Apparently we should have taken the whole Walking Dead Final Season thing as a warning as what Epic is going to resort to. Not only are they intent on capturing exclusives from the start, as well as ones that already had Steam listings, as well as pre-order listings, now they’re after anything that’s been sold on Steam for years, such as Rocket League. The wording of things implies that they’re intending to eventually delist the game from Steam and leave it Epic exclusive while maintaining the Steam version for some time, but now they’re trying to clarify they won’t be taking it off Steam and have “long-term plans” coming later. Add a “yet” to that, because this is Epic we’re talking about. This is another one of those “wait and see” things, but at this time, I’m going to add them to the list of developers/publishers to not trust for defying the playerbase in the name of cashing out more.
By also absorbing random studios, there’s always the chance that the IPs will be gathered and the companies disbanded, as goes for just about any studio that gets absorbed by a big company. The dozen or so that ended up under Microsoft recently also come to mind. And whatever’s happened to whoever joined into EA before. Now I just wonder, for any studio that’s used Unreal for their latest game, if Epic is going to be hunting them down.
Due to how Steam works, even if the game gets unlisted from the store, it won’t remove the game from anyone who already has it on Steam. As far as them supporting the game there afterward, no idea at the moment, but lots of suspicion. Developers of good games deserve good income but sellouts can only go so far. Especially if they somehow suddenly take on the “fuck you I have money” mindset that seems to spread from anything Epic seems to touch. Though that usually mostly stems from the CEOs who want to pocket most of the difference. If the increase in income is meant to help the studios, it should for sure go to everyone involved, and not horribly disproportionate.
If studios keep selling out and going back on their words like they have been, I have to say that I’ve never fully advocated piracy since I believe in honest pay for honest work as long as the systems are in place, but I have to insist at the very least to put out a decent easily accessible demo for everything so people don’t have to “try before they buy” through illicit sources the way some do now. It’s a service problem, of course, I have no issue with buying from reputable other stores if that’s the way I go. If it’s not on any reputable stores like those, we’ll just see.