Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable
Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable
kotaku.com
Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable
327 comments
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Sure isn't profitable from me, I haven't bought shit from them.
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That's one interesting thing about this: They trained the players so hard to associate their store with the free weekly giveaways and only the free weekly giveaways, that's all everyone uses the client for now, and never mentally considers it to be usable for anything else.
The effect is pervasive, too. Games factually have not released if they're epic-exclusive. They're not discoverable on PC, as nobody would ever imagine checking the Epic catalogue for a game they're looking for. That's not what you open Epic for, it's those 1-2 free weekly games and nothing else.
In their bid to vie for developers not consumers they went so far too far that they have managed to alienate the concept of "selling games to players" in the consumers' minds, therefor making their store automatically unable to compete at its main intent.
Mind you, there are far more problems with it. Among which is that despite having so little in there, discoverability and navigation are downright terrible! It's an interesting lesson for frontend/UI design I imagine.
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Won't even take their free 'gifts', worse than Origin when it comes to spyware and data collecting. I can't understand anyone who willingly puts EGS on their device but complains about advertisers on other platforms collecting info about them.
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Yeah let's not forget this is the client that went through your Steam-installed files on your drive to see what it could offer you.
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Free games be damned, I’m not using it while they pay for timed exclusives and limit consumer choice.
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Because ads are something I dont want to see in general. EGS is something I knowingly use and want on my pc to play games. The choice is what makes it different.
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Probably people who understand how to make their computer do what they want it to? You control who your software talks to.
Well, at least at the application level.
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I got Death Stranding...
...It was free. The Epic client runs under Bottles in its own isolated sandbox, so it can't spy on me.
If it's free it's for me, if you have to pay no way.
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They had some amazing coupons a few years ago, I remember buying Jedi: Fallen Order for like $4 USD
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Oh what a suprise. Maybe... Just maybe...spend some bucks on developing the store to be viable(!) competition to steam. And not just a ghastly shit-shop, where people only exist because of the freebies and partially because of the exclusives (i pirate the exclusives. Fuck exclusives).
Even GOG galaxy is a better client/store and they don't have the same budget.
Epic sucks sweaty, hairy monkeyballs. And i would welcome competition for the apex.
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Did they get a shopping cart yet? I remember not being able to buy multiple games at once, but I just gave up on that store so no idea how it is now
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They do now, yeah
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I do through playnite. Using their own launcher for anything else than playing a game is horrible
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I get the free games via the site but I dont use windows so I've never even tried to play them. I'd rather support valve who have really went all in on Linux gaming.
I know it is possible to get some of epic ones working via lutris but I'm not that bothered to be honest.
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Using dishonest tactics to claw away market share won't work with gamers. Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.
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Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.
Well, eventually.
When Steam was first released, the running joke was "steaming pile of shit". It was slow, unreliable and only a couple of shades of green away from the worst color in the world. People complained about the birth of "always online" games and about paying full price but not even getting a box with it.
It's not exactly unassailable now either. It's my platform of choice as a user but for indie developers, the 30% cut is brutal and last I used it, the Steamworks SDK was pretty rough. The app itself also has a lot of legacy bloat like a built in MP3 player.
It's ahead of the rest but I think "good will, good prices and good features" might be an overly romantic take on "it's where all my games already are".
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the 30% cut is brutal
This part always confuses me. When Steam started allowing non-Valve games on their storefront, 30% was considered a bargain compared to selling your games at retail. In fact, PC versions of games were often $10 cheaper than their console counterparts specifically because distribution and platform fees were lower. It wasn't until MW2 came out that PC prices started reflecting console prices.
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I still remember being annoyed I suddenly needed to get a separate app just to continue playing counter strike.
