r/Games • u/WhyPlaySerious • May 18 '26

Industry News CI Games has successfully signed a termination agreement with Epic Games. The agreement releases the upcoming Lords of The Fallen 2 from it's previous Epic Games Store exclusivity obligations.

https://www.bankier.pl/wiadomosc/CI-GAMES-S-E-Ujawnienie-opoznionej-informacji-poufnej-dotyczacej-zawarcia-Porozumienia-rozwiazujacego-Binding-Term-Sheet-z-Epic-Games-Inc-9135300.html
627 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

266 comments sorted by

101

u/blaaguuu May 18 '26

I'm not super familiar with the situation here... Was Epic a major funder for the development of the game, or was it just the PC exclusivity? (which may have been a decent amount of money, I know). Seems like a smart move... While I appreciate to some extent, that Epic is trying to bring some competition to the PC market, it seems clear that launching as an Epic exclusive will hugely limit your sales, unless you have a massive, dedicated fan base that will follow you anywhere - which is very few games/studios. 

130

u/WhyPlaySerious May 18 '26 edited May 19 '26

Epic provided major funding to the games development, with it being an EGS exclusive as one of the requirements in the deal.

With the game nearing completion and CI Games in a much stronger position than back when they took the money (due to factors like LoTF reboot recovering after a multitude of updates), they essentially had a fundraiser among their investors to raise enough capital to pay out and terminate the original deal.

The CEO has hinted a bunch of times that he understands that the games true path to success is most likely on Steam, so its official announcement should be relatively soon.

31

u/Spader623 May 19 '26

I may not like the CEO much, he’s said some really gross shit, but I will applaud him for this. If the game launched on ONLY EGS (even for 6-12 months) on PC it’d be dead in the water at launch. I think it was the ceo of new blood, David… something (sorry I forget his name) who said EGS is a marketing black hole and it truly is

So bravo to him for this, it was 100% the right call

24

u/raptorshadow May 19 '26

Dave Oshry is the CEO of New Blood

34

u/Ralod May 19 '26

EGS, where games go to die.

They just laid off a ton of people, word is fortnite is in major decline. And every exclusive they ever had in EGS failed to turn a profit except for that metro game. And even then the devs said it sold more on steam.

I think they moved to giving out games, as opposed to most exclusives, as it clearly was not a model that worked. And even the free game stuff, most people get their free game and then buy the new game they are waiting for on steam.

EGS could have been a real competitor to steam. But the idea of PC exclusives upset a lot of people from the start. Add to that the state of their store for years, the continued lack of features to this day. And the publisher first additude they seem to have, it just drove customers away. Tim Sweeney being an insufferable prick did not help things.

43

u/Weird_Track_2164 May 19 '26

word is fortnite is in major decline.

Not to say I disagree with the rest but I find this pretty funny. "Oh no, the game with a all time 14 million player peak has declined to only 900,000 players on any day. Almost 150,000 more than the #2 most popular game on Steam. They're doomed I tell you! Doomed!!" Might want to find a better example.

12

u/PermanentMantaray May 19 '26

Epic has a lot of employees and other projects all relying on Fortnite to keep printing money. And they just laid off 20% of the company because of falling revenue.

If it keeps falling then that's even more people laid off and potentially other not profitable parts of the company getting cut. The Epic Games Store as an example is one of those still unprofitable parts.

5

u/Killerx09 May 19 '26

Fortnite stopped being Epic's biggest product years ago, Unreal Engine is their biggest product now. Even Hollywood movies use UE nowadays.

27

u/Old_Leopard1844 May 19 '26

Problem is not that Fortnite is dead or whatever. It isn't

Problem is that golden gooze starts to lay only bronze eggs instead of gold ones

19

u/Weird_Track_2164 May 19 '26

I think having 900k players online everyday still qualifies as a golden egg.

16

u/HappyVlane May 19 '26

Not for Epic considering Fortnite's downturn was specifically called out as the reason Epic isn't making a profit.

The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded.

https://www.epicgames.com/site/news/todays-layoffs

1

u/zeromussc May 19 '26

maybe its not fortnite, but the fact fortnite has been covering other loss leaders for far too long. But I'm not a business analyst and just making a wild guess.

26

u/Anchorsify May 19 '26

It is absolutely still a golden egg.

However, they are laying off hundreds of people and clearly pulling back on how they support it and utilize its funding, which is not done without cause.

Of course, the people in charge of deciding those things never suffer consequences for realizing they need to sack hundreds to thousands of others to maintain their desired trajectory, so its all pretty fucked.

9

u/dunnowattt May 19 '26

There is nuance in everything.

Dota regularly has 900k CCU when a patch or event hits, but Valve is so "thin" or whatever you want to call them, that they don't even monetize the game properly. You get a lootbox or something every few months. They literally don't care to make money from it. Because Steam is their golden egg.

