Epic Games paid 9.49M Euros for Control exclusivity According To Digital Bros

Digital Bros, parent company of 505 Games, has disclosed that they received a payment of 9.49 million euro from Epic Games for Control.

[Blu3_Berry]

Jesus, if this is true then that is a LOT of money. You know what they say, money talks and bullshit walks.

[VenomUK]

If true, that IS a lot and it's no wonder a company would take it as it can mitigate some of the development costs and the publishers figure they're not actually losing sales as the people who really want it will buy it from wherever.

It does give us an idea of the sort of money Epic is throwing around, I imagine for Borderlands 3 it was at least double that. Epic is willing to pay it because then it means the people who buy will likely buy again. And if you think about all the different exclusives Epic has got, big and small, that adds up to a lot of moolah - that's the power of the Fortnite golden goose.

[Srhalo]

Rumor has it Microsoft paid 16 million for 6 months of Monster Hunter exclusivity on gamepass and they still have to pay royalties.

[DaDrunkenJester]

That was based on Capcoms digital revenue or something right? People were speculating it was from DMCV, Monster Hunter, and possibly an RE2 reveal as well. but none of that is confirmed

[RedDevils]

OT: Go to EPIC STORE NOW and get FREE Batman games for free all six of them.

[Godmars290]

Free, aside from giving Epic access to you. Give a company a position to exploit you later down the line once a level of trust and loyalty has been established.

[Cobra951]

Godmars290, that's a good point. When something's free, you have to wonder where the catch is.

[RedDevils]

Well I haven't spend a cent on them and I have almost 20+ games from them for free. Remember the catch is only if you gonna spend, however there will be none if you never intend to buy anything from their store.

[rainslacker]

That seems excessive, especially since Epic is still paying the higher revenue cut. I mean, even a big AAA game with a lot of clout behind it probably wouldn't command that much on PC.

[Godmars290]

Only this is BS talking through money.

[KeenBean345]

This type of spending for games like Control is not financially stable long term.

[crazyCoconuts]

Agreed. Just like the weekly free games and the XBGP $1 promotions...loss leaders to get us hooked. Great time to be gaming though, I'm playing tons of games and just paying peanuts. Enjoying it while it lasts

[Cobra951]

I think he means Epic forking out €9.49 million (and up) per exclusive. That's not sustainable for very long.

[SegaGamer]

You're right, it's not, and Epic themselves have even admitted that. It's all for one thing, to bring people to their platform. What will be interesting to see is if people will stick around once the timed exclusives and free games dry up.

[DaDrunkenJester]

The thing is... there is nothing in the Epic store to keep customers in their store. So they can buy up all the exclusives they want, but they won't retain anyone with their terrible store.

[pleasuretokill]

Yup. They are going to BK themselves if they keep this up. One game they are going to overpay on and it's going to sell nothing...

[eddvdm]

Their long term plan is to hook all those that are cheap enough to install their ****ware for free games and exclusives.

Unfortunately, they are the same ones that will be crying in 2 years when they see what they allowed to happen in PC gaming.

[zoramax]

Understandable why so may devs are accepting these payments, thats crazy money especially for a game that wasn't expected to sell loads of copies.

[Blu3_Berry]

I want to add further to this. This means Epic paid an equivalent of 250K copies if Control were sold on Steam. So if we put together that in order to make the same amount of money on the EGS, they would have to have sold 200K copies. That's only roughly 50K difference in copies being sold to make the same amount of money.

Honestly, the difference to be sold to make the same amount of money isn't that much different. What makes it enticing for big publishers to do this is the free fat paycheck they get upfront. The percentage difference isn't as much of a big deal to me in my opinion, least for bigger companies. Smaller indie developers I can understand however. I guarantee you if they did not get a paycheck from them up front they could care less about making the deal with Epic.

[NiteX]

Holy shit. If I were to guess I would say they gave over 30 million for Borderlands 3.

[InKnight7s]

Epic won tons of easy money through Fortnite, now they want to create market and throwing money at developers, but is ir sustainable? Atleast for them?

[kikicub]

I guess bullying is ok when it is paid....

