More than 5 years since launch, the Epic Game Store has still not turned profitable

sharknice said:
I'm pretty sure all of those pricing justifications were just speculations from random people. My speculation is Nintendo just charged what the market would bear. People would pay more for higher quality games with more content so they charged more.
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You may want to look back and see what flash memory cost back in the late 80's and early 90's. Heck the PS1 memory cards used 1 meg and were $25 back at launch. Sure they were overpriced, but imagine what a 32 meg eprom cost 2 years earlier. Plus the game carts had to be bought through nintendo, so you had to pay them through the nose to make them for you. If you made a mistake in how many you ordered, you either had to wait months to get more as you ran out on the shelves...or be stuck with lots of unsold carts.
 
OutOfPhase said:
Turok, Mario 64, and Wave Race were just incredible titles.

I got rid of a lot of my old stuff, but I really wish I kept the N64 for the next gen (of kids).
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Ah, yes. Wave Race 64... It really had impressive water/visuals for the time. It was definitely a cut above anything PlayStation or Saturn could do, albeit a little blockier and with lower resolution textures (I blame Nintendo cheaping out on the texture cache (only 4KB)... Carts over CD certainly didn't help matters.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Ah, yes. Wave Race 64... It really had impressive water/visuals for the time. It was definitely a cut above anything PlayStation or Saturn could do, albeit a little blockier and with lower resolution textures (I blame Nintendo cheaping out on the texture cache (only 4KB)... Carts over CD certainly didn't help matters.
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That was the limitation of the Nintendo 64 for sure.

Hardware back in the early 90's (which it would've been during development for its launch in June 1996) was not as "figured out" as it is now. They didn't really full know what was the most important aspects to spend money on to get all aspects of the hardware working right. Knowing what they know in hindsight, I'm sure they would've put in a larger texture cache as that was the major bottle neck with the hardware. It ultimately defined what all the games would look like until Gamecube.

Heck, even coding wasn't really figured out well either. There was a recent thread that some modder for fun improved the run speed of Mario 64 after working with the code for an hour or so on original hardware. There's simply way more knowledge now about both hardware and software in games now than before.
It really was the wild west of 3d gaming. They did the best they could with very imperfect knowledge. Nintendo 64 in that regard is charming. We don't really get hardware advancements like that where things feel like they're on the edge of something new at this point. It's been all iterations since.

It might be interesting to see a timeline of the history of gaffs in the 3d world. Because 3DFx, nVidia, ATi, even S3, (maybe even SGI?), etc all have made quite a few mistakes in hardware. And also what the results of those failures were. And also perhaps lessons learned.

EDIT: As another side note, I'm sure Sega would've made massive changes to Sega Saturn had they the benefit of hindsight. And similarly the PS1 would've likely been a very different machine had they had the vision of pushing more 3d like Nintendo did just as a few other examples that would be interesting to explore from a technology retrospective. All of this hardware always had to compromise on performance to price and what 'kind' of performance they wanted.
 
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Epic seems to give out a free game every week almost how do they do that without losing money? I prefer to buy on steam tends to be cheaper and the multiplayer usually works. Recall friends who bought wreckfest on epic couldn't see my server while those on steam could.
 
Kirika said:
Epic seems to give out a free game every week almost how do they do that without losing money? I prefer to buy on steam tends to be cheaper and the multiplayer usually works. Recall friends who bought wreckfest on epic couldn't see my server while those on steam could.
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They are hoping that by giving out lots of stuff, people will switch. They seem to forget if you want people to switch you need to be at least as good, if not better. Otherwise people will take the free shit, but not come back to spend money.
 
Kirika said:
Epic seems to give out a free game every week almost how do they do that without losing money? I prefer to buy on steam tends to be cheaper and the multiplayer usually works. Recall friends who bought wreckfest on epic couldn't see my server while those on steam could.
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Their game store may loose money but it’s easily offset by everything else. They are reinvesting their Fortnight money well, the UE5 engine is printing money, Fortnite makes more than they know what to do with and the Stores install base continues to grow and that’s the hard part they will gradually convert over some of the user to spending money there. Us older people are Steam entrenched, the younger people out there not so much.
 
