World War Z Developer Says Epic Game Store Helped them Succeed

People have been mad – sometimes understandably, sometimes less so – over Epic Game’s plan to overthrow Steam by basically buying out a bunch of exclusive and timed-exclusive games to force people who want the best and most exciting games to use their platform over Steam. Epic has gone on record as saying this practice is only temporary, and they’ll stop it anytime Steam agrees to change its revenue split (although how honest that demand actually is could be debated). What it certainly hasn’t done is slowed down, because the people who actually matter in this debacle – the developers themselves – seem to love the hell out of the Epic Game Store.

For example? World War Z developer Saber Interactive, who claims that not only did their game do well on the Epic Game Store, the platform actively contributed to the game’s success.

Saber Interactive chief executive Matthew Karch had this to say, to VentureBeats:
 

“Overall the US and EU have been equally strong in sales. We have had 70,000 people playing at once across all platforms, with very similar distribution among PC, PS4 and Xbox… What surprises us is the fact that sales outside of the US on the Epic Store have been so strong, with the US being only one quarter of sales.”

He also said, in a separate press release:
 

“On the PC specifically, we are performing way above expectations thanks to the support we have received from the Epic Games Store."

Although he didn’t say what kind of support that was, outside maybe the platform being less crowded and not having a perfectly good L4D2 to buy on it.

Anyway. To me, it seems clear that with numbers like this, all Epic Games has to do is wait out the controversy: the more games come out for them, the more people will download their client, which means less people will need to complain whenever a new exclusive deal is announced. They’re pretty much set.

Although a shopping cart would be nice.