After years of exclusivity for the Borderlands series on the Epic Games Store, Borderlands 4 is back on Steam. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said that their collaboration with Epic Games was a mistake. This was reported by TweakTown.
In 2019, Gearbox announced that Borderlands 3 would be an Epic Games Store exclusive. Years later, Borderlands returned to Steam, and Borderlands 4 is planned to launch on both EGS and Valve's store.
So what really happened? From a business perspective, it's pretty simple - Steam is much bigger than the Epic Store and has the potential to generate more sales.
According to Pitchford, at the time of the collaboration, it seemed that the Epic Games Store could beat Steam if Epic did everything right. But that didn't happen.
According to Pitchford, Valve doesn't even have to try hard to maintain its monopoly in the Western market, while "would-be competitors with much more developer friendly models continue to shoot themselves in the foot."
"I had high hopes for Epic - hopes that were validated in the moment of the Borderlands 3 and Wonderlands launches. But my long term hope regarding Epic's store were misplaced or overly optimistic," says the director of Gearbox.