You put it on Epic, that’s basically yelling “IGNORE ME!” in a world where the Striesand Effect doesn’t exist
They didn’t “put it on Epic”. Sam Lake and the rest of Remedy really really wanted to make the game and were trying to find funding for it for over a decade, but Alan Wake 1 sold poorly and thus nobody else would touch the franchise with a ten foot pole. As part of the deal to fully fund the development, it was made an Epic exclusive. Sam Lake signed the deal with the Devil because it was literally the only way he saw his dream game ever being made.
I wish it was put on Steam and sold three times as many copies, but I am still incredibly thankful it got made at all. It’s a masterpiece.
Doesn’t change the fact that putting it on Epic was a mistake. Crowdfunding and doing a Steam release would have been the smart choice
I do wonder how the crowdfunding route would have gone for them. I don’t know that they could have raised the full $50M though. The original had a cult following, and Control did really well, but it would be very risky. If they failed to hit their goal in a crowdfunding round, then they could be guaranteed going forward that no one, not even Epic would have seen it as worth funding. It would have been forever dead.
A Low Budget Alan Wake would have been better than one that doesn’t sell a single copy because putting it on Epic is the marketing equivalent of proudly announcing that your product is loaded with anthrax.
It’s a platform that literally struggles to GIVE games away.
I realize there was no other choice, but if they expected to sell a product on EPIC they were smoking that pack.
As for would it have done well in crowdfunding? Probably Alan Wake is a name everyone knows as “One of the horror greats”
It wouldn’t have gotten 50 million though
A Low Budget Alan Wake would have been better than one that doesn’t sell
I don’t follow. As a fan, I get to play the game either way. Why would a lower budget version that more people buy be “better” for me? It might be better for the companies involved, it might even make future installments easier to sell to investors which means I get more games. But at the end of the day, as a player I end up with a worse AW2. Why would I want that?
Control was also an Epic exclusive and didn’t come to Steam until much later. That undoubtedly hurt it.
Alan Wake 2 is a masterpiece, and I didn’t pay for it since it was Epic Games Store only.
I was so happy when it was free on my kids PS Premium subscription, because Epic will never see my credit card (even though i have 100’s of games there).
Gee, I wonder if not putting Alan Wake in steam might have had anything to do with it?
Quite literally would not have existed had Epic not funded it. Lake shopped it around for the better part of a decade seeing if anyone would be interested in funding it, but no one besides Epic would.
So, again, this game would not exist if Epic wasn’t involved.
It’s a shame people don’t seem to realise this. I have genuinely no idea why you’re getting downvoted. I guess people on Lemmy just hate Epic that much. I think if the Epic Store was the last food source on Earth, over half of Lemmy would voluntarily starve to death.
Anyway, it’s a real shame what happened. Alan Wake 2 is a true masterpiece and yet it needed like a year and a half post release to just break even. It makes me fear that we won’t ever see another Alan Wake game as ambitious and amazing.
Yes, it’s an unfortunate reality that EGS was the only option. But still, my hope is that someone can crunch the stats and prove to future publishers that the revenue delta can be attributed to EGS exclusivity.
Yep. Genuinely would have gotten it if on steam, just want to make sure I can continue to play it if I want to in many years time.
It’s DRM free, you can just zip up the files if you really wanted to make sure.
Yes, but the game was payrolled by Epic and wouldn’t even exist without them. Its different from those other instances where they threw money at a game at the end and bought the exclusivity.
