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Wlad Marhulets, the developer behind the Burton-esque horror indie Darq, rejected an Epic exclusivity agreement and explained his reasoning in a Medium post published earlier this week.
Marhulets had been working on his game for almost four years. Darq appeared on Steam last year, and was sitting comfortably in the top 50 most wishlisted games on Steam before it launched last week. After Marhulets had posted a trailer announcing the release date, he received an email from Epic Games that offered an exclusivity deal for the game on its distribution platform. The developer refused the proposal even before money had been discussed.
‘It just wasn’t the right fit for Darq,’ Marhulets explained in a Reddit post. As his decision gained more and more attention from gamers and from media outlets, he published a Medium post to clarify what happened and why he chose to turn down the deal. ‘I would like to emphasise that I’m not speaking on behalf of other developers,’ he prefaced the explanation, ‘Every indie studio has a unique story and has to deal with a unique set of obstacles. The following reasons are mine and mine only.’
Marhulets stated that Darq had been listed on Steam for a long while, and fans that followed and supported the game’s development journey from the beginning would have been blindsided by the decision. ‘Pulling the game off Steam a few days after Steam release date announcement would forever ruin the credibility of my studio,’ the developer added, ‘I would like for my customers to have confidence that my word means something.’
The comments under Marhulet’s Reddit post and on Darq’s Steam page laud the developer for his decision, and iterate contempt for Epic Games exclusivity agreements. ‘I never intended to become the face of the Epic Store exclusivity controversy,’ Marhulets wrote in the Medium post, and in an email to Kotaku, stated that the attention has caused ‘a lot of pressure.’
Despite this, Marhulets maintains his perspective on taking up Epic Games agreements: ‘As for harassing developers and sending them death threats for accepting exclusivity deals: there’s no excuse for it.’
Glumberland, the studio behind kooky farming sim Ooblets, announced its Epic Games store exclusivity and received an unprecedented wave of vitriol and abuse. Epic Games also published a statement in the wake of the backlash, promising its current and future partners that it would defend them against abuse and build ‘a healthier and more competitive multi-store world for the future.’
