(It was previously an Epic exclusive since launching in early access).
I’m excited to check this out.
This just reminds me that, in any hobby, there are nuanced turf wars and internal politics that superfans are invested in following. This is the sort of thing that I might have really cared about in my days as a gamer, and hearing about it now makes me realize how out of touch I am with the community.
I do miss it sometimes. Makes me nostaligic for riding the bus with friends and arguing about Sega vs Nintendo or what’s going on at Activision.
Epic vs Steam isn’t much of a turf war as far as the fans are concerned. Everyone universally hates the Epic Games Store and loves Steam. The only reason EGS has so many timed exclusive is because Epic pays out the nose for them.
I don’t know if I’m opposed to store exclusives exactly, but epic was paying out the nose to drive people to their store that didn’t even have a shopping cart.
They launched a store without a feature every online store has had for decades
People have Epic for only one of two reasons, either they play Fortnite, or they collect a library of free games they’ll never play lol
I know a bunch of people who have amassed a whole library of games and never play on Epic regardless.
Steam vs GoG is a turf war, Epic vs anything will make people side with anything. The problem is that Epic has a shitty store with shitty features, and the only way it can compete with the others out there is to pay piles of money to game devs so they make their game exclusive to their store for some time. So usually people just ignore the game until it comes up in another store, and most of us have completely forgotten about it by then so when we find out just add it to the wishlist and wait for a 90% discount in a while. The game has been out for years at that point so a massive discount is expected soon and you already waited years to play, you can wait a bit more and save money, plus that teaches companies that signing exclusivity contracts is a shit deal.
How long was it an Epic exclusive?
From September 20, 2023. So almost exactly a year of exclusivity.
No thanks. Games that choose to sign with the anti-consumer storefront don’t deserve my attention as the consumer.