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Valve is constantly looking for ways to help the customer, just in their own weird ass way. Having linux as a competitive option to windows and being able to refund/return digital games, as well as a built in mod searcher and loader being some of the things they brought to the platform because Valve employees themselves are gamers and want their platform to be useful towards gamers needs
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the 30% cut is brutal
Reportedly Epic's 12% barely covers costs and would not if they included transaction fees. 20% seems to be the bare minimum if you want a store to actually have good service, and then I'm giving Valve additional credit for sinking boatloads of money into general infrastructure, in the long term Proton alone is worth those 10%. Much unlike the rest of the stores (exception GOG) which take the same 30% and are run by humongous multinationals.
...and then there's itch.io. If you're a small and scrappy indie very much an option: They're also small and scrappy. And they'll probably shout at you if you try to upload a 20G game I very much doubt their servers would survive an AAA launch. OTOH, reportedly their average revenue split is 8% (customers can choose).
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"it’s where all my games already are."
My pet theory is this was realized by epic and so the only reason they give games away is to "help" users build a library they won't want to "leave behind" for another store platform. Once they reach the market share they were aiming for I fully expect the practice to stop.
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Yes, there's bloat from old features, but there's also quality tools built into Steam, such as Steam Input and Proton.
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Well, eventually.
When Steam was first released, the running joke was
Has anything ever worked perfectly when first released?
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If that was true, EA would have been dead in the water 12 years ago.
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I was up for a Steam competitor. I signed up for the Epic store a few years back. Tried to get the first free game. It wasn't available in my region despite being plastered all over the store in my region. The exact same thing happened the next month. Both of those games were available on Steam in my region at some pretty low prices by then.
Then, Epic started paying for exclusivity, making games not available in my region at all. I had at least deleted their stupid app by then anyway. Fuck Epic entirely.
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I was up for a Steam competitor.
GOG Galaxy has been good even before Epic Store existed.
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My only complaint about GOG is that developers treat it as an afterthought. Plenty of games that stop receiving updates, or are pulled out of the store entirely, while the Steam version remains maintained. Also, the required lack of DRM makes multiplayer online games relatively scarce.
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GOG is great. I have an account and have bought a few games there when I think of it. I just wish they had Souls games.
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Used to have similar problem with Steam back in the day.
Edit: I like how some people disagree that i experienced something by downvote. It's not like i can change it or something 😅 👌
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I don't doubt it, but I've been a pretty regular user since 2009, and I've never had a game advertised to me on the front page that wasn't available in my region. In fact, there are games I want that I know aren't available on Steam here, and the only way to get to the Steam page for them is by using a proxy or VPN. I definitely can't buy them with my account. It seems pretty amateurish of Epic to advertise unavailable games and to even let me click "buy" before telling me I can't buy it. Maybe they've fixed that by now, but whatever. The paid exclusivity bullcrap showed me where their priorities lie.
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Maybe just uh..
Put your games on steam?
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Steam won't let Tencent put their spyware on the platform.
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On what basis do you say that? There's tons of legit malware on there, just search for shit that implements denuvo.
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Valve happily censor their client and games for the Chinese audience.
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Nope, they have the moral high ground, like pioneering and perfecting how to market gambling and loot boxes to kids through video games.
Or do we only hate that when EA does it?
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Shocking literally no one, the game store that took a shot at the king with store that (initially) didn't have baseline stuff like reviews and a cart, and tried to get by on giving away product and paying a bunch of money to make stuff exclusive isn't doing so hot financially.
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On one hand, thanks to the nonstop giveaways, I have way more games on Epic than I do on Steam, so I have a reason to continue using Epic.
On the other hand, Epic's launcher runs like shit, constantly refreshes my library page, slow as hell, glitchy as hell, and makes me feel dirty when I use it.
Steam is just so cozy and is on the whole a much more enjoyable PC gaming experience. I imagine 95% of Epic users are people like me: sign in on Thursdays for the free game and then bounce.
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Have you tried Heroic Games Launcher?
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I know about its existence, but I'm not sure how safe is it as a way to prevent Epic (and potentially Tencent) from tracking my personal information.