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Lakados said:
Their game store may loose money but it’s easily offset by everything else. They are reinvesting their Fortnight money well, the UE5 engine is printing money, Fortnight makes more than they know what to do with and the Stores install base continues to grow and that’s the hard part they will gradually convert over some of the user to spending money there. Us older people are Steam entrenched, the younger people out there not so much.
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In other words, Epic loses some of their Fortnite profit so real gamers can get some free games ;)

Not so bad if you think about it!
 
t1337duder said:
In other words, Epic loses some of their Fortnite profit so real gamers can get some free games ;)

Not so bad if you think about it!
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I mean Fortnight players are as real of a gamer as a CoD gamer is, or a WoW player, or a FF14 player, but yeah.
Their old lead on the project has done a shit job of converting free users to paying ones though.
 
Have zero free games from Epic, games I have are all bought. Not many, 4. As a gamer I don’t see anything EPIC store has that is better than Steam, except earlier access to the games I bought.
 
Lakados said:
I mean Fortnight players are as real of a gamer as a CoD gamer is, or a WoW player, or a FF14 player, but yeah.
Their old lead on the project has done a shit job of converting free users to paying ones though.
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It's like a mobile game. It offers a simulated game experience, but it's barely a game. Is someone who plays one game on their phone really a "gamer"? Sounds like a stretch. If I read a book once, does that make me a reader?
 
t1337duder said:
It's like a mobile game. It offers a simulated game experience, but it's barely a game. Is someone who plays one game on their phone really a "gamer"? Sounds like a stretch. If I read a book once, does that make me a reader?
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Fortnite is a battle royale tps, how is that like a mobile game? It's a true shooter and can also scale up incredibly in graphics on the pc.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Fortnite is a battle royale tps, how is that like a mobile game? It's a true shooter and can also scale up incredibly in graphics on the pc.
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It's a simulated game experience meant to sell you on microtransactions. The game is filled with bots that present themselves as players.

So players play the game thinking they're playing against other players, but are really just playing against extremely dumb bots. It's not anything like playing an actual online game. CoD Mobile is identical. At least that's what my experience was years ago. I guess you wouldn't know unless you took the dive yourself.

Extremely barebones game experience + game fueled by microtransactons = mobile game. Don't let them fool you with pretty graphics. Shitty phone games have good graphics these days.
 
Lakados said:
Their game store may loose money but it’s easily offset by everything else. They are reinvesting their Fortnight money well, the UE5 engine is printing money, Fortnight makes more than they know what to do with and the Stores install base continues to grow and that’s the hard part they will gradually convert over some of the user to spending money there. Us older people are Steam entrenched, the younger people out there not so much.
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Lakados said:
I mean Fortnight players are as real of a gamer as a CoD gamer is, or a WoW player, or a FF14 player, but yeah.
Their old lead on the project has done a shit job of converting free users to paying ones though.
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You need to tell your autocorrect to chill.

The last stats we have from the EGS shows the average amount spent on the store, including Fortnite microtransactions, was only a little over a dollar. The younger people that Epic attracts with Fortnite are not spending any money, even as they are getting older and starting to have their own disposable income. Epic is riding on the revenue from the small percentage of the player base who are whales, and Sweeney is wasting all that money away with his frivolous lawsuits against Apple, Google, and Valve.
 
Armenius said:
The last stats we have from the EGS shows the average amount spent on the store, including Fortnite microtransactions, was only a little over a dollar. The younger people that Epic attracts with Fortnite are not spending any money, even as they are getting older and starting to have their own disposable income. Epic is riding on the revenue from the small percentage of the player base who are whales, and Sweeney is wasting all that money away with his frivolous lawsuits against Apple, Google, and Valve.
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Good. Let him shoot his own foot. For as anti-PC as Epic was when Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein were still around, I'd say them going bankrupt from said lawsuits is laser guided karma for hating on a community that enabled them to be what they are today. The only bad thing is the non-management staff would suffer as a result.
 
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Mr. Bluntman said:
Good. Let him shoot his own foot. For as anti-PC as Epic was when Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein were still around, I'd say them going bankrupt from said lawsuits is laser guided karma for hating on a community that enabled them to be what they are today. The only bad thing is the non-management staff would suffer as a result.
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In all fairness the fact Valve gets away with a clause saying if you sell the software cheaper than here anywhere else we will pull it is kinda BS. Even Apple doesn’t have the balls to pull that move. The fact that Apple was able to deflect every argument Epic and Google threw at them to compare them against Valve who is the overwhelming force in digital distribution and say “if they can legally do this with no repercussions then we should be able to do what we are doing because it’s nowhere near that bad” and have it hold up in court says a lot about Valve..
And I kind of want to side with Epic on that front.
 
