Epic losing large amounts of money on the EGS

[09philj]

Epic is losing hundreds of millions of dollars in its war against Steam

In its bid to take on Steam with the Epic Games Store, the company behind Fortnite is burning through hundreds of milli…

www.eurogamer.net

According to court documents published as part of the Apple/Epic lawsuit, it turns out Epic is projected to lose about $273 million on the store in 2020. Only $265 million of their revenue came from spending on third party games, and they spent $444 million on minimum guarantees paid to secure exclusives and free games.

Epic's CEO is convinced that they've got a long term strategy and getting all this engagement will pay off in the end.

I'm not tremendously convinced by Epic's strategy. They're spending a lot, hundreds of millions of dollars, to create engagement, except that the engagement they're creating isn't much of an incentive to purchase anything. There's a lot of people out there who just passively acquire the free games without considering ever spending any money in the rest of the shop. If I'm going to lay blame somewhere, it's probably at the UX. There's a lot of things wrong with Steam, particularly how clunky its UI is and how much shit is shovelled onto the front page every day, but once you get over those things their UX is actually really good. It's easy to buy multiple games, you can send games as gifts, there's baked in controller support, big picture mode makes it easy to operate with a controller on a TV, there's user reviews, there's community groups, games are recommended to you algorithmically, and the whole thing loads faster and is less CPU intensive than Epic is. With all that in mind, why would I ever buy a game on Epic if it's about the same price on Steam?

 

[BrawlMan]

Karma is catching up to there asses! Ha! Tim Sweeney is a delusional moron thinking their "long-term" strategy will be a success or work in the end.

 

[laggyteabag]

The problem with the Epic Store, and a lot of the other Steam competitors, is that I don't want to use it.

There is nothing that the Epic store does, that Steam doesn't, from a user-perspective. If I had it my way, I would have everything on Steam, because that is where 90% of my games are located, and that is just convenient for me.

The only reason why I use the EGS, is because for a lot of games, I don't have any other choice, but to either use the EGS, or wait a year to get it elsewhere. Being forced to use a service, doesn't make me want to use a service.

Honestly, the best thing about the EGS is the free games - but if Im being perfectly honest, out of the 100+ free games that I have redeemed, I've probably played less than 10 of them.

Maybe it will turn out to be profitable in the future, but I can't really see the EGS's stats improving anytime soon.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The Epic Games Store does not have my payment information, and it never will, because its security is a sad joke.

Though I'm curious: Did they ever get that revolutionary concept called a "shopping cart" implemented?

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The Epic Games Store does not have my payment information, and it never will, because its security is a sad joke.

Though I'm curious: Did they ever get that revolutionary concept called a "shopping cart" implemented?

I think they call theirs the “Download” button. The “Sign-Up” button is technically a more accurate “Shopping Cart” to them, in terms of acquiring user info.

 

[09philj]

The Epic Games Store does not have my payment information, and it never will, because its security is a sad joke.

Though I'm curious: Did they ever get that revolutionary concept called a "shopping cart" implemented?

No.
No user reviews either.
They do have wishlists, but that's about it as far as features goes..

 

[Samtemdo8]

Die Epic Store, restore all the games made exclusive to it on Steam and GOG please.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I am a bit disappointed that the features the EGS promised have still not happened. Namely Achievements and use reviews. But there was a laundry list of features they were supposed to add and never did. Maybe the spent on their money on free games that nobody fucking cares about and couldn't afford to actually make the store not lame.

 

[BrawlMan]

The Epic Games Store does not have my payment information, and it never will, because its security is a sad joke.

Though I'm curious: Did they ever get that revolutionary concept called a "shopping cart" implemented?

Any web store or market app that lacks a shopping cart is an epic fail in my book. I prefer Steam, but I don't even use it that much aside from smaller games.

I am a bit disappointed that the features the EGS promised have still not happened. Namely Achievements and use reviews. But there was a laundry list of features they were supposed to add and never did. Maybe the spent on their money on free games that nobody fucking cares about and couldn't afford to actually make the store not lame.

