There Would Be No Alan Wake 2 Without Epic: Remedy Defends a Very Fair Publishing Deal Amid Fresh Steam Exclusivity Debate

Remedy’s Alan Wake 2 has always been an easy win on quality and a complicated case study on commercial reality. The survival horror sequel launched in October 2023 to standout critical reception, racked up major awards at The Game Awards 2023 including Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, and Best Art Direction, and became the fastest selling game the Finnish studio had ever shipped at the time, reaching 1,300,000 units sold by February 2024. But the long tail did not scale the way many expected for a prestige title with that level of industry buzz.

By November 2024, Remedy acknowledged to investors that Alan Wake 2 had not yet fully recouped its development and marketing costs. That only changed in February 2025, when the game crossed 2,000,000 units sold and began generating royalties for the studio. The numbers are not a disaster, but for a premium, high profile release with global platform marketing, they became the fuel for ongoing debate about distribution strategy and whether the game’s permanent PC exclusivity on the Epic Games Store limited its upside.

Two explanations have dominated the conversation. First, the lack of a physical release at launch, which only changed about a year later. Second, the bigger lightning rod: Alan Wake 2 on PC is exclusive to Epic Games Store rather than Steam, still the largest storefront for premium PC games. For a portion of the core audience, the friction is not price or reviews, but platform preference, and some players still refuse to install the Epic Games Launcher at all.

That debate reignited this week through a chain reaction across social media, triggered by the wider argument about Epic’s free game program and how exclusives and giveaways shape the market. The sequence started when New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry suggested that giving a game away for free on Epic can boost sales of that same game on Steam. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney responded by arguing that gamers and developers benefit from more options and better deals, while also claiming Epic Games Store is now 55% to 60% of Steam’s userbase and that Epic reinvests revenue into its free program.

Larian Director of Publishing Michael Douse then pushed back hard, arguing that Remedy seemingly went into financial crisis because Alan Wake 2 could not tap into Steam sales, suggesting the studio may have lost potentially hundreds of millions by not launching on Valve’s platform.

What makes this story notable is not just the criticism. It is Remedy’s choice to step into the discussion directly, in public, and defend its partner. Remedy responded to Douse and made the core point unmissable: Alan Wake 2 would not exist without Epic Publishing. Remedy said the publishing deal was very fair, and highlighted that while complex publishing agreements can take up to 1 year to finalize and are not always fair to the developer, this deal took months and Epic has been an excellent partner, Steam or no Steam.

From a business lens, Remedy’s response is strategic. The studio is reframing the narrative away from a simplistic Steam versus Epic argument and toward the reality of funding and risk. Epic did not just provide distribution. Epic Publishing funded the game, which means Remedy got the green light for a sequel that was far from guaranteed, and it got a deal Remedy is publicly describing as fair. In other words, the trade was not just about storefront reach, it was about whether the project could be built at all under acceptable terms.

It is also worth acknowledging a broader pattern around Remedy’s catalog. The studio has a long reputation for making critically respected games that do not always convert into blockbuster unit sales, with Control being the exception that broke into a more mainstream genre lane. So while a Steam launch would almost certainly have improved Alan Wake 2’s PC sales curve, the more important question is whether that lift would have been large enough to outweigh the terms, timing, and certainty of Epic’s funding and publishing support.

For gamers, the practical takeaway is that the industry is increasingly defined by tradeoffs. Platform exclusivity can reduce reach and consumer choice, but it can also be the mechanism that makes high risk, high craft projects viable in the first place. Remedy is effectively telling fans and industry peers that Alan Wake 2 is not a cautionary tale about Epic. It is a proof point that Epic Publishing can be a real enabler for premium single player games that might otherwise never ship.

So the real conversation becomes less about which launcher wins, and more about what funding models keep ambitious single player projects alive in a market that has become brutally selective on what gets financed.

What matters more to you as a player, a day 1 Steam launch for maximum accessibility, or a publishing model like Epic’s that can finance sequels that might not exist otherwise?