Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[LESS T_T]

Epic will continue to offer free games throughout 2020: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-store-tops-usd680-million-in-player-spending

Epic Games Store tops $680 million in player spending
Storefront touts 108 million PC customers a little over a year after launch, extends weekly free game promotion through 2020

Epic Games today offered an update on the growth of the Epic Games Store. Launched in December of 2018, the store to-date has racked up $680 million in spending from 108 million PC customers.

While much of that total can be accounted for by Epic's own hit Fortnite, the company noted that $251 million has been spent by players on third-party PC games.

One of Epic Games Store's biggest selling points for customers has been its distribution of free games. When the Epic Games Store launched, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney promised it would offer one free game every two weeks throughout 2019. It actually surpassed that mark, so far providing 73 free games to players that have been downloaded more than 200 million times put together. The program has been successful enough that Epic also announced today it will be offering weekly free games throughout 2020.

The other big selling point came in the form of exclusivity on the PC versions of anticipated games. That also seems to be drawing consumers, as Epic's list of the most popular Epic Games Store titles consisted of nine third-party titles, all of them exclusive: World War Z, Satisfactory, Dauntless, Untitled Goose Game, Outer Worlds, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, The Division 2, and Control. An Epic representative clarified for GamesIndustry.biz that list was based on sales, and does not include free-to-play titles.

This is not the first time Epic has provided an update on Epic Games Store sales. Last March, less than four months after launch, Epic's David Stelzer told developers the store was nearing $500 million in gross revenues. However, Epic said shortly thereafter that Stelzer misspoke and that number wasn't accurate.

Also infographics.

$680M

To put this into a perspective Steam's revenues in 2017 was 4.3B USD (conservatively estimated, by non other than SteamSpy guy himself, F2P games and in-app purchases were not counted) and Fortnite's estimated revenues are billions USD per year. Yeah, 680 million seems small compared to those but without no doubt this is the most successful effort as a competitor to Steam. I have to wonder how much Epic has spent for giveaways and exclusive deals though.

(Also funny they're boasting the average Opencritic score for free games, not exclusive games.)

 

[JarlFrank]

Zero games in epic store i want to pirate so it's even less games i want to buy.

Wtf, i must give money for classic RPG's: M&M1-6, W1-7, GoldBox to GoG, Steam?! Do Bradley, Caneghem still get extra shekel?!

Are you saying that I can just waltz in to my local book store and leave with a copy of Don Quixote without paying because Cervantes won't see a dime from it? Cool!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Yes.

 

[Tito Anic]

The program has been successful enough that Epic also announced today it will be offering weekly free games throughout 2020

 

[flyingjohn]

The article mentions that Fortnite is responsible for 429M of that 680M.

Since their cut is 12%,they only made 30M of that remaining 251M. And that is before you even look into the coupons which lower that even more.
Wow,without Fortnite they would make even less money then GOG.

 

[Silentstorm]

429M for Fortnite seems really low, that game is everywhere, seriously i have passed through toy aisles in stores where 99% of toys or even just Funko Pop stuff is Fortnite, there is a TCG, it's mentioned all the time and last i checked, it was the most played game on the planet.

Then again, it is F2P and not everyone wants to pay, i just assumed it made more money than that, still, if flyingjohn above me is right, then...didn't Steam absolutely destroy Epic, with or without Fortnite?

Also, i assume the billions part comes from merchandise then?

 

[DalekFlay]

$400 mil is a lot of money relatively, but yeah I would have expected Fortnite to have generated way more. Interesting.

 

[passerby]

$400 mil is a lot of money relatively, but yeah I would have expected Fortnite to have generated way more. Interesting.

It was generating 200 mil monthly in 2018 and it generated 4 bn revenue since release.

 

[Ismaul]

One of Epic Games Store's biggest selling points for customers has been its distribution of free games.

 

[Outlander]

Zero games in epic store i want to pirate so it's even less games i want to buy.

Wtf, i must give money for classic RPG's: M&M1-6, W1-7, GoldBox to GoG, Steam?! Do Bradley, Caneghem still get extra shekel?!

Are you saying that I can just waltz in to my local book store and leave with a copy of Don Quixote without paying because Cervantes won't see a dime from it? Cool!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Yes.

Dude that's an ebook. Horrible things, I avoid them whenever I can.

 

[Curratum]

Zero games in epic store i want to pirate so it's even less games i want to buy.

Wtf, i must give money for classic RPG's: M&M1-6, W1-7, GoldBox to GoG, Steam?! Do Bradley, Caneghem still get extra shekel?!

Are you saying that I can just waltz in to my local book store and leave with a copy of Don Quixote without paying because Cervantes won't see a dime from it? Cool!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Yes.

Dude that's an ebook. Horrible things, I avoid them whenever I can.

Then you can just download the text and print it for around three dollars worth of ink.

 

[Reinhardt]

The program has been successful enough that Epic also announced today it will be offering weekly free games throughout 2020

Nigga, you wat? Why RPG codex should be hyped?

 

[JarlFrank]

Zero games in epic store i want to pirate so it's even less games i want to buy.

