Any chance he’s putting the question on social media to convince other stakeholders above him?
It’s possible he was in a board meeting when some novice shareholder suggested “What if you take an exclusivity deal”? And he just didn’t have clear evidence on hand of that being vastly unpopular. Obviously that could be me being overgenerous to him.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
There are Steam exclusives, but it’s because the publisher chose it to be that way, not because of any incentive by Valve.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
That's what I mean by artificial exclusivity. There are games where the developer or publisher decided it's the only platform they will release on but that kind of "exclusivity" is not at all the same as Epic paying developers or publishers to not release on Steam. Valve/Steam doesn't prevent those games being released elsewhere, the developers/publishers themselves don't want to.
I could understand smaller (I'm talking literal solo devs or studios with less than 10 people) choosing to be exclusively on Steam. Supporting other platforms can have huge overhead costs for them. But for a studio the size of Gearbox there's no benefit to being exclusively on Steam. They have enough support staff to manage multiple stores. There maybe be suits wondering if it's worth being exclusively on Epic but there are no suits sitting around wondering whether to be exclusively on Steam or not, the answer is obviously not.