World War Z Sold 250K ( out of total 1M ) on Epic Store in launch week , Way above expectations according to Developers

[Rodjer]

Warhammer isn't some unkown IP and has been linked for decades with PC gaming

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The Warhammer series is indeed a "popular" IP but there are very few games using the Warhammer name that did really good and Vermintide 2 is one of them.


The whole "Unknow IP" or "old IP" or "new IP" argument is useless, WWZ is a game that copies the L4D2 formula i can't think of any game using the L4D template flopping hard, unless it's a garbage game, see Overkill TWD.
If WWZ was on Steam, the sales are 100% going to be higher than 250k for a simple reason, China, Steam has over 30 million chinese account and the chinese audience buys a lot games, from every genre.

 

[Kalamour]

Glad the game is doing well. Don't really care where people choose to buy it.

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You do understand that the reason pc players are complaining is because Epic payed so that they cannot make that choice, right?

 

[Alexandros]

Perhaps. But WWZ has proven that exclusive games can be very successful on Epic's store. No doubt this will persuade other developers to skip Steam as well to benefit from Epic's lower cut.

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I don't agree, because as I've said in the past, developers are not the important factor here. Epic is. Developers are always going to go for the sure thing and Epic is providing that through its moneyhats. As long as Epic is paying, accepting the moneyhat is risk-free. Without that safety net, developers will have to gamble on whether the extra 18% is worth the risk of not being one of the few titles big and popular enough to attract an audience on EGS.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Fortnite is on EGS. More people know about EGS than you think.

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Most people who play Fortnite will launch Fortnite and that's it.
Everything else will be the equivalent of having a popup advertisement on your browser for all they care.
You don't even need to use a single client feature in FN, anyway, Everything is integrated in the game itself.

 

[Assenzio]

Except that as I said, even without precise data, it's easy to see that the split for these games heavily skew toward PC. I will gladly eat crows if I'm wrong on that one.

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Virmintide was release almost 2 years in advance on pc, same Killing floor. Left 4 Dead we know today that thanks to mods and discounts is by far more successful on pc, but we do not know what happened the first week of sale.

THis is why I say It's not a fair comparison.

 

[Norwegian_Imposter]

I'd like to see some sales numbers on EGS vs Uplay for Anno 1800 and The Divison 2. Do people use EGS over Uplay if those are your choices?

World War Z looks about as dull as the movie. I hate to sound like a cliche here but the book is better.

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The game is good however if I try and run the game via moonlight using the exe in the game folder it doesnt connect to server but if I run it through epic store first it runs fine

 

[Deleted member 50969]

Which just means releasing on Steam would've been a bigger success.

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Are you sure about that?

 

[GhostTrick]

Virmintide was release almost 2 years in advance on pc, same Killing floor. Left 4 Dead we know today that thanks to mods and discounts is by far more successful on pc, but we do not know what happened the first week of sale.

THis is why I say It's not a fair comparison.

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Did these games sold close to as much despite the years ? not really.

Are you sure about that?

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100% sure. You think if the game released on both, it would've meant 0 additionnal sales ?
Even if it wasn't on EGS.

 

[neon_dream]

250k others didn't share your issues, so I'm sure Epic will somehow get past the fact they lost your 40 quid.

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Literally the definition of a fallcious bandwagon argument.

The point made is that the system is inadequate. That a certain set of people put up with it doesn't make the system less bad.

 

[Kazer]

Would've done better without the exclusivity bullshit on PC.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Virmintide was release almost 2 years in advance on pc, same Killing floor. Left 4 Dead we know today that thanks to mods and discounts is by far more successful on pc, but we do not know what happened the first week of sale.

THis is why I say It's not a fair comparison.

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Vermintide 2 dwarfed the first one in sales. By a wide margin.
And the first was already rather successful.

 

[MillionIII]

Most people who play Fortnite will launch Fortnite and that's it.
Everything else will be the equivalent of having a popup advertisement on your browser for all they care.
You don't even need to use a single client feature in FN, anyway, Everything is integrated in the game itself.

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Well they are betting that some of them will check out the store since the first thing that you see is the featured page, it's similar to battle.net that features other games even if you are not interested in them.