Wtf, i must give money for classic RPG's: M&M1-6, W1-7, GoldBox to GoG, Steam?! Do Bradley, Caneghem still get extra shekel?!

Are you saying that I can just waltz in to my local book store and leave with a copy of Don Quixote without paying because Cervantes won't see a dime from it? Cool!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Yes.

Dude that's an ebook. Horrible things, I avoid them whenever I can.

Interestingly enough, computer games are also entirely digital. Buying them from Steam or GoG does not even give you a boxed copy! It is an entirely digital good! Just like that ebook you can download for free because its author is long dead and wouldn't see a single cent if you purchased the book.

Downloading M&M1-6, Wiz1-7, GoldBox etc from an Abandonware site is pretty much the same as this.

 

[Outlander]

Zero games in epic store i want to pirate so it's even less games i want to buy.

Wtf, i must give money for classic RPG's: M&M1-6, W1-7, GoldBox to GoG, Steam?! Do Bradley, Caneghem still get extra shekel?!

Are you saying that I can just waltz in to my local book store and leave with a copy of Don Quixote without paying because Cervantes won't see a dime from it? Cool!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Yes.

Dude that's an ebook. Horrible things, I avoid them whenever I can.

Interestingly enough, computer games are also entirely digital. Buying them from Steam or GoG does not even give you a boxed copy! It is an entirely digital good! Just like that ebook you can download for free because its author is long dead and wouldn't see a single cent if you purchased the book.

Downloading M&M1-6, Wiz1-7, GoldBox etc from an Abandonware site is pretty much the same as this.

Yes, but:

Reading an ebook and reading an actual book, even if it's the same content, it's not the same experience.

Playing a boxed version of the game and playing a digital version of the game it's the same content and exactly the same experience.

I get that the actual book has costs attached to it, such as manufacturing, logistics, shop and employee costs, etc, and digital games usually don't, unless work is being done to them to keep them updated, which frankly, usually doesn't happen.

But it just seems silly to me to think that, for example, if all Megadeth members die in a plane crash, then all their CDs should automatically be made free. Somebody will still have rights on their content, for whatever reason.

 

[Viata]

What all these posts are saying is that pirate games, don't give a shit to any store.

 

[karoliner]

Piracy is wrong.

 

[Tito Anic]

Piracy is wrong.

Why?

 

[Tito Anic]

Nigga, you wat? Why RPG codex should be hyped?

YOU NOT GAYMER?!

 

[Tito Anic]

Dude that's an ebook. Horrible things, I avoid them whenever I can.

Dead tree fetishist?

429M for Fortnite seems really low

Fucking billionaires everywhere...

 

[Outlander]

Dead tree fetishist?

Tree hugger!!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

One of Epic Games Store's biggest selling points for customers has been its distribution of free games.

"selling point", as in the main thing about a product that makes people want to have/use it. In this case they're attracted by the freebies and become regular customers.

 

[Silentstorm]

I mean, i have used EGS to get some freebies and the same goes for a lot of people, so they aren't exactly wrong about that.

Curious about something, people seem to mention the 2017 numbers for Steam, did we never hear what they were in 2018 and still nothing of last year?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I mean, i have used EGS to get some freebies and the same goes for a lot of people, so they aren't exactly wrong about that.

Curious about something, people seem to mention the 2017 numbers for Steam, did we never hear what they were in 2018 and still nothing of last year?

Given the source of the 2017 Steam numbers was a rough estimate and wasn't counting free to play purchases/DLC/etc and was pulled from Steamspy who was datamining for Epic apparently (I think? I don't really remember) that's probably why we haven't heard shit for 2018 and 2019.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Dead tree fetishist?

Tree hugger!!

PURGE THE ELF!

 

[DalekFlay]

"selling point", as in the main thing about a product that makes people want to have/use it. In this case they're attracted by the freebies and become regular customers.

Epic's theory is people will use the client to get the freebies and some exclusives and then transition into becoming regular customers. However I see no reason for this to play out in practice long-term unless Epic drastically improves the client (which they're barely bothering to do at the moment), or offer some other consistent incentive. I'd like to be a fly on the wall during their long-term planning meetings, because I have a feeling they're missing the crucial step between "force people to come here" and "everyone switches to Epic!"

 

[FeelTheRads]

"selling point", as in the main thing about a product that makes people want to have/use it. In this case they're attracted by the freebies and become regular customers.

What? Noooo. All those companies that use sales and give stuff for free to attract customers? Never ever worked before.

However I see no reason for this to play out in practice long-term unless Epic drastically improves the client

It's hardly about the quality of the client. It's much more about force of habit. Valve held customers despite having a much shittier client at launch. Steamtards will say that they won't move because the Steam client is much better, but they wouldn't have cared about any those things if Valve never improved the client and still stayed with what they had. Do you really think that people who've been for years on Steam and have friends and hundreds of games there would instantly move to Epic even if it had a much better client? You've seen people here saying it's either Steam or pirate. That has nothing to do with the quality of the client, it's all about force of habit.

Epic is probably betting more on getting new customers than stealing old ones.