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Epic accuse SuperData on questionable methodology & "wildly inaccurate reports" about Fortnite's decline
- Thread starter Arthands
- Start date
Taking into account the time Epic's CEO spends arguing with nobodies in Twitter, the guy is unable to ignore the noise.
Well, Tim Sweeney considered that third party non affiliated company reliable enough to quote when it reported on Epic in a positive light. When industry figures use these numbers it is natural for the average gamer to assume that they are at the very least somewhat accurate.
Remember how Fire Emblem Three Houses made more money than Fortnite and sports games in July? The game is massive /s
It was reliable enough for him to use it as a note of positivity when they reported positively on Epic's numbers.
I don't think they're wrong about there being a large decline, though
Fire Emblem sold 2.23 million copies in 3 months, so it might have sold ca. 1.5 million copies alone at launch. Multiply that by a base price of 50$ (lets do it a bit lower than general) and you get 75 million.
For reference, the entire revenue of Fortnite on PC for 2019 was ca. 430 millions (as they gave that info when talking about EGS revenue). July was not the start of a new season so a lot of the revenue from Battle Pass was probably not up, so lets just take the general average (35 millions a month) and pump it up a bit (so 50 million)
I could see Fire Emblem earning more for a month than Fortnite on consoles.
Yeah but 2.23 is digital+physical, while SuperData provides only digital data. And I doubt that FE digital sales are much higher than physical but who knows.
If so you are right (althgouth they have no information on the table that say it is digital data only, which is a huge omission).
He's been using the same talking points from r/fuckepic too. "GAMER RIGHTS!!!"
To call it embarrassing would be an understatement.
Their "1,6 million digital copies sold" for DBZ Kakarot in 2 weeks is pretty cute too, considering Bandai Namco officially said the game shipped (retail + digital) 1,5 million after 1 week. Their digital estimates is quite off the mark, at the very best it would probably be around 700K and that would be with a pretty great digital ratio.
Games want to look like Fortnite aesthetically, be as superficial in gameplay depth(games like Battlefield adopting simpler mechanics to cater to it's fans), promote the toxic culture we see offline with clothes and fashion online in a gross way where kids are being mentally harmed and judged and as well as other companies using them as a poster child for why it's all ok.
People like what ever suits their narrative superdata has always just done estimates and often times they change them when actual numbers come out. If people want to push that fortnite is declining then they will use whatever they can get ex superdata
I remember when they posted that PSNOW accounted for like more than half of subscription service revenues with no actual evidence ,people ran with it. But then it came out that PSNOW had less than a million subs people were quiet
But both can be true at the same time. Estimatng how many pcs have egs installed is magnitudes easier than estimatng the earnings od the game.
Games looked like Fortnite before Fortnite, (overwatch), and more stylized and vrubrsnt colorful games is not a bad thing. And BF's devs simplifying the gameplay is not the result of Fortnite. Which has way more depth than BF's sandbox already, as well as many other shooters. Hell most shooters don't even have reversals these days and the reason isn't because of the game where the slogan borderline spells out the concept of reversals.
Not sure I get all the people pointing to Tim referencing them as some kinda slamdunk, it's possible they got an aspect of their use growth correct and goofed up other areas badly.
And if anyone is being honest, stating that Fortnite has reached lower than Nov 2017, the point when the game barely started hitting a stride, before their monetization really kicked off and they were only on three disconnected platforms... that sounds absurd. I'm not saying they haven't declined, because that'd be crazy as well, nothing can keep its peak eternally but Nov 2017?
And if anyone is being honest, stating that Fortnite has reached lower than Nov 2017, the point when the game barely started hitting a stride, before their monetization really kicked off and they were only on three disconnected platforms... that sounds absurd. I'm not saying they haven't declined, because that'd be crazy as well, nothing can keep its peak eternally but Nov 2017?
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It is declining. Web traffic is down, twitch viewership is down, their merch is showing up in clearance isles, etc. The only question is how much.
For what it's worth, that doesn't mean it's doing badly, every other game company would love to have declining fortnight in their portfolio. But fortnight's peak was never sustainable.
Its decline is not surprising. Anyone playing the game for a couple years can tell that, its so of touch lately.
Its just epic's way. They know fortnite isnt supposed to last long such as counter strike and other competitive games, so they invested on epic store. Perhaps in a couple years they will kill it and try something new, just like they did with Paragon (or STW) before fortnite.