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they have no excuse for it to be slow as shit
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thanks to the nonstop giveaways, I have way more games on Epic than I do on Steam
I still have more games on Steam, however, Itch.io has had a couple of insane bundles in the last couple of years, which mean I have way more games and content on Itch than on Steam, which I did not see coming. I still use Steam the most, though, because I'm used to their interface and it works really well on Linux.
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I talked to their support about the library force refresh and it's apparently intended. That library refresh is literally the only reason the EGS isn't open all the time like Steam is. Random data usage is bad, and can fuck off. I do not need random lag spikes.
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Valve has not optimized big library, so me with 4k games and good computer but Steam performs like PoS.
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My launcher shows that I have 379 games from Epic. Not DLC, not demos. Full games.
I have never given Epic a single cent and I never will. (That is to say, until they offer me something that makes me want to use their platform). They have no killer features - AT ALL.
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To make it worse, I have all these games, but I still rarely play them. Not that it’s a bad selection, but between steamdeck, gamepass and just a crazy backlog on Steam makes me rarely think of Epic store.
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LoL. Yeah I've got a ton and I've never actually launched a single one
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The "killer feature" is that they pay more to the developers, so if you are getting the exact same game on (e.g.) Steam versus Epic Games, then whomever actually made the game gets more money from the Epic sale. Isn't that a good thing?
(Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer, but either way, it's still the case that less money is taken by intermediaries, which is a good thing.)
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Except they only do that because its the only way to get publishers to use them over steam, and once they have a reliable customer base they will reneg on that generosity to gain profit.
We know this business strategy. It will not stay that way.
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That's a reason for developers to use them, not for consumers to use them.
EPICs anti-customer practices (such as trying to make everything exclusive) are reasons for consumers not to use them.
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However because of their 40% ownership, you're ALSO giving more money to Tencent.
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No, because epic has been engaging in anti consumer practices from the start. This is literally the only category epic has a leg up on steam, and if they didn't need to bully their way into the marketplace, I have no reason to believe they'd treat creators any better than they currently do customers
edit: The revelation that they are running the store at a loss just furthers me not believing they are helping developers from the goodness of their heart, it shows they're likely running the Walmart strategy of using their vast wealth to choke out their competition until there is none, and then once they have a monopoly, jack everything up, which'd probably include their cut of the pie
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Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer
You think?
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See it's not all negative news on the internet.
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EGS losing money has been great for gamers, as they continue to give away free games in an attempt to claw any marketshare. Gamers continue to win as long as this situation lasts. But reading these comments, nobody seems to recognize this.
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ESG losing money is great for me just on principle, Tim Sweeney can go fuck himself.
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Consumers also won when a Walmart would open up in their neighborhood and run the local stores out of business by selling everything at a loss.
Of course, once the competition was eliminated, Walmart stopped selling things at a loss.
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I have no idea why this is newsworthy. Epic's own 2019 documents and testimony in the Apple trial showed that the company did not expect the store to be profitable until 2024 or even 2027. The strategy of heavy investment and operating at a loss to turn a profit later worked for Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft, and many others. Even this week, there are headlines like "Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Achieves Breakeven Cash Flow".
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But all the other companies had in mind something else besides "gotta beat the other guys" and actually brought something to the table.
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You can't deny that Epic taking 12% revolutionized the industry, with Microsoft following suit and even Valve making some small changes. As Gabe himself said on the competition, "it keeps [them] honest". That's a win for game creators.
For the gamers, we got many free games and I think the Epic freebies inspired Microsoft to offer similar deals with Game Pass, Amazon with Prime, and even GOG recently gave away a pretty notable game, Blacksad, which was uncharacteristic in relation to their past giveaways.
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Spotify has never turned a profit, at least not yearly.
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That could be true, making it an even stronger argument.
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I have a crazy idea for Epic. Instead of paying a fortune for exclusives, leverage the lower 12% cut and have game publishers sell for less (so that the publisher makes the same amount on Steam and Epic)
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Gotta love the diehard linux users promoting their preferred OS on a topic even slightly related.
