Epic Games Store Thought It Could Claim Half of All PC Gaming Revenue, but Remains Unprofitable Five Years After Launch: “The Goal Is Still Growt...

[Tsing]

...the Epic v. Google trial continues to drag out, and one of the latest revelations that has emerged as part of the argument between the two companies is the fact that the Epic Games Store has failed to make a profit despite having launched years ago.

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[Dan_D]

It doesn't help that its had to resort to giving games away for free in order to get people to even bother downloading it. EA had a much better shot of doing something about Steam's dominance and its failed to unseat it. Frankly, people are sick of having eight different services for games just as they get sick of it on the streaming side.

 

[Zarathustra]

Doesn't help that they need to resort to giveaways and bribing developers for exclusivity.

It's a tough nut to crack. I would of course like to see effective competition in this market, which is difficult when people already have a library in Steam and are thus inclined to stay there.

I think some regulation might be necessary.

1.) Make game sales universal. Every store gets to sell every title with without any special contracted markups for any retailers. Treat them all the same.

2.) Titles should be transferable. After purchasing you can move them at will between library/stores. Should you have 100 games in Steam, and want to move to another store, have a method to transfer the titles to the other store.

Put all the stores on an equal footing, and may the best store win!

 

[MadMummy76]

Who would've thought that bribing developers with no regard for how detrimental it is to consumers would not result in more consumers choosing your store?

I'd have welcomed a steam competitor with open arms, who competed for the customers. But they did the opposite, they thought win over the developers and the customers will come automatically.

Now they can't win me over no matter what. I couldn't care less about free games, I buy all the games I want to play anyway.

 

[MadMummy76]

Doesn't help that they need to resort to giveaways and bribing developers for exclusivity.

It actually hurts their case.

It's a tough nut to crack. I would of course like to see effective competition in this market, which is difficult when people already have a library in Steam and are thus inclined to stay there.

I'd have zero issue going to another store if that store gave me better conditions or prices. But I'll never go to a store that built a fence around developers and then told me you want their games you have to go through me for them. This is Mafia tactics, a racket, not competition.

I think some regulation might be necessary.

The market seems to regulate itself pretty well. Bribing idiots not gaining market share is great.

1.) Make game sales universal. Every store gets to sell every title with without any special contracted markups for any retailers. Treat them all the same.

I don't think so, retailers should compete for the developers, but they also should compete for the consumers, who the money actually comes from and not take them for granted.

2.) Titles should be transferable. After purchasing you can move them at will between library/stores. Should you have 100 games in Steam, and want to move to another store, have a method to transfer the titles to the other store.

That's not feasible. They pay a lot for hosting, you buy a game on one store then download it from another you incur them costs without paying them, while the other store gets money for nothing.

Put all the stores on an equal footing, and may the best store win!

Sounds like planned economy.

 

[DrezKill]

Titles should be transferable. After purchasing you can move them at will between library/stores.

And somewhat related, I've been complaining for years that if I own a physical copy of a game, I should be able to get a free digital version. Ironically it was Epic themselves who allowed owners of UT3 to register their keys with Steam to get a free Steam copy of the game. Very few developers have ever done that in the past. It needs to be standard practice.

EDIT:
The ONLY reason I have an EGS account (and used the launcher) is because I used to f*ck around with Unreal Engine 4 dev stuff. This was before it was even a storefront. One of the first games they had on there was porting the X360 game Shadow Complex to PC (pretty decent Metroidvania, especially back when the market was extremely starved for such). They gave it out for free, so I grabbed that and went through the game again. I didn't realize at the time that Epic was testing the waters with digital distribution for retail games. The earliest form of the storefront was for developers and the development community. You could sell the sh1t you made in UE4 to other creators. I guess that was another example of Epic testing the waters. I missed all these signs, so I was very surprised when they announced they were gonna be another Me-Too-Steamlike store.

I have never ever paid money for a game on EGS. I have barely used it to launch and play games. I haven't even used it since I was on Win7. I didn't bother to install it when it moved to Win10. Never bothered to install it in Linux. I tune in every week to grab the free games, which I grab via web browser. But I never play these games. I don't want to use the EGS launcher. I pay so little attention to my EGS library that I've bought games on Steam and GOG not even realizing I already had them on EGS. I think it's sad that not even their free games entice me to use their sh1t.

EDIT 2:
Wait, there's an Epic vs. Google trial?! I never heard about that! I still remember Epic and Apple going at each other's throats. Don't even know what happened with that situation. I assume that one is still ongoing too? Man, who would have thought the man behind Unreal Engine would end up spending his days in court battling tech giants, fancying himself a revolutionary and liberator, all the while filling his pockets with mad loot, and pimping out his engines beyond game developers to Hollywood studios and filmmakers and whoever-the-f*ck-else. Whatever happened to just making awesome engines and games, Tim Sweeney? Maybe CliffyB and Rod Fergusson and others saw Tim turning into some whacko and that was one of the main reasons why they eventually rolled out.

 

[Brian_B]

I gave EGS an honest shot when it first came out. I bought a couple of titles through there on their first big sales event.

Yup. I regretted it.

The EGS has no benefit at all apart from being a storefront (and a poor one at that), and it has never really matured beyond how presented upon release. Whereas Steam, while it may be a bloated elephant, has benefits beyond just being a store front and the advantage of already having 90% of my library in it.

I still claim the free games when I remember to, but I don't really do anything with it and never play any of them. Maybe it's the allure of something free, or maybe it's just out of spite because I know it still costs them to provide those free games, I don't know.

 

[MadMummy76]

And somewhat related, I've been complaining for years that if I own a physical copy of a game, I should be able to get a free digital version. Ironically it was Epic themselves who allowed owners of UT3 to register their keys with Steam to get a free Steam copy of the game. Very few developers have ever done that in the past. It needs to be standard practice.

EA did this too, you could register physical copies of games on Origin. I was able to register almost all EA games I had, including ME1,2,3.

 

[theblackangus]

How can you not be profitable when you sell something that is ethereal?
I mean if the sales can pay for cloud hosting that is really really sad.
If they spent so much on giveaways that they are un-profitable for 5 years, someone needs to be fired.
I wonder if this is a tax shelter =)

 

[Brian_B]

If they spent so much on giveaways that they are un-profitable for 5 years, someone needs to be fired.

 

[Denpepe]

That's not feasible. They pay a lot for hosting, you buy a game on one store then download it from another you incur them costs without paying them, while the other store gets money for nothing.

They must have made money that way since when steam started most people still bought their games in real stores, yet you had to use steam to play them.

 

[Uvilla]

I don't see why anyone has issues with any storefront regardless of exclusives and what have you, who cares.
What I do care is walling in your device, Apple style. That I have a huge problem with. Side loading Android is exceedingly easy,, so google doesn't really lock anything. That might be why epic would lose. In a pc, well just load the storefront search for your game, buy it at whatever price.
Its just a distributor, that's all. When it was actual hard media, that was decided for you. Now that you don't own squat, well you dont own it in epic, steam, whatever, you pay for the access and pray it remains for a very long time , which granted, it will .
All that really matters is if you agree with the price of the game itself in my eyes.

 

[Zarathustra]

Sounds like planned economy.

Nope, ensuring a level playing field free or market manipulations is actually at the core of capitalism.

That's why just about every capitalist system has a set of rules about how businesses can conduct themselves, and business practices that are illegal.

A free for all where businesses can just do whatever the hell they want is not capitalism. It's anarchy.