A new court filing has revealed some interesting new details about Epic Games and Epic Games Store. According to the filling, Epic has lost around $181 million & $273 million on EGS in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
This basically means that Epic Games Store has not been profitable these past two years. Epic expects its store to turn a profit in 2023, though this sounds like an optimistic scenario. Furthermore, Epic’s exclusives are not that profitable for the company.
Additionally, EGS has currently more than 160 million registered users and more than 56 million monthly active users.
Lastly, the 12% distribution amount charged by EGS is sufficient to cover the operating costs of EGS.
It will be interesting to see whether EGS will become profitable in 2023. It will also be interesting to see whether Epic will keep signing up new exclusive deals in order to further increase its market share.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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EGS is just spending up that CCP money like there’s no tomorrow. Lol. The 56 million users part is bullshit, it’s propped up by bribes aka “free games” that are handed out like welfare every month. If it weren’t for bribes in the form of games and bogus exclusivity deals, nobody would ever talk about the Epic Games Spyware Store – not even in passing.
Numbers could have been adjusted to fit the narrative they are trying to push in court against Apple
So faking their books in a major court dispute against one of the most powerful tech company in the US? I highly doubt that.
https://media4.giphy.com/media/u1r17BYXVodfW/giphy.gif
The ironic thing is that I would probably have at least a somewhat positive opinion of EGS if it weren’t for the forced exclusives. Instead I’ve gotten hundreds of free games from them without giving them a dime of support. Blow me, Timmy Tencent.
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i dont care about the exclusivity as much as i care that the shop is trash, awful ui, no forums lacks features, and it has random crashing error messages when i am not using it, wtf? How unfinished its this thing?
most other stores I use have forums even GOG has forums it might not have the same exposure as most other launchers but it still offeres features epic doesnt have.
even the free games are at a limit https://imgur.com/a/4ykLYWj https://media4.giphy.com/media/dC9DTdqPmRnlS/giphy-downsized-medium.gif
i never paid anything on epic games or uplay, amamzon has prime, and steam and humble bundle i buy games with mix of free games
so like Gone home, i never bought 4 copies, Alan wake i bought Steam & gog and epic gave away that version for fre
I buy games exclusively on GOG and Steam because I like the platforms and I’m protecting my investment. I’ll never spend a penny on Epic, or UPlay.
and just hope your internet doesn’t go down because you can’t use any of your games. they say they have an offline mode but you got to go online and login to use it!!!??
How ungrateful of you.
If you’re “grateful” to a company, you’re a chump. Companies exist to make a profit off of consumers and suckers. Whose grateful for that? Pathetic.
I’m grateful so long as i don’t spend money on EGS. The moment i spend a dime is the moment i expect the company to cater to me.
Maybe Epic is really run by a bunch of American Patriots who figure the best way to fight against China is hit them in their wallet and waste all of their money.
Good guy Epic.
Yeah, that poor oppressive, genocidal Chinese government. Whatever will they do now that Winnie the Pooh’s feewings are hurts?
If it weren’t for their sh*tty attitude back in 2019 then I probably would’ve picked up a few games from them by now, but I never will. I have way too much self-respect
because there’s no money to be made in giving things away for free.
they already knew this. which they can also afford. they make their earnings through residuals and licensing deals which grants them the ability to squander in different ventures.
This^^. This post is quite sensational. It is not the first article of its kind that I see on this site. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the last either. The fact is that I took the hook… For some media, it seems a click is more important than offering quality and contextualized content.
what ? where is the sensationalism in this article? do you have better info ? are you an epic games employe so you Know what they are saying is incorrect ?, do you Know the actual benefit numbers of the EGS?, do you have some other info so yo can debunk this article ?
not to mention literally billions of dollars on Fortnite alone. Losing a quarter billion on EGS is just their kindness to the industry. <3 Epic
Yep, but they have a long-term plan. their target is the teenagers who has little access to money and as they grow up they will have a long catalogue of games on epic store rather than steam.
You or me want our games on steam because we have all our games or more than 95% of the games on steam, now similar behavioural theory is applicable on them as well, they will want all their games on epic rather than steam.
kinda 1/4 to 1/2 of games epic gave away of all those free games where already free on other stores like steam / humble bundle, gog, uplay
with epic https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1c3cea63cb30aec8481734bfa8ae9d2116a4167f0883038bea7f94cbc49a2fae.png
here are the similar games for gone home, i never bought any of those copies but Alan wake i bought 2 copies. some companies are double dipping it’s how i got 3-4 copies of some games..
holly shet most of you are absolute morons.
