Epic Games Publishing Deal | Games ReCAP

epic games the engine maker the game maker the storefront Handler and now the games publisher welcome to another episode of games recap be sure to hit the subscribe button to get your game news recap every Monday Wednesday and Friday I am Brandon Pham and you can hit me up on twitter at blue champs to discuss today's news or just tell me your favorite color fortnight and Unreal Engine developer epic games will publish new games from three Studios gen design The Last Guardian play dead makers of inside and limbo and remedy entertainment makers of control as part of a new developer first approached publishing agreement holy crap that's a pretty crazy start for a publishing deal usually most don't shout their contract terms from mountaintops but you can't be a company called epic and tell people things in the back alley

or something believe me this is a pretty epic announcement epic games publishing arrangement with the developers is a fundamental change to developer publishing model here are the terms full creative freedom and ownership developers retain 100% of all intellectual property and full creative control that work in other words the developers give epic a license to distribute its game and takes its share of the revenue but holds on to ownership of all the copyrighted code character designs art and so on practically speaking this means that if remedy wanted to make a sequel to one of its epic published games but didn't want to involve epic at all it could theoretically do that fully funded projects epic gains publishing will cover up to 100 percent of development costs from developer salaries to go to market expenses such as QA localization marketing and all publishing costs one or remedies press releases confirms that epic is providing the entire budget for

two of its games the agreements specified the publisher will fully fund game development costs and that remedy is entitled to a 50% share of net revenue from the game sales remedy also retains the ownership of the game's intellectual property the first project is a triple a multi-platform game already in pre-production and previously referred to as the unannounced third project the second is a new smaller scale project set in scene franchise both projects are being developed on remedies proprietary northlane game engine and tools man and that because footing the bill for everything and isn't even making developers use their Unreal Engine that is mega what is the last thing there's got to be a catch right 50/50 profit sharing holy crap well developers earned a fair share for their work once costs are recouped developers earn at least fifty percent of all profits buttered

pancakes this means after epic makes backsons investments and covers retail marketing and other costs they'll split the rest of the revenue 50/50 I like the sound of that the lease hears suggest that in some cases developer will get a bigger net revenue share in remedies case it's 50/50 we're building the publishing model we always wanted for ourselves when we work with publishers Tim Sweeney founder and CEO Epic Games said in a statement Tim Sweeney is slowly becoming the Bill Gates of game developing which also means he's so rich he's trying to write all the sins of this industry all by himself this is a monster deal for any developers well how big well as a comparison let's look at another publishers deal with remedy for their hit game control for investing 7.75 million dollars into remedies development of control which cost between 20 to 30 million to make and handily marketing and distribution 505 games secured publishing rights for 20

years for that 20 year period remedy gets 45% of controls in net revenue which refers to revenue after the investment is recouped retail costs marking costs and so on head of epic games publishing Hector Sanchez added that developers will have full creative control while epic will provide a solid foundation of project funding and services as part of their deal with that being practically this means that if remedies new games flop and epic never recoups its investment remedy won't have loss of money because epic paid for the entire cost of development the deal with 505 games though didn't even cover half of remedies development cost and took a 5% greater net revenue cut epic is definitely bearing more of the risk here is Meowth who is a self-proclaimed indie developer messiah says like what is the deal they give you money so you can make your game for you owned by you controlled by you and then give you half the more money if it does well which

they will use for their own resources sore I have rarely heard of anything close to this devolver digital and indie publisher responds sarcastically come on man to be fair at the time that this reported the Volvo Digital offers a 70/30 revenue split with the larger portion going to developers that's obviously better than 50/50 deal epic has with remedy but come on man epic is investing a lot more money into remedy than the Volvo Digital put into say the development of hotline Miami which is made by two people so there's a difference here in terms of volume the kinds of games epic is funding can cost tens of millions of dollars to make and again it's that commitment to 100% funding that makes the whole deal stand now three deal now so far aren't the only publishing contracts epic has signed either additional information development partners and games will be announced in become a month it says even if epic story exclusive remains a thing

I expect time exclusivity for these games mostly one important note is that the new games published by epic won't necessarily be exclusive to its store epic describes the new venture as a new multi-platform publishing effort with a developer first approached key word multi-platform epic says that more partners and the first games will be announced in be coming months as from whether the game publishing industry as a whole will shift in response to epics publicized terms whatever angle you look at this announcement what epic is doing is pretty admirable epic is sitting on such a huge amount of fortnight money that they don't need to take on any unnecessary risk however instead they are continuously trying to upend the game development standards first with the 12% storefront and now fronting dev costs for games and giving developers full intellectual control this is madness let me know your thoughts in the comment section below how are you responding to this piece of news as epic blowing smoke or do dreams really do come true

[Music] you [Music]