Epic Games is funding the cost of Shenmue III’s Kickstarter Refunds
Epic Games is funding the cost of Shenmue III’s Kickstarter Refunds
These backers were originally promised the game on Valve’s Steam platform, making many of these customers feel betrayed due to the game’s change in platform. Since then, YS Net has promised these users free Steam keys when Shenmue III’s exclusivity period ends (alongside Epic Games Store keys at launch), or full refunds if gamers prefer.
Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, has pledged to cover the cost of all Kickstarter refunds which come as a result of the game’s platform exclusivity agreement, ensuring that YS Net’s development funding will no decrease as a result of their exclusivity agreement. Moving forwards, Epic Games plans to do what they can to prevent similar issues happening again with future game exclusivity deals with crowdfunded titles.
Epic is funding the cost of all Kickstarter refunds resulting from Shenmue III’s move to the Epic Games store, so that refunds won’t reduce Ys Net’s development funding.When future games go Epic-exclusive after offering crowdfunding rewards on other PC stores, we’ll either coordinate with colleagues at the other stores to ensure key availability in advance, or guarantee refunds at announcement time.
Shenmue 3 is set to release on PlayStation 4 and PC on November 19th.
You can join the discussion on Epic Games’ plans to fund Shenmue III’s Kickstarter refunds on the OC3D Forums.