The employees got paid while working on the game. They don’t only get paid based on sales.
I’m making a parallel between those businesses who still need money to come in in order to pay employees and the way people who are complaining about exclusives wouldn’t submit themselves to the same process of working without any guaranteed income. Money to pay employees doesn’t come out of nowhere and plenty of publishers have went bankrupt leaving the employees without anything to show for their hard work.
You’re also completely forgetting about indie devs.
Analogies, you guys should go read about those.
You can’t hide behind a bad analogy simply due to it being an analogy. It’s still bad. McDonald’s doesn’t get paid until someone buys a burger. Walmart doesn’t get paid until a customer leaves the checkout. This is very normal for businesses that you don’t get money until the consumer buys your product. If I start an independent business selling socks I can make all the socks I want, I don’t get paid unless people buy them. That’s a normal risk to starting your own business.
All of this is besides the fact that I don’t blame devs for taking the offer, I blame Epic. If a game later becomes available on another service I will consider it then, I will not let Epic have any of my money.
You’re also completely forgetting about indie devs.
Okay, let’s ask an indie dev.
Except that yes it does. You’re expecting all devs to spend their life savings to develop a game in the hope that Markiplier or Northernlion or whoever else decide to play their game out of thousands of suggestions they get? Some of them prefer a guaranteed salary in exchange for exclusivity, just like the vast majority of people exchange a guaranteed salary in exchange for work exclusive to a single employer. But somehow you guys expect devs to just gamble while you wouldn’t play slot machine for a living.
I am not a dev. You are also not a dev. Here are some thoughts from an indie dev about Steam and Epic: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/1dbljev/jason_thor_halls_pirate_software_thoughts_on/
Note the comments he makes about why an Epic exclusivity window is valuable to a dev.
