Another highly anticipated game (among many others) has been revealed to be an Epic Games Store timed exclusive. Following closely on the heels of Maneater, Ashen, Super Meat Boy Forever and Operencia: The Stolen Sun, it appears as if Vblank Entertainment’s Shakedown: Hawaii is another victim of the Epic Games Store timed exclusivity.
Eurogamer is reporting that Vblank has confirmed that the game will appear on the Epic Games Store first on PC, and will likely remain there for a year before releasing on Steam. Most of the Epic Games Store exclusive deals are for one year, so while the release date on the Steam store at the moment only states TBD, don’t be surprised if it changes to “releasing in 2020” in the coming weeks.
Shakedown: Hawaii is the latest game to join the timed exclusivity fray, following on the heels of other games like Genesis Alpha One, the first-person roguelite ship builder, which was highly anticipated but ended up missing its launch on Steam for a one-year exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store.
The Steam store page for Genesis Alpha One now only promises a generic January, 2020 release window. It’s just another example of many, as outlined in a Steam forum post, of an upcoming game that was moved over to Epic’s new distribution storefront. This also includes games that seemingly slipped under the radar, such as Zen Studios’ Operencia: The Stolen Sun, which is another game that was also delayed to 2020, as indicated on the Steam store page.
Some people think that this is giving Valve some stiff competition from Epic Games, but it actually seems to create more consternation than anything, especially given that there was massive backlash against Deep Silver and 4A Games when Metro: Exodus was revealed to be a timed Epic Games Store exclusive at the twelfth hour, resulting in the other Metro games getting mass-review bombed as gamers warned others away from purchasing Metro: Exodus from the Epic Games Store.
In this case, it’s hard to tell how this will affect Shakedown: Hawaii. The game will also be releasing on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS Vita, and Nintendo 3DS, so if anyone really wanted to get their hands on it they could every well just do so on any of the other platforms without worrying about getting embroiled in the Epic vs Valve debacle.
Ultimately, though, it just seems like this would hurt the developer’s bottom line more than anything. While Epic may take a smaller distribution cut from accrued revenue, it doesn’t really make sense as a sound business decision if fewer people are buying the game in the first place. What’s the point of a 12% distribution cut if only a couple thousand people buy the game anyway?
We’ll see how the sales battle unfolds when the game launches on the Epic Game Store this year, and then launches on the Steam store presumably a year later.
(Thanks for the news tip msoltyspl)
