It's not a fumble. The game is an epic exclusive for one year on PC. Excluding microsoft store, because microsoft owns Obisidian.I recently stumbled across this and it looks good, but that release fumble
That is correct, though in this case Epic payed the *publisher*, not the developer. Obsidian had no say in the matter. To make things more complicated, Microsoft isn't the publisher either. Microsoft merely owns Obsidian, but they do not publish the game in this case. The one getting the money in this case (and making the decision) is pirate division, who publish the outer worlds.I think Epic has been throwing money at developers to get them into temporary exclusive deals to use the Epic (Fail) Games Store, otherwise I can't think of an explanation for some of the release schedules I've seen around the internet.
I'd rather have steam challenged by somebody actually competent and service focused, instead of someone that just throws money around. Unfortunately, that doesn't work that well, as GoG clearly shows, which is by far the best and most customer oriented store out there. So epic is trying different tactics, and they're just bad for customers, and while they boast about how they are better for developers, they have also refused to take games onto their store completely after the developer refused an exclusivity deal. So I'm really not thrilled about the way they do business...Im personally very glad the Steam monopoly is being reduced by Epic.
But I guess if benevolent business practices would make for good competition, itch.io would be ruling everybody...