If you want to play Control, Remedy Entertainment's hit take on the sci-fi policing institute -- very reminiscent of the SCP Foundation, if you like your Creepypasta -- you'll need to get it from the Epic Game Store. That's just one more exclusive that Epic has managed to secure by paying for the privilege. According to the latest financial report out of the developer, Epic paid as much as $10.45 million to the parent company of Control's publisher, 505 Games, for the game to sell exclusively through its store instead of proliferating through Steam, GoG, Humble Bundle, and the myriad of other smaller stores.
As PCGamer explains, 505 Games received 45 percent of that payment, while the rest, around $5.75 million, went to Remedy Entertainment. That's a huge sum, and likely covers a major portion of the game's developmental budget. It cost between $20 and 30 million to develop and managed to sell more than $10 million worth in its first couple of months of being on sale, so Control is well on its way to being a profitable game and will likely pass that threshold in the months to come.
Although it likely would have sold a greater number of copies if it did sell on Steam as well, 505 and Remedy take a larger share of the profits of game sales on Epic's store, so there's that to consider too. When it does eventual launch on Steam, as most Epic exclusives are wont to do after a set period of time, then Control will sell more copies again, helping it get over the line into pure profitability, if it isn't there already.
How do you guys feel about exclusives at this point? Although it's a pain having multiple launcher installed, competition for Steam should make it a better service overall.
I still can't watch fullscreen video on it without heavy buffering. It'd be nice if Valve fixed that.