Its just epic's way. They know fortnite isnt supposed to last long such as counter strike and other competitive games, so they invested on epic store. Perhaps in a couple years they will kill it and try something new, just like they did with Paragon (or STW) before fortnite.
Well, yeah? FE3H dropped in July, so all of its day 1 revenue is included there while FIFA 19 was 10 months old at that point, so any MTX revenue is gonna be depressed in anticipation of the new game dropping in the fall.
I'm kinda glad my nephews don't play it that much anymore. Between the two of them they have spent around $900 on skins.
It's a major fucking rip-off charging like $8-$20 for a dumb skin. It blows my mind that folks are willing to pay for them. Maybe I'm just old school, but this shit is worse than horse armour. If I'm spending that much I want it to be on expansions, not a skin and some wraps. It also makes kids a little depressed when they can't afford the latest skins that vanish after a certain time.
Fuck Epic.
It's a major fucking rip-off charging like $8-$20 for a dumb skin. It blows my mind that folks are willing to pay for them. Maybe I'm just old school, but this shit is worse than horse armour. If I'm spending that much I want it to be on expansions, not a skin and some wraps. It also makes kids a little depressed when they can't afford the latest skins that vanish after a certain time.
Fuck Epic.
He seems to want the infamy, guy is probably afraid he wont be well known like others game company execs.
I think is some kind of mid life crisis.
Fine, but do you believe that it continued being in top-5 in August and September, making more money in September than Link's Awakening?
Epic is out there hustling to get other games on their platform, and a big part of the sales pitch is that one of the biggest games in terms of active userbase is driving traffic. So epic needs everyone to know that it isn't just successful, but still a massive phenomenon and will continue to be one for the duration of whatever contracts they are signing.
As usual, companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want you to think Fortnite is doing great and the evil data is wrong, but they also are very clearly unwilling to share the correct numbers in the call out because they don't want anyone to know their ups and downs that scare investors.
Its also possible that he thought SuperData was reliable until he saw another claim that he knew was wrong. Or does Tim Sweeney has a longer history of using SuperData numbers as it suits him? I'll guess we have to see if he will reference SuperData stuff in the future.
Not at all.
Superdata, AppAnnie, SensorTower, and other reporting services aren't accurate in isolation (e.g. looking at the numbers for a specific month), but they are generally accurate when it comes to reporting on trends, and making comparisons between products.
He literally has the real numbers, he doesn't need to guess. At least where his own games are concerned.
He knew whether the postive number was accurate or not and he knows if the decline is true or not.
Sure, i know. I just mean that the first tweet he did, where he mention Epic Game Store and Steam in regards to percentages, maybe he thought that this was accurate info from SuperData. So its not so strange that he referenced this, in my opinion. But then SuperData made another claim about Fortnite being at the lowest earning in like 3 years, which he certainly would know is true or not, indeed, and i dont think its strange that he calls out SuperData for being wrong in this case. It would be strange if he continues to use SuperData as a reference point after this however, now that he doubt their general methodology, but we'll see what happens =)
Nobody on social media. Work is work and should be left out of one's personal life.
Pretty sure their recent(ish) gaming sub numbers were also wildly in accurate.
They are already in the thread, and I can't be arsed trawling through every post. A simple example is the comparison between EGS and Steam user reach. EGS 17% in 1 year, Steam 36% in 16 years. Without context its pretty useless dick waving, but can support the argument he wants to make. The context is irrelevant to his conversation, but important to understand the difference.
If you're happy to take these stats with his argument as 1:1, its misleading. The two have started at different times with very different approaches in this example.
To be clear - there is plenty in that particular thread that he is right about. But there is a regular pattern of misrepresenting data to suit the argument he wants to make.
I also agree that Superdata isn't exactly reliable.
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Why? Because the picture is ~20 years old? :P
I only saw one tweet mentioned in this thread (the one with EGS and Steam percentage), so i was just curious if it there were more tweets that it was referenced to since "tweets" were mentioned. I didnt read every post that clearly, so maybe i missed something. But i see what you mean with that tweet. Thanks for the answer.
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Epic says this, "We are disappointed that SuperData has repeatedly published wildly inaccurate reports", which means the lowest earning report isn't the first and only report they deemed inaccurate, but that this is the report which broke the camel's back and that they have been finding SuperData reports inaccurate for a while now.
Again, it's mostly about trends. 3rd party revenue reporting is never really accurate, but it's hardly anything to cry about on social media. As others here have already said, he's got the receipts. He can share them if he wants, but he won't.