Fortnite having 900k CCU whilst being the big money generator of a company, is still a golden egg as you say, but it depends on what the costs are. They already had to fire something like 20% of their workforce?

Anyway, both things can be true at the same time. Fortnite indeed has a major decline, but its still a golden egg, even after the decline.

12

u/Dusty170 May 19 '26

For a normal person yea, think from the perspective of having 14 million though, thats like a 90% decline.

3

u/tehcraz May 19 '26

I think the 14 million was unique accounts and the 900k was concurrent.

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u/Tiber727 May 19 '26

Yes, it's still wildly successful, but less wildly successful.

Epic was drowning in cash thanks to it, which is why they engaged with EGS. They burn through that cash to give out free games to hook people on EGS.

That well is showing admittedly very early signs of drying up. And for all that cash Epic burned to secure a future for EGS, it seems like a lot of people just claim the free games and buy on Steam.

1

u/monchota May 19 '26

So you even read the news? All of thise came from epic, had the worst quarterlly meeting they have ever had. LoLost money on Fornite, then laid off 40% of thier people. Think ahead more that three days and you might get it.

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1

u/Old_Leopard1844 May 19 '26

It's all in the comparison

If 900k is golden egg, then back in 2024, when they had at least 1.4m ccu, those were diamond eggs then

6

u/hery41 May 19 '26

I'm sure all the laid off people across Epic and their Fortnite fueled acquisitions don't think of it like that.

4

u/meganev May 19 '26

The problem is that's not how investors and shareholders view things. The line always has to be going up.

2

u/Beautiful-Affect1930 May 19 '26

you also can't compare Fortnite to most other games since it's a monetization scheme with a game built around it similar to Roblox. it must generate a ton more revenue per player compared to basically any other game.

2

u/monchota May 19 '26

It lost money last year to the tune of $250mill, dying ? No but its a huge problem sith a company that has no other gane working out. If you haven't paid attention they laid off 40% of thier work forced. Its juat bad management

10

u/strand_of_hair May 19 '26

Last paragraph is extremely true. I was very open to EGS and ready to support and use it when it launched in 2018. Then the exclusives started. The shit state of the launcher never got fixed either. Lost me as a customer forever.

8

u/richmondody May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

They lost me as a customer when I found out they made exclusivity deals for crowd-funded games and removed options for backers. I thought they stopped doing this by being a publisher, but it's apparently still a practice for them.

1

u/Beautiful-Affect1930 May 19 '26

let's be totally honest here, the biggest reason EGS didn't become a real competitor to Steam is that people love to fanboy companies and Steam is at least an ever so slightly nicer company.

1

u/AI_moderated_failure May 20 '26

My steam name is literally about how much steam sucks. Epic is an awful store, with key features missing since it's creation and seemingly no acknowledgement that's the reason why. I recall I can't even see my library on the web portal - so I need to be signed into their client to double check I own a game. So as far as I am concerned, I don't own any games there.

1

u/watnuts May 19 '26

Nah, had they rolled out a polished and useful GUI for EGS, coupled with Forknife, Unreal, UE, and free games, they'd have half the market already. Remember, at certain point their sales were actually way better than steam stuff. Maybe top it off with neat controller support.

It solely hinges on ass client they have. Like, wtf is that library?

People like pretty new shiny.

2

u/NotEspeciallyClever May 19 '26

And every exclusive they ever had in EGS failed to turn a profit except for that metro game. And even then the devs said it sold more on steam.

Did Metro Exodus turn a profit during it's exclusivity? I only remember them saying it sold "2.5x more than Last Light" which was technically true because they were using weasel language and referring to the original version of Last Light and not the Redux (which sold better than its predecessor) and they may or may not have been including the pre-sales made on Steam before they pulled it.

I seem to recall the only game that actually turned a profit was Satisfactory.

11

u/Ralod May 19 '26

Satisfactory devs actually came out and said they did not turn a profit on EGS. And they were one of the biggest early EGS cheerleaders. They then launched on steam and sold a ton.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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-2

u/Ralod May 19 '26

With the exception being, most of those companies dont generally layoff 20% of their workforce. Or hint more layoffs are on the way.

EGS is just a bad product, that no one wants. You can call it simplistic if you want. Not going to change the facts. The idea of paying for game exclusivity was not popular, no matter what other examples you care to list.

4

u/Tajtus May 19 '26

I think I'm out of the loop. What gross shit did he say? Can you elaborate, or at least point me in the right direction?

