New information about Epic Games just got released with the ongoing trial with Apple and this time it is related to the Borderlands 3 PC exclusivity deal.
A document released publicly as part of the trial was posted recently by GameDiscoverCo Founder Simon Carless on his personal Twitter account. It revealed that Epic has paid $146 million in advance for a sole purpose: to secure six months of PC Borderlands 3 exclusivity for their digital store from September 13, 2019. Yes, in order to get that exclusivity, they had to pay a lot of cash.
With this deal, PC platform Steam could not have the game on sale until the day it was available for them, March 13, 2020.
For specifics, Epic Games paid $115 million for the deal, which is broken down as follows:
- Minimum guarantee – $80 million
- Marketing Commitment – $15 million
- One-Off Fee – $20 million
So where is the rest? That involves the bundled 2K deals. This includes money paid to release a couple of 2K games on the Epic Games Store for free. Yes, you read that right, they needed to PAY 2K Games to make it available for free for everyone. This is how it is broken down:
- Borderlands: The Handsome Collection – $11 million
- Civilization VI – $20 million
That is a total of $31 million and add that to $115 million before, which adds up to a grand total of $146 million.
Just so you know, the money Epic Games paid was worth it because 100 percent of the $80 million minimum guarantee was recouped within two weeks by just gaining $100 million. In the first two weeks, they got $9.2 million from Borderlands 3, based on its 12 percent cut. In just that amount of time, the game gained over 1.5 million users. Also, 53 percent of those users were new to the store, which is a big gain for them.
If the money you invest profits, then it is worth it and Epic Games did that with the Borderlands 3 deal.
Thanks Eurogamer!