Growing up, whenever there were talks of exclusives, for me, it usually meant games for consoles. Console makers trying to edge each other out by offering something, which could never be available on its counterpart. A healthy competition welcomed by all. But, in 2019, the meaning and the effect of exclusives have been given a complete new meaning.
With the extra cash on Epic’s hand, after the tremendous success they had with Fortnite. They dared to challenge the supremacy, held by Valve’s Steam for decades. However, they weren’t the only one to do so; Twitch and Discord came before it and fell flat on their faces. Epic on the other hand, had a different idea of how they were going to deal with the giant; weekly free games and exclusives were its trump card against Steam. But, who knew, this idea of exclusives, will start off a chain reaction.
Epic’s Exclusivity Deals
It was Epic, who drew the first blood, by pulling a big title like Metro Exodus from Steam’s store to its own, as an exclusive. After being sold on Steam for months as a pre-order; the decision to make it unavailable on it, was meet with harsh backlash and criticism. But, this was just the beginning. Epic started abusing its powers and caused many highly anticipated games to switch from Steam to Epic, in exchange for extra benefits and sometimes, even cash. “We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers”, those were the only words Valve could offer to the ongoing game poaching Epic was doing.
In its crusade against Steam, Epic was using any means necessary to win this war. As Epic marched on, problems caught up with it. Shenmue III, one of the most successful project on Kickstarter; announced in E3, that it was going to be an Epic store exclusive. A move which not only displeased its loyal fan base, but also many of the Kickstarter backers; who were promised that the game will be available on Steam. With the influx of refunds request from backers and pre-oderers alike, Epic stepped in to help the developers, to maintain its own image. But, that wasn’t the end of it. Epic’s continued its exclusive hunt and got themselves another game, called Ooblets. That’s when things got really messy. In matter of 2 days after the move was made public, the developers behind the game received thousands of hateful and threatening messages over Epic exclusivity deal. Things took a turn for the worse, after both the developer and Epic released their individual statements regarding the issue.
After-effects of Exclusivity
Cyber-bullying or hateful crimes such as threatening messages should be condemned in all cases. However, in the case of Epic and its exclusive games; this hate is being manifested due to most of the developers breaking their promises or what was expected of them. Yes, like the developers behind Ooblets stated, they don’t owe anyone anything. However, they do have to think of the effects of such decisions will have on the sales of their game and the image of the developer, as the gaming industry itself is at the mercy of the gamers.
Game developer’s sudden decision to pull games out of Steam, because they were offered more money for exclusivity deals, shows bad character and is plain unfair to gamers.
Being unfair to customers and cyber-bullying is not the only problem we are looking at; its much worse. Last week, popular game streamer, Ninja, decided to leave the well-aged game streaming site, Twitch, for a new comer for an exclusive deal; which of course comes with extra cash. That’s just the start, imagine your favorite TV show running on Netflix for 3 straight seasons and suddenly a week before the release of the 4th season, it decides to switch to a new service provider as an exclusive. Imagine the rage one would feel. The way things are going, we might not be far behind on that reality.