The recent launch of the Epic Mega Sale has seen several Epic Store games removed following decisions from their developers and publishers. The sale originally had several developers and publishers participating with discounts of their own, but a unique spin on things from Epic Games appears to have complicated things somewhat. Epic automatically added an additional discount of $10 to every game priced $14.99 or higher.
One of the first notable losses was the upcoming action RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 which is currently in a pre-purchase period leading up to its release date. It was available for a short time at a discounted price before it mysteriously disappeared from the store entirely. Paradox has stated that it should return to the store soon.
“If a developer or publisher chooses to not participate in our sales, we will honor that decision,” the Epic rep said in an email as reported by Kotaku. “Paradox Interactive has chosen to not participate in the Epic Mega Sale and the game has been temporarily removed from sale. If you’ve purchased Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 during the period when the discount did apply at the time of check out, Epic will honor that price.”
Another one of the Epic Store games removed was Klei’s Oxygen Not Included. Klei has not yet publicly commented on the reason for the removal. Oxygen Not Included is currently in the process of transitioning from Early Access to a full release; the launch is expected to take place sometime before the end of May 2019.
Not only were there several Epic Store games removed — a number of titles have had their prices changed. Hades was priced at $6.99 for a short time, but its base price was increased from $19.99 to $24.99 shortly after the beginning of the sale. The developer stated that this was a planned increase as new features had made their way into the game, but they quickly rolled back the price increase and announced that it would return following the conclusion of the sale.
“After the sale is over, on June 14, we will be raising the game’s retail price to $24.99,” the developer of Hades said in a statement posted in its Discord. “We had intended to raise the retail price of the game soon, but made the decision rashly as part of the sale — we didn’t provide advance notice to our customers, despite previously stating we would do so. That was our mistake, and we sincerely apologize. To all our players, thank you for your patience and understanding around this.”
Metro Exodus also suffered some oddities with pricing during the Epic Mega Sale as we reported yesterday. It was listed as $39.99 on the store’s front page yesterday while simultaneously being priced at $34.99 on the game’s page.
We can’t say for certain why exactly all of these removals and price changes have taken place; it may have something to do with the $10 discount mechanism that Epic Games applied to every game on the storefront. Any title priced over $14.99 got a $10 discount applied, and Epic paid for that discount out of pocket (meaning that it cost the developer nothing). However, some developers may have felt that a lower price devalued their game, especially for newer titles. We’ll keep an eye out for any other major removals or price changes in the coming days.
