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Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2 came to PC on 5 November 2019 and managed to sell around 406,000 digital copies in the launch month. The game released on Steam on 5 December 2019 and sold one million copies over the course of one month, according to .
This undoubtedly showed that players are more than willing to wait out that one month of exclusivity in order to play games on Steam, even if they are highly anticipated titles like Red Dead Redemption 2. Ironically enough, this research painted a completely different picture from the results of the same group's consumer study that dictated .
Considering that Epic Games Store's main selling point is the 88/12 revenue split, one had to wonder which store proved more profitable for Rockstar through Red Dead Redemption 2.
Assuming that all digital sales in November 2019 went through EGS, selling 406,000 copies at $60 while keeping 88 per cent of the revenue would yield $21,436,800 for Rockstar. Even assuming that everyone bought Red Dead Redemption 2 from Steam in December, one million copies sold with 70 per cent revenue retained would provide $42 million. Chances are low that exactly every digital sale came from Steam so the actual revenue is inevitably higher than that.
Red Dead Redemption 2 - Gameplay footage reveal gallery
In other words, exclusivity didn't benefit Rockstar in the first month as sales could have been even higher with Steam included from the get-go. The split between people buying RDR2 through storefronts and directly from Rockstar also remains cryptic, with the latter option obviously letting the company keep 100 per cent of the revenue.