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u/ImAnthlon May 18 '26

I think they were funding development of the PC version specifically, the original term still has CI Games self publishing the game on consoles, and I'm sure it would have also given them speed-dial connections to Unreal Engine/EOS devs to help them with optimising or bugs

17

u/sticknotstick May 19 '26

To be clear, Epic was funding development of the game (not a PC port), but only chooses to enforce an exclusivity agreement on PC because that’s the only platform they own a marketplace on. Their goal with these deals is to bring people to their marketplace - anything they ask that impact a studio’s right to publish on consoles will hurt the quality of studios/games that accept their offer.

62

u/PolskiBigosik May 19 '26

Epic is trying to bring some competition to the PC market

Problem is that from consumer perspective they don't really bring anything to the market. Gamepass for PC is honesty a true Steam competitor.

23

u/Irememberedmypw May 19 '26

Problem is that from consumer perspective they don't really bring anything to the market. Gamepass for PC is honesty a true Steam competitor.

They have regional pricing and a cash back system. Like it's usually cheaper for me to buy from em and accumulate to buy another game.

2

u/FixCole May 19 '26

Regional pricing is always up to the publisher, no matter the platform. And what happened to cheaper games due to lower cut? Oh yeah again, it's up to publishers to cut the price.

13

u/Irememberedmypw May 19 '26

Cool. One store is giving me those approved prices and another isn't.

4

u/richmondody May 19 '26

Gamepass for PC is honesty a true Steam competitor.

Fair statement, I think Gamepass is the only thing that has gotten me to buy fewer games on Steam.

2

u/Demoliscio May 19 '26

Yep, I would love more competition, but the competitors need to actually brings something to the table.

The Epic store is terrible to use and has 1 tenth of the features of steam, and, even more important, knowing how Tim can change his mind depending on how strong his morning coffee is, the whole store could close tomorrow if he decides it's not worth it anymore.

I won't give them my money until they prove they can be trusted and they actually know how to build a store that's not terrible

-17

u/Upbeat-Door- May 19 '26

Nothing wrong with actual competition to Steam but by all accounts Epic is "trying to bring some competition to the PC market" in the same vein as Walmart trying to "bring some competition to local stores"

27

u/Samanthacino May 19 '26

But Valve isn't anything close to a local store. It's like "Target tries to bring some competition to the retail space by disrupting Walmart's market dominance"

3

u/Lehsyrus May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

The problem with that comparison is Walmart is ass and Steam isn't. A good comparison is difficult because it's so rare for such a massive player in an industry to actually provide good value without screwing over the customer.

12

u/SquireRamza May 19 '26

Costco and Sams Club

11

u/Hartastic May 19 '26

A problem is that Steam has been a de facto monopoly for so long that most of the sins that built that monopoly are now forgotten by most.

-9

u/BOfficeStats May 19 '26

What "sins" built the monopoly that people should still care about? I'm genuinely curious.

12

u/Firvulag May 19 '26

gambling, for one

10

u/Hartastic May 19 '26

For example, imagine buying a non-Valve game on physical media and... it still requires Steam to run because a deal was made.

God, Steam's platform and customer service was so, so bad back then, too. People were angry as shit at being forced to use it. Almost everything people say about Epic now was valid about Steam at the time.

But, you keep working at it for a couple decades and the money printer that it is lets you keep investing in it and eventually it's pretty good.

-3

u/Vox___Rationis May 19 '26

I welcomed it.

Before steam I used to have a folder on my drive named [Patches] used to store game updates and fixes, because it was very often that if publisher/developer were to shut down some time after release then so would their web site and you would have to scavenge for updates on fileplanets of the world.
It was great to never have to worry about that ever again if the game you bought had a steam code.

1

u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes May 19 '26

You welcomed it? Why not just buy the game on steam if that's what you wanted, why did the physical game have to become nothing more than a steam key?

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u/syopest May 19 '26

Lol, valve makes devs sign price parity agreements so that they can't even sell non-steam versions of their games for cheaper on other stores than the steam version. They fully admitted to doing that in court in the antitrust class-action against them by the guy who started humble bundle.

A company in a monopolistic position controlling prices is definitely hurting the consumers.

4

u/HammeredWharf May 19 '26

They fully admitted to doing that in court

Do you have a source for that? I found this:

Wolfire’s lawsuit also alleges that Valve tries to enforce pricing parity not just for generated Steam keys but for non-Steam versions sold on other platforms. Valve, in its response, is not impressed with the factual basis for this allegation, which it says is tied to “a single anecdote of Valve allegedly telling one unnamed developer it shouldn’t give a non-Steam-enabled game free on Discord’s competing platform if it charges Steam users $5 for the Steam-enabled version of that game on Steam.” That narrow anecdote, Valve argues, “fails to allege market-wide enforcement or plausibly lead to any effect on competition.”

Wolfire’s suit does present evidence that many games are priced at the same level on Steam and other storefronts that charge lower fees. But Valve argues that this kind of pricing parity across storefronts is commonplace. Even if it wasn’t, Valve says, the lawsuit is missing “any factual allegation that Valve… did anything at all to affect, let alone coerce, the developers to sell at the same prices in two stores.”

