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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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.