CI Games has bought out the 2024 Epic Games Store publishing agreement that had scoped Lords of the Fallen 2 to a storefront-exclusive window, returning full PC distribution rights to the Polish studio ahead of the Soulslike sequel's release, according to Wccftech.

The transaction ends an arrangement that committed the follow-up to 2023's Lords of the Fallen to the Epic Games Store for a defined period on PC. CI Games, developer through internal studio Hexworks and now sole publisher, has not disclosed the buyout price, the original guarantee figure, or the residual exclusivity term that the payment extinguished.

What the deal did

Under the 2024 terms, Lords of the Fallen 2 was positioned as an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC during its committed window, separating the sequel's PC distribution from the multi-storefront footprint the 2023 original had carried on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S at launch. That divergence had been the most commercially conspicuous feature of the sequel's pre-release coverage.

The 2023 title, distributed by Square Enix and developed internally, sold across all major storefronts on day one. Pulling the sequel onto a single PC storefront for any meaningful window represented a structural change for the franchise's commercial reach, and one that had drawn scrutiny from PC audiences and analysts tracking mid-budget Soulslike releases.

Why buy out rather than wait out

Exclusivity terms that may have looked workable in 2024 look materially different 12 to 24 months later. Steam continues to concentrate the majority of paid PC game transactions globally, and for a mid-budget action-RPG, the storefront choice at launch is a material driver of unit volume, concurrent-player peaks, and review-aggregation velocity. CI Games has publicly positioned Lords of the Fallen 2 as central to its forward slate, and storefront reach now sits inside that framing in a way the original agreement did not accommodate.

The math for buyouts of this type is straightforward: a publisher pays a fixed fee to terminate the obligation, converting a future revenue-share constraint into a present capital outflow. The decision typically clears when the publisher concludes that capture on a fully open storefront would, over the contract's remaining term, exceed the cost of the original guarantee. CI Games has not specified how the transaction was funded or whether the move accelerates, delays, or leaves unchanged any previously communicated release window.

What it signals for the wider market

This is the second publicly reported buyout of a platform exclusivity deal in the recent PC market, and the broader category has continued to thin as storefront competition for publisher attention increases. For mid-sized and independent studios operating without a captive storefront, the existence of an off-ramp — even an expensive one — is operationally relevant. Buyouts convert a future obligation into a present capital event, and they become rational when the underlying product slips, the commercial math shifts, or the publisher's strategic priorities change during the exclusivity term.

CI Games has not commented on whether additional terms, performance milestones, or back-end obligations were attached to the original arrangement beyond the storefront commitment itself.

What to watch

The next operational signal is a Steam store page activation for Lords of the Fallen 2, which would convert the buyout from a contractual fact into a visible commercial signal and reset pre-order and wishlist tracking. Investors and developers tracking CI Games will also look to the studio's next regulatory disclosure for any settlement figure associated with the transaction, and to any update on the previously targeted release window, which had been signaled for late 2026 at the time of the original 2024 arrangement.