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Darq steam1/31/2024 ![]() Marhulets also added that though he will probably make less money off DARQ by being on Steam instead of opting for the Epic Games Store exclusivity deal, in his view, it’s “a fair price to pay for establishing an ongoing trust between my studio and its customers.”įinally, Marhulets also expressed the importance of giving customers options – DARQ itself is also going to be available on GOG in addition to Steam – before pointing out the disparity between how major AAA releases aren’t bound to exclusivity to be sold on the Epic Games Store, which doesn’t seem to be the case for indie releases. “Pulling the game off Steam, especially so close to the release date, would surely make a lot of DARQ fans unhappy.” Which makes sense- one only needs to look at Shenmue 3’s EGS announcement after the game’s Kickstarter backers had already been promised a Steam release a long time ago. “A lot of Steam users added DARQ to their wishlist and patiently waited for its release date for almost a year,” he wrote. Marhulets also mentioned that DARQ has been listed on Steam since late 2018, and that in the time since then, has popped up on the wishlists of a large number of Steam users. When thinking long term, however, this was an easy & obvious decision to make (in my case).” Turning down the Epic exclusivity offer might have been a foolish decision in the short term, considering the amount of money that might have been involved. I would like for my customers to have confidence that my word means something, especially when making announcement as crucial as release date / platform. “I had just announced DARQ release date on Steam – pulling the game off Steam a few days after Steam release date announcement would forever ruin the credibility of my studio. ![]() “Although I’m a first time developer, I’m very serious about working in this industry for a very long time,” he explained. For starters, he felt accepting a deal in exchange for an upfront payment and guaranteed revenue would have made sense in the short-term – it’s something that a lot of developers have openly cited as the reason for going exclusive to EGS, in fact – but in the long-term, doing so merely days after announcing the game’s Steam release date would affect his studio’s credibility with the larger audiences. The reason, Marhulets explained, was manifold. After explaining that “every indie studio has a unique story and has to deal with unique set of obstacles” and that “rejecting such offer happened to be right for my game, but might not be right for other games / studios”, explained why he rejected it in the first place. Publishing a lengthy blog post on Medium, Marhulets explains that he was contacted by Epic Games – a couple of days after he announced DARQ’s Steam release date – who proposed to sign up DARQ as an Epic Games Store exclusive. One such game is the indie adventure title DARQ, and recently, (mostly) solo developer Wlad Marhulets of Unfold Games shared just why exactly he ended up choosing to remain a multiplatform PC release. But while games both big and small have been declaring exclusivity for Epic’s storefront quite frequently, there are others that are doing the exact opposite of that. There aren’t a lot of topics in the industry right now that can cause as much controversy as the Epic Games Store, and it seems, thanks to Epic’s exclusive-poaching practices, that the digital storefront is making the headlines every other day.
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