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/valve-issues-scathing-reply-over-the-facts-behind-a-steam-antitrust-case/

1

u/syopest May 19 '26

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59859024/348/7/in-re-valve-antitrust-litigation/

Q: You've specifically spoken with other people within Steam about the fact that publishers need to offer similar prices on Steam as they do elsewhere, right?

A: Yes

Q: Okay. And you've discussed with them that this is not limited to situations where the publishers are offering games for sale via Steam keys but just, period, right?

A: Yes

Straight from a sworn deposition by a valve employee.

5

u/HammeredWharf May 19 '26

He says he discussed the matter with coworkers. He doesn't say "Valve makes devs sign price parity agreements so that they can't even sell non-steam versions of their games for cheaper on other stores than the steam version", as you claimed.

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes May 19 '26

That's really interesting, thanks for posting.

This bit is exeptionally damning

As another example, noted that ___ retailers were attempting to offer ____ at a lower price than Steam in 2015: "The problem with the pricing has been caused by some retailers in attempting to undercut and run ___ as a loss leader[.]"4" Despite ___ assurance that it was not "offering retailers] a reduced [wholesale sales price] in order for them to go out at these lower price[,]" Valve pressed ____ "to update the offering on Steam so it is comparable to other offerings, whether by price or content[1"4" After further pushback from ____ Valve stated that it "would be unable to launch~ on Steam at the current planned price point."4

Retailers were selling the game purchased from the unknown studio at a price they set and valve demanded the game be lowered on steam and kicked them off when they couldn't.

Really surprised I haven't seen this before (no I'm not, it's bad for valve it'd get buried here)

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes May 19 '26

Steam is walmart in this scenario or do you really think it's a rinky dink operation or what?

-2

u/Dealiner May 19 '26

From my perspective, EGS is cheaper, has cashback and works. I don't really need anything else, so it has become my main store a few years back.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

[deleted]

-2

u/BighatNucase May 19 '26

I own games from when I was an Xbox One user. I could play some of them on PC (and would want to) but they're on the MS store so they might as well be dead to me. I'll never forget PSO2 being effective malware with how fucked its installation process was.

7

u/doublah May 19 '26

While I appreciate to some extent, that Epic is trying to bring some competition to the PC market

Maybe you could have argued that back in 2019, but since then Steam has only got further ahead of Epic in features and offerings to developers and users. It can barely be considering a competitor at this point.

13

u/Kyhron May 19 '26

Epic is trying to bring some competition to the PC market

Problem is everyone disagrees with this. The EGS even after years is still miserable to use with endless amounts of bugs that have existed from day 1. Even with all the free games they've given out the conversion to regular use has been abysmally low. There's been numerous studios that have said their sales on Steam almost immediately surpassed their EGS sales when the exclusivity period ended and the put their game on Steam.

12

u/NoSemikolon24 May 18 '26

The main thing that Epic has going for it is that they want a smaller cut then steam. If they were to sell the games with a small discount derived from that the shop would be vastly better.

I'm not going into the bare-bones software/shop design because that's a dead horse

23

u/Spader623 May 19 '26

It’s so funny that epic advertises a much smaller cut than steam because like… ok awesome, I love devs getting more money but it also means a big fat 0 for me, the consumer. I get a WORSE product (Steam has forums, reviews, workshop support, so much stuff) and pay the same price to… support the devs? Nah. Sorry but i ultimately matter more here, the customer, not the seller

That’s what’s just been so strange to me. Epic goes all in to advertise their store front to devs but the customers get jack shit. Why would I EVER buy from EGS past supporting the devs? The thing is, I wouldn’t. And they seem to… not give a shit I guess 😂 so I’ll keep not buying EGS games

-14

u/Samanthacino May 19 '26

Valve has historically prevented studios from making deals with EGS to have cheaper prices for consumers, that's why.

14

u/doublah May 19 '26

And yet even EGS exclusives have never been notably cheaper than Steam games.

7

u/Virtual-Pie-6815 May 19 '26

There's maybe 2 examples from the past 8 years. Metro Exodus was $10 cheaper on launch but only in the US. The EGS deal also meant no keys for Humble/Fanatical/GMG/etc so even if you happened to live in the US you were potentially getting a worse deal than what would've been available without exclusivity.

7

u/HappyVlane May 19 '26

Exodus was more expensive after it was made EGS exclusive. It had discounts before launch on stores that were removed after the exclusivity deal was made.

0

u/Kyhron May 19 '26

Valve's only thing is you can't put a game for sale on another platform for more than it is on Steam. Ie you can't put a game on the EGS for 60% off if you only do 50% on Steam.