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Man, I enjoy Linux too, but I cannot see how its related to the post.
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Having been on Linux for over a year now, I don't. It's still plagued by instability, weird bugs, and big limitations whenever non-Steam games are involved.
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You mean games that arent available in steam at all, vor those which you haven't bought there? I found the easiest workaround for me was to simply add the games to my steam library and to launch it from there. Then I don't have to worry about what proton version I should use or whatnot.
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Yes, both from Valve working hard on compatibility and game devs testing against it
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Which destro would you recommend? I'm kind of sick of Windows.
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If you want a Couch Gaming Station I recommend you to look at ChimeraOS. Linux first that boots directly to Stream Big Picture (since it's based on SteamOS) and it supports emulators and Epic Game Store.
On my old i5-8700T with qUHD630 it pretty much was a install, reboot, login to Steam and start playing. My Wireless Xbox Controller USB dongle was plug'n'play.
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Nobara has, for me, been the most plug and play no headache distro I've touched, ever.
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What brand of graphics card do you have? If it's Nvidia Pop!_OS will likely work best. If you have an AMD card I've heard good things about EndeavorOS.
Also, feel free to shop around for a desktop environment (DE) you like, which controls the look and how things are organized. While distros have a default, it's pretty easy to swap them. I personally use KDE Plasma (the same DE the Steam Deck uses) with Pop!_OS
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Thanks for the tip but no
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What does this have to do with the Epic store?
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Not worth the hassle but you do you. Keep fighting the good fight.
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Keep fighting the good fight.
And it really is the good fight in this case. I've been running Linux on my gaming PC for around four years with very little trouble. Games from Epic and GOG run very well(for me at least) through Heroic Games Launcher. I've been using Windows for work on/off the last couple of years, but especially since they "upgraded" to Windows 11, it's such a relief to come home to Linux.
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Sorry, I'll wait some more. I tried two times getting back to Linux as I see the potential. It didn't work. I'm gonna stick to windows until some problems will be fixed, or Microsoft further enshittifies itself.
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No thanks
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I might actually buy a game of the app didn't constantly sign me out.
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I know, right! The "Remember Me" option does absolutely nothing ffs
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Would you though
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I've already purchased a few, tbh
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Seems to me that the most lucrative thing in gaming is still just making really good games.
Sure, there's Steam, but that's a fluke. The exception that proves the rule. Just get back to actual game making.
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But you have to give Valve credit for supporting Linux gaming witch if gets popular enough will create perfect competition for Windows. imagine system that requires 1GB or RAM instead of 4-5GB when idle , that doesn't spy on you and is more secure. Perfect for gaming IMHO if taken seriously.
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Windows PC gamers and Xbox gamers are more or less the only ones who game on non-*Nix kernels; PlayStation is BSD-derived, Switch is BSD+Android, Steam Deck is of course Linux, a lot of arcade cabinets run on Debian. Gaming on non-Windows platforms is absolutely viable, it's just being hidden from players by a thin layer of customization.
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Is it actually not profitable or is this one of those tax writeoff bullshit things where it makes them money in some indirect way
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Most likely actually non profitable. With crapton of Chinese cash, they can keep paying studios more of a cut than Steam, giveaway games, pay for exclusivity. Their goal right now isn't to make money, but to take market share
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Would that be because it is still a pale imitator not remotely competitive with steam?
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Doesn't need to be profitable, when they're just rolling around in Fortnite money wondering what to spend it on.
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then why they layoff like 10% of their staff recently?
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Because they're greedy?
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Well they're not gonna cut top salaries, can't have any of that, it's bad for business!! Imagine being able to only afford one yacht instead of your standard three! Gotta let those lackeys at the bottom of the pyramid go, what're they even holding up, anyway? The foundation of the company? Surely not.
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because profit + 10% of salary > profit
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It's the hip new tech company trend to help keep wages and salaries down.
