The funding from exclusive deals can be a lifeline for indies.
Did you know Julian Gollop has written four columns for us, including subjects like the creation of the deckbuilder genre? Epic's strategy of timed exclusives helped make it an established source of videogame deals, but not without inspiring quite a bit of vitriol—some from folk with understandable grievances, but a lot of it from Steam stans. This vitriol often gets directed towards the developers who accept these deals, too, as it did whenstudio Snapshot Games teamed up with the store.
It was another avenue to get funding, of course, which is very, very difficult to get with an indie studio.Steam, of course, gives developers access to a vast audience, so waiting a year before releasing it on the platform still comes with some risks."It's always better to have the widest access to storefronts as possible," Gollop acknowledges."If you have the money to get to that finishing line, to get the game in a releasable state.
A staggered release also comes with some benefits. A second launch allows developers and publishers to drum up excitement all over again, and in the case of Phoenix Point it meant the new players got a better game. Over the year after its Epic launch, Snapshot Games introduced several updates, balance tweaks and other improvements.
There's an argument that developers have been using Epic launches as unofficial betas, polishing things up before the"main" launch on Steam, but it is the nature of modern game development to release post-launch fixes and updates. Few games, at least among those with teams still actively tinkering away, don't see some improvements a year after launch.
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