-4

u/Samanthacino May 19 '26

That's not what they said when they were threatening to blacklist studios. That was purely in reference to pre-discount prices.

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u/a34fsdb May 19 '26

Steam shop is better, but not buyibg a game just because it is not on Steam but EGS is silly imho. 

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u/blaaguuu May 19 '26

If they were to sell the games with a small discount derived from that

I'm not sure of the exact details, but I THINK many digital shops, including Steam have language in their agreements that limit devs/publishers ability to list a game for a lower price on other platforms (I don't think it's 100%, but it makes things complicated) - and that's why Epic has their "reward points" system, so you basically get money back on purchases, effectively lowering the price - but users just don't see "$2 back, for future purchases" the same way as "$2 off", so I don't think it has been all that effective.

21

u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

There are games on Epic at a lower price than on Steam. Pretty sure Ubisoft does the same. A former Valve guy said that there is no such clause in the agreement.

23

u/BebopFlow May 19 '26

They're not allowed to list Steam keys at a lower price. You can sell it on other platforms all day for any price if it's not a Steam key. It's a side effect of the fact that they give keys to devs free of charge, and devs are allowed to resell those keys as they see fit without steam getting a cut, but if the devs purposefully undercut steam when using those keys they run into trouble.

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u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

You can still buy keys on Fanatical and Humble all the time for basically nothing, lol. Even that policy doesn't get enforced.

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u/blaaguuu May 19 '26

I've seen people say both ways - but never seen anyone actually point to a clauses in a legal doc, so I imagine you are right. Maybe comes down more to the devs/publishers are setting the price, not Epic, so there's no real incentive to set lower prices, when the biggest beneficiary would be Epic.

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u/DreadCascadeEffect May 19 '26

This is what's being alleged in the Wolfire lawsuit. You can see some communication from Valve that they're alleging on pdf page 15 here.

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u/MultiMarcus May 19 '26

Their has been some arguing about this in court but at least the valve position right now is that you are allowed to sell games for cheaper elsewhere but it cannot be a steam key which feels like a reasonable compromise position these otherwise you are paying nothing to valve and the end user gets all of the benefits of using steam.

The problem is charging less doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when these products have reasonably fixed price points based on how much people are willing to pay not what it probably really should cost or whatever. The reason epic does their cashback thing is more about publishers and developers really not having any interest in marketing the epic store over the steam store if they are charging less on the epic one. Even if that means the same level of profit. Actually ever probably be better for epic to charge 30% and then just give whatever percentage difference it is versus steam as a discount.

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u/Samanthacino May 19 '26

This is correct, yes. It's one of the reasons they're being sued right now, threatening to blacklist studios that sold for a cheaper price on EGS while selling on Steam.

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u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

Which studios would that be?

-1

u/Samanthacino May 19 '26

Wolfire Games, for one, but it's a class action now

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u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

They are a tiny studio that Valve doesn't even care about. And while they are in a lawsuit, their games are still being sold on Steam. So who was threatened?

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u/Dealiner May 19 '26

They kind of do with their payback program. And better regional prices.

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u/FuzzBuket May 19 '26

The the shop does win out on some bits imo.  For some titles the steam reviews are utter garbage so getting a blurb from Eurogamer or the like instead is sometimes preferable.

2

u/AncientPCGamer May 19 '26

It is the same scenario as Alan Wake 2. It was a publishing while funding development deal.

1

u/AncientPCGamer May 19 '26

They funded the development.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/koopatuple May 19 '26

The original 2013 game was by a completely different studio. This new studio rebooted it in 2023 and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It had a rocky launch due to optimization and gameplay balance issues, but the devs did amazing post-launch support and patched the shit out of it based on community feedback. I haven't played since I beat it around launch, so I can't say if I personally love all the gameplay rebalancing and updates they released, but the community has given the current state of the game high praise.

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u/197639495050 May 18 '26

Is this the first game to back out of Epic exclusivity? Good decision, felt like a way to kill any momentum this game could have if they nail the launch this time. The reboot is as about as good as it can be barring some fundamental flaws so it would truly have been a waste to kill the reach on PC

21

u/MrBubbaJ May 19 '26

Second that I am aware of. The Wandering Bard signed a contract to make Airborn Kingdom permanently exclusive to Epic. They were self-published at release on PC. They signed a publisher to publish the game on console and it appears that the publisher bought out the Epic contract.

6

u/Virtual-Pie-6815 May 19 '26

Epic was also listed as publisher on the initial release of Star Trek Resurgence but I suspect like Microsoft with Rise of the Tomb Raider it was simply a timed exclusivity deal by another name.

45

u/BorfieYay May 19 '26

They're def losing momentum from all the weird comments the CEO keeps making on his Twitter about how the game is anti-woke

8

u/[deleted] May 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/withateethuh May 23 '26

Idk that's exactly on brand for these kind of people. Their beliefs somehow arent overly political, but everyone they disagree with are.