Lakados said:
In all fairness the fact Valve gets away with a clause saying if you sell the software cheaper than here anywhere else we will pull it is kinda BS.
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I think there's a class action lawsuit for this reason.
Even Apple doesn’t have the balls to pull that move.
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Apple doesn't have to do this to get the same result. Their iOS devices doesn't let developers offer their software outside of their App Store. That's the whole point of the Epic Vs Apple lawsuit, and why the EU will force Apple to allow side loading next year.
The fact that Apple was able to deflect every argument Epic and Google threw at them to compare them against Valve who is the overwhelming force in digital distribution and say “if they can legally do this with no repercussions then we should be able to do what we are doing because it’s nowhere near that bad” and have it hold up in court says a lot about Valve..
And I kind of want to side with Epic on that front.
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The problem here is that when you buy a game from Steam, you can use it anywhere. Linux, Mac, Windows, it doesn't matter because you own the game. You can't exactly buy Resident Evil 4 on iOS and then install it on Android, or even vice versa. That's not to say that Valve should be allowed to force games to have certain prices at other not Steam stores. Definitely put a hot poker to Gabe Newell's balls for that one. Realize the reason Steam is so dominant is because they constantly do things better as a store. While Apple doesn't have to force developers to do anything, because they already force users to use their App Store. Even still, iOS has Metal which makes developers lives harder than needed. You can bet that Resident Evil 8 for iOS won't get an Android port because it uses Metal API. You won't find Resident Evil 8 for MacOS on Steam, despite that Steam is on MacOS. The game is in Apple's store though. Where as Total Warhammer II is on MacOS, Linux, and Windows but you only need to buy the game once for it to work on all platforms. While Epic doesn't have this exact problem, it's not doing things better than Steam.
 
Lakados said:
In all fairness the fact Valve gets away with a clause saying if you sell the software cheaper than here anywhere else we will pull it is kinda BS. Even Apple doesn’t have the balls to pull that move. The fact that Apple was able to deflect every argument Epic and Google threw at them to compare them against Valve who is the overwhelming force in digital distribution and say “if they can legally do this with no repercussions then we should be able to do what we are doing because it’s nowhere near that bad” and have it hold up in court says a lot about Valve..
And I kind of want to side with Epic on that front.
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That's not what Steam's TOS says. It says that if you sell a Steam key cheaper somewhere else that you need to offer the same discount on Steam in a timely manner. It says nothing about not being able to sell your game cheaper on another launcher.

The exact phrasing:

It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.

If you're selling the game on the Epic Games Store or GOG, you're not selling a Steam key.
 
Lakados said:
In all fairness the fact Valve gets away with a clause saying if you sell the software cheaper than here anywhere else we will pull it is kinda BS. Even Apple doesn’t have the balls to pull that move. The fact that Apple was able to deflect every argument Epic and Google threw at them to compare them against Valve who is the overwhelming force in digital distribution and say “if they can legally do this with no repercussions then we should be able to do what we are doing because it’s nowhere near that bad” and have it hold up in court says a lot about Valve..
And I kind of want to side with Epic on that front.
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Alright, fair enough.
 
Armenius said:
That's not what Steam's TOS says. It says that if you sell a Steam key cheaper somewhere else that you need to offer the same discount on Steam in a timely manner. It says nothing about not being able to sell your game cheaper on another launcher.

The exact phrasing:

It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.

If you're selling the game on the Epic Games Store or GOG, you're not selling a Steam key.
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Based on my experiences it seems like this either isn't enforced or only applies to the base price before any discounts because I buy the majority of my steam keys from authorized key sellers or directly from the publisher because they're almost always cheaper(on sale).
 
Armenius said:
That's not what Steam's TOS says. It says that if you sell a Steam key cheaper somewhere else that you need to offer the same discount on Steam in a timely manner. It says nothing about not being able to sell your game cheaper on another launcher.

The exact phrasing:

It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.

If you're selling the game on the Epic Games Store or GOG, you're not selling a Steam key.
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Valve has been fighting with this in court since 2021 they have a history of pulling games from the Steam Store where the advertised prices on the developer's website don't have price parity with the Steam Store.
So if the Developer shows it as being available direct, from Epic, and from Steam and those links take to a retail (non-discounted) price of say $55 direct from them, $56 on Epic, and $65 from Steam, then it violates their price parity TOS as well.
The courts decided in 2022 there was enough evidence showing that Valve was doing this that they allowed the lawsuits filed in 2021 to proceed, and Valve has been making changes to its policy ever since with a revision again in 2023.

