All that said, what the heck is the point of stuff like Godfall? I don't understand how that appeals to a person.
Epic most likely based their exclusives plan over info obtained during 2017-2018, probably from Steamspy before it stopped working well. It's very obvious if you look at most of the egs exclusives announced during the store launch. Most of the indie games were sequels of very succesful games (at the time), like Super Meat Boy or Retro City Rampage, and they also got big names like Borderlands. The lawsuit shed some light over this.
The lawsuit however also highlights how insane some of their expectations were. Like in the case of Shakedown Hawai where they paid 4 millions $ for a 1-year exclusivity. And that's the issue: maybe Retro City Rampage was a succesful indie title 8 years ago but 8 years is a long time. Steam changed a lot, players changed a lot too. Their buying habits changed. More and more AAA games release on Steam and competition itself completely changed too. Consoles changed too. Shakedown Hawai ended up being a wet fart everywhere, not only on PC. But maybe in 2017 Shakedown Hawai looked like a surefire bet.
There is a perfect example released last year that shows how much Steam users changed over the last 5 years: Axiom Verge 2. The first Axiom Verge was a succesfull and unique metroidvania at launch, nabbing the sequel felt like a great way to spend your Fortnite money. But is it still a popular game or did the times change its perception? According to Steam Axiom Verge has 4740 reviews, a very high amount especially compared to other -vanias available on Steam during that period (like Environmental Station Alpha at 1048, or Aquaria at 1347). Here's the issue; supposing 2017 was the initial cutoff point as said above there is one thing epic forgot: Hollow Knight released that year, a vania currently standing at a wopping 216532 reviews, mogging every other game in the same genre released at that point. Now i'm not talking about game quality or things like this, I'm only looking at reviews, and here's the thing: HK changed the metroidvania space on pc and consoles forever. After it other vanias came out which were completely different compared to Axiom Verge, and the players also started to prefer that direction. and you can see it because many other games released with a combined amount of reviews surpassing Axiom Verge and ESA and Aquaria and other "past" vanias combined, like Rabi-Ribi (9890 reviews), Ori (51888 reviews), Blasphemous (21581 reviews), Bloodstained (31082 reviews), or even Ender Lilies (16229 reviews) which released less than a year ago. Each one of this games most likely outsold Axiom Verge, and will easily outsell Axiom Verge 2, and each one of these games was completely under the radar for Epic
The same could be said for AAA exclusives. In 2018 betting on SE looked like a surefire hit. FFXV released on Steam and currently has 40719 reviews. Everyone would rush to get another FF game as an exclusive. But again, 5 years is a long time and things changed. XV was the most played JRPG at the time of its release but in september 2021 it was beaten by Tales of Arise, which doubled his all time peak and dominated the online discourse during its release month. And that happened every time, every year since the EGS launched. Every exclusive Epic got during 2019/20/21 means nothing if games like Monster Hunter World/Rise, Resident Evil VIII and 2/3 Remake, Sekiro, Elden Ring, even remasters like the Command & Conquer collection all have higher peaks than most EGS exclusives, and they all skipped the Epic Store
Epic completely failed to understand which games pc users really wanted to play and instead invested millions in games like Godfall which in their minds would have been the perfect game to steal users from Steam. But well, 5 years is a long time and steam users evolved into a different direction. And now every egs exclusive is basically cursed to be forgotten in the long run