Yu Suzuki is clearly a developer first and not adept with the PR side of his duties as head of a game studio. Watching the game's Kickstarter management made it clear that he's struggled to find good help. In addition, he probably doesn't have a good feel for the PC market, being in Japan where PC gaming isn't all that popular. He's got his nose to the grindstone trying to ship this game in a quality state, and the controversy surrounding Epic has developed over the course of just a few months. I would be surprised if he knew much about the issues surrounding EGS, and bought into the exclusivity deal because he was told it would be great for sales by Deep Silver. I believe he'll try to do something to satisfy the backers affected by this decision once he's reviewed his options.
He's really missing that business and marketing support he got at Sega. Deep Silver has not filled this role appropriately. Contrasting against how 505 has handled their role as publisher of Bloodstained, you can see that Deep Silver isn't putting in the work. 505 games has taken on a community liason role in every backer update, making sure to set backer expectations appropriately against their need to ship a profitable game. They explain every decision they make to the backers, and while a backer may not like a decision they make (like the steel book preorder bonus), they can't claim the publisher isn't letting them know why they're doing it. Deep Silver on the other hand is just throwing their hands up and telling backers to go talk to the other guy.
This post reminded me of this other post at tumblr.
In this context, a game like Shenmue suddenly makes total sense: Yu Suzuki set out to make a game so realistic that it was actually boring. Sega invested $70,000,000 to make this game a reality; more money than anybody had ever spent developing a game franchise before. It would be a new genre. A new paradigm. An unparalleled statement of art. Nobody was there to tell them, "Hey, this is unmarketable. Noone's going to buy your insane vision."
It tanked.
Shenmue is a bold game, and interesting as hell. But it sailed right over everyone's heads. It requires a certain kind of appreciation to really understand it.
At the end of the day, Sega always was and always will be their own worst enemy. A once-in-a-lifetime flash in the pan where art met business in the most perfect way possible, and they will probably never, ever recapture that mixture.