[harmny]

What bullying? Are you high?

[AnubisG]

Can you explain who bullied who here?

[life28]

It was from pre-orders of PC version on EGS.

[thatguyhayat]

Damn, no wonder developers couldn't say no to a huge sum like that

[babadivad]

That's a lot for a person, not a lot for a company.

[coolbeans]

No, that's still a lot for a company, especially when considering Control's dev costs were around $20-$30 million.

[harmny]

Oh no! Ten millions? Epic what are you doing? That's like 4 hours of fortnite revenue!

[lelo2play]

With all the exclusives and free games offered, Epic Games are spending a crap-load of money to promote their store.

Now the main question is...
Will it be worth it? ... or... When the exclusives and free games cease to exist, will the Epic Store be relevant in PC gaming market?

[Seafort]

Yeah loads of money to promote a barebones store that is embarrassing how bad it actually is.

EGS doesn't even have a shopping cart yet. They've only just started adding cloud saves for some games.

[babadivad]

That's it??

[Flewid638]

I could care less how it got there.

The game was phenomenal.

[TheColbertinator]

Interesting. That type of cash is not easily ignored.

[BLow]

That's about an hour of Fortnite money lol...

[SlagWolf]

Between this and the free games they are paying for and all those other exclusives I wonder if they are in the black or red with they EGS. I have lots of friends who are PC gamers and all of them have swore they will either never use the EGS store or are just taking the free games.

I wonder how long Tim can keep this up for.

[AK91]

WTF?

[TheHateTheyGive]

Fortnite making these guys BILLIONS to this day. Fortnite for me is the best multiplayer game i have ever played.

[W34KN35S]

the only thing about this whole situation is that you eventually get developers making games no longer to be played by gamers but instead just to sell to Epic without even a thought of anyone playing it. As it stands now , at least for those who care , any developer who sides with Epic is shunned , so if a developer sides with Epic knowing that then its like saying they dont care about those gamers who dislike Epic and that the developers themselves arent interested in creating a good name for their company but more interested in just making a check.

[Bobertt]

You would think with all the money they throw around for exclusivity they would be able to spend some on actually building a game store worth using. It just goes to show they don't care about quality. They rather throw some easy fortnite money to buy a bunch of developers to make their shitty store the only place you can buy from if you want to play at launch. Fuck that i have enough games in my backlog for years that i don't need to rush out and buy games at launch. I can wait for it to come to Steam. Most of these games are buggy at launch as well and have features missing. Better to wait even if its a multiplayer game because if the playerbase is gone after a year it probably wasn't worth it.

[BlackIceJoe]

I wish Epic would invest some of that money into the company, so they could bring out a new Unreal Tournament. I'd so enjoy playing an old school game like that again.

[rob-GP]

The EGS has been home of a new Unreal Tournament for about 6 years now. It was the main reason they had the launcher - before Fortnite took over. However, I think they stopped developing it once FN started pulling in so much money for them - but you can still download it and play it free on there. It has support for mods as well I think, as well as info on how to make your own levels and what not - or it did the last time I looked.

[BlackIceJoe]

I understand that one is available, but I remember there was plans to make that into a full Unreal Tournament that was one that you'd purchase with a campaign mode and that it was to have cross play with console gamers. But it was cancelled for Fortnite, so I'd enjoy seeing what Epic could do with bringing back Unreal Tournament, like how ID has brought back Doom.

[pootymcpoockle]

Thanks for paying for my copy, Daddy Epic.

[S2Killinit]

This is terrible. EPIC and their masters Tencent will ruin PC gaming. PC is supposed to be a open platform.

[Orionsangel]

That's business. So what?

[Father__Merrin]

Good job for the publishers as a large chunk of development costs is paid for. The game will do pretty good on epic games store, EGS will get bigger and bigger I predict in a couple of years EGS to be the goto AAA delivery platform for pc games.

What I would really like to see is library transfer from one store to another. If you already aquired the game on steam gog etc you should get the game free in your library etc

[pleasuretokill]

These guys will go bankrupt if they keep this up.

[coolbeans]

Not if the Fortnite $$$ keeps coming.