Epic paid Digital Bros $10.4 million for Control’s Epic Games Store exclusivity

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Digital Bros, the parent company of publisher 505 Games, has published a financial document which exposes how much Epic paid for Control’s Epic Games Store exclusivity.

According to Digital Bros, they were paid €9.49 million ($10.44m) by Epic Games, of which 55% of this payment went to Control’s publisher, 505 Games

At $60 a copy, $10.44 million would be an upfront payment for 174,011 copies of Control on PC. If 505 Games had chosen to go through Steam, which takes a 30% cut on games with revenue less than $50 million, they would’ve had to of sold 226,214 copies in order to earn that same $10.4 million in revenue.

You can see the revenue breakdown for yourself below, with Control earning Digital Bros €9.49 million during the quarter leading up to June 30th, 2019. Control didn’t launch until August 27th, so it stands to reason this was pre-release earnings contributed to by Epic Games.

I’ll be honest here: that figure was nowhere near as high as I was expecting. Put into context though, Control hasn’t fared particularly well in the sales department, at least in terms of physical console sales. I’m of the opinion it’s one of the best games to come out this year but it would appear it doesn’t have the greatest commercial traction. Taking that account, $10.44m in one lump sum probably seemed like a decent deal for Digital Bros and 505 Games based upon their internal projections.

The benefit to this system for the publishers though is that Control will circle back around to a Steam launch eventually anyway. August 27th, 2020 is the obvious date, at which point 505 Games stands to benefit from a second round of launch hype and sales.

At the very least this does provide us with some sort of indicator as to the figures that Epic Games are throwing around. The likes of Borderlands 3 are an entirely different ballpark though and we’d imagine Gearbox and 2K put a hefty price on such a deal.

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