Remember when companies didn't need kickstarter/crowdfunding to fund games? Yeah, me either.
Yes but it was still a point where people could reasonably do it from their garage/bedroom and distribute them as a tape or floppy disc (back when they were actually floppy even), though even then for certain things you would see demos and prototypes made and initial orders used to funder wide scale production or some additional development. That said why not have crowdfunding as an option? It is not without its downsides but it seems to have caused games to happen which might not have and that is not a bad thing.
I'd argue that most of the developers you mentioned here would have found themselves on solid financial ground if they hadn't managed to release one steaming turd after another. In Capcom's case, all they needed was a single big hit (Monster Hunter World) to give themselves a positive future outlook. Gaming is still a business like any other, so you have to create quality products which consumers can see the value in. Nobody's obligated to buy games which are universally panned by critics just because EA or some other ethically-lacking publisher already sunk an initial investment into them.
That one should be obvious: false advertisement and/or bait and switch are universally reviled (potentially even illegal) business tactics. The blame for which falls entirely on Epic because they try to purchase exclusivity rights as close to a game's release as possible. There would be no issue if games seeking crowdfunding clearly advertised EGS exclusivity from the start, but I think both developers and Epic understand that doing so would significantly reduce the chances of meeting their crowdfunding goal.
I don't disagree that trying to make profit from sub par product is difficult and better to have good product in most cases (or for a measure of good -- don't want to have the kiddies still playing it extensively next year when the sequel hits), but if the point was about money had to spend on further projects...
I can't get to false advertisement here. Or if it is then it is so utterly minor (on par with a generic art post game bonus skin not being there) that complaining as bitterly as some seem to be is bizarre. As far as being such a massive negative for potential funding endeavours prior even to the event... I guess I massively underestimate the fondness people have for Steam and such a thing would utterly boggle the mind -- normally a difference in vendor is nothing to note beyond maybe having to bust out the wallet rather than having it locked and loaded into a service already.
so, Epic roughly paid for 175,000 copies of Control (priced $60 per copy). Is it a good amount of money? Will remedy got another revenue if someone buys control on epic? or that's the total money they will get under the exclusivity contract?
the question is whether epic could sell more than 175,000 copies in 12 months before it is available on steam.
Probably a few more copies than that if revenue sharing works as it normally does, and I don't know if they have another publisher involved here which is what traditionally gets most (maybe all in the case of a work for hire, though there might be bonuses for the devs).
Anyway we don't know the terms of the contract and we rarely see leaks of such things, nor have we seen any such contracts for another company, much less one in their particular position (a potential top tier monster hit is presumably more lucrative than some indy game), to speculate here. The only reason the numbers are known is because someone tried some analysis on financial numbers from their publisher. Two main scenarios as I see it or have seen such things play out for somewhat related businesses.
1) Yes it is all they will get either for the period in question or all time on that platform. Not the most common approach but if the money is either in line with or more than what their sales projections would be, or the injection of cash means they have enough cold hard money in the bank rather than potential earnings (someone offering reasonable cash right now might be better if you are broke than holding out for months/years for a slightly better offer) then people occasionally take it. In this case the game is coming to consoles as well I think, for many the PC is something of an afterthought (and I doubt the modding and multiplayer scenes will drive much here) and if the eventual release on other platforms is truly what people say then this could be a slight delay people get paid for. That said have we seen any games actually make it out of exclusivity yet to see what the holdout vs buy it anyway ratios are? Edit. Or has anybody done a console vs PC sales comparison and compared to prequels, general historical trends (do bear in mind a PC release 6 months later is also sadly common), review scores (possibly adjusted or factoring in user scores) and whatnot?
2) Any earnings made above what Epic paid for this (or some significant fraction of it -- Epic might be writing some of it off as advertising) will start to generate revenue again. Whether it is the standard cut or some reduced one I would not like to speculate upon. Think what happens when publishers give money to an author to write a book, or music groups give money to a band to make an album. In some cases they might still get a tiny percentage before it is all paid off but that is usually an accounting or legal trick to dodge some issue in some country, or keep them at least a little bit keen to continue promotion (or have some income to not end up homeless if they are an author which presumably spunked away their advance already).
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