Epic Store losing money like crazy - over $400 million dollars lost so far

[Brian9824]

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-games-store-exclusives-apple-lawsuit/

They have lost over 450 million dollars so far, with the trend showing no signs of stopping and have already forecasted losses of at least 139 million dollars for this year.

That is what happens when you have to bribe people to use your store and have nothing that actually draws people to it.

**Edit**
They have actually lost FAR more then $400 million, the numbers being reported for sales are not actually revenue

third-party game sales only accounted for $265 million of that spending.

Money spent on the store is not what epic gets to keep, they only keep at MOST 12% of that, and less with coupons so at most they got $32 million in revenue from that in 2020 which is nothing compared to money spend

[Mad Scientist]

Jt の投稿を引用：

If you look at the pc sale numbers which is in the hundred of millions space,it seems only a minority would never buy games there.Or they say and are lying

Their own infographic (2020) shows 200 million free game copies given out,

Cost of "Free Games" (2020 Infographic)

-If they were all $60 games that's $12 Billion
-if they're all $20 games that's $4 Billion

-$23 Million to create coupons fully funded by them, assuming $15 for minimum of $20 if everyone buys a $20 game with it, that's an estimated 1.53 million coupons only creating $7.66 Million (if $20 games) rather than raw-potential
-The 73 free games are a total value of $1,455 which is nearly $20 per game however there's likely cheap games to full priced games so subject to that as demonstrated by AAA games for free.

Asterisks

$680 for Epic and $251 million for 3rd party games income "spent" as of the 2020 infographic notes "These numbers reflect actual spending by customers and don't include the value of coupons, Epic funding of developers, or other", so obviously the number is lower than that while trying to tell people it's "actual spending"; a way of saying "before cost reduction measures on checkout" ie Coupons of Free titles. They're using the raw value regardless of true currency spent on checkout, given that when you get a free game it treats it like a checkout whereas Steam just let's you add a license of a free game. Lie by omission or otherwise by legally putting asterisks to not get slammed for false representation is still going to make average consumers think they're more successful than they actually are.

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

Lemale の投稿を引用：

Buhu epic bad epic bad.If epic takes over the pc market steam would also improve so it’s benefitting gamers in general

A lot of games are also drm free on epic if you look in comparison to steam on the pcgaming wiki.Launchers should always be optional and not mandatory

[Brian9824]

Fred Durst の投稿を引用：

Sweeney still has a higher net worth than GabeN though...

The reason why they continue to give out free games, is because they can afford to. And when they stop giving out free games entirely, they will resume the shovelling of money into their bank accounts at a rate even faster than before.

The Epic store has never once made a penny in profit, so they can't RESUME something they never had. Again though its funny that people claim this, yet every number they have posted shows that its not true. People aren't spending money on their store despite their free games. Average spending per user is less then $2 a year which isn't sustainable.

Its showing that most of their "users" are just snagging free games and not actually spending any money from their store. So if you think those users will magically start spending money when the free games stop then i'd have to question that logic....

[Brian9824]

Mr. Gentlebot の投稿を引用：

Jt の投稿を引用：

If you look at the pc sale numbers which is in the hundred of millions space,it seems only a minority would never buy games there.Or they say and are lying

Their own infographic (2020) shows 200 million free game copies given out,

Cost of "Free Games" (2020 Infographic)

-If they were all $60 games that's $12 Billion
-if they're all $20 games that's $4 Billion

-$23 Million to create coupons fully funded by them, assuming $15 for minimum of $20 if everyone buys a $20 game with it, that's an estimated 1.53 million coupons only creating $7.66 Million (if $20 games) rather than raw-potential
-The 73 free games are a total value of $1,455 which is nearly $20 per game however there's likely cheap games to full priced games so subject to that as demonstrated by AAA games for free.

Asterisks

$680 for Epic and $251 million for 3rd party games income "spent" as of the 2020 infographic notes "These numbers reflect actual spending by customers and don't include the value of coupons, Epic funding of developers, or other", so obviously the number is lower than that while trying to tell people it's "actual spending"; a way of saying "before cost reduction measures on checkout" ie Coupons of Free titles. They're using the raw value regardless of true currency spent on checkout, given that when you get a free game it treats it like a checkout whereas Steam just let's you add a license of a free game. Lie by omission or otherwise by legally putting asterisks to not get slammed for false representation is still going to make average consumers think they're more successful than they actually are.

Yep, the numbers are HORRIBLE for them. Despite the free games they offer people aren't buying other games. Everyone I know just logs in every week, grabs the free game and then ignores their store. They have 50+ games for free and never spent a penny which is why they are hemorrhaging money.

Yet their issue is without those free games their user base would disappear.

[Nomad]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

People aren't spending money on their store despite their free games. Average spending per user is less then $2 a year which isn't sustainable.

But how many users do they have? And does the store include how much they make from fortnite?