That doesn’t change the fact that with 12% provision they will never get profitable with EGS, which was and still is their whole shtick.
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“56 million monthly active users”. I wonder how many are left if you deduct those who play Fortnite and those who log in every week for the free games.
^^
Exactly correct. I’m counted as one of those numbers and not only have I never bought anything on the Epic Store, I’ve never even played anything on it aside from a couple hours of Troy Total War, but I’ve logged in 99% of the weeks to grab the free game. Take us out, and Fortnite players like you stated, and the place would be a ghost town.
So just for the sake of argument, if we ballpark those numbers to an average of 200 million per year, by 2023 they would be investing something in the range of 1 billion dollars before turning a profit? Are they trying to build a profitable digital storefront or the new Tesla killer? O__o
people laugh at this but this is going everywhere, my dudes i am getting the feeling that the elites are not doing what they do for money but for control and socially engineering society, i dont get why they keep doing stupid things that make them lose money tons of money and stil do them.
good
OHH NOES… EPIC: Cries in money :*(
ofc it’s not making money because their strategy was to dump fortnite money into buying up games from under steam, it’s all for making a big userbase
>it’s all for making a big userbase
which in turn they can mine data from and give directly to the CCP offices in TenCent’s HQ.
No thanks.
“which in turn they can mine data from and give directly to the CCP offices in TenCent’s HQ.”
Why would they want your data?
you know what’s the trend on this site, let them farm upvotes.
I know it’s just dumb as hell.
because data is valuable, even if its just to do ML training for the social credit score system that Tencent has been developing. Ask a better question, like why is Tencent, one of the companies behind the social credit score system, with direct ties to the CCP, bankrolling money into Epic when they have been losing money Year-over-Year? It certainly isn’t out of goodwill.
“because data is valuable, even if its just to do ML training”
Are you concerned about other software in your hardware mining data as well?
“why is Tencent, one of the companies behind the social credit score system, with direct ties to the CCP, bankrolling money into Epic when they have been losing money Year-over-Year?”
Is Epic really losing money, or just their store? Tencent can just go to Steam if they are more interested in data mining, since the player base is bigger.
>Are you concerned about other software in your hardware mining data as well?
of course
>Tencent can just go to Steam
Valve isn’t a publicly traded company, so no, not the same.
“Valve isn’t a publicly traded company, so no, not the same.”
They can still mine your data.
Never said they couldn’t, but I haven’t used Steam in probably 3-4 years now so I don’t see what your point is aside from the usual smoothbrain take that if I’m against Epic+Tencent it must mean I’m automatically pro-Valve or something.
it’s capital expansion you bloody autists. have you never traded shares in your life? when a company invests in something, they’re spending money from either people’s investment or out of their pockets (profits) so obviously their dps and mostly share price plummet because they have barely any money in their pockets and if you’re not a brainless monkey, this more often than not is a sign of the company doing well.
They would make way more if they invested that money in mining
More if they did nothing hah
“Lastly, the 12% distribution amount charged by EGS is sufficient to cover the operating costs of EGS”
When your store lacks most basic features and doesn’t even have a cart of course 12% are sufficient, i swear if it had half the features found on Steam these motherfu*kers will ask for 50%
That China and Fornite money will eventually burn out…giving away free games for relevancy doesnt help.
Fortnite money will, but China…China has a stupid amount of wealth and has been spending the past decade trying to rebuild the silk road, which in turn is going to generate insane amounts of money and control for them.
If Tencent wants the West under it’s fingertips, they’ll use themselves and Epic to do so. Trust me, they already have Disney, practically a megacorp like MS, under their heel at this point.
You have a strong point there. But my naive gut tells me that when they start to see that Epic becomes a waste of resources…they will abandon it (of course it wont happen)
it could. i doubt they want to give free crap for years on end with no growth of any kind. only if profit becomes foreseeable theyll keep up with it i mean i doubt they want to stick for 15 years of straight losses
Good news.
all of you have no clue what you’re talking about.
Thanks for the free games! 😀
So does that mean they will stop buying exclusives and giving free games out in 2023?
