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Epic Games Store took financial concerns off Coffee Stain's shoulders for Satisfactory

Epic Games Store took financial concerns off Coffee Stain's shoulders for Satisfactory

The developer behind Satisfactory Coffee Stain Studios has said that going exclusive with the Epic Games Store helped ease financial worries.

Speaking to PCGamesN, UI and UX designer Nathalie Verwei said that partnering with the Fortnite firm to appear on its marketplace gave the developer security. She added that there was a backlash to the decision, but this was a "loud minority."

“As an indie studio it’s nice to have that security that you know that your game is going to get out there and you don’t need to worry about making certain financial deadlines,” she said.

“You can just focus on making a good game. Of course, we had some backlash but I think it’s a loud minority.”

She continued: "It’s a good thing that Epic is trying to do. Of course, the users will only see the end of, ‘oh, it’s another launcher, it’s another store’ but Epic is trying to do something for game developers to make it better for them so we can deliver better quality of products, basically.”

Since launching in December of last year, Epic has been snapping up games to appear exclusively on its storefront. One of the first, and most high profile, of these was Metro Exodus from publisher Deep Silver and developer 4A Studios, which was available to pre-order on Steam at the time the deal was announced, something that served to annoy consumers.

Epic also snapped up looter-shooter Borderlands 3, with developer Gearbox Software saying that the storefront helped it find a new audience. The company also apparently paid Digital Bros, the parent company of 505 Games, $10.5m for exclusivity of Remedy's latest release, Control.

It's not just triple-A giants that are being fished up by the Fortnite firm - it has also been paying for exclusivity for indie games. Epic paid for Ooblets to be exclusive on the store, shelling out a minimum guarantee of sales, with developer Glumberland receiving hate mail and abuse as a result.

Epic told PCGamesInsider.biz that its strategy of snapping up games exclusively was working earlier this year at GDC, with the Fortnite form later condemning the abuse studios were receiving over going with Epic's store in the wake of Glumberland's treatment.  

As PCGamesInsider.biz has said in the past, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to not like the Epic Games Store but there is no denying it is providing developers with a degree of financial stability they are likely otherwise lacking in this competitive landscape

Back to Coffee Stain for a second - the Goat Simulator and Satisfactory maker was purchased by European games giant THQ Nordic in November 2018 for a cool $44.4m, with another $14.26m on the table if the company hits certain financial milestones.


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.