Let me start off by saying that if you want all the nitty gritty details then head over to Blues News. Go there and get the full breakdown of the Russ Bullock Ask Me Anything that happened on the No Guts No Galaxy Podcast. For everyone that just wants the mother tea, yeah I went there, then read on and let’s get to it.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries was made using Epic’s Unreal Engine. This means that right off the bat Piranha Games has to give Epic a 5% commission from the sales of the game. If they put the game up on Steam then would also have to hand over 30% of their profits to Valve. That means a whopping 35% of the games profits would be going to people who had no involvement in the creation of the game.

Conversely, Epic has offered Piranha Games, and literally every other developer, a flat 12% to have the game put up on the Epic Games Store. This is whether or not the game uses Epic’s Unreal Engine. That means if MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries was put up on Steam it would cost Piranha Games just shy of triple the amount of money in fees. Going to Epic Games Store is a no brainer, even if it screws over all the fans.

“Real fans just won’t buy the game!” You yell into the void. Well, by going on Epic Games Store as opposed to Steam it means that if they make $2 Million in sales on EGS they earn more than if they would have sold $3 Million worth of games on Steam. So, yeah they may lose some sales by going exclusive on EGS but Piranha Games is still going to come out ahead. If gamers want EGS to stop scooping up games as exclusives than Steam either needs to lower there ridiculously high fees or gamers have to buy no EGS content. Neither of these things seem possible, so you better get used to seeing more EGS exclusives in the future.