Epic Games is attempting to take marketshare from Steam in part by signing games to be exclusive, at least for a period of time, to the company’s Epic Games Store. Titles like The Division 2, Metro Exodus, and Borderlands 3 launched as timed-exclusives for the Epic Games Store. Looking ahead, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said the company will continue this strategy, but he observed that this effort worked best for bigger titles.
“We’re really honing our strategy based on what we observed worked really well in previous launches, and what didn’t work really well,” Sweeney told PC Gamer. “A handful of major exclusives really moved the needle … and the smaller games, especially games that had a smaller audience that was typically on Steam, we found that a lot of those players weren’t willing to move over.”
Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison said the launch of Borderlands 3 on the Epic Games Store as a limited-time exclusive “crushed” expectations, though specific numbers were not shared.