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[Draugoth]

The Epic Games Store still isn’t profitable. We knew the company was spending millions to give away free games every week, but we’d heard it was a bit of a money sink despite not actually paying for each and every copy given away.
In case you’re keeping track, Epic Games Store boss Steve Allison says on the witness stand his store isn’t profitable yet. The goal is still growth, he says. Emails revealed during the Epic v. Apple trial suggested the company was hoping to claim half of all PC gaming revenue.

It has been revealed during the ongoing antitrust legal battle with Google that the Epic Games Store still isn’t profitable, 5 years later. The comments were made by Epic Games Store General Manager Steve Allison, who said that the store isn’t profitable yet (via The Verge). “The goal is still growth”, he revealed.

The Epic Games Store first incentivized developers coming to its platform by introducing a more generous revenue split with 88% of sales going to the developer. In comparison, Steam only offered 70%, but changed its program to a tier-based program soon after Epic Games’ announcement.

In an October 2019 document, it was revealed that Epic Games had planned to grow to 50 percent of all PC revenue. Such an aggressive deadline was predicted by Epic Games’ generous revenue split compared to Steam, in addition to the company buying PC exclusives on the platform.

 

[T-Cake]

 

[Topher]

 

[Dazraell]

50 percent of all PC revenue? Lmao

 

[lee50_10]

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Judging Epic from a purely functional view: where are the forums? Where can I read about updates? All those billions and they can't just copy Steam?

Don't give a shit about whatever vendetta the gaming community has with Epic but their store is simply inadequate compared to Steam.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

50 percent of all PC revenue? Lmao

Probably not even Steam has 50% of the total revenue on PC considering huge games like League, Genshin, WoW and more are not on Steam. Not to mention all the Korean and Chinese MMOs.

 

[RoboFu]

At the same time I will never forget those who released exclusively on EGS on day 1.

 

[Dazraell]

Probably not even Steam has 50% of the total revenue on PC considering huge games like League, Genshin, WoW and more are not on Steam. Not to mention all the Korean and Chinese MMOs.

Yeah, exactly. This only shows how delusional Epic is if they really thought something like this is possible to achieve

 

[winjer]

Maybe they should spend money improving their store, forum, workshop and features, instead of wasting money of one year exclusives.

 

[Dr.D00p]

Who cares, I'm just here for the free stuff, Dude.

 

[Melon Husk]

EGS still feels like a finance hustle, 5 years later. They're not putting any effort into competing with Steam in terms of features.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Have you guys seen/heard the epic achievement sound?



I was playing Alan Wake 2 and this shit popped up 3 times in a row loud as fuck in an important scene. Fire whoever came up with this shit. You also cannot disable the sound unless you DISABLE ALL NOTIFICATIONS which includes messages/achievement pop-up, etc. Also you cant even disable epic store in-game unless you manually edit a config. THIS IS A 2023 STORE APP.

 

[buenoblue]

Store waring is the funniest

 

[Pakoe]

 

[Majormaxxx]

I haven't played a single game yet. I just collect em every week. It's like Pokémon. Or gran turismo sport.

 

[Dazraell]

 

[Guilty_AI]

Emails revealed during the Epic v. Apple trial suggested the company was hoping to claim half of all PC gaming revenue.

Well, there's the problem. Thats far too unrealistic of a goal.

 

[64bitmodels]

even if epic games store got better I still wouldn't want them to succeed for the simple fact that they jumped ship to Xbox and consoles back in the 2000s with Gears, & then proceeded to neglect PC gaming for a full decade until they whipped up this half assed store to try and capitalize on the userbase that Gabe built up. So fucking lame.

 

[lordrand11]

Judging Epic from a purely functional view: where are the forums? Where can I read about updates? All those billions and they can't just copy Steam?

Don't give a shit about whatever vendetta the gaming community has with Epic but their store is simply inadequate compared to Steam.

That's been my biggest beef with them too, all this money and time spent on bringing the games and you can't create a decent to use platform with a solid UI and create a community around it?

 

[MoreJRPG]

EGS is the definition of a tax write off.

 

[lyan]

Have you guys seen/heard the epic achievement sound?



I was playing Alan Wake 2 and this shit popped up 3 times in a row loud as fuck in an important scene. Fire whoever came up with this shit. You also cannot disable the sound unless you DISABLE ALL NOTIFICATIONS which includes messages/achievement pop-up, etc. Also you cant even disable epic store in-game unless you manually edit a config. THIS IS A 2023 STORE APP.

To be fair it should be the dev's responsibility to normalize the volumes when they decide to implement this, but the sound effect itself is still badly designed imo.

 

[SmokedMeat]

You get out what you put in.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Tim Sweeney cares about gamers, not profits. He's planting trees all over the place both literally and figuratively.

 

[Kdad]

Good...fuck Tencent.

 

[Diseased Yak]

I'll never forget that Road Map they put out early on when the EGS was just getting going, showing all these Steam-parity features.

