Ooblets is Going Epic Exclusive and Being Super Smug About It

Ooblets is a game I didn’t know existed until recently, but in circles outside my own it was a fairly big deal: it’s going to be a cute little mash-up of Pokemon and Harvest Moon, by the looks of it, and there have been a number of people who have been carefully watching it develop since it was announced. However, the reason it came to my attention – and the rest of the gaming press, which had largely been ignoring it too until now – was because they took the deal and decided to go Epic exclusive.

Now, that’s always news in its own right, because as a console gamer I love nothing more than seeing the exclusivity wars fanned on the once-smug PC Gaming master race, but what makes this especially noteworthy is how the Ooblets team decided to make the announcement: really, really smugly.

Here are some exerts.

Just imagine if other companies got it in their head to offer funding in exchange for exclusives. What’d be next? Game consoles paying for games to be exclusive on their consoles? Netflix paying for exclusive shows? Newspapers paying for exclusive articles? It’d be some sort of late capitalist dystopia.

And:
 

You’ll have to install EGS if you wanna buy Ooblets on PC. I know that’s asking a lot but I believe in you and your ability to download a free thing and create a user account (if you haven’t already done so to play Fortnite which I KNOW YOU HAVE).

And:

I get the appeal of wanting to seek out things to get angry about. Venting anger is cathartic and natural, but let’s have just a little perspective about what we decide to get angry about. Look at the things going on around you and ask yourself if there might be anything just a tad more worthwhile to be upset about.

It’s not that they make bad points: far from it, even. I encourage you to read the whole thing because it breaks down the logistics of their decision quite nicely and really spells out why it is they decided to go this route in a way that’s a lot more transparent than the usual lines of BS that studios like Gearbox and 4A Games. They also just happen to be very smarmy in the process as well, which has ironically gotten more people mad than the exclusivity deal would have.

Plus, they make some rather questionable comparisons about how getting annoyed at Epic Games is a waste when you should really be annoyed at climate change. That would be the last quote.

Which is silly, of course.

We can be upset at both.