Control launched a few weeks back as an Epic Store Exclusive, and though we’ve suspected for a while now that these deals are quite pricey, there’s never been a hint to suggest what sort of money we might be talking about.
That changed earlier today, when Digital Bros, a parent company of Control’s publisher, 505 Games, disclosed that they’ve received a payment of €9.49 million for what can only amount to be said exclusivity contract. Since the total development cost of Control was €20-30M, that’s quite a hefty sum.
The report itself (which is in Italian) states that said Digital Bros received the said amount of money from Epic by the 30th of June, while Control launched on 27th of August. This means it couldn’t have been virtually anything else other than the one-time exclusivity payment that we know Epic offers.
According to the same document, 55% of that payment went to 505 Games, while the developers, Remedy Entertainment, received the rest. This explains why so many developers have been eager to jump ship from Steam to Epic, when push comes to shove. We’re sure this money also plays part in Remedy’s willingness to continue producing post-launch content for Control. Keep in mind that this hasn’t been outright confirmed by any of the parties it relates to. It’s an educated guess drawn from the given financial statement. Whether it’s the correct conclusion, we cannot say with 100% certainty, but the numbers and the dates sure do seem to fit.
Mike Rose of No More Robots recently announced his findings that the vast majority of games do not make money on Steam at all. If all the devs who opt for an exclusivity deal with Epic get such a considerable sum, they can hardly be blamed for it.