[Lemale]

Jt の投稿を引用：

Lemale の投稿を引用：

Buhu epic bad epic bad.If epic takes over the pc market steam would also improve so it’s benefitting gamers in general

A lot of games are also drm free on epic if you look in comparison to steam on the pcgaming wiki.Launchers should always be optional and not mandatory

Gog is my place to go for that but even steam has a huge library of drm free games but if that’s the case for epic it’s good.They don’t have any games i care about....yet

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

Lemale の投稿を引用：

Jt の投稿を引用：

A lot of games are also drm free on epic if you look in comparison to steam on the pcgaming wiki.Launchers should always be optional and not mandatory

Gog is my place to go for that but even steam has a huge library of drm free games but if that’s the case for epic it’s good.They don’t have any games i care about....yet

Hitman was the one i bought there but it was a pain in the butt to transfer the games from steam to epic.The next game is probably chivalry

[Radene]

I do find it entertaining though... All these "But this time Epic is *really* dying this time!" reminds me of Harold Camping.

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

Epic is here to stay if you like it or not and could become a threat at some point to steam.If both companies improve with this im fine with that

[Panazois λ]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-games-store-exclusives-apple-lawsuit/

They have lost over 450 million dollars so far, with the trend showing no signs of stopping and have already forecasted losses of at least 139 million dollars for this year.

That is what happens when you have to bribe people to use your store and have nothing that actually draws people to it.

Epic doesn't have any of it's memorable games like the Half life series in their Store. Steam has been around for way longer and it's really hard to adapt to a new platform for games. Why go to Epic when you have Steam and it offers discounts at certain dates for so many games? The only things that kept Epic in the game were Fortnite which they only make profit from the game and giving for free GTA V which probably cost them more money as well.

[Brian9824]

TRASH の投稿を引用：

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

People aren't spending money on their store despite their free games. Average spending per user is less then $2 a year which isn't sustainable.

But how many users do they have? And does the store include how much they make from fortnite?

Helps to read the article.

In its end-of-year report, Epic said that players spent $700 million on the Epic Store in 2020, but third-party game sales only accounted for $265 million of that spending.

So 3rd party game sales are every game but Fortnite. So you know that 265 million SPENT on their store. But of that 265 million EPIC only gets 12% of that, so that means they got $31,800,000 in REVENUE

Gotta love their tricky wording and how they are reporting money spent on store and not revenue to try to make it seem better then it actually is.

$444 million spent to generate $32 million in revenue

Lets look at 1 example - 10.5 million dollars JUST to have the exclusive deal for Control,
The game was selling at $60 of which Epic gets just $7.20 per copy. So they'd have to sell 1.5 million copies of Control JUST to break even.



They claim 160 million users
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2020-year-in-review#:~:text=There%20are%20now%20over%20160,up%20from%207M%20in%202019).

So that's an average of $.20 per person spent in ALL OF 2020. So think about how many of those users must not spend a penny to have driven the average spend so low. Especially

[Radene]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

TRASH の投稿を引用：

But how many users do they have? And does the store include how much they make from fortnite?

Helps to read the article.

In its end-of-year report, Epic said that players spent $700 million on the Epic Store in 2020, but third-party game sales only accounted for $265 million of that spending.

So 3rd party game sales are every game but Fortnite. So you know that 265 million SPENT on their store. But of that 265 million EPIC only gets 12% of that, so that means they got $31,800,000 in REVENUE

Gotta love their tricky wording and how they are reporting money spent on store and not revenue to try to make it seem better then it actually is.

$444 million spent to generate $32 million in revenue

Lets look at 1 example - 10.5 million dollars JUST to have the exclusive deal for Control,
The game was selling at $60 of which Epic gets just $7.20 per copy. So they'd have to sell 1.5 million copies of Control JUST to break even.



They claim 160 million users
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2020-year-in-review#:~:text=There%20are%20now%20over%20160,up%20from%207M%20in%202019).

So that's an average of $.20 per person spent in ALL OF 2020. So think about how many of those users must not spend a penny to have driven the average spend so low. Especially

Yes, yes. We get it. Epic is really dying this time. Mwa-ha-ha.

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

Borderlands sales were even higher on epic than any of the previous titles....hmmmm

[Brian9824]

Also this really does sum up well why Steam doesn't have to copy Epic with game giveaways and stuff. It's not a good idea for a wildly successful store that is extremely profitable to copy the tactics of a store that is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year....

[Spawn of Totoro]

Panazois λ の投稿を引用：

Epic doesn't have any of it's memorable games like the Half life series in their Store. Steam has been around for way longer and it's really hard to adapt to a new platform for games. Why go to Epic when you have Steam and it offers discounts at certain dates for so many games? The only things that kept Epic in the game were Fortnite which they only make profit from the game and giving for free GTA V which probably cost them more money as well.

You bring up a point that has always bothered me...

Like you said, Valve has their Half-Life games on Steam, yet Epic really has nothing original on their store, other then Fortnite.

Why doesn't Epic have their Unreal games on their store? They leave them on the Steam store instead. If they wanted, they could removed them from Steam and make then Epic Games only.

Even if they didn't remove them from Steam, they are missing their own legacy on their own store front. Games that defined them and their engine.