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Epic paid out $115m for Borderlands 3 exclusivity

Epic paid out $115m for Borderlands 3 exclusivity

Fortnite maker Epic Games shelled out $146 million in order to land Borderland 3 as an exclusive release on its platform.

That's according to a report disclosed during the company's legal battle with Apple – spotted by Game Discover's Simon Carless – which shows that the firm signed a deal with publisher 2K Games for $146 million for a few titles on its store.

Epic paid out a minimum guarantee of $80 million – the lowest number of copies it will sell – alongside a $15 million marketing cost and another $20 million in "non-recoupable fees", whatever that means.

This larger $146 million deal also saw Epic pay $11 million for Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and $20 million for Civilization VI.

Epic claims that 100 per cent of the $80 million minimum guarantee was recouped and that it scored 1.56 million Borderlands users to its platform. 53 per cent of these were apparently new to the Epic Games Store, contributing net revenue of $9.2 million.

Between December 2018 and September 2019, it's also been revealed that the Fortnite maker shelled out $11.658,000 for free titles for its store.

Borderlands 3 made its debut in September 2019, with Gearbox telling PCGamesInsider.biz that launching on the Epic Games Store attracted a whole new audience to the looter-shooter title.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.