Epic doesn’t rely on the game store. so it’s not really effecting them in a major way. on top them already making residuals for games using their engine being sold in their store, triple dipping and recycling. their engine makes up for hundreds of indie games on top of major investors like sony and Microsoft.
Thanks for the free games! 😀
So does that mean they will stop buying exclusives and giving free games out in 2023?
regional price is what i need. steam price is the best.
Unfortunately, pubs and devs have been trying to do away with regional prices for some time now, even Valve has been crunching down on them.
Not always, EGS price is better here. RDR 2 for example, Steam version sells for $60 and the EGS was $35 with occasional dicount coupon during their sales event, the EGS will usually fall to $ 25 mark
it was.. but now in my region steam have better price..
56 million monthly LMAO. That’s 30 different days.
Steam has 25 million daily.
And as someone wrote above, most of those are Fortnite players or people just logging in once a week to get their free games.
Don’t forget that literally every single Unreal Engine dev/user/asset flipper/workstation in the world is also a part of that number.
to be fair they are new and are obviously spending millions to make a dent. they gave away gtav which im sure rockstar wanted millions for not to mention the arkham trilogy etc. while i dislike epic like most others here, think about it this way… they giving indies money to make games, they are making competition with steam(who used to do free games whenever epic,origin, and the other launchers where rumored or near/nearly after but dont do no more because they see they kill any competition(apex on steam now) and where responsible for kingdo mheaerts3 and other rare games that wouldnt have been on pc AT ALL if not for them. dont support them, but trash talking them everywhere will make investors weary and no more money thrown at free games. pretend to like them for free stuff.
Yeah,Im much more agree with how Epic invest with their money, while Steam stockpilling it into one person rather than produce their own game that not GaaS or peripheral exclusives.
we are going in the right direction guys. Let’s see if we financially sink this company.
jesus christ, you are one hell of a brainless baboon.
Oh those poor multi-billion dollar game companies. Sad little crying faces wandering the streets with their hat out asking for anything you can spare. You are a chump. I actually own a business and if I took home 70% in profit I’d be able to retire after about 5 years. Steam takes a 30% cut and in return add all sorts of features to games to increase the longevity of their sales like the Steam Workshop and online features. The companies going exclusive on Epic are multi billion dollar companies whose profits increase year after year, not some poor Indie devs. You know nothing about business and you treat corporations like they’re your friends. You are the type of person we know is born every minute and you’re embarrassing yourself.
They invested in the company rather than paying taxes, they likely knew that when they were spending it. You cant really judge that as a loss for them since it would have gone on taxes anyway. Unfortunately this is not such terrible news for Epic Store.
it’s not that they “knew”, this is called capital expansion, it’s a very basic financial concept. john pepega is either a pepega or wants some clicks.
at least you’re one of the few who had the brain capacity to think.
Can’t help but think they are missing the mark, why aren’t they producing lots of exclusives for EGS internally when they have one of the best engines out there? That’s exactly how steam managed to get marketshare in the first place anyways.
“why aren’t they producing lots of exclusives for EGS. That’s exactly how steam managed to get marketshare in the first place anyways.”
Which exclusive games are you talking about?
Team fortress 2, Portal, Half life 2 and episodes, cs source.
Those are not exclusives. You can play them on consoles.
A pc centric store’s marketshare is not directly competing with console platforms.
who did valve compete against back then?
Ok, but they are still not exclusive. I also think Epic could invest in real exclusives, without console.
Games made by Valve itself. This would be fine if Epic’s only exclusive were Unreal, Fortnite and some other IP.
Your example is bad, and you should feel bad.
They are in USA?
epic keeps giving away games like candy, even the high profile games like GTA. people only really buy timed exclusives on their store, and even then they only have to wait a year before the games hit steam (or just pirate them much earlier). there’s no way it will be profitable by 2023
Steam s*cks, it’s full of SJW antifa moderators, their 30% cut b*ttf*cks game devs. Steam is a hand rubbing (((good goy milking factory)))
I don’t care about EGS and how sh*tty their store is, what matters here is Steam hegemony needs to go, they went full ret@rd, never go full ret@rd. You can’t have a proper discussion in their forums because woke police are ready to ruin your sh*t.
A sad day for freedom. F*ck steam, and their badge collecting children audience. Game devs are forced to take their 30% cut up the @ss, and if you ever worked a day in your life 30% is a huge f*cking cut for almost nothing.
