Epic Games Is Killing Kickstarter

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have a bad reputation for having projects & games listed where the person behind them is only looking to make a quick buck, proceeding to either release a sub-par product or run off with the money entirely. Epic Games recently has not been making the situation any easier for these websites as they’ve been effectively bribing publishers/developers to go back on their initial “backer” promises to gain exclusivity to their platform, the Epic Game Store.

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games

Epic Games is notorious for paying publishers large sums of money for EGS exclusivity but recently it seems they’ve swung their attention to smaller, crowdfunded titles. These games, such as Shenmue III, What The Golf, Outer Wilds, and Phoenix Point, all promised backers that upon the release of the game they’d receive a Steam download code (if PC was their preferred platform) – Due to Epic Games sudden exclusivity deal it appears they’ve pulled the rug from under the backers of all of these games, saying it’s Epic Games Store or nothing. In some cases, even gone as far to even refusing refunds.

Tim Sweeney (CEO of Epic Games) took to Twitter and claimed it’s Valve’s fault for all of this uproar – Claiming that Steam is trapping them on their platform after being successfully crowdfunded, even though many (if not, all) of them are also available on GOG.

More and more people within the gaming and crowdfunding community are growing frustrated with Epic’s anti-consumer practices, moreover, they don’t seem phased that they’re causing a lot of goodwill towards developers (and themselves) to be lost for short monetary gain. Sweeney appears to be completely ignoring criticism against him, making many non-sensical posts on Twitter regarding the situation. Everyone has their fingers crossed that Epic may eventually change their ways, but even with the backlash, as time goes on, it seems less and less hopeful…