 

[cw_sasuke]

I could sort of understand being fine/neutral with its existence, but HOPING for the EGS success sounds like being deliberately spiteful toward the PC community, which by the most part has a very unfavorable opinion of it.

To be clear, I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying you are being rather transparent there.

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EGS success means success for the developers publishing their games on that plattform .....so no I won't be neutral about sales success stories regardless of the plattform.

 

[BeI]

Unfortunately not because the publisher didn't communicate for the console versions. But if it was a success, you can bet you'd have heard from them.

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The only thing I could even find for PC sales was 1 million copies sold on Steam through early access, so over 1 million people had it on launch day, I guess.

 

[Rodjer]

Virmintide was release almost 2 years in advance on pc, same Killing floor. Left 4 Dead we know today that thanks to mods and discounts is by far more successful on pc, but we do not know what happened the first week of sale.

THis is why I say It's not a fair comparison.

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Vermintide 2 made more revenue than Vermintide PC + console lifetime, the co-op audience is on PC, especially for a Warhammer game.

 

[Kazer]

EGS success means success for the developers publishing their games on that plattform .....so no I won't be neutral about sales success stories regardless of the plattform.

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Except they would've had more sales if it wasn't exclusive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Assenzio]

Vermintide 2 dwarfed the first one in sales. By a wide margin.
And the first was already rather successful.

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I know, we ere talking about console\PC split.

Did these games sold close to as much despite the years ? not really.

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That is exactly the point. How can you judge the split if the games you are comparing to it have a completely different sale model?

I keep asking you if you have data, you don't and furthermore you compare a game released on all 3 platforms d1 to games that where released on console 1-2 years later. It's obvious that those games are going to have a bigger PC communitiy

 

[Assenzio]

Vermintide 2 made more revenue than Vermintide PC + console lifetime, the co-op audience is on PC, especially for a Warhammer game.

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Again I know that, we are not discussing success as whole. We are discussing split.

People here are saying that the game did badly or could have done better because the split is "low", when we have really nothing to compare it to

 

[GhostTrick]

I know, we ere talking about console\PC split.

That is exactly the point. How can you judge the split if the games you are comparing to it have a completely different sale model?

I keep asking you if you have data, you don't and furthermore you compare a game released on all 3 platforms d1 to games that where released on console 1-2 years later. It's obvious that those games are going to have a bigger PC communitiy

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And the point is they don't seem to set the chart on fire on consoles.

Again I know that, we are not discussing success as whole. We are discussing split.

People here are saying that the game did badly or could have done better because the split is "low", when we have really nothing to compare it to

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It didn't do badly. It could've done better. When a genre that usually sells really well on PC but didn't always set the charts on fire on consoles, yeah.

 

[nuttyevans]

You do understand that the reason pc players are complaining is because Epic payed so that they cannot make that choice, right?

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Whoops my bad, brain fart.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Except they would've had more sales if it wasn't exclusive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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That's besides the point.....they already made that decision and I'm happy that it seems to be working out for them.

Don't need another Telltale situation where the upper management fucks up the situation for the whole studios because of a bunch of bad decisions.

Devs getting paid is a good thing - EGS is very young and I'm sure Epic is gonna improve e things quite a bit over the next couple months.

 

[Cosmic Schwung]

Are you sure about that?

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Pretty much guaranteed simply because it would have had access to China, but still, these are some great numbers for a game I didn't expect to do well at all. Congratulations to Saber.

 

[Kyougar]

Fortnite is on EGS. More people know about EGS than you think.

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We know the following:

- >80 Million Fortnite PC Players
- the biggest free game on EGS was taken by 4.5 Million accounts
- Without any new users that is only a ratio of ~5%
- BUT Not every EGS user is playing Fortnite (unless Epic stupidly counts every EGS account as a Fortnite account)
- So we have to include users who only installed the EGS to get the free games or who buy other games on EGS and don't have a Fortnite account.

So we could look at something like below 3% of Fortnite users who even care about FREE games on "their" store.
Like Galyonkin said, "Your target Audience doesn't exist"

 

[Assenzio]

And the point is they don't seem to set the chart on fire on consoles.

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At this point I have to assume you have no clue on how sales work. If you release a game late on a platform it's going to sell less on said platform ( in 90% of the cases).

