Outer Wilds, in an official blog post, announced that the game would be launching exclusively on the Epic Store for the PC. The announcement reads “Outer Wilds will first be released on XBox One and on PC via the Epic Games Store, with additional platforms coming later.” It is interesting to note that Mobius Digital, the parent developers for Outer Wilds, had promised a simultaneous launch of the game on multiple storefronts at once.
Needless to say, a crowdfunded game becoming an exclusive at the last moment didn’t go down well with the backers, who created an uproar after the announcement, prompting Mobius Digital to calm the nerves of anxious backers with the promise of bringing the game to other “unannounced platforms” soon enough. Apparently, Mobius Digital had promised Steam keys to backers when they first backed the project, which was the reason for the outburst.
Epic Games’s controversial strategy of making games exclusive to the Epic Store as a way of ‘competition’ has not exactly gone down well with gamers, but it appears that they are covering quite some grounds with their exclusivity deals. Last month, Epic had also announced that Quantic Dream’s Detroit : Become Human, Beyond Two Souls and Heavy Rain, former PlayStation exclusives, will be launching exclusively on the Epic Store. Clearly, exclusivity isn’t a path they’re going to give up anytime soon.