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New court filing shows Epic has lost more than $450 Million on the EGS in the past 2 years and other interesting facts
- Thread starter CommodoreKong
- Start date
As a consumer I feel no need to spend money on the EGS. If I have the choice between Steam/EGS, I always go Steam. If it's an EGS timed exclusive, I have no problem waiting for a Steam release, that may also be at a discount.
EGS just provides no value to me, besides the free games.
EGS just provides no value to me, besides the free games.
I think it's time to shift the EGS loss away from free games towards having better deals. Especially for games that are about half a year old and also on Steam.
Another big thing that keeps me buying on Steam despite having an actual positive attitude towards the EGS is that the mod support is almost always for the Steam version of games and Steam has Steam Workshop. What could get peoples' attention is an in-game advantage for games on the EGS that Steam doesn't offer.
Another big thing that keeps me buying on Steam despite having an actual positive attitude towards the EGS is that the mod support is almost always for the Steam version of games and Steam has Steam Workshop. What could get peoples' attention is an in-game advantage for games on the EGS that Steam doesn't offer.
Why would they shut down the store instead of rolling back on coupons and free monthly games?
UE4 and UE5 are going to be still hugely used engines in the industry and the relatively small cut they take when you use UE and publish on the EGS is surely attractive to developers and publishers.
As mentioned, the UE royalties is enough *right now* to cover the EGS costs. That revenue will only continue to grow as more and more titles use Unreal and launch on the storefront. All this cost is coming from the freebies and promotions to gain market share.
Free games, all the $10 off coupons and locking AAA games on their platforms for 6-12 months.
Eh, people need to differentiate between EGS lossing money and Epic lossing money. This is just a subdivision of Epic lossing money (a ton) in trying to gain a foothold on a market. It is still a ton of money, but Epic as a whole is probably still profitable, considering they earned 400M+ in revenue from Fortnite PC alone last year.
EGS just isnt catching up to steam in terms of features. Its almost the same store it was a year ago.
If they couldn't make bank during a pandemic where people were forced to be indoors for their own safety, I'm seriously pessimistic about them (I mean EGS) being profitable around 2023.
eh, seems like the target is profitability by 2027. I can appreciate the long term thinking though I think it also has the implications that it's gonna take 2-3 years still to flesh out EGS.
The active users are higher than I thought, though I guess that would also include Fortnite players right?
well yes, partially at least. They do have to pay those developers after all.
well yes, partially at least. They do have to pay those developers after all.
Hard to tell since they're a private company, and this is an older article but:
Epic Games unveils $1.78 billion funding round at $17.3 billion valuation
Fortnite maker Epic Games announced a $1.78 billion funding round at a $17.3 billion valuation. That includes a previous investment from Sony.
venturebeat.com
Sounds like 4.2 billion in revenue in 2019 and 5 billion forecasted for 2020? (Looks like Fortnite on iOS according to Google and sensor tower was doing ~48 million a month on iOS worldwide. So that's what 200 million loss in 2020 from sept - December.
Curious, to go along with this, has Fortnite been losing money as well?
Because I still strongly believe that all of this EGS stuff would not have come to fruition if it wasn't for the success of Fortnite.
Because I still strongly believe that all of this EGS stuff would not have come to fruition if it wasn't for the success of Fortnite.
Makes sense then. Now that they have a big enough userbase, I wouldn't be surprised if they slowed down heavily on the things above.
Am I missing something? Isn't it perfectly fine for them to be losing that much? A lot of companies and services lose money with the promise of recouping later, how is this any different?
On top of this, Fortnite alone can more than support this, right? Where's the issue here?
On top of this, Fortnite alone can more than support this, right? Where's the issue here?
How about you put more effort into actually improving your platform instead of just throwing money at free games and exclusives people will just wait out anyway?
The EGS itself doesn't really have much to offer and they don't really seem interested in changing that.
How is controller support still lacking as bad as it is?
The EGS itself doesn't really have much to offer and they don't really seem interested in changing that.
How is controller support still lacking as bad as it is?
so people shouldn't be happy about the value GP brings?
It is incredible how much some people on this website REALLY don't want Steam to have a competitor in the same space.
I would assume when you're trying to open a PC storefront to compete with Steam... it's going to be extremely expensive upfront to pry some users out of their normal habits. But as the users grow, eventually they start to make more money and maybe it's possible to be profitable by 2023.
Also, who cares if Epic is burning their own money to give you free games? It seems like consumers would be happy about that... lol.
The game sales covering operating costs is a drop in the bucket compared to the money they're spending on the promotions and freebies and exclusives.
MS is absolutely not doing the same thing. They are paying a bunch to get games from third parties onto Game Pass in addition to their normal sales, with the expectation that users will remain subscribed and essentially subsidize the costs of signing the deals. You still need to pay $10 to access those games.
Epic is betting that you will buy from their store if you get hooked through free games. You have to pay NOTHING to take on Epic's offer.
It would only be the same if MS was giving away free games to try and get people to buy an Xbox / use the Windows Store more. It's not the same.
They are similar in that they are slinging around a lot of money to entice users, sure, but there is a big difference in business models. I don't think anyone expects Epic to still be giving out freebies 6 years down the road.
