Epic Games Store still isn't profitable five years after launch, says GM
In recent testimony in the Epic Games v. Google lawsuit, EGS General Manager Steve Allison revealed that the platform is still not profitable.
Five years ago, Epic Games launched the Epic Games Store to try to give users a new platform outside of Steam to download and play games. It wanted to capture half the PC gaming martket, but recent reports show that five years in, EGS still isn’t profitable. Epic Games has found itself in a predicament over the last few years doing battle with Apple and Google in court. Apple and Epic may be done with legal proceedings until an appeal, but Epic and Google are still at it, and a recent court appearance forced Epic to share some unfortunate stats.
It was Epic Games Store General Manager Steve Allison that shared word of EGS’s struggle to become profitable over the last five years, as shared by The Verge. This week, Allison took the stand to testify against Google’s unfair practices in listing and delisting apps on Google Play, similar to the case against Apple. In his testimony, Allison answered a number of questions, one of which included sharing that Epic Games Store hadn’t been profitable since it launched in 2018.
Source: Xfire
The goal of the Epic Games Store is still growth, and Fortnite and Unreal Engine 5 still cover the lion’s share of the company’s income, but Allison’s testimony revealed that Valve is still the dominant force in PC gaming platforms.
Epic Games and Google have been headed for a court date ever since Epic Games goaded Apple into delisting Fortnite by purposely putting an in-game payment option in the mobile app, breaking Apple’s rules about circumventing App Store charges. That saw Apple and Epic go to court over Apple’s apparent domination of the mobile app arena. Although Epic was able to get a win out of the judge deciding that Apple should allow third-party payment options, it lost quite a bit more for its methods of pushing Apple to delist Fortnite, and Google would go on to countersue Epic Games based on the rulings in the Apple case. If that wasn’t bad enough, Epic Games also laid off 900 employees recently as a result of the expenses it has incurred partially due to these court cases.
Epic Games Store not being profitable certainly isn’t helping the company out and one wonders just how long Epic will continue to pour money into the platform. Nonetheless, as the Epic Games v. Google case carries on, stay tuned for more updates here at Shacknews.
-
Shacknews
replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Epic Games Store still isn't profitable five years after launch, says GM
-
-
Two games for me. Tetris Effect and Alan Wake 2 (which technically was purchased via gmg, but yeah).
I'll begrudgingly be grabbing the AW2 expansions as well when they arrive. And whatever Remedy does next because I love what they do, and probably Fumito Ueda's next game which they're also funding and publishing like Remedy. So that publishing initiative will be doing more for them on my end than giving away hundreds of games over the years. Probably a good decision, but I still hate using their app and storefront.
I am curious where the Max Payne Remakes from Remedy will land. I believe Rockstar is financing those, so will they be a fucking Rockstar Launcher exclusive?? God damn it.
-
-
-
Profit is pretty straightforward. Headcount working on the product, operating costs to run it, marketing/promotional costs (free games, etc) vs the revenue brought in from their 12% cut of sales. There's no reason to think they're being tricky here. They've intentionally burned cash to try to grow marketshare so the 12% cut eventually becomes at high enough scale to offset their other costs (as well as reducing the need for things like free games to gain share).
-
unprofitable can be bad optically tho, it provides the argument that steam does need 30% to stay alive. the reality i guess tho theyre unprofitable regardless of cut
-
A big thing is Valve and Steam more or less created the market organically and slowly. They didn't invent digital distribution but they pretty much perfected what we know it as today, and they went a while on Steam before it started allowing third parties on there. So there wasn't some big expensive push to capture market share because there wasn't really a market yet.
Today there is a market and Steam dominates it so there's this huge expensive barrier to entry. I'm not surprised Epic hasn't made a profit yet, and won't for years.
I'm really curious though - Steam's big thing was it was required for HL2, one of the biggest games of all time, and between being a well done service and being required for a game the hardcore gamers liked that really cemented it as a base. Epic has Fortnite and that's great and all but I'm curious what the average person thinks of EGS and the client. Not the average Chatty user, we're all mad here, just curious how many people see it as a gaming platform they care about and/or like. Because the way I see it (and I'm a Chatty user so I don't count as normal) most people see it as either that thing that they have to run for Fortnite or that thing that gives them free games every week they'll never play, or that thing that's holding some game you like hostage and you'll wait it out and play your backlog in the meantime on Steam. Like I'm curious how many people saw Borderlands 3 on there and, when faced with the issue of not having all their Borderlands games on the same service, just said "nah, I'll just wait and get it on Steam"
I fully see the benefit to having multiple competing services, not having all the eggs on one basket, competition breeds better prices, etc. but a lot of folks really would be content to just have literally everything on Steam and for all the other services to just disappear tomorrow. If someone other than Valve or GabeN took over Steam tomorrow that might change (different field, but look at how Unity basically Paula Deen'd themselves overnight) but for now Steam basically *is* PC Gaming.
-
-
-