You give me Virmintide and Killing floor that released late and where updated in a slower fashion.

Then you mention Left 4 Dead of which we have no launch data.

You are basing your argument on nothing.

 

[Nintendo]

We know the following:

- >80 Million Fortnite PC Players
- the biggest free game on EGS was taken by 4.5 Million accounts
- Without any new users that is only a ratio of ~5%
- BUT Not every EGS user is playing Fortnite (unless Epic stupidly counts every EGS account as a Fortnite account)
- So we have to include users who only installed the EGS to get the free games or who buy other games on EGS and don't have a Fortnite account.

So we could look at something like below 3% of Fortnite users who even care about FREE games on "their" store.
Like Galyonkin said, "Your target Audience doesn't exist"

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The post I quoted was saying that people don't know the EGS exists which they obviously do. Doesn't matter how many are using it. That wasn't what I was talking about.

 

[jrDev]

Except they would've had more sales if it wasn't exclusive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Which can be said about every game that is exclusive...but we don't know if that hypothetical "missed sales" has already been dwarfed by the Epic payment and percent split for each sale...it's most likely made back all costs plus from this move which is great for the dev...

 

[Alexandros]

We know the following:

- >80 Million Fortnite PC Players
- the biggest free game on EGS was taken by 4.5 Million accounts
- Without any new users that is only a ratio of ~5%
- BUT Not every EGS user is playing Fortnite (unless Epic stupidly counts every EGS account as a Fortnite account)
- So we have to include users who only installed the EGS to get the free games or who buy other games on EGS and don't have a Fortnite account.

So we could look at something like below 3% of Fortnite users who even care about FREE games on "their" store.
Like Galyonkin said, "Your target Audience doesn't exist"

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Very well said.

 

[Rodjer]

Which can be said about every game that is exclusive...but we don't know if that hypothetical "missed sales" has already been dwarfed by the Epic payment and percent split for each sale...it's most likely made back all costs plus from this move which is great for the dev...

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WWZ missed the chinese audience by not releasing on Steam, we had numbers and Valve statement about how big are the chinese players on Steam.
Not releasing on Steam means not bringing your game to over 30 million chinese users on Steam.

 

[Joe Spangle]

Good on Epic, the more success they have the more Valve/Steam will actually need to do something to compete as opposed to the sit on their ass and do nothing approach.

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erm...I think you've got that the wrong way round. The more success the Epic store has the less likely they will be to implement features even close to what Steam offers (steam is the leading Client for features just in case you didnt know).

 

[Skux]

The idea that people only use EGS to play Fortnite is just flat out ignorance.

People shop. They browse. They impulse buy. And people who play Fortnite also play other games (hard for people here to accept, I know).

Hell, people's Steam backlogs shows that people will buy games that they don't even play.

 

[Alexandros]

Which can be said about every game that is exclusive...but we don't know if that hypothetical "missed sales" has already been dwarfed by the Epic payment and percent split for each sale...

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Indeed we don't. Which makes both opinions (the game would have or wouldn't have sold much more if it wasn't exclusive) equally valid.

 

[Fularu]

The Warhammer series is indeed a "popular" IP but there are very few games using the Warhammer name that did really good and Vermintide 2 is one of them.


The whole "Unknow IP" or "old IP" or "new IP" argument is useless, WWZ is a game that copies the L4D2 formula i can't think of any game using the L4D template flopping hard, unless it's a garbage game, see Overkill TWD.
If WWZ was on Steam, the sales are 100% going to be higher than 250k for a simple reason, China, Steam has over 30 million chinese account and the chinese audience buys a lot games, from every genre.

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There are over 10 fantastic Warhammer games on PC going as far back as the early 90s.

Warhammer is one of PC gaming staples

 

[Serious Sam]

I'm constantly amazed at gaming industry. Other industries strive to sell products in as many shops and locations as possible to reduce hurdles for consumers and maximize reach. But gaming industry is like "nope, fuck all that, we want to sell our games in as few places as possible and inconvenience our customers as much as possible!".

 

[Rodjer]

At this point I have to assume you have no clue on how sales work. If you release a game late on a platform it's going to sell less on said platform ( in 90% of the cases).

