XCOM Creator Says There Were "A Lot Of Conspiracy Theories" About Epic Games Store
There was a time when there was only one digital marketplace for PC games. Steam was the sole place to buy games digitally – others, like GoG, were around, but could never hope to match even a fraction of Steam's scale. Eventually, the Epic Games Store popped up and started signing exclusivity deals with major developers. While it still isn't anywhere close to the scale of Steam, it has managed to keep Valve's marketplace on its toes.
At the time, potential customers weren't sure whether they liked the idea of another major contender in the digital video game retail space. Whether it was a question of security, or just not wanting to make another account and split their libraries, players were a bit wary, and even annoyed at developers who made deals with Epic
As mentioned by PC Gamer, XCOM creator and Snapshot Games CEO Julian Gollop did not let this affect the decision to sign an exclusivity deal with Epic for Phoenix Point.
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"When we did our Epic exclusive—this was the very early days of the Epic store promotion—yeah, there was a lot of hostility. And also a lot of conspiracy theories about it," he said. "The whole Chinese spyware and all the rest of it. Obviously, that's settled down a bit, and Epic has been great for many indies, in fact. It was another avenue to get funding, of course, which is very, very difficult to get with an indie studio.
"So overall, it was very positive for Phoenix Point itself. We had extra money that would go into making the game, which we didn't have otherwise. So it really did help the quality of the game itself, helped us get it released sooner rather than later and enabled us to put more content in so it was good."
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