Epic Founder And CEO Rises To Defend The Epic Games Store ‘Exclusive Games’ Strategy On Twitter

Epic Games and their recently launched Epic Games Store has been the topic of many debates and controversies especially among die-hard Steam fans on the subject of their growing library of exclusive games. Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney defends the Game Store's for exclusive titles in a series of posts on Twitter.

“We believe exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry,” tweeted Sweeney. “If the Epic strategy either succeeds in building a second major storefront for PC games with an 88/12 revenue split, or even just leads other stores to significantly improve their terms, the result will be a major wave of reinvestment in game development and a lowering of costs.”

Sweeney also believes that their strategy, although unpopular among dedicated Steam users, will benefit gamers in the long run. “I believe this approach passes the test of ultimately benefitting gamers after game storefronts have rebalanced and developers have reinvested more of their fruits of their labor into creation rather than taxation.”

For example, after years of great work by independent stores (excluding big publishers like EA-Activision-Ubi), none seem to have reached 5% of Steam’s scale. Nearly all have more features than Epic; and the ability to discount games is limited by various external pressures.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) June 26, 2019