You give me Virmintide and Killing floor that released late and where updated in a slower fashion.

Then you mention Left 4 Dead of which we have no launch data.

You are basing your argument on nothing.

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we talkin about co-op games?


There's Payday 2 and we all know that the PC version trashed all console versions in term of sales, players, actual support and DLCs
PayDay 2 was launched at the same time on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

There are over 10 fantastic Warhammer games on PC going as far back as the early 90s.

Warhammer is one of PC gaming staples

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In the 90s and i agree with you, but now? Vermintide 2 and Total War Warhammer are the biggest games in the franchise right now, after Dawn of War flopping and Martyr.

 

[Nooblet]

The post I quoted was saying that people don't know the EGS exists which they obviously do. Doesn't matter how many are using it. That wasn't what I was talking about.

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Additionally the demographic that plays Fortnite will become adults in the coming few years/start earning money, in the coming few years Fortnite might be dead and more of that demographic may start buying games, when they do that it's far more likely that they'll buy their games on EGS than on steam.

 

[Norwegian_Imposter]

WWZ missed the chinese audience by not releasing on Steam, we had numbers and Valve statement about how big are the chinese players on Steam.
Not releasing on Steam means not bringing your game to over 30 million chinese users on Steam.

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With no anti cheat in the game, this is a wise decision lol jk

 

[GhostTrick]

I'm constantly amazed at gaming industry. Other industries strive to sell products in as many shops and locations as possible to reduce hurdles for consumers and maximize reach. But gaming industry is like "nope, fuck all that, we want to sell our games in as few places as possible and inconvenience our customers as much as possible!".

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The most moronic thing is that you have people actually championning that and getting mad when people gets more choice.

 

[Alexandros]

The idea that people only use EGS to play Fortnite is just flat out ignorance.

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No, in the context of the entire EGS userbase it is very much a fact. A very small percentage of the total userbase decided to download games that were available for free. 90%+ of the userbase didn't even bother to redeem the free copy.

 

[Assenzio]

WWZ missed the chinese audience by not releasing on Steam, we had numbers and Valve statement about how big are the chinese players on Steam.
Not releasing on Steam means not bringing your game to over 30 million chinese users on Steam.

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Not every game releases in China.

we talkin about co-op games?


There's Payday 2 and we all know that the PC version trashed all console versions in term of sales, players, actual support and DLCs
PayDay 2 was launched at the same time on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Yes, we are talking about coop games with the same value ( 40 bucks)

Payday it's a good example, but I doubt the first week it did more on pc than console. Usually these games have a rising curve on pc, but after launch, while console decreases.

I am sure even WWZ will at some point have at least double the sales on pc than console, but launch week is what we are discussing here.

If you can find first week sale data for Payday 2 it would help, I tried with no success

 

[kaishek]

Lol with all the buzz this game got, 250k really isn't that impressive

 

[Joe Spangle]

The idea that people only use EGS to play Fortnite is just flat out ignorance.

People shop. They browse. They impulse buy. And people who play Fortnite also play other games (hard for people here to accept, I know).

Hell, people's Steam backlogs shows that people will buy games that they don't even play.

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Didnt the spy data guy say that people who play the free to play games very rarely go on to purchase much else from stores?

 

[Papacheeks]

Lol with all the buzz this game got, 250k really isn't that impressive

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250k is pretty impressive since it was on one store for PC. ANd is impressive when you look at it did 1 Million total. A third of that on one store is actualyl impressive.

Which is also depressing as the launcher/store is complete shit. So thanks I guess to the guys who have no fucking standards and bought WWZ on a shit store.

 

[Rodjer]

Not every game releases in China.

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Not every games but all games releasing on Steam are releasing on China.

If you can find first week sale data for Payday 2 it would help, I tried with no success

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No first week numbers, but first month sales were 1.58 million copies with 80% through digital store, digital share in 2013 on PS3, Xbox 360 was extremely low compared to now.

Going by Steam charts, Payday 2 peaked at 57k players during launch month on Steam with 16k average daily players
https://steamcharts.com/app/218620

 

[HighResTomato]

Nice numbers and spilt, hope to see more.

I know right, maybe MS and Rockstar has some time left to cut a deal with Epic to release Red Dead and Halo:TMC only on EGS.

