“Now we can just focus on making the game without worrying about keeping the lights on.”
– The Glumberland team shares one of the reasons they signed on with Epic’s store.
Ooblets is the latest game to sign on as an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC, and it’s a decision the development team candidly explained in a blog post on the game’s official site.
Epic Games Store exclusives, though often only exclusive to the storefront for a limited time, tend to draw a lot of ire online from people feverently against games signing deals with Epic for one reason or another.
But, while more and more games have signed on with the fledgling platform this year, not many have sat down to explain how and why the development team opted to go exclusive like Ooblets dev Glumberland has.
“So we had a big decision to make, and we didn’t take it lightly. Because Epic doesn’t yet have the same market share as their competitors, they offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we’d be wanting to earn if we were just selling Ooblets across all the stores,” explains the team.
“That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won’t fail and we won’t be forced to move back in with our parents (but we do love and appreciate you, parents!).”
The rest of the blog post specifically addresses the two common complaints devs see after opting for an Epic Games Store deal, like the fledgling platform’s lack of features compared to Steam and the idea that exclusives are inherently anti-consumer.
On that second topic, Glumberland points out that the access to the Epic Games Store or other PC-based game platforms isn’t locked behind a subscription like exclusives on Netflix or Hulu, “it’s more like just having to press a button on your remote to change between free TV channels.”
“It’s also really disappointing to see folks threatening to pirate a game just because they can’t get it on the game launcher they’re used to,” continues the post. “Feeling like you’re owed the product of other people’s work on your terms or else you’ll steal it is the epitome of that word ‘entitlement’ that people use to discuss immature, toxic gamers.”