The Epic Games Store Ooblets controversy, explained

After a few years in early access, Ooblets is out now on a few different platforms. When it comes to PC, you’ll only be able to get it through the Epic Games Store. That may still irk some people, especially if they remember the drama that surrounded the game when the announcement was made. So how is it that a game about cute little wobbly creatures can draw such ire from certain gamers? We can explain.

Related: We played Ooblets, and here’s what we thought

Why is there an Ooblets Epic Games Store controversy?

It all boils down to the ongoing PC game-selling contest between Epic Games Store and Steam. For many years, Steam was the place to buy your digital PC games; there simply wasn’t any viable competition. That changed in December 2018, when the Epic Games Store launched. Epic’s plan to seize a piece of the PC market had two components: free game offerings (which continue to this day) and exclusives. The latter is what angered many people at the time — in their eyes, Epic was waving money in front of developers’ faces to bring their games to its storefront instead.

For many, this put an end to their Steam loyalty. If you check your Steam purchase history, you can probably verify this yourself. Others took offense any time a game jumped shipped from Steam to go to Epic, and that’s exactly what Ooblets did. The 2019 blog post announcing the switch rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way, especially with the flippant wording it used. It’s been several years since then, and even though developer Glumberland explained its business decision to switch stores at the time, the sourness still lingers for some would-be Ooblets players.

What platforms is Ooblets on, anyway?

Ooblets is out now, and you can of course grab it from the Epic Games Store. You can also wishlist it on Steam, but anyone holding out for that release will be waiting for a while. As for consoles, the game is available on Nintendo Switch and Xbox. There’s a slight annoyance to some with the latter though: Ooblets is not a part of Game Pass, even though it was in the Xbox Preview Program during its early access period.