There's enough there that 5 days ago Gabe was ordered to make an in-court appearance to explain why this is happening
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gabe-...-deposition-for-valve-v-wolfire-games-lawsuit

Because ultimately the courts have this on record:
the court acknowledges the more detailed claim that “a Steam account manager informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys.’”
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs...fail-to-get-dismissed---now-what-#close-modal
 
Lakados said:
Valve has been fighting with this in court since 2021 they have a history of pulling games from the Steam Store where the advertised prices on the developer's website don't have price parity with the Steam Store.
So if the Developer shows it as being available direct, from Epic, and from Steam and those links take to a retail (non-discounted) price of say $55 direct from them, $56 on Epic, and $65 from Steam, then it violates their price parity TOS as well.
The courts decided in 2022 there was enough evidence showing that Valve was doing this that they allowed the lawsuits filed in 2021 to proceed, and Valve has been making changes to its policy ever since with a revision again in 2023.

There's enough there that 5 days ago Gabe was ordered to make an in-court appearance to explain why this is happening
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gabe-...-deposition-for-valve-v-wolfire-games-lawsuit

Because ultimately the courts have this on record:
the court acknowledges the more detailed claim that “a Steam account manager informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys.’”
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs...fail-to-get-dismissed---now-what-#close-modal
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If you have examples of games being pulled from Steam that were pulled for being sold on other digital storefronts for less aside from Wolfire's allegations I'd like to see them.

On your first link, nothing is mentioned about Gabe being summoned for price parity issues. It specifically mentions the old 30% share due to Steam's monopolistic position nonsense.

On the second link, you left out this part:
And it wants to see if there’s more alleged evidence like that. So that claim can go to the next phase.

As in, the court wants to find out if this was just the action of a single rogue employee or indicative of company policy not expressed explicitly in their agreements.
 
Armenius said:
If you have examples of games being pulled from Steam that were pulled for being sold on other digital storefronts for less aside from Wolfire's allegations I'd like to see them.

On your first link, nothing is mentioned about Gabe being summoned for price parity issues. It specifically mentions the old 30% share due to Steam's monopolistic position nonsense.

On the second link, you left out this part:
And it wants to see if there’s more alleged evidence like that. So that claim can go to the next phase.

As in, the court wants to find out if this was just the action of a single rogue employee or indicative of company policy not expressed explicitly in their agreements.
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Will be interesting to see what happens.

Slightly related, I do know Steam stopped allowing non-Steamworks keys to stop activating on Steam years back. Essentially people would buy non-Steam versions for less money and activate them on Steam. The idea was this would convert non-Steam purchasers to Steam purchasers. But it didn't work out, and for smaller independent games the gamers choose to support the developers directly. Meaning Valve doesn't get a profit, but pay for the bandwidth and support. I can see why they stopped this practice.

I bought DCS F-18 on Steam in 2020, but used the key with the standalone game as that is where most of my DCS products are. As of now, it seems like Steam and the developer branches are entirely different. If you purchase on Steam, you can't use it on the standalone launcher, or if you buy on the standalone, you can't activate it on Steam. There were times I wanted to buy DCS stuff on Steam as I had some Steam Wallet balance but that would lock it out from the rest of my products.
 
Maybe an opportunity to restrict the bleeding 🤔

The Verdict Is In and Tim Sweeney Is Celebrating as Epic Games Wins Its Case after a Federal Jury Finds Google in Violation of US Antitrust Laws

https://www.thefpsreview.com/2023/1...nds-google-in-violation-of-us-antitrust-laws/

Below is a summary of the questions asked of jurors

“Did Epic prove, by a preponderance of the evidence and in accordance with the instructions given to you . . .”
  • The existence of a relevant antitrust market? YES
  • That Google willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct in any market that Epic proved? YES
  • That it was injured as a result of Google’s violation of the antitrust laws? YES
  • That Google entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade in a relevant antitrust market? YES
  • That Google unlawfully tied the use of its Google Play Store to its Google Play Billing? YES
Google has already said (via Engadget) that it plans to challenge the verdict

A summary (via The Verge) of both lawsuits can be found here.
 
