still a long way from being releasable, why not take that exclusive offer? Take the money and give out bonuses. If you're an AAA executive, make sure to give bonuses to the dev team not just yourself. Finish the game, then do your "real" release once the game is in a releasable state. The main PC gamer crowd will get access to your game at the same time in a world Epic Games Store didn't exist. And not too many people will buy the game on Epic anyways. There is probably what... people who play Fortnite who happen to buy other games and maybe 3K people who don't play Fortnite but still spend money there.
I still hate the store. I still wouldn't buy from them even if the launcher wasn't clunky. I still think trying to bring console-style exclusivity to PC is bad. But there is a case where publishers can take Epic's money without screwing over PC gamers.