The fact they failed to keep up on any of their promises is further proof, they don't know and don't care what they're doing. They just want the money and need it now. For all the problems Steam has had, at least Valve were able to actually fix their crap, improve it, or get rid of unnecessary features.

 

[laggyteabag]

I am a bit disappointed that the features the EGS promised have still not happened. Namely Achievements and use reviews. But there was a laundry list of features they were supposed to add and never did. Maybe the spent on their money on free games that nobody fucking cares about and couldn't afford to actually make the store not lame.

I love the transparency of the development of the EGS, but a lot of this stuff is just getting the EGS to have feature parity with Steam - and the store was released over 2 years ago. A lot of this should have been there at launch. You still can't even buy multiple items at once.

Again, I admire the goal of the Epic store, to try and give developers a better cut for each game sale, but the state of Epic's store and their exclusivity strategy often comes off as a failed "get rich quick scheme". Free games aside, Instead of offering incentives, they just force you onto their platform.

 

[Worgen]

It feels like they are doing this more to try and sell themselves to investors. Like the reason Amazon managed to get where it was is because Bezos was really good at selling his vision to investors and keep the money coming in till amazon started making bank and huge amounts of bank. But EGS isn't alone in the market, steam is just better. They are spending more time and money trying to get new users instead of making users want to use their service. Just the exclusivity thing is enough to make me never even want to get the free games from them, before they started pulling that I probably would have installed it at some point.

 

[meiam]

Well money is being funnelled out of epic pocket (ie whale who buy way too much stuff on fortnite) into other studio's pocket which I don't really mind.

I'll never buy anything on epic just cause it's a massive pita to split my game across multiple store front and I got more than enough games to play so missing a couple is really not a big deal.

 

[BrawlMan]

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[TheMysteriousGX]

They're just trying to pull an Uber

 

[Chimpzy]

Well, they better find a way of turning things around. Fortnite won't be able to bankroll them forever. Tho I am happy getting ostensible confirmation that every time you grab a free game off EGS, you're effectively making Epic pay for it

 

[Agema]

I'm not tremendously convinced by Epic's strategy. They're spending a lot, hundreds of millions of dollars, to create engagement, except that the engagement they're creating isn't much of an incentive to purchase anything.

Well, maybe that specific strategy doesn't work. But if you ever needed proof that throwing a lot of money at making a loss works whilst you build up your base, take a gander at Uber. Actually, I'm not sure I really approve of this anyway. The theory is we should be getting the best combination of low cost and product quality, but where a product is artificially underpriced, running at a loss, it's subverting this process. Consequently, massive investment backing can effectively drive the success of a suboptimal product that in truth should be driven out of the market.

I bought a couple of games that Epic acquired as a privileged access, so I've some familiarity with it. One of those, because I backed it in pre-release, they gave me a Steam key as well when it finally got to Steam, so I now run it out of Steam. The Epic Games Store sucks, to put it harshly. I don't think they've even got the basics like browsing the games done well.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So I guess this would put a new twist on the notion that digital games don't cost anything? Seems mighty generous of them to use their own store as the guinea pig.

 

[Dalisclock]

The Epic Games Store does not have my payment information, and it never will, because its security is a sad joke.

Though I'm curious: Did they ever get that revolutionary concept called a "shopping cart" implemented?

Epic: What's this "Shopping Cart" you speak of? Can we get R+D to look into this?

 

[Chimpzy]

Epic: What's this "Shopping Cart" you speak of? Can we get R+D to look into this?

Ah, but when Steam launched in 2003 it didn't have a shopping cart either, probably because while in 2021 "how to e-commerce" has been solved for like at least a decade, back then they were still busy figuring that whole thing out.

So you see, Epic's lack of shopping cart can be reasonably excused.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ah, but when Steam launched in 2003 it didn't have a shopping cart either,

????????????????

I thought Steam started in 2008-2010. I did nor realize it started this early.