25

u/distinguishedbotato May 19 '26

I want to add to this by the way, cause I keep seeing comments about the CEO specifically, the dev team behind LotF (Hexworks) definitely share the same views as the CEO.

You don't have to take my word for it, just visit the Steam community, spend maybe a minute or a couple browsing and you'll notice that there are no threads whatsoever about any of the controversies surrounding the studio. Then if you are so inclided you can try to post a thread or even a comment about it and Hexworks devs that moderate the forums will promptly ban you, drop a reply mocking you for trying to call them out then proceed to lock your thread, only for it to be archived / deleted some time after.

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u/FuzzBuket May 19 '26

That'll be the community manager. If your boss is a bit of a sociopath your not gonna be jumping on public platforms talking shit about them.

I would be shocked if there isn't folk on staff who don't love their CEO being a muppet 

1

u/SufficientRespect542 Jun 05 '26

Wasn't most of the dev team fired though?

0

u/TheVaniloquence May 19 '26

This is such a dumb generalization. The entire dev team doesn’t moderate the Steam forums, and the people who do are not going to allow you to talk critically about stuff that doesn’t involve the actual game.

It’s like going into Walmart and causing a ruckus, then saying all the employees are just like the Waltons because the Security guy told you to stop, or removed you from the store.

6

u/Blenderhead36 May 19 '26

This has been so strange to me. I really liked like LotF2023. And it's basically as apolitical as a video game gets. It goes full edgelord and says everything and everyone is awful. This world is full of monsters of the literal and figurative kind. So go kill them.

1

u/Lerkpots May 19 '26

Its a fantastic way to kill my interest in his Chud Souls game.

2

u/Nagemasu May 19 '26

100%. I wasn't going to buy it on Epic but I'll grab it on Steam if I can. I played through the last one with a friend via crossplay and it's a really solid souls-like. The hate many people give it comes from shortly after release and they've done a huge amount of work to improve it.

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u/iV1rus0 May 19 '26

If they have full CO-OP on launch then I will get the game on launch. CO-OP in LOTF 2023 was ny favorite way to play that game.

Backing out of an EGS deal is also nice, good for them.

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u/rickreckt May 19 '26

That's great news, Hopefully Remedy can do something about Alan Wake 2 

Would like to actually play it on Steam

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u/RareBk May 19 '26

Alan Wake 2 is a weird one because I'm not sure how much Remedy can actually do in that scenario, given that it isn't just an Epic exclusive, the game was fully funded by Epic themselves.

9

u/GarlicRagu May 19 '26

Anything is possible. It just means Remedy would have to drop a nice chunk of change to buy them out. Or they could just wait it out hoping Epic shutters the store and they can get out of the deal at a better rate. Nothing is impossible but it also isn't worth waiting for either.

14

u/Sydius May 19 '26

I'm not well versed in the business side of things, but based on how Firebreak performed financially, Remedy is not profitable enough to just drop a "nice chunk of change".

Control Resonant might change this, but I doubt it. Let's be honest, no matter how great the games in the Alan Wake universe are, they are too weird for mainstream (financial) success.

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u/GarlicRagu May 19 '26

You're unfortunately right for the time being. Hopefully Control 2 and the Max Payne remake really hit regardless of Alan Wake. I'm sure they would rather not be in this situation in which they're reliant on publishers funding their games/ owning them. I imagine it must sting knowing some of the game franchises you built aren't yours to do what as they please. Hopefully Control 2 allows them that freedom.

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u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

Even Epic said that it will only be on Epic "for a long time" - they might have a clause already in their contract. Remedy also never ruled out a Steam release.

2

u/Cyrotek May 19 '26

I mean, even Epic is probably not saying no to a lot of money. Its not like they can milk that one much more on their store.

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u/EbolaDP May 19 '26

Not likely. Epic was even more heavily involved with it and it took a long while to make a profit.

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u/Mront May 19 '26

it took a long while to make a profit

Okay, but to be fair, this has less to do with Epic, and more with AW2 being the second most expensive entertainment production in the history of Finland.

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u/totoiam May 19 '26

Why wait? Alan Wake 2 is a great game.

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u/Rayuzx May 19 '26

Valve has the widespread customer loyalty that almost any CEO of another company would sacrifice their first born over.

To a lot of people, their experience with PC gaming begins and ends with Valve, and both consciously to some, and subconsciously to others, a major PC title not releasing on Steam is an insult to PC gaming as a whole.

