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yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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The thing that puzzles me the most is why devs and EGS continue doing the 1 year exclusivity. I figured the Borderlands 3 and RDR2 1-6 months would be norm by now.

Devs should know by now EGS doesn't have the userbase or the customer base to keep your game selling for an entire year without bargain bin coupon bullshit. EGS doesn't have any discovery tools either. I feel like nobody wins with 12 months time. Epic is basically doing buyback programs and devs not making good revenue with their PC versions.

By the time their games come to steam they really are old news. And if they didn't review well or have some type of good WoM then its pretty much dead a year later. Take less money but at least 1-6 months feels like a period where devs can really recover with updates and steam launch imo.
 
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Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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The thing that puzzles me the most is why devs and EGS continue doing the 1 year exclusivity. I figured the Borderlands 3 and RDR2 1-6 months would be norm by now.

Devs should know by now EGS doesn't have the userbase or the customer base to keep your game selling for an entire year without bargain bin coupon bullshit. EGS doesn't have any discovery tools either. I feel like nobody wins with 12 months time. Epic is basically doing buyback programs and devs not making good revenue with their PC versions.

By the time their games come to steam they really are old news. And if they didn't review well or have some type of good WoM then its pretty much dead a year later. Take less money but at least 1-6 months feels like a period where devs can really recover with updates and steam launch imo.
Because the standard deal is 12 months, RDR2 and BL3 are the exceptions and you shouldn't expect those to happen often.
 

eonden

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
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The thing that puzzles me the most is why devs and EGS continue doing the 1 year exclusivity. I figured the Borderlands 3 and RDR2 1-6 months would be norm by now.

Devs should know by now EGS doesn't have the userbase or the customer base to keep your game selling for an entire year without bargain bin coupon bullshit. EGS doesn't have any discovery tools either. I feel like nobody wins with 12 months time. Epic is basically doing buyback programs and devs not making good revenue with their PC versions.

By the time their games come to steam they really are old news. And if they didn't review well or have some type of good WoM then its pretty much dead a year later. Take less money but at least 1-6 months feels like a period where devs can really recover with updates and steam launch imo.
Cause you get more money for long deals. In the end, BL3 and RDR2 show more that EGS doesnt have an infinite money bag, and the requirements for a 1 year exclusivity for GAAS AAA games is quite high (because they are interested also in the long term SALES of the game as they drive mtx and repeted money). Really interested how much money Epic gave Ubi for their coexclusivity. How would that appear in Ubisoft financial reports?
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Really interested how much money Epic gave Ubi for their coexclusivity. How would that appear in Ubisoft financial reports?
This is something I would really want to know, perhaps madjoki, you and me could join forces to investigate this? ;)
 
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CommodoreKong

Mercenary in the Badlands
Jun 15, 2019
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I wonder how EGS is hurting these days. Looking at the current top 5 global sellers on Steam, only 1 of them is on EGS (Warhammer 3) and that game is without a doubt not selling on EGS much at all.
Given the numbers they recently released they're almost certainly loosing tons of money on the Epic Games store. They're burning money on free games, exclusives and coupons while making a tiny 12% cut and when developers release numbers for PC their EGS sales are almost always a tiny sliver of the total sales. It would be interesting to know how far in the red they are on the EGS.
This is something I would really want to know, perhaps madjoki, you and me could join forces to investigate this? ;)
It's very possible they just lump it in with PC revenue and we don't know unfortunately.
 
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Xclash

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Dec 13, 2018
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I wonder how EGS is hurting these days. Looking at the current top 5 global sellers on Steam, only 1 of them is on EGS (Warhammer 3) and that game is without a doubt not selling on EGS much at all.
Who the heck are dumb enough to buy Total War Warhammer 3 on EGS? There is a great benefit for owning the two prior games as you get access to the additional free campaign/mega map.
 
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Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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Who the heck are dumb enough to buy Total War Warhammer 3 on EGS? There is a great benefit for owning the two prior games as you get access to the additional free campaign/mega map.

To be fair, CA said they would put TWW 1 and 2 content on EGS before TWW 3 comes out. They also said they were working on cross buying, but that it may or may not happen and customers shouldn't count on it.
 
