Digital Bros, the parent company of Control publisher 505 Games, listed €9.49 million (~$10.45 million) in revenue for Control ahead of the game’s release, a payment spotted by Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad and one it says relates to the game’s exclusivity agreement with a certain digital marketplace known for chasing exclusivity deals.
Control, developed by Remedy Games, launched in late August for consoles and, on PC, exclusively on the Epic Games Store.
While some developers on the Epic Games Store have been more open than others about the terms of whatever exclusivity arrangements they’ve made with Epic, most have been fairly quiet about the specifics to their deals.
For Control, neither Remedy nor 505 Games has been particularly forthcoming about the arrangement behind the Epic Games Store launch, so the revenue mentioned in the Digital Bros report represents an insightful (albeit somewhat contextless) look at the inner workings of that arrangement.
The document notes that Control brought in €9.49 million in revenue before June 30, and later on notes in a platform-by-platform breakdown that Epic Games was likewise responsible for €9.49 million in revenue during that same period.
Remedy itself has previously said (in a quote captured by PCGamesInsider) that the development budget for Control fell between €20 million and €30 million, so, at face value, the payment from Epic represents a significant chunk of the game’s total budget.
It is worth noting that the actual terms of the agreement between Epic and Digital Bros aren’t laid out in the document, only that the funds were sourced from Epic’s exclusivity agreement. That unfortunate vagueness makes it difficult to know the specifics on exactly how Epic plans to recoup that investment, or how that upfront payment will impact future earnings on 505 and Remedy’s side from sales of Control on the Epic Games Store.