Because i dont think that alone would be enough. We're talking about 450M. Epic is not spending over 1M dollars a day on free games that most people dont play and on coupons that most people dont use. I guess buying exclusives would be the rest but can they stop with those? Becauae the 2-3dollars that users spent on average on third party games on EGS was probably like 95% on exclusives. Sure the UE royalties might be enough to cover thd cost for a long time but at some point things may not be worth it. I dont know if this reads as if i want EGS to go down but its not. I couldnt care less. Im just saying that i dont see it being profitable in 2023 and im explaining why.
Nobody has any issues with games on the Xbox app; frankly even Origin brought stuff to the table like preempting Steam with refunds, preempting Microsoft with having a game subscription service, and offering old games. What does Epic bring to the table? Fucking coupons?
I mean, 6-10 free games a month seems kind of great value to me. I get that gamers are spoiled, but hopefully not that spoiled.
The key difference between the two though is that epic seems to struggle to convert their MAU into paying customers. And, unlike gamepass, their product isn't very appealing yet.
I see gamepass still having sucess if they double the price. I don't see that path for epic once they stop with their freebies. There's obviously still time until 2023 though.
Folks mostly focus on money lost and assume that says it all. Epic is spending more money so they lost more, regardless of 2020 being high on game sales everywhere(generally speaking I'm sure it was bad in some places/platforms).
Is that a competitor to Steam? I'm not a PC gamer, so it's hard to separate fact from fiction with all of this stuff, but the vitriol in these threads is incredible.
I would lean to believe the business folk with the data to have an idea of an estimation on when it will be profitable...
The amount of money they are projecting to lose this year is trending upwards even compared to their first year, and especially last year. That's a sign of either change in strategy or sign of growth in terms of userbase/purchases.
You can get PC games on it so... yes?
edit: "I'm not a PC gamer" and you're authoritatively saying that people don't want a competitor to steam lol
Also, in terms of optics, what Microsoft is offering is additive to the landscape from my perspective as a consumer/player. They're giving people more options to play games rather than limiting them. This has been a major factor for myself at least. Despite disliking the Xbox app, I can appreciate what they're bringing to the table with GP. That's a stark contrast to Epic's "our way or the highway" strategy for getting me onto their service.
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In this thread, Individual shocked that companies can leverage debt and equity to operate at a loss to gain market share.
Game Pass doesn't make me mad. The threads asking why everyone else isn't doing it (then ignoring the stated reasons they aren't), only for the same discussion to be repeated again in another thread later, are what makes me annoyed. GP being a success of failure doesn't affect me, neither do people who believe it's a good value for them.
OP
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Yeah I agree, I just don't see a large number of people there to get free games converting to paying customers.
good point, I worded that poorly. More like I don't feel compelled to spend money on EGS.
Just read the thread, lol. Or any thread with "Epic Games Store" in the title. You don't need to play games on PC to be able to read...
Alright! First time I've heard someone mention the Xbox App on PC as a Steam competitor, I'll note that going forward, thanks!
These kinds of long timelines aren't too unusual when you're trying to build marketshare in a new or developed space. Epic are still making plenty of money so these losses aren't too bad in the short term. The issue is that I don't see masses of people suddenly becoming full time buyers on Epic. I've bought stuff there but the store is still just clunky enough that I'd rather use almost anything else.
Tech company lights a bunch of cash on fire to pursue growth, news at 11.
As long as their investors are on board there's really nothing to see here. This is the norm.
As long as their investors are on board there's really nothing to see here. This is the norm.
Xbox App on PC relies on the W10 Store and the W10 Store still sucks. I've had my own list of issues with it and it's pretty much why I won't get anything on the W10 Store/Xbox GP for PC. To say that nobody has any issues with the App is way too broad of a stroke. If you mean that it's fine that the games are on the store itself? Yes, that's fine and I don't think people have issues for that. But please be specific when saying that line.
I don't even see the people there getting the free games actually playing those free games. Its anecdotal but i know very few people who have touched one of the free games that epic offered, but nearly everyone gets them. Same goes for coupons. I've used one so far because of an exclusive game.
I have read this thread, and other PC gaming threads including Epic related ones; the common thread is that people dislike *Epic* they don't dislike other alternatives to Steam.
Content delivery being bad for some people because they have delivery optimization in Windows enabled for some reason or behind on updates is whatever.
It's the same playbook as every other startup. Undercut the competition on price (or in this case, with free games), keep pulling in those VC bucks, and eventually IPO.
It's not whatever. Why pay for something that constantly has issues that MS refuses to actually fix? And not only that, while they have moved to Win32 with a lot of programs, they lock their installs behind a secure folder that would require some form of technical knowledge on how to get through. This should never ever be the case. I still feel that MS put their games on Steam as a way to ignore the problems with the W10 Store.
I forgot they were even adding features. I mean, we got Achievements and Cloud Saves right? Still no basket, though I guess I agree with Epic there, I'm not buying multiple games from them, I'm redeeming the weekly free game, I don't need a basket on Epic.
Glad Steam has one though, would've made buying like, 8 Final Fantasy games a few weeks a go an absolute pain and likely flagged my card with my bank.
It is whatever because an edge case of bum users don't mean much in the face of achievements and a solid subscription service. It's not better than Steam at everything but they're a great alternative.