Not surprised. My ex manager went to work there and she was a f*king idiot. Hid for 6 months not joining meetings or supporting her people. Too busy trying to work at (not so)Epic I guess.
LOL as I said in 2019 it happened HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Good news! Very good news! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/71902b1d89dd0205b89bee016556e5fed5698362e1e90f108c69a68f3c7ab8f8.jpg
Most anti-consumer store by far.
Epic, make piracy great again.
via GIPHY
They should improve their store as well, only exclusivity doesn’t help. The store still lacks some of the most basic features and still they are busy scoring exclusivity deals & giving free games.
Im not that fond of ‘features’ in game storefront, im mostly turning off that steam layer, achievement or steamworks gimicks, prefer GoG if the game available there. But yeah, still agree with this, they need to up their store features to cater the one that love to use it
I think in year 3 a shopping cart would probably make a little sense for anyone dumb enough to spend money there.
Reddit is soyfacing over this
Gamers are a weird bunch, everything becomes a c*ck measuring contest where achievements are mocked when someone else did better- imagine knowing that there are hundreds of world famous companies that are yet to turn a profit, or some that are having huge losses after major investments.
I mean I hate EPIC so good but … this won’t change anything … for now at least.
They got Fortnite money to burn. It is how they are paying for their exclusives.
Sorry let me rephrase. It is how they are buying exclusives away from other stores.
They are not snatched them away from another stores, the devs/publisher that have control over where they gonna put their game
They’re giving developers tens of millions in cash to keep a timed exclusive on their store. It’s the literal definition of “snatching” them away. If they weren’t doing that then the games would never be on Steam and they are. Take a business class, pal.
They aren’t even real exclusives. I was happy to wait a year to get games like Metro 3, Outer Worlds, and Control on Steam. On top of it I got the best versions. People that bought Control had to buy the DLC separately and then to get the next gen upgrade had to buy it again. That’s around 160 dollars. I got the Ultimate Edition on Steam, all nice and beta tested by Epic chumps, on sale over Christmas for I think around 24 dollars. Epic will never be able to compete with Steam because it’s an inferior product and too many people won’t use it to protect Steam and GOG from financial trouble and protect their investments in their game library.
dumb baboon.
This isn’t rocket science. Honestly this store does not seem to care about being a store. It’s sole purpose is some nerd rage battle against steam, while trying to make it sound like their here to help devs despite every store taking 30% cut… even sony/microsoft. Sure the free games are nice… but honestly… all the money they have lost and the store hasn’t changed or improved at all. It’s still a s###ty looking store with no features. I don’t hate the store… but I still don’t see any incentive to want to use it. I usually claim the games and continue to use steam 100% of the time
They’re helping devs and at the same time give Steam a kick in a groin for not innovate enough or want to spending resources on what the most important things which is a game and not game as a service or game to sold expensive peripheral.
being innovative enough? Steam VR is a godsend. Remote Play with friends online for local co-op. The store is absolutely amazing. Steam is not a charity and do not have to do what Epic is doing. If epic wants to lose money to help devs… whatever thats on them. If they cared about the store… honestly not even 500k would pay people to pump the store up with features and a great ui.
Godsend ?? With that price … C’mon … Wait until they discontinue it like what they did with Steam Controller and Steam machine (??) The store is amazing .. ?? Seriously … its like you always have to visit a store everytime you want to play or install the game you bought already and show them the receipt in order to be permitted to launch and play your game. This is what a steam fans think a gold standard for a storefront just because they did it first not because its better. There is better and much more amazing store called GoG, where you can backup, install, and play a game you already bought without need to visit their store everytime you want to install and play the game. Thats the standard that every storefront should follow and every customer should support/ vote with their wallet, and not a store that gave the privilege of just being first to be exist
ROFL. You really believe that bullshit sob story that Tim Sweeney tried to sell the gaming world a few years ago. Just about every game that has been given exclusivity deals would’ve sold well within the duration of the deal, games like Control, Borderlands 3, Hitman 3, etc.
Unfortunately, I have to shatter your delusional fantasy with some pragmatism:
Tim doesn’t care about developers, he just like every other corporate suit caring only about themselves, there’s zero nobility in the actions of a corporate entity, only feigned faux virtue as the guise in front of cutthroat, calculated self interest.
