Epic’s first “Mega Sale,” launched yesterday, is causing some pricing and availability hiccups for a few publishers. As Kotaku lays out, a couple of games in the store’s small catalog seem to have removed themselves from the platform rather than participate in the temporary price reductions.
Paradox Interactive’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Klei Entertainment’s Oxygen Not Included are no longer available on the Epic Games Store as of this writing. Bloodlines 2 was actually removed shortly after being listed at a reduced sale price, a state of affairs that Epic’s Sergei Galyonkin said happened because Paradox was unaware of the “sale mechanism.”
“If a developer or publisher chooses to not participate in our sales, we will honor that decision,” an Epic representative told 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.”
Paradox also noted in a statement that the game will “return to the store soon,” presumably after the sale is complete.
Epic’s Mega Sale, which offers a reduced price for every game currently available on the platform, also includes an additional $10 discount for games prices $14.99 and over, covered by Epic itself. But those steep discounts can cause an awkward price discrepancy for publishers that also offer their games on Steam, where Valve’s larger revenue cut can create a different value proposition. Some publishers also might be wary of effectively devaluing a new release by offering such a large price reduction so soon after launch.
Meanwhile, the Epic Mega Sale also caused some brief pricing confusion for Supergiant’s hack-and-slash title Hades. After the game was briefly listed at $6.99, its sale price was reset to $14.99. The game’s base price, however, was listed at $24.99, up from its original listing of $19.99. Supergiant later reset both the base and sale prices to $19.99 and apologized for raising the base price without advance warning.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1506959