Epic paid $10.45 million for Control's exclusivity

(Image credit: Remedy)

The PC version of Remedy's Control is exclusive to the Epic Games Store, and thanks to a financial report from Digital Bros—the parent company of Control's publisher 505 Games—we know how much Epic paid for that exclusivity: €9.49 million, which translates to just over $US10.45 million.

505 Games takes 45% of that amount, leaving 55% for Remedy—which works out to around $US5.75 million. GameDaily.Biz reached out to Epic for a quote on this, and were told, "We don't comment on the terms of our deals," although Epic's representative did add, "Everyone should play Control; it's really good." We won't argue with that, James Davenport gave it 88% in his review and called it, "a gorgeous font of wonders and poop monsters and wild physics unlike anything I've played in recent memory."

This kind of payout is typically given as an advance on royalties, which means that Remedy and 505 Games won't see any further payments for Control until after it earns back that advance. As was explained by Ooblets' developer in a blog post about their exclusivity deal, it's "a minimum guarantee on sales" presumably based on what the game is predicted to earn across multiple stores.

505 Games also signed an exclusivity deal with Epic for another game they're publishing, Typhoon Studios' Journey to the Savage Planet, which is due out in 2020.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.