Comment on Exclusive Interview with Remedy’s New CEO: “Alan Wake and Control Should Have Sold More"
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 5 days agoThey 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.
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
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
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
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.
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
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”
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
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?