In an interview, XCOM creator and CEO of the Snapshot Games development studio, Julian Gollop, said that the exclusivity for the Epic Games Store was great for many indie studios.
Epic Games is pursuing a strategy of limited-time exclusives for the Epic Games Store. This provokes quite a lot of hostility – often from Steam fans as well. But this anger is also often directed at the developer studios that accept these offers, such as the studio Snapshot Games with its title Phoenix Point. However, CEO and XCOM creator Julian Gollop has not swayed from this strategy.
A lot of animosity towards Epic and dev studios
“When we launched our Epic Exclusive – that was in the early days of the Epic Store promotion – there was a lot of animosity. And a lot of conspiracy theories too. All the Chinese spy software and all the rest of it. Of course that’s changed a bit and Epic has actually turned out to be great for a lot of indies. It was obviously another way to get funding, which is very, very difficult for an indie studio. So overall it’s been very positive for Phoenix Point itself. We had extra money that we were able to put into developing the game that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.It really helped the quality of the game, helped us release it sooner rather than later, and allowed us to include more content , so it was good.”
Phoenix Point: XCOM competitor after Epic exclusivity now on Steam
Of course, publishing games on Steam gives developers access to a huge audience. Therefore, waiting for the release on the Steam platform after a year still carries risks. Finally, the visibility of individual titles on Steam isn’t as great as it is on Epic’s platform. “It’s always better to have the widest possible access to the storefronts,” Gollop concedes, “when you have the money to get the game into a publishable state. But that’s usually not that easy and the developers need to look for other avenues to secure the necessary funding.”
However, a staggered release also has advantages. So a second release can usually show a better game. “When we released the game after Kickstarter, we knew we needed a better tutorial,” says Gollop. “It took us about a year to improve the game after the initial release in 2019. When it released on Steam in 2020 we had a much nicer, much better tutorial that provided a much better introduction to the story and, I think it was appreciated by a lot of new players.”
Source: via PC gamers
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