Dauntless Interview on the Epic Games Store and Cross-platfrom Play

Jesse Houston, the founder of Phoenix Labs, recently had a chat with the folks over at GamesIndustry.biz, during which he talked about his vision for his studio’s co-operative action-RPG Dauntless, the game’s cross-platform aspirations, and the decision to go with the Epic Games store as the game’s main distributor on PC. A few sample paragraphs:

“I’ve had this vision for Dauntless since the get-go, of One Dauntless [the game’s single account system across all platforms],” he says. “Wherever you are, whoever you want to play with, whatever device you want to play on, you can. This was even before Epic started doing the cross-platform play stuff. So Epic said they were doing cross-platform play and offered to teach us the ropes.”

Dauntless’ open beta on PC began not on the Epic Games store or even Steam, but as a standalone, self-published game downloadable through its own website. Initially, Phoenix Labs avoided storefronts both to ensure it entirely owned the publishing process, but also because there wasn’t a storefront out there that quite aligned with its plans.

“We have a very particular vision for the experience we want our players to have in terms of how their data is used, their views on privacy, how customer service works, and the end-to-end user experience,” he says. “Other companies that have these big platforms, whether it’s Steam or the other folks, the views just didn’t align. They’re not bad, they’re just not well-aligned. We’re also a free-to-play game, and a bunch of platforms don’t support microtransactions, whereas Epic started with that.”