i mean - i kiiiiiinda can understand them ... Danger Zone 2 (their latest game) barely sold anything on steam (they have 36 reviews right now ... so it probably means it sold below 1k copies ... well below)
and epic almost definitely promised them marketing (if not straight-up money ... although with the performance of their previous games - i'm not sure they would do that ... they weren't exactly smash hits) in exchange for exclusivity
BUT, with all that being said - that announcement isn't maybe something they should've posted in that form ... even ignoring all the complaining about steam ... it still reads like "if you steam people bought our games we wouldn't be doing this right now ... and thanks for your support but, byyyyyye"
and then there's of course the fact that they haven't even bothered posting that announcement in any of their 4 steam forums (they have 4 games on steam), so people had to go digging to even find out about it, because they stopped posting in their steam forums a good while ago (and they WERE quite active on there beforehand!) ... so ... also not very nice of them
I can understand why they'd do it. I don't like these store exclusive games (never liked them), so I'm not happy in general, but I can understand why a small indie dev might do it to secure some chance of success (the big indie devs and the big pubs like Ubi tho? they can go pound sand), be it advance payments, marketing or whatever else.
What I don't like is the double speak. It sucks that they didn't find success with their games on Steam. The fault isn't with the userbase who wasn't interested in their games tho, nor is it Steam's fault for not marketing their games, since Valve isn't the publisher who signed them up to release their games for them. I'm not even gonna put the fault on them. Sometimes great games simply don't manage to find their market.
Yet, I don't see this kind of talk about Humble, Indiegala, Gamersgate. What kind of marketing did they run for their games? Are they gonna skip selling their games through those stores because few people bought them and the stores didn't do marketing for them?
This kind of... idiocy? is infuriating in a way. I'm not gonna chastise developers for trying to chase an opportunity. They need to earn a living like anyone else. I'm gonna chastise them for coating their reasons in a bunch of well sounding bullshit.
Rome wasn't built in a day is such a stupid thing to attach to that message. The EGS has been around as long as Fortine has been around. It has been around before Fortnite was around. Supposedly this game store has been in the works for years. Saying *Rome wasn't built in a day* when taking this in mind, and taking in mind the multi-billion dollar company behind it, makes it look farcical and laughable.
Rome wasn't built in a day, it took centuries for it to be as big and as great as it became. Does the general customer have to give a few centuries to EGS too before they can dismiss it as a turd of a store and a client?
In the end, it's their business. If they have gotten a good deal to only release on the EGS, good for them. Hopefully it works out and they find success.
I'm just tired of the bullshit to try and paint these decisions in a good light.
I'm also surprised because for some reason I own Dangerous Golf. It must have been a bundle.