Epic Games Paid 10.45 Million for Exclusivity Rights to Control

Epic Games has made no secret of the fact that it’s using its big bank energy to strong-arm publishers and developers into taking what is now ominously known as “the deal”: temporary or permanent exclusivity on the Epic Game Store. Everyone knew they had the capital to spare with Fortnite still rolling in big bucks, but up until recently, we could only guess at the kind of numbers Epic Games were writing on their checks. After all, no one would want to advertise how much their exclusivity ultimately cost them.

But thanks to the financial report from Digital Bros, the parent company of 505 Games, the publisher of Control, Remedy’s newest game and current Epic Store Exclusive, we’ve got our very first official number: 10.45 million dollars.

That’s right, the Epic Game Store paid 10.45 million dollars for the exclusive right to sell what could generously be called a double-plus A title.

505 Games got about 45 percent of that amount, while Remedy got the remaining 55 percent, which amounts to about 5.75 million dollars: not a bad cut for a modern game of that caliber. That may seem like a lot of money on Epic’s end, considering they’re also famous for taking very little percentage of sales, but deals like this are usually positioned as advances on royalties, which means that until Control manages to break the 10.45 million mark, neither 505 or Remedy are going to be making any money from sales. Which is still a pretty great deal, in so far that it guarantees at least some success.

When reached out for comment, Epic Games said: “We don’t comment on the terms of our deals. Everyone should play Control; it’s really good”.

In any case, it’s doubtful every game on the Epic Game Store got that much money in their version of ‘the deal’, but having an actual number is still pretty interesting.