We are on the brink of "Fashion Designer" development. Meaning: pubs and devs design their game around the desire to shop it as an exclusive and not with the customer in mind, they don't need the customer.
Epic Exclusives: designed to appeal to the money, like a Fashion Star-Designer who makes stupid dresses that no normal person would wear.
Non-exclusive games:
I don't think we're deep enough down the EGS rabbit hole for this to be a thing yet. We've heard, anecdotally of possibly 3-4 games on the platform selling well, with no actual numbers to back it up (actual sales data). Everyone else has been silent, and several of the developers can't
not have seen the pushback, both legitimate and trolling; from the community just for taking the cash. Low "sales" and angry community will sink a dev fast after Epic stop calling.
In the year since EGS has been live, all the games taken have been in development for at least a year, if not more. There is no way EGS would have influenced the design of any game already in production, only something starting production within the last year. Most of the games have been poached because they got hype from fans elsewhere, if a game newly starting production can't build an audience before hand, Epic can't find them. Also, how would one, at this point figure out 'what game' is the Epic game type? None of the games that have sold well have been the same genre or all that mechanically similar.
If a "boutique" game's only audience is Epic or any imitators that follow in their wake, they won't survive long without those same saviours swooping in again and again. Those ridiculous pieces of clothing can survive by pricing at an equally ridiculous price. There is a FOMO and scarcity for physical items like that. I don't think something like Untitled Goose Game 3: Goosehard with a Vengeance would sell any copies if it's priced at $95 USD to recoup costs because Epic didn't drop cash on the dev again. It's a digital piece of software, there is no scarcity or status to be gained from owning it. In this hypothetical, I'm assuming theyd make UGG2 with Epic's cash, just an FYI
Basically what I'm saying is, if Epic don't buy Ice Pick Lodge or exclusive their next game, this idea falls apart, as they're the most games as art/out there games/weird design you're going to get at a budget level that Epic would notice.