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Everyone (in big tech at least) has. Just didn't want to feel left out.
Shouldn't have bought Mediatonic either.
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Whether its games stores or streaming services, the media seems to constantly miss the obvious, lack of accounted profits means no tax to pay.....
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that's also called tax evasion
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No... No, that's not tax evasion.
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Only way epic can compete, even with bloody ubisoft launcher, is to remove competition. Improving their store just isnt part of their business plan, if it was they would do it.
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I had epic game store before they started blasting free games for unreal tournament. That was a fun alpha and was excited to see what it was going to evolve into. Guess not now lol
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Fortnite killed that and I'm still bitter about it
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And it'll never be.
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Well yeah, of course it isn't profitable, when it's damn near malicious in how they treat their customers it's not surprising.
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Never bought anything there and probably never will, but I'm always there every thursday to get the free games. Heavy gog and steam user, and gamepass subscriber.
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Do you guys think e.g. YouTube or redshit is profitable despite of what they say and without "profit" that's pumped in by investors or mother companies?
it's just a business,
They get market share by loosing profit then once they are establish enough so most people won't leave if they change things and they change things and start to make profit.
At least that's the plan.-
Google's goal with YouTube was never profit. Had it been YT would end up on Google graveyard long time ago. They are looking for market dominance with video streaming which in turn provides a lot of useful data for mining. Ads are there to curb price of whole ordeal a bit.
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I mean, it’s trying to compete against Steam. A platform which has 99% of the games ever released on PC after its inception at the same price and with a great interface.
You’re not winning against that unless you actually sell the same games at a lower price (and I don’t think they can afford to do that)
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It would help if their service itself wasn't just objectively worse, but they're not even trying to compete on quality. Their only selling points are free games and platform exclusives. It's like they haven't even tried to actually make a better service.
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So like xbox and Xbox live but without the Xbox lol
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Also you can't trust epic. They have been caught scraping user data and they negotiate shitty deals which actually harm users on the PC platform overall. Fuck epic.
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I wonder if GOG is profitable?
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I wish I had an adblock for the epic launcher.
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Just use the Heroic launcher
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Bye Felecia
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The only time I paid for anything on epic was Kingdom Hearts and that's only because I've wanted a PC Version for 20 years
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Good.
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That's really sad. I like Unreal Engine a lot, I hope it doesn't suffer from this.
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I imagine Unreal Engine is likely what keeps that store open. That and Fortnite.
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I was upset when Epic acquired Rocket League and drove it into the ground, and then I was pissed when Epic paid for exclusivity on ubisoft games. I bought one game on Epic game stores app two years ago and have since claimed every free game they offer every week whether I care to play it or not. I have also repurchased that game on Steam, so literally the only time I even open epic games is to claim the weekly free game and cost them money.
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Epic has exclusivity on all Ubisoft games? I stopped buying Ubi games years ago, so I guess that's fine with me. I hope Ubisoft loses money on that deal.
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I don't LIKE the epic games store, but it is kind of fucking strange, that valve is a company whose literal monopoly is not only not questioned, but specifically celebrated.
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Haha
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I recently played hitman 3 with Lutris on Kubuntu in Epicstore.
Sync was working well. Game was running well.
It is not Steam (which has a native Linux installation), but at least it works.
If the price is the same I go with steam, if epic is much cheaper I go with epic.
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Lucky you, that you managed to make Epic run properly over Linux!
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It was really straightforward to be honest. But I did it 2 weeks ago.
Maybe 6-12 months ago was more difficult.
I installed Lutris I opened it, then installed epic store Then I logged in and installed hitman.
To play I have to open lutris > epic store > hitman 3.
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327 comments
Maybe less investment in trying to monopolise the market and more investment in developing their shopping platform so it’s not a smouldering turd.
This is the most asinine approach IMO.
"Let's release a worse product. Hey, no one likes it. Okay, let's spend money on games so THEY can essentially force people to use our software. Hey, still, no one really likes it. Okay, let's try to give away stuff for free. Hey, people use our thing for the free stuff but still no one likes it for any other reason."
