ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Coffee Stain, Team17 and Double Damage Games pick Epic over Steam for new releases

Coffee Stain, Team17 and Double Damage Games pick Epic over Steam for new releases

Epic's brand new storefront is having an impact on the way that projects sold are launched on other platforms.

So far three titles announced for the Fortnite firm's marketplace have changed their release strategy for Steam, as reported by PC Gamer.

Coffee Stain Studios has removed the Steam store page for first-person construction title Satisfactory, which is now exclusive to Epic's store. Meanwhile, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw developer Double Damage Games revealed that that title would be exclusive to Epic's store for a year, saying that this was driven by the aggressive revenue share that Epic has proposed for its store.

"Before Valve and the 70/30 split it was pretty darn rough to be an indie (both in terms of royalty share and in terms of the ability to sell things without a publisher)," the company said in a blog post.

"We can all thank Valve for using their leverage to make that happen, and usher in the era we have now. We think it's safe to say that a large percentage of the games made today wouldn't exist without it.

"Epic is using their leverage to push that even farther, to 88/12. That's another whole strata of developers who can survive. Would we like that to become the new standard? Yes. Can that be done without leverage? No."

Finally, Team17 social media and community manager Brett Young announced on Steam that Genesis Alpha One from developer Radiation Blue would not be launching on Steam next month as previously announced. The title previously was set to release on January 29th.

"You might be wondering what this announcement means for Steam users and we will be able to update you in the near future but we can confirm that Genesis Alpha One will not be launching on Steam on January 29th 2019," he wrote.

"We understand that this will be frustrating to some of you who have supported the game since it was revealed, and we are extremely thankful for all your suggestions and feedback.

"The team are still hard at work putting together the final touches and incorporating some great new features into Genesis Alpha One and we hope you continue to be as excited as we are for it. At this time, we are making sure we put everything into realising our fullest vision of the game. As a result, we have suspended work on the playable preview. Again, we understand this might be disappointing, and this was a tough decision to make but we believe this will help Genesis Alpha One get off to the best possible start. Once the game launches, we may be able to reassess the playable preview later down the line."

Epic announced it was launching a new storefront last week before the marketplace was rolled out days later with a launch line-up announced at The Game Awards


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.