Outer Wilds is the last in a growing line of Epic Games Store (EGS) exclusives, and the developer of this crowdfunded open-world exploration game, Mobius Digital, said that Xbox One and EGS will be the first to launch, followed by the rest.
Mobius wrote that additional platforms will be coming later, although they didn't specify the exact date.
It's safe to assume, however, that Outer Wilds will be following the standard timed EGS exclusive recipe, so we're most likely looking at a year of exclusivity.
"Throughout the development of the game, we've welcomed helpful partnerships with Annapurna Interactive, Xbox, and Epic to support us and keep our small studio running long enough to ship the game at the level of quality that it is today. Each of these partnerships has enabled us to make the game better and more accessible for everyone who will play it", they wrote.
As we said, Outer Wilds is a crowdfunded game whose goal of $125,000 has recently been met on Fig. According to their page, they've done so with the help of 968 backers, and Mobius will soon come out with a launch date.
Unfortunately for the dev, not all customers are happy with the exclusivity, and their Fig page already has a few backers apparently backing out over this.
One Outer Worlds fan said he's been a fan since 2015, but that Mobius' decision to side with "a predatory company hellbent on raping the consumer for their money" is what finally made him reconsider his support.
Even though it's probably the most radically worded post of them all, it seems to echo the sentiments of the rest of the commenters pretty well.
Note, however, that we're not exactly talking about a mass outcry - there were less than a dozen commenters at the time of writing, but it does amount to somewhere around 1 per cent of Outer Wilds backers.
Mobius Digital
In conclusion, considering that Mobius went with Epic, it's unlikely that the worst case scenario, i.e. backing out by a portion of its users, will have any effect, but the dev does have some explaining to do.
