Over the past decade, French studio Quantic Dream has become closely associated with the PlayStation platform, thanks to games like Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls. But now, the developer is expanding its reach to the PC, and it’s starting with Epic’s new game store.

Today, Quantic announced plans to bring its three latest games — Detroit, Beyond, and Heavy Rain — to Epic’s digital shop as timed exclusives for a year after launch. The move comes not long after Chinese internet giant NetEase invested in Quantic Dream with the goal of reaching a larger global audience. Both announcements represent a dramatic shift for the studio.

“David Cage and I have planned the next evolution of Quantic Dream very carefully,” Guillaume de Fondaumière, the studio’s co-CEO and head of publishing, tells The Verge. “The move to PC constitutes our studio’s first effort to develop non PlayStation exclusive games in over 13 years, but also an opportunity to gradually engage the team on multiple projects at the same time.

“The most important evolution for Quantic Dream, however, is that we are no longer a developer working with a publisher,” he says. “Starting with the PC versions of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human, we will be self-publishing all our titles.”

Quantic becomes the latest notable developer to choose Epic’s store over Steam, the long-dominant PC gaming marketplace. Launched in early December, the Epic Store has managed to lure big-name titles like The Division 2 and Metro: Exodus as well as prominent indie games like Hades and Journey. At its Unreal keynote at GDC today, Epic also announced a handful of other prominent developers that are launching on PC exclusively through its store, with incoming titles including The Outer Worlds, Control, and Afterparty.

One of the most appealing parts of the store for developers is the revenue split: Epic takes a 12 percent cut of all sales, compared to 30 percent for Valve. (Discord’s fledgling game shop has entered the arms race as well, offering developers 90 percent of all revenue.)

“Quality has always been of paramount importance to us and the fact that the Epic Games Store offers its partners a better share of revenues will ultimately enable us to create more qualitative games for players,” says de Fondaumière. “Another important aspect is curation, which will enable our games to stand alongside other high quality titles. The store being less crowded, it will also result in more exposure for our titles to the community, in particular at launch.”

No release dates have been announced yet, but all three games are expected to debut on the PC later this year.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18272214/quantic-dream-epic-pc-store-detroit-beyond-heavy-rain-gdc-2019