It has been announced that The Outer Worlds will only be available on the Epic Store or Microsoft’s Windows Store for gamers who wish to pick the game up on PC. This means that other online video games distribution services such as Steam will not be selling The Outer Worlds until a year after the game’s initial release.
The Outer Worlds Twitter page made the announcement today stating that, “Our partners at @EpicGames have announced that #TheOuterWorlds will be coming to the Epic Games Store at launch, alongside the Windows Store. It will be released on other digital platforms 12 months later. The Outer Worlds will still release on XBOX and PS4 on launch.”
This announcement has continued a trend of new PC video game releases moving to the Epic Store for a twelve-month exclusivity period. Metro Exodus that released in February and The Division 2 which launched just last week have also made similar moves to the Epic Store. The motivation for this action is likely a result of the more generous revenue split the Epic Store offers to developers and publishers. Valve’s Steam service for instance shares revenue in a 30/70 split whereas the Epic Store splits 12/88.
The Outer Worlds was revealed last year and is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment which is responsible for many classic RPG such as Fallout: New Vegas and Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic 2: Sith Lords.
This announcement will likely deter some gamers who were anticipating the Obsidian release on services such as Steam. However, it is unlikely this will have a great effect on the sales performance of The Outer Worlds. It was announced by Deep Silver at the Game Developer Conference 2019 that Metro Exodus, another Epic Store exclusive game, managed to sell two and half times as many copies on the Epic Store as the previous release in the Metro series did through Steam in the same amount of time.
