I was gonna make a thread about this but I figured it'd probably just devolve into the usual EGS banter. I was just wondering how the sales have been going for indie devs on the store. Actual indie devs, not superstar ones like Supergiant but Bigben (Sinking City), AOne Games (Omen of Sorrow) or Zen Studios (Operencia: The Stolen Sun). For someone like Zen Studios all I can see is they released it, EGS didn't even promote it, it got buried and now all I can see is their recent work has been on DLC for their Williams Pinball games with literally no word on Operencia performance. Their forums actually have more questions about gamepass PC then EGS even.
The same can be said for Omen of Sorrow, AOne Games has gone absolutely radio silent since June 20th when the game launched. There is literally zero presence on their social platforms. Bigben is a bit different in that they have Sherlock Holmes as well to help their presence, but in regards to Sinking City nothing has been said about how well it is doing since launch, not even a "sales have been great" kind of post. Obviously they are unique in that they are also battling resubmitting their titles because Focus Home Interactive went all bullshit on them and wouldn't give content or title IDs back which is super scummy but off topic.
My point is, how well is EGS actually helping indie titles? Are their sales actually significantly enough to cover the contract cost of exclusivity, one that doesn't guarantee your own sale revenue until the point of payout has been reached? My opinion on this is no, it isn't helping. At least, not with the current layout design of the store that actively punishes non-AAA titles by pushing them further down a list of ever-growing titles that mix in with those that are free, those that are for pre-order and those that aren't even available yet but have an icon to distract you. Epic aren't actually, from my point of view, helping indies at this time and simply using them as PR power for the marketshare battle. To me that's just plain disgusting when these companies are so fragile already that they go for the sweet words of Epic's tall tales and get no real juice in return.
Of course, exclusivity is still exclusivity and it has the benefit of paying bills that they may have otherwise never been able to pay. For that I'm actually grateful because there are some absolute gems hidden in the store that I want to play, and knowing that they have at least some short term profit to keep going until maybe a non-EGS release is good. However, the obvious wart on the nose is that at the end of the day competition is competition, and even EGS is now prone to it despite Tim's battle cry of justice to PC markets.
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