And then the Road Map disappeared into the shadow realm and we've seen very little updates since...

 

[Magic Carpet]

Good...fuck Tencent.

Just finished The 7th guest on quest 3. Watching the credits the Tencent name scrolled up. I assume meta got my money and not epic.
Not sure who owns what anymore.

 

[MrTired]

Probably not even Steam has 50% of the total revenue on PC considering huge games like League, Genshin, WoW and more are not on Steam. Not to mention all the Korean and Chinese MMOs.

Steam is 80% of the PC Revenue. Even if you include gaming on browsers. They are PC market place.

 

[Skifi28]

You're telling me that trying to pander to developers instead of your actual customers doesn't work? I'm sorry, but the average consumer doesn't care what percentage of the profits goes where no matter how loud you yell about it, that's not real marketing and buying store exclusives just pisses them off even more.

 

[violence]

Interesting to hear it’s not profitable. I guess it’s entirely due to user base size.

 

[Gudji]

I have a ton of games and spent zero moneyz. GJ Tim.

 

[LazyParrot]

Steam is 80% of the PC Revenue. Even if you include gaming on browsers. They are PC market place.

Got a source for that?

 

[ClosBSAS]

I'll never forget that Road Map they put out early on when the EGS was just getting going, showing all these Steam-parity features.

And then the Road Map disappeared into the shadow realm and we've seen very little updates since...

the best part was when timmy boy was cryinga bout MS creatig a clsoed ecosystem with the MS Store and that he would defend it at all costs.
then he proceeds to money hat devs and buy exclusives to take away from Steam, cause that was his purpose, for steam not to have them.

 

[ClosBSAS]

Steam accounts for 50% to 70% of all PC game downloads around the world. Steam is the most widely used video game distribution platform in the world, with around 75% of the global market. It attracts approximately 20 million gamers every day.Oct 17, 2023

Got a source for that?

 

[LazyParrot]

Steam accounts for 50% to 70% of all PC game downloads around the world. Steam is the most widely used video game distribution platform in the world, with around 75% of the global market. It attracts approximately 20 million gamers every day.Oct 17, 2023

Even if all of this were true (and I'm having my doubts here - that site doesn't list a reliable source) it doesn't mean that Steam accounts for 80% of PC gaming revenue.

For example, Statista lists the global revenue for PC games in 2022 as roughly 30 billion, and most other sites I've found cite similar numbers. Steam revenue in 2022 was just under 9 billion. That's obviously not 80, 70 or even 50 percent.

 

[SHA]

He's flexing.

 

[A.Romero]

I would advice less lawsuits and more effort in building capable products.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

 

[DaciaJC]

Emails revealed during the Epic v. Apple trial suggested the company was hoping to claim half of all PC gaming revenue.

 

[BWJinxing]

Good.

Epic built a GameStop.

Its been years since I set foot in a gamestop.

If they can't compete, then they need to innovate. Money hatting the developer doesn't seem to be working.

My friend and I are still counting the days till dead island 2 drops on steam.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Once the free games dry up, the store’s going to fall off a cliff.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

That's been my biggest beef with them too, all this money and time spent on bringing the games and you can't create a decent to use platform with a solid UI and create a community around it?

It's ridiculous because GOG can do it and they presumably have a lot less money to spend.

 

[Puscifer]

Probably not even Steam has 50% of the total revenue on PC considering huge games like League, Genshin, WoW and more are not on Steam. Not to mention all the Korean and Chinese MMOs.

Just to add epic is fucking schizo if they think that split is going to work out in the long term. Valves CDN is astounding considering they own and manage them vs paying Amazon to use AWS, you know they're feeling that shit even if they'll never publicly admit it.

That "we keep the profit" shit seems so cool and 100% of everyone comes crawling back eventually and I see epic being no different, there's no way they're going to keep this going.

 

[Gamezone]

It's been a slow year for EGS. They barely released any new features to the store this year, and the biggest publishers still don't care about releasing their games on the store, meaning they lack both publishers and custemors.

 

[JokerMM]

"50% of PC gaming revenue"
Bro, 95% of all EGS users use it to launch Fortnite and claim free games.
That's literally it lol

 

[lordrand11]

It's ridiculous because GOG can do it and they presumably have a lot less money to spend.

Oh absolutely, I fully support and purchase from GoG on a lot of the older games I want to own again just because.

It took them approximately 4.5 years just to enable and allow games with achievements on them in Epic which to me is astounding. Like they have their own forum service why would they not focus on some type of integration with it?

 

[Grildon Tundy]

Tim Sweeney cares about gamers, not profits. He's planting trees all over the place both literally and figuratively.

 

[LordOfChaos]

It

 

[DaleinCalgary]

That's kinda funny

 

[CrustyBritches]

It would be funny if EGS folded and everybody lost access to all the free games they claimed, but nobody cared because they never played them anyway.