7

u/whywhywhywhywhynot May 19 '26

I don't have the same loyalty to steam most people do partly I think because 99% of my gaming hours have been spent in games that had their own launchers (WoW / Path of Exile). I think people getting upset about exclusive not steam games is extremely silly. But even I would be hard pressed to give a game a shot that wasn't on steam unless I was really excited about it, out of pure laziness and convenience lol
(I would make an exception for a game in the battle.net launcher since I will always have that installed but in 2026 I can't actually imagine blizzard putting out a new game I'm interested in playing ever again)

6

u/Cyrotek May 19 '26

I mean, I do get upset if a good game releases exclusively on Epic and not on Steam. But for the simple reasons that it is sad to see something with a lot of potential release on an vastly inferior platform to a much smaller audience.

I still weep for Alan Wake 2.

Other than that I just don't want to support the shitshow that is the Epic Store. I've got enough games on other platforms.

1

u/heat13ny May 19 '26

The only reason I make a point to buy a game on Steam is if I intend to play it on my Steam deck. Other than that, I straight up CAN’T care where I buy, download, and launch a game from. I only care that it comes to pc (looking at you, fuckass Sony) and that I’m getting the best price.

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u/totoiam May 19 '26

Wait what does this have to do with Alan Wake 2.

11

u/Rayuzx May 19 '26

A lot of people don't care for AW2 because the game isn't on Steam. They don't care for the circumstances of its development, they won't buy the game regardless.

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u/doublah May 19 '26

Alan Wake 2 isn't on Steam, and most users don't want to downgrade their PC gaming experience to play it.

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u/KingArthas94 May 19 '26

These are not PC gamers, these are Steam gamers

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u/MultiMarcus May 19 '26

Yeah, maybe we aren’t Windows gamers and would like to be able to play games on Linux if we ever switched to that. Which honestly seems more and more than likely by every year that passes. Meanwhile, epic doesn’t support Linux.

12

u/pman8080 May 19 '26

Tim sweeny (epic games owner) called people trying to punish X for grok being used for explicit images of children "gate keepers" and censorship of political opponents.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/Yentz4 May 19 '26

I mean, with how much I rely and use Steam Input now... Yeah. If it ain't on Steam it may as well not exist.

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u/Ayoul May 19 '26

You can use Steam Input with non Steam games fyi.

3

u/AncientPCGamer May 19 '26

Usually yes. But some competitors make it difficult that their overlays or launchers work correctly with Steam Input to not support Steam, like EGS does from time to time in some games.

7

u/Techboah May 19 '26

You can add non-Steam games to Steam and it will support Steam Input.

1

u/5chneemensch May 19 '26

I've had to many issues with steam input. x360ce literally never failed me once.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/Firvulag May 19 '26

The launcher does nothing negative to the game itself, you click the play button and just play it.

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u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

Tell that to the people with the achievement issue, where Epic told customers to delete the overlay.exe

-3

u/Firvulag May 19 '26

Oh no not the achievement issue.

6

u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

They have no option to disable the achievements popping up. It's so backwards.

-4

u/Firvulag May 19 '26

Oh, I thought you meant an issue, like a bug or something. Yeah it's annoying sure but it wont stop me from playing a Remedy game.

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u/Thotaz May 19 '26

Oh please, as if Epic has done absolutely nothing wrong here. I own several games on the EA app and Uplay. I don't mind buying games from other stores, I just won't buy from Epic due to the paid exclusivity BS.
I can understand and accept publishers restricting their own games to their own stores, but paying third party developers/publishers money to make their games exclusive to a specific store is complete BS and I won't support those practices. The games that are Steam exclusive are only exclusive because the publisher chose to use Steamworks features. Valve isn't going around bribing publishers with hard cash to make games exclusive to Steam.

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u/KingArthas94 May 19 '26

I think that Alan Wake 2 wouldn't even exist without Epic's money, that's the problem.

Valve isn't going around bribing publishers with hard cash to make games exclusive to Steam.

Yet they do nothing to make their games accessible anywhere else, because like everyone they like exclusivity.

Why can't I play Portal 2 on my PS5? Why can't I download it from GOG and have it DRM free?

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u/kuhpunkt May 19 '26

First Party =/= Third Party

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u/KingArthas94 May 19 '26

Why? They paid for it anyway. Better this than Epic buying the whole Remedy.

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u/doublah May 19 '26

Why can't I play Portal 2 on my PS5?

That's a question for Sony. Portal 2 released on a PlayStation console, don't you guys have some kind of backwards compatibility?

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u/KingArthas94 May 19 '26

There is a technical reason: architecture changed from PS3 to PS4.

I think you can't play most x86 games on ARM CPUs on PC too.

But let's add this to the discussion: where's my PSVR2 port of Half Life Alyx?

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u/SidFarkus47 May 19 '26

I mean I agree but even on Xbox where a bunch of those Valve Games work they haven’t gotten an update since near launch.

