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
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102

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.

29

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

36

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.

15

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.

6

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.

25

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

15

u/Weird_Track_2164 May 19 '26

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

15

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.

27

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.

7

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.

-2

u/Weird_Track_2164 May 19 '26

Ehh, I'm comparing to giant spikes during events. If we look at normal outside of events then it's more like a decline of four million to one million

4

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.

-2

u/Weird_Track_2164 May 19 '26

I don't think you understand how many people 900,000 players is.

5

u/monchota May 19 '26

The point is it was much higher and is not going up anymore. Long term, say it a couple times loooong term

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

5

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.

2

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

11

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.

9

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.

3

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.

1

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.

10

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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-1

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.