Epic Paid $146m For Borderlands 3 PC Timed Exclusivity

Court documents released as part of the currently ongoing Apple v Epic Games trial have revealed that Epic paid $146 million to secure Borderlands 3 as an Epic Games Store Exclusive on PC for a timed exclusive window of six months.

Also notable: Epic paid Take-Two $146 million in advances for PC Borderlands 3 exclusivity ($115 million for the game + marketing + one-off fee) and recouped the minimum guarantee part ($80mil) in just the first 2 weeks. pic.twitter.com/3YThZuy5pJ

— Simon Carless (@simoncarless) May 4, 2021

As noted by GameDiscoverCo's Simon Carless on Twitter, Epic paid Borderlands 3's publisher, Take-Two Interactive, $115 million for exclusive rights to distribute the PC version of the game for six months. This included a "minimum guarantee" of $80 million to cover costs, as well as a marketing commitment of $15 million and $20 million to cover non-recoupable fees. Additionally, Epic also paid Take-Two $11m for the Borderlands Handsome Collection and $20million for Civilization 6, which were all added together to make a "Fully Loaded Borderlands 3 Deal" priced at $146 million. As shown in the tweet, Epic recouped the cost of its minimum guarantee payment in just two weeks, and managed a net revenue of $9.2m from sales. During that period, 1.56 million people came to the Epic Games Store to play Borderlands 3, 53% of which were new to the platform. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/08/14/borderlands-3-the-borderlands-are-yours-trailer"] Both Epic and developer Gearbox faced plenty of criticism following the announcement of Borderlands 3 being exclusive to Epic Games Store on PC. The game would, of course, come to Steam in March 2020, but that half-year window was enough to bring many new users to the Epic Games Store. For more news arriving from the Apple v Epic case, take a look at our story on Sony making Epic pay for Fortnite cross-platform support, and how much Epic has spent on free games for its store. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.