Marees said:
Maybe an opportunity to restrict the bleeding 🤔

The Verdict Is In and Tim Sweeney Is Celebrating as Epic Games Wins Its Case after a Federal Jury Finds Google in Violation of US Antitrust Laws

https://www.thefpsreview.com/2023/1...nds-google-in-violation-of-us-antitrust-laws/

Below is a summary of the questions asked of jurors

“Did Epic prove, by a preponderance of the evidence and in accordance with the instructions given to you . . .”
  • The existence of a relevant antitrust market? YES
  • That Google willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct in any market that Epic proved? YES
  • That it was injured as a result of Google’s violation of the antitrust laws? YES
  • That Google entered into one or more agreements that unreasonably restrained trade in a relevant antitrust market? YES
  • That Google unlawfully tied the use of its Google Play Store to its Google Play Billing? YES
Google has already said (via Engadget) that it plans to challenge the verdict

A summary (via The Verge) of both lawsuits can be found here.
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For anybody wondering, the difference between this and the Apple case is that Epic was able to convince the jury that Google engaged in shady tactics to enforce use of their store and payment systems. Epic wasn't able to prove that to the jury in the Apple case.
 
Armenius said:
For anybody wondering, the difference between this and the Apple case is that Epic was able to convince the jury that Google engaged in shady tactics to enforce use of their store and payment systems. Epic wasn't able to prove that to the jury in the Apple case.
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I believe in the apple case, it was decided by a judge not jury?
 
Newbie_52 said:
I believe in the apple case, it was decided by a judge not jury?
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Yes but Apple provided the courts with a very detailed breakdown of their costs and profit margins.
Apple also pulled data from the independent payment systems from Korea to show they at most saved 5% over the Apple one.

Google didn’t provide the financials and they don’t offer near the same level of services the Apple Store does. So it was a much simpler case.
 
Epic had to build up their Library which was part of the problem 5 years ago no games really to purchase. I think if had Epic wallet store cards at Walmart Target and Best Buy it would increase sales and knowledge that the store exists.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
People who login to claim the free game every week are counted as active users.
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I believe that people that play games that use Epic Online Services for multiplayer and/or Easy AntiCheat (Bought by Epic about a year ago?) are counted as well. For instance when you play Returnal on Steam it will nag you at every start that it needs to create an Epic account and link it to your Steam profile in order to pay Multiplayer until you allow it.
 
Bankie said:
I believe that people that play games that use Epic Online Services for multiplayer and/or Easy AntiCheat (Bought by Epic about a year ago?) are counted as well. For instance when you play Returnal on Steam it will nag you at every start that it needs to create an Epic account and link it to your Steam profile in order to pay Multiplayer until you allow it.
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I don't know, I just played the tribes 3 test (on steam) and I believe it has easy anti-cheat and didn't see any prompts about epic.
 
Comixbooks said:
Was it good? I didn't even know they had a test going on.
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They're short, that one was only for several days I believe. They didn't say when the next one was going to be. I had some fun but I'll be interested to see how it evolves.
 
Furious_Styles said:
I don't know, I just played the tribes 3 test (on steam) and I believe it has easy anti-cheat and didn't see any prompts about epic.
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Yeah, it can do it in the background without asking as well. There was an old version of EAC that didn't require EOS but IIRC Epic shut it down in order to force devs to use the EOS-enabled version.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Ah, yes. Wave Race 64... It really had impressive water/visuals for the time. It was definitely a cut above anything PlayStation or Saturn could do, albeit a little blockier and with lower resolution textures (I blame Nintendo cheaping out on the texture cache (only 4KB)... Carts over CD certainly didn't help matters.
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The water physics were ahead of their time that's for sure, but I thought the Jet Moto series were better games all around.
 
Furious_Styles said:
I don't know, I just played the tribes 3 test (on steam) and I believe it has easy anti-cheat and didn't see any prompts about epic.
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Huh...didn't know they were doing another one.

Don't know if I could play it though. Every Tribes after Tribes 2 hasn't held up IMO...although I really tried to like Vengeance.

Too bad they never did a re-master of 2. Maybe the newer games were a better experience for some younger players who never played Starsiege or T2.
 
Monkey34 said:
Huh...didn't know they were doing another one.

Don't know if I could play it though. Every Tribes after Tribes 2 hasn't held up IMO...although I really tried to like Vengeance.

Too bad they never did a re-master of 2. Maybe the newer games were a better experience for some younger players who never played Starsiege or T2.
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Having never played tribes before I had some fun with Ascend. Thought they definitely made hitscan too powerful and went way overboard with the monetization scheme.
 
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