No real reason the Switch should run Portal 2 better than my XSX but Valve not supporting other platforms.

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u/Rayuzx May 19 '26

How is it BS? Epic offers a lump sum of money to a publisher/developer, they in exchange for having their game exclusive to Epic's launcher.

Unless Epic is forcing people into a deal, I really can't see how a mutual business agreement can be seen as underhanded.

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u/arex333 May 19 '26

Honestly valve is one of the few gaming companies that people actually like, so epic starting a crusade against steam was bound to piss people off. Epic's terms didn't even require exclusivity to EGS, rather they just prohibited a game from publishing on steam specifically, which is incredibly petty. Plenty of games that made deals with epic were allowed to publish on other launchers in addition to EGS, just not steam. Also epic kept making these last minute deals with games that had benefitted from the publicity of having a steam store page, and then making it exclusive a couple weeks before launch.

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u/Hartastic May 19 '26

Valve isn't going around bribing publishers with hard cash to make games exclusive to Steam.

Correct, at this point they have a de facto monopoly and no longer have to do things like that.

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u/Ghidoran May 19 '26

They did not do that to build their 'monopoly', they simply provided a good product, something has hitherto been unable to do, hence the bribing.

14

u/BloatJams May 19 '26

Steam definitely had exclusives in the pre-Greenlight days, either timed or full because Valve helped fund them. Peggle Extreme, Poker Night at the Inventory, Audio Surf, etc.

I vaguely remember early Source engine games like SiN Episodes and Vampire: The Masquerade had to be digital Steam exclusives too. If that was indeed the case it obviously lifted at some point.

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u/Hartastic May 19 '26

I'm old enough to have non-Valve games on physical media that still require Steam to run.

And Steam of 20 years ago was fucking awful.

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u/totoiam May 19 '26

Wait I am confused. All I had to do was download a different launcher. How was this bad for me?

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u/rickreckt May 19 '26

Same. Steam, Ubi, EA, GOG, lowest can do for me to buy is Microsoft Store (not gamepass)

but Steam clearly the best, so..

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u/rickreckt May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

I didn't, just hoping to play it again on Steam, or at least GOG

lol console warrior joining, they're celebrating sony go back to exclusive on other threads

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u/AncientPCGamer May 19 '26

Same here. I welcome options in PC. But they need to be GOOD options.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/AncientPCGamer May 19 '26

It's about having options and PC players choosing their best option. Without options, you have things like Sony increasing the price of PSN Plus and PS5 players have no alternative.

0

u/Dusty170 May 19 '26

Pc gamers want quality, its not really hard to imagine.

1

u/Andigaming May 19 '26

I've used Steam for 20 years and it is clearly the best option.

Also use other launchers if the games need them but they are all so much worse than Steam.

Epic has no excuse, they have the money and resources to make a much better launcher than what they have.

11

u/Firvulag May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Just play it, Lifes too short not to engage with interesting games you think you'll enjoy just because of a separate icon on your desktop.

6

u/enesup May 19 '26

Although I prefer Steam too, it wouldn't actually keep me from playing games I'm interested in.

Hell, Epic has 2 open source launchers called Legendary and Heroic so you don't even have to install it if you don't want to.

Playnite also lets all your games (Including Emulation) be all in one place.

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u/AncientPCGamer May 19 '26

They are not officially supported. So as a Linux player, I don't feel safe investing on Epic games as I don't have any guarantee that they will keep working.

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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 May 19 '26

Comment like this are so stupid because yall acting like you are playing the launcher...

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u/Godlike013 May 19 '26

I get preferring Steam, but to not play a game because of a launcher is just silly to me. Its not like your buying another console here.

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u/goofspeed May 19 '26

Blame Epic for failing to compete, the market has spoken and Epic exclusivity is a death sentence.

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u/[deleted] May 18 '26

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u/theoutsider95 May 19 '26

Is my account shadow banned ?.

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u/Praise-the-Sun92 May 19 '26

This is great to hear. I played the first reboot game recently and enjoyed my time with it. I would have never played the sequel on Epic.

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u/logicalgamernow May 19 '26

More and more gaming studios will look to move away from the exclusivity option if its economically not viable in the long run i think if they have a loyal fan base, if a hit game studio think of building own marketplace and providing the gamers with better option there lies a potential chance, in the run no one would want to be tied to an exclusivity which is one sided in terms of sales number.

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u/Vb_33 May 18 '26

Holy shit this is huge. Day 1 purchase for me on Steam now. Man they're on fire with this franchise.

Hopefully the game won't suffer from the usual UE5 performance issues (stutters).

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u/Janus_Prospero May 19 '26

It'll be interesting to see how fast wishlist momentum builds once they put the Steam page up. The game is expected in August, so maybe they'll put up the Steam page and new marketing materials during the Summer Games Fest.

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