The recently launched sale in the Epic Games Store seems to be facing issues, as some publishers are withdrawing their games. What is going on?
What does the sale offer? For about a month, you can grab many discounts of up to 75% in the Epic Mega Sale and even get an additional discount of 10€ on all games priced at 14.99€ or higher. This results in some truly fantastic deals. Apparently, the deals are too good and are now causing disadvantages for the publishers.
Withdrawal from the Sale
What happened? The sale included Paradox’s action RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which is supposed to be released in 2020. However, suddenly the game’s website in the store only displayed an error message. According to Epic Games, Paradox temporarily withdrew the game from the sale. It can no longer be purchased through the store at this time.
The reason is that, according to Epic’s Director of Publishing Strategy, Sergey Galyonkin, Paradox apparently was not aware of the impacts the sale would have on the game.
Why was the game withdrawn? A sale before the game’s release certainly sends a signal. Why should players buy the title at full price when it is much cheaper in a sale even before its release? After all, there will surely be more such promotions.
Especially in countries where the title is already available at a lower price, this can lead to problems when Epic Games grants additional discounts. Because there are significant price differences for games in the Epic Games Store across different countries.
What is the problem? The sale is organized by Epic Games. The 10-euro special discount comes directly from Epic. Therefore, the publishers have nothing to do with it. They were informed about it, but apparently some were not entirely clear about what impact this would have on the games.
Players are now of course waiting for more such promotions. And they do not pre-order the game in other stores because they would have to pay more there.
What does Epic say about all this? The company explains that the decision of a publisher is respected if they do not want to participate in a sale. This was the case with Paradox and Vampire, which is why the game was removed.
What happens to those who were able to buy the game at a discount? Since Vampire was briefly discounted, Epic and Paradox will obviously allow the purchases and provide the games at the lower price.
The game is also expected to be available again in the store soon.
Problems with the First Sale
Are there any other problems with the sale? In addition to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, the title Oxygen Not Included also disappeared from the sale. No reasons have been given so far.
The game Hades by Supergiant was mistakenly offered at a too low price. When the correction took place, customers were quite surprised. Because the game suddenly cost more than before the sale.
The developers apologized and explained that they had no ill intentions but wanted to increase the price of the game due to many new features anyway. That this coincided with the sale was unfortunate.
How are players reacting to the situation? There is obviously frustration among some customers who hoped to snag a good deal. Players are also mocking the store’s technology.
However, some also understand that the first sale in a new store may not run smoothly. Still, some believe that it was a communication problem and Epic should have better informed the publishers.
- DarkWingedEagle says on Reddit: “I think Paradox knew about the sale but was not aware that Epic would use regional pricing.”
- cheesyechidna writes: “This is ridiculous. The store has so few features that they need to remove the games instead of just changing the prices? How is it programmed?”
