Rebellion: Epic Is “Paying through the Nose” for Store Exclusives

[Tsing]

Zombie Army 4 developer Rebellion Developments is the latest game maker to succumb to Epic's philosophy of succession through exclusivity. Studio founders Jason and Chris Kingsley told journalists at the Develop:Brighton conference this week that exclusives weren't necessarily their thing, but Epic's dump truck of money was too tantalizing to ignore.

"Generally I think I would prefer not to do exclusives but I understand Epic's position with it, and quite frankly they are paying through the nose to build their store," said Jason [Kingsley]. "All credit to them, it's fantastic, and we'll take some of their money, thank you very much."

These are pretty bold comments. While frankness is always appreciated, Kingsley's comments suggest he hasn't considered the interests of gamers at all and the ongoing controversy regarding the Epic Games Store and its practices.

"I was aware that Epic was doing exclusives, [but] we hadn't been offered at the time," said Jason. "I didn't really think they would, because typically they go for the super big [games].

 

[Brian_B]

To the surprise of no one. It won't continue forever. Either Epic will get tired of throwing cash at it, or they will get big enough they can afford to not have to buy out exclusives to compete. Or they just turned into timed exclusives, like Sony does on Playstation.

 

[Zarathustra]

To the surprise of no one. It won't continue forever. Either Epic will get tired of throwing cash at it, or they will get big enough they can afford to not have to buy out exclusives to compete. Or they just turned into timed exclusives, like Sony does on Playstation.

Of course it can't go on forever. Right now they are blowing a huge chunk of their income on this. I wouldn't be surprise if they are operating the store at a loss.

The goal here is obviously to get as many people to sign up as possible, so that they have a larger user base, and then revert to a more normal mode of operating a store later.

You would think that because of Fortnite they would already have critical mass with those millions of kids, but maybe not. They tend to skew younger, have less of a budget, and are so obsessed with Fortnite that they probably don't buy many other games. So, in order to get more of a critical mass of customers with Epic store accounts they decided to use this ****ty method. The reigning theory being that once people have an account in your store, you have already broken down their resistance, and they are much more likely to use your store in the future.

Time will tell if it works for them. Personally, I don't think they needed to do this if they were just willing to be patient. They had already captiured the entire next generation of gamers via Fortnite. it was just a matter of being patient. Instaid they chose to be impatient and screw everyone over.

Personally I hope they die in a fire. Their actions have only strengthened my resolve to never under any circumstance use their store. I don't reward companies with unethical business practices and wannabe monopolists with my money.