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EGS will be successful regardless of how much Steam fanboys cry about it.

Their tactics maybe questionable depending on who you ask. But if they can deliver what consumers want and it works then I wish them more success.

Everyone here acts like Steam had all these features from the start. And stuff like refunds were implemented as good will and not forced by incoming legislation.

EGS will get there and Valve needs to get off their arse and make something other than relying on that 30% cut they get.

 

[MillionIII]

I'm constantly amazed at gaming industry. Other industries strive to sell products in as many shops and locations as possible to reduce hurdles for consumers and maximize reach. But gaming industry is like "nope, fuck all that, we want to sell our games in as few places as possible and inconvenience our customers as much as possible!".

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You're comparing physical stores to digital ones, the music, movie and tv industry deal with exclusives all the time.

 

[BeI]

Doing some quick math, if WWZ goes on to sell 1 million on EGS with a 95% cut, I think it would have to sell roughly 1.3 million on Steam to make the same amount (assuming Epic's upfront exclusivity payment is reimbursed if a game meets expectations). I could see that having happened if the game was only on Steam (although the ideal would have been availability everywhere).

 

[Kyougar]

Additionally the demographic that plays Fortnite will become adults in the coming few years/start earning money, in the coming few years Fortnite might be dead and more of that demographic may start buying games, when they do that it's far more likely that they'll buy their games on EGS than on steam.

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No, they don't.

- First of all, one can't argue about users not caring about where they buy their games and suddenly argue that the Fortnite users are loyal to Epic or the EGS.
- Second, GaaS gamers care about GaaS games they will flock to the next big GaaS game, wherever it is.
- Third, didn't happen with Steam and Dota gamers "Mister Epic Store" (Galyonkin) himself wrote a long article about GaaS gamers not buying many games and took Dota2 as an example.

 

[Papacheeks]

Doing some quick math, if WWZ goes on to sell 1 million on EGS with a 95% cut, I think it would have to sell roughly 1.3 million on Steam to make the same amount (assuming Epic's upfront exclusivity payment is reimbursed if a game meets expectations). I could see that having happened if the game was only on Steam (although the ideal would have been availability everywhere).

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I would argue if it was available everywhere I don't think you would see 250k in sales on EGS.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Which can be said about every game that is exclusive...but we don't know if that hypothetical "missed sales" has already been dwarfed by the Epic payment and percent split for each sale...it's most likely made back all costs plus from this move which is great for the dev...

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Let's be clear about something: Epic doesn't gift "free money" around. If what they told everyone publicly so far is any true, they guarantee a minimum of sales.
This greatly reduces the initial risks (i.e. if you have 200K guaranteed sales and you only sell 20K Epic makes up for it) but it doesn't guarantee a breakthrough success )if you sell 250K, Epic still pays 250K, the upfront bonus becomes null).

What else we know about the popularity of their service for anything that isn't Fortnite? Without actual numbers we can only look at how other games are doing.
Here's the thing: most of them have virtually faded into oblivion since their launch. Some of their exclusives have been so obscure virtually NO ONE is talking about them on the internet anymore.
Operencia is basically lost in the mists of the internet. No one is talking about it.
Dangerous Driving is a goner (also, appartently a driving game of very forgettable quality, so not surprising).
Ashen, Hades, whatever else could you mention: definitely not the talk of the town.

The only game we have numbers for is this one, and bizarrely enough this alleged success does't seem to match all the other stats: online games are reportedly hard to find on PC according to a lot of people, features are missing making players unhappy and Twitch views may be among the lowest we have ever witnessed for a "popular" new launch despise Epic bragging about them in the first two days when they were artificially driven up by paid streamers.

No, in the context of the entire EGS userbase it is very much a fact. A very small percentage of the total userbase decided to download games that were available for free. 90%+ of the userbase didn't even bother to redeem the free copy.

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Which is interesting, given that even a lot of the people who swore to never purchase anything there (myself included) redeemed those anyway.

 

[xMaximusx]

Could have been much more successful. I was gonna buy it to play with my friends cause we always play co-op. I personally don't care :& was okay using epic store but all 3 of my closest friends said they'd either wait for steam release or not play it at all.