Epic Games Store is, according to a recent translation of a podcast featuring Sergey Galyonkin, Director of Publishing Strategy at Epic Games, straight-up purchasing timed exclusivity deals to try and cut out a piece of the market pie for themselves.
Epic Games purchasing exclusivity deals isn't exactly a new idea to throw around, but there's been no outright confirmation that this is what Epic are attempting to do - up until now. Granted, this is all sourced from an unofficial translation, so keep a pinch of salt at hand, but it's definitely in the realm of possibility.
The story about Epic Games Store timed exclusivity deals is coming from a recent - and rather lengthy - post on Resetera, where a Russian-speaking user translated the aforementioned podcast with Galyonkin.
"There will be (PC) games that have timed exclusivity to the EGS. Galyonkin says that Epic pays for this. They mainly pay developers to finish financing ports or to assuage fears of the game not doing well on this new platform," they said, adding that the deal works out much like a minimum guarantee of sales at the moment.
In other words, should this information be true, Epic Games have proven themselves not to be above straight-up buying a fully-fledged exclusivity deal for certain titles. The PC port of Journey is sure to be an example of this, and the post mentions it as well: "Epic cut a deal with Sony, and, to me, it sounded like Epic paid to get it ported over."
Now, if it's only timed exclusivity that we're dealing with here, then die-hard fans of Steam might opt into waiting for the games they're interested in to eventually come to Steam, too, but since this is an unofficial source, it's almost senseless to draw any concrete conclusions from it.
How do you feel about exclusivity deals? Let us know in the comments below.