Consider yourself hopelessly naive.
Its impossible for the devs to just put their game in EGS without money being exchanged, right ?? Its business as usual, I never believe with corporate BS myself, but when there is money being involve from EGS that going straight to the devs themselves Im more than agree for them just to take the deal and forget about fans that raging some BS about being cheated by the devs for put their games in other than their holy Steam. And Im also have to shatter your delusional fantasy with some pragmatism:
STEAM also doesn’t care about developers, they just like every other corporate suit caring only about themselves, there’s zero nobility in the actions of a corporate entity, only feigned faux virtue as the guise in front of cutthroat, calculated self interest. Consider yourself hopelessly naive.
All part of the strategy.
For tencent its just pocket change
They sacrifice profit for market share, many newcomers in a market does this – What’s new? Also their still developing their store that lacks some quite major features still. Would guesstimate their profit turnaround forecast is a bit optimistic but then again how much have they spent on exclusives/freebies and how much will that have to be adjusted to actually make profit?
Its clear epic plan is long term, they gladly eat loss and get market share for a later turnaround.
I love steam and its store/policies so don’t get me wrong when i say this – Steam today take a bit to big cut of the cake leaving too little to the dev’s and that makes small/medium dev’s hurting – That cut was totally fine when they started as network costs etc back then was big, today its quite darn cheap compared to back then.
Agree with this assestment, big player like Epic its main source of revenue came from other venture like licensing deal and fortnite, its just lose this round but its invest on the next phase of gaming where majority of their player came from the after generation playing fortnite that wants all their game in one place like Valve did back then when they introduce Half Life 2 as an incentive to use Steam and we eventually stick with it for too long and thought all Steam policy as gold standard all needs to follow and obey.
Good, stay unprofitable, so that Eins and Flashnoob can cry more. Those two being the worst EG bootlickers ever known to man.
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Honestly, it’s a suprising news. I thought EG need to spend billions to compete with Steam. ~450 millions? It’s cheap.
Except they aren’t competing with Steam at all. That user base is what Steam sees every two days. EGS is a failure that even bribes and free games couldn’t bring enough people to. Then subtract from those pathetic user figures the fact that most will be Fortnite users and many of the rest will be people like me that log in to get the free games, but will never spend a dime in the store.
Dude should spend less time in front of the mirror, and more time working on his writing skills.
wah wah
i refuse to buy from them because lightning knocked out my modem/router and during my week with out internet i couldn’t play any of the games i bought from there. I had no problems with my steam games.
Good. It’s still an awful store over two years in and I’d never give them a penny.
HA HA HA HA HA
In my opinion, I would use the Epic store MUCH more if they had basic gaming community features. Off the top of my head: Achievements/Trophies System like literally EVERY other platform, Communities/forums in-client to interact and communicate. Those are basics. Also, they should just legit rip-off the steam client, but add to it. Epic has the chance to make something truly amazing, but they need to actually do it. Bringing in emulator support and a cleaner more intuitive UI would also be good moves..
It’s in Epics hands. We’re all just along for the ride. Let’s hope they deliver on their promises…
Looking forward to reading the comments.
good screw them and their paid exclusive nonsense hope they lose more money if it proves people dont want to use their storefront.
A blip in their profits like a honey badger steam rolling steam as it were ?????
Epic Fail for the Tensh*t-CCP store.
good screw them and their paid exclusive nonsense hope they lose more money if it proves people dont want to use their storefront.
I visited EPIC from time to time and got a free game now and then, but did not trust them enough to give them any of my money. And I was right. Again and again their stupid launcher fails to recognize my video card and refuses to launch. I suspect it is the bundled Epic Online Services. This is a well known problem they have refused to address, let alone fix.
Anyway, I am glad they don’t have any of my money and they can keep their “free” games. Most of them were either garbage or just the bare-bones game.
Never installed that crap never will.
No Sh*t!!!
> Give out games for free trying to lure people in
> Spark disgust towards your store and practices among gamers
> Snipe awaited new releases for exclusivity
Gee I wonder why it ain’t making profit LOL.
come on, of course is not profitable from those 160 million accounts registered maybe a quarter of those are actually players, the rest are people who just enter to get the newest free game.
Hope They Don’t Stop Giving Games For Free :’)
Excellent news! Hahaha.