They just keep spending money to up their numbers and their product is still missing features and inferior to competition. They spend big money on exclusivity, but that is only temporary - if that's how you're getting your customers, you're going to have to keep doing it forever to retain them. If people only use you for free stuff, you're just going to have to keep giving stuff away at a loss to retain them.
This model is not sustainable. You're not doing anything that aligns value with your customers besides just throwing free stuff at them. That's not a business.
What's especially sad to me is they could literally have just spent that same money to improve their launcher and have an actual product. Instead they've invested in temporary stats. They're essentially bankrolling other devs on games with temporary popularity instead of in their lifelong product.
Using other games exclusivity as sway into your ecosystem only works when you have a good product the person would be interested in but they haven't seen it yet. EGS is currently something people are essentially coerced into using but no one really gets any real value out of it other than "well I couldn't buy this game anywhere else"
Plus it's not like there wasn't room for a good shopping client, if you go smart about it.
Steam had at the time - and still has - tons of bad UI design, stemming for its very old layouts wrangling with newer client additions and changes. Plus Steam for the longest time until the new client solved it had serious issues with late boots and hanging closures. GOG had just tried to bring out their own client a few years before, but in the move to GOG Galaxy had gotten a lot of ire and fucked a lot of things up. All the per-developer clients were berated constantly.
There was room there. But Epic, hell, this is so not it. Your client is so much worse than even the bad competitors...
I think it just depends on how long they can do this. I think they are banking on getting the fortnite kiddies hooked on the store. They typically have far less disposable income (yet they still charge kids for 20$ skins), they will most likely not have a super large steam library (probably due to the aformentioned skins) so they are banking on the store being that kids default to Epic rather than steam. Its not terribly odd since Steam basically did the same thing, when it used to have those mega sales with the flash sales and the such. That is when the love for Steam basically exploded and its been cruising on that hypetrain for a while.
We made the shittiest thing and nobody likes it. We’re all out of ideas.
Yeah, if I'm reading that right they're complaining that they're stuck at phase one of enshitification - lose money on aquiring users. The reason behind that is they're not able to monopolize the market for their games. "These damn mobile stores won't let us turn the corner and put the clamps on our users. Fix it please."
If you count all of Steam’s features (Steam Input, Big Picture Mode, Proton etc), then Epic has decades of catching up to do. The problem is that usually executives will choose the “easy way out” of problems, so let’s just give free games instead of making a good platform.
Well not to discourage them but I like Epic games because every Thursday they give me a free game sometimes two. Hell all the 100 games I own on their platform I gotten for free. So maybe that's why it's not profitable?
Beyond that I see no monopoly every game on their I can find on Steam and so far have had no issues with it.
They literally pay for exclusivity. It's weird that people seem to selectively ignore that every time someone brings up their desire to get free games from them.
I have not bought a single game from their store. I have over 300.
I also haven't played any of the games I got for free. Maybe one day I will, but today is not that day.
Oh yeah? Find these:
3 out of 10
A Knight's Quest
Alan Wake Remastered
Alan Wake 2
Assassin's Creed Mirage
Battle Breakers
Binary Smoke
Castle Storm 2
Core
Corruption 2029
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Dangerous Driving
Dauntless
Dead Island 2
Diabotical
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed
Goat Simulator 3
Grit
Infinitesimals
John Carpenter's Toxic Commando
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition
Kingdom Hearts series
The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
Ooblets
PC Building Simulator 2
ReadySet Heroes
Rocket League
RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures
Salt and Sacrifice
Saturnalia
The Settlers: New Allies
Shoulders of Giants
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Space Punks
Star Trek: Resurgence
Tchia
The Crew Motorfest
The Expanse: A Telltale Series
Tortuga - A Pirate’s Tale
Touch Type Tale
Witchfire
The Wolf Among Us 2