Phoenix Point - Epic Store Deal

PC Gamer reports that the Epic Store deal is worth $2.25 million:

Phoenix Point's Epic Store exclusivity deal is worth $2.25 million, says Fig investor

"Snapshot's distribution agreement has brought in significant resources," says Fig.

Epic Games paid more than $2 million to Phoenix Point developer Snapshot Games to secure a timed exclusive on its Epic Games Store.

In a thread on Resetera, a financier who supported the game on Fig - a platform that not only enables backers to financially kickstart a game, but also take a share in its profits - confirmed the game had already seen a 191 per cent return on investment (ROI) thanks to a "cash advance" raised by "Snapshot's distribution agreement" with Epic Games.

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Old news as this was mentioned in the reddit AMA Snapshot did last month. Still they might have to repay some of that if the game doesn't sell a certain amount.

As I suspected. Let's say Phoenix Point was released on Steam at 50 euros and the developer got 70% percent of the profits (pretty generous I'd say as many developers find a publisher to distribute their games) they'd need to sell around 65,000 copies of their game at full price to reach the amount Epic paid them. If we say their cut is less, then its even more copies.

So, in other words, if you are a small or indie developer, and Epic comes to you with a suitcase of money for your game, you can't say no. Unless you have incredible confidence that your game will be a blockbuster.

The only developers who can say no are going to be very successful and established ones who can afford to decline the money, either out of principle or out of confidence they will sell many copies of their games.

Not much of an advance if you have to repay it. Still it sounds like they need to sell a min of 600K copies for epic to break even (very rough estimate i don't remember the exact price of the game or epic cut - but it begs the question i wonder if epic takes a larger cut until the amount is paid off??)

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Old news as this was mentioned in the reddit AMA Snapshot did last month. Still they might have to repay some of that if the game doesn't sell a certain amount.

Good decision! Small teams need every bit they can get. This is basically a publisher deal.

Originally Posted by you
Not much of an advance if you have to repay it.

Though that's pretty much what "advance" means.

Originally Posted by mercy
Good decision!

No.
If you advertise your crowdfunding campaign with Steam/GOG this is not a good decision.
Revenue should not be the only thing that matters.
Even if you don't advertise a crowdfunding campaign with certain release platforms - if you want to do an exclusive deal, I as a backer want to know this if I back your project.

Snapshot Games has no respect for backers/crowdfunding - I hope they fail as a developer.
What they did is almost scam.

Originally Posted by you
Not much of an advance if you have to repay it. Still it sounds like they need to sell a min of 600K copies for epic to break even (very rough estimate i don't remember the exact price of the game or epic cut - but it begs the question i wonder if epic takes a larger cut until the amount is paid off??)

Well they are not repaying it. Epic is just not going to give them any money from sales until the amount of $ is surpassed through sales.

Not much of a "scam", though. You get the software you paid for, via a different freely-available distribution system, and if that is unsatisfactory, you get your money back. If you put that before a judge, I'm fairly sure he'd say, "Go away immediately."

Valid point but do we know if it is an advance or actual payment. It sounded to me (from the article) that the 2.5 million was an actual payment.

Originally Posted by Hindukönig
Though that's pretty much what "advance" means.

Originally Posted by Kylex
No.
If you advertise your crowdfunding campaign with Steam/GOG this is not a good decision.
Revenue should not be the only thing that matters.
Even if you don't advertise a crowdfunding campaign with certain release platforms - if you want to do an exclusive deal, I as a backer want to know this if I back your project.

Snapshot Games has no respect for backers/crowdfunding - I hope they fail as a developer.
What they did is almost scam.

Bullshit. The reasonable view is that when you back a game, you're backing a game. They were making a PC game and it will still be on PC. The only thing different is the launcher app you'll use. Of course the Fig campaign said Steam/GOG - those are the stores that games were typically sold on at the time, so it made sense at that time to say it would be available on them. It's not like it was ever intended to be some promise carved in stone.

If I backed a board game on Kickstarter and the campaign said all the games would be shipped with FedEx when they're done, then later they changed their mind and decided to ship with UPS, I wouldn't care either.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but now I won't be playing this game until it appears on either great old games or steam. And I'm doubly glad I didn't give to the project, in hindsight, one of my better decisions!!

I'm happy with a publisher doing whatever he wants with his IP *EXCEPT* in this case, this asshole promised a product to gamers to be delivered on certain platforms in order to generate revenue on Fig, then once he got his seed funding reneged on that promise when presented with a better offer.

I'm not going to call that fraud, since I'm not a lawyer, but it's definitely bullshit.

Originally Posted by screeg
I'm happy with a publisher doing whatever he wants with his IP *EXCEPT* in this case, this asshole promised a product to gamers to be delivered on certain platforms in order to generate revenue on Fig, then once he got his seed funding reneged on that promise when presented with a better offer.

I'm not going to call that fraud, since I'm not a lawyer, but it's definitely bullshit.

Agree I tried to call it bait and switch but that didn't go so well with defenders.

Ubisoft also just did the same thing as Metro Exodus with Anno 1800. They took pre-order money on Steam and within a month of launch switched clients. Assholes.

The devs' answer fits well: they took the money to make a better product and better support after launch.
If cocky, they could have stated that their deal with the distribution network guarantee a return on investment for crowdfudnders.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
As I suspected. Let's say Phoenix Point was released on Steam at 50 euros and the developer got 70% percent of the profits (pretty generous I'd say as many developers find a publisher to distribute their games) they'd need to sell around 65,000 copies of their game at full price to reach the amount Epic paid them. If we say their cut is less, then its even more copies.

65k is below their target. XCOM is now considered a genre by players. Firaxis'products are successful and will help saving on marketing.
65k might be around the sales number incitated by the streaming scene.

Originally Posted by you
Not much of an advance if you have to repay it. Still it sounds like they need to sell a min of 600K copies for epic to break even (very rough estimate i don't remember the exact price of the game or epic cut - but it begs the question i wonder if epic takes a larger cut until the amount is paid off??)

600k to break even with what. They might reach the target though.

At what point is this considered anti-competitive practice? Epic can throw gobs of money at this endeavor, because of their success selling other games like Fortnite. So they are branching into a new business (retail re-sale) and potentially operating at a loss, subsidizing it with money from a different business (game development).

This is considered to be illegal in many instances, like how Microsoft undercut the browser market back in the day by subsidizing their entry with their OS business (not that they paid much of a price, but it was definitely anti-competitive behavior).

Something about this whole Epic thing just doesn't smell right to me….

Originally Posted by Fantasm
This is considered to be illegal in many instances, like how Microsoft undercut the browser market back in the day by subsidizing their entry with their OS business (not that they paid much of a price, but it was definitely anti-competitive behavior).

In order for it to be considered anticompetitive, you have to be a dominant player in the market, seen to be seeking to squeeze out the competition. If you are a relatively small competitor, you can pretty much be as aggressive in your business tactics as you like.

Originally Posted by Ripper
In order for it to be considered anticompetitive, you have to be a dominant player in the market, seen to be seeking to squeeze out the competition. If you are a relatively small competitor, you can pretty much be as aggressive in your business tactics as you like.

So double standards once again love how that works.

Let me put it the English way, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So double standards once again love how that works.

Let me put it the English way, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

In terms of anticompetition law, that's just how it is. And I think it does make sense - if you have a competitive field, let people play, but if you have a massively dominant company, then we need to look at it differently, as it does us little good to let them extinguish all competitors with unanswerable power.