Epic wants to leave the Epic Games Store exclusivity decision up to devs

There had been some mention from Epic staff of not pursuing games that are already up on Steam to avoid controversy, but, after discussion, Epic says it still plans to offers devs on Steam the option to go Epic Games Store exclusive.

This all comes from a Twitter conversation spotted by VG247 this week between Tim Sweeney and a handful of folks on Twitter where Sweeney explains that “these calls must be up to developers and publishers.”

At GDC a couple of weeks ago, Epic’s Steve Allison said that the company wanted to avoid more situations where devs pull games from Steam to jump over to Epic, something that came up after that first Metro Exodus exclusivity deal attracted a fair amount of criticism for switching platforms after it had already been up for pre-order on Steam.

Since then, however, Sweeney says that the Epic team has “had a lot of discussions about this since GDC” and decided that the company “is open to continuing to sign funding/exclusivity deals with willing developers and publishers regardless of their previous plans or announcements around Steam.”

“[Allison’s GDC comments] prompted further discussions at Epic," tweeted Sweeney. "Leading to the realization that these calls must be up to developers and publishers, and Epic wouldn’t tell them ‘no’ on account of existing statements made about Steam.”