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Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
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Who the heck are dumb enough to buy Total War Warhammer 3 on EGS? There is a great benefit for owning the two prior games as you get access to the additional free campaign/mega map.
I wouldn't be surprised if Epic gave away a shitload of DLC for free. At least that's what I would do if I was them.
 
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Arc

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I wouldn't be surprised if Epic gave away a shitload of DLC for free. At least that's what I would do if I was them.
I think it's a given TWW 1 and 2 will be freebies at some point this year. If they actually get their shopping cart online, they could probably do a coupon deal to help sell DLC too.
 
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Arc

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I'd be surprised if Epic went public. A board of directors would probably frown upon some of Tim's more eccentric directives, like intentionally getting kicked off mobile app stores and refusing to be reinstated while in the middle of a lawsuit.


Unless I am unaware of another giveaway, I think this means 8 million people redeemed Elite: Dangerous during the EGS free week (12 million owners minus 4 million sales).
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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If Epic goes IPO, the shares would come out of Tim's <60% majority hold (I think tencent isn't the only shareholder, some other peoples/corps have a few percent of Epic)

Tencent would be stupid to float their shares of the company if they want to take over Epic. Unless they are hurting for money.

But why would Sweeney give up the majority in Epic?
  • maybe he is not as cash fluid as he appears to be
  • maybe he gets fire under his arse from the other company shareholders (especially tencent) because of the costly and stupid decisions that Tim made in the last 2 years. And they could force an IPO for Epic with basically saying to him, if he wants to burn money, he should do it with his shares.
  • There could also be a buyout clause that could be triggered by certain company metrics/milestones. Sweeney could be forced to buy a certain percent of Tencent's share at current market value if Epic failed to achieve certain metrics. If Tim doesn't have the money, he would have to go public.

Buyout clauses were/are the bane of many companies. Doesn't matter if you hold the majority of a company, if there is such a clause and you don't have the money, you are fucked. You could be selling 10% of your company to a different buyer at a reduced price so that you could then buy 5% of the predetermined buyout shares at the price of the current market value or the pre-approved price that was done the years before.

For example: "We at Hedgefund-Sharks. Inc are buying 40% of your Company with the current value of the company being 10 Billion Dollars. With your current growth and growth forecast (which you provided so that we decided to invest in your company with 4 billion Dollars) we expect that the company has a value of 40 billion in 5 years. We expect that the money we provided is used to grow the business and that the company president will be able to buy back 5% of our shares with the company being valued at 40 billion dollars, regardless of the real value at that time. (We have a veto on any loan that exceeds x% of current company value)"
 
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Derrick01

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Oct 6, 2018
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Going public risks being one of the bigger self owns in recent time. Shareholders are not going to accept the huge money sink that is EGS when you put out your yearly revenue and it only went up like 1.5% YoY, in a pandemic year no less. They want constant growth and just saying you got players who aren't spending anything isn't going to fly.
 

Ruvon

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May 15, 2019
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cabinetdechaologie.wordpress.com
I'd be surprised if Epic went public. A board of directors would probably frown upon some of Tim's more eccentric directives, like intentionally getting kicked off mobile app stores and refusing to be reinstated while in the middle of a lawsuit.


Unless I am unaware of another giveaway, I think this means 8 million people redeemed Elite: Dangerous during the EGS free week (12 million owners minus 4 million sales).
8 millions accounts, not necessarily people :p
 
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bobnowhere

Careful Icarus
Sep 20, 2018
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Fighting multiple lawsuits, you cash cow missing from some of the biggest platforms, a giant store blackhole that any competent CEO/CFO would nix on day one... Maybe not the best time to go public. Sounds a bit like an exit strategy.
 

Ruvon

Chaotic writer
May 15, 2019
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cabinetdechaologie.wordpress.com

I don't really see the reason why this article was made.
Damage control ? "Free" advertising ?

So, how's it going? Well, Epic says that it sold $265 million worth of third-party games on the Epic Store in 2020. Compared to a couple years ago, when Epic didn't have a PC game store at all, that's a huge increase.
Yeah dude, compared to ZERO, 265 million is huge. Seriously, this guy is a professional ? Is this for real ?

Compared to 2019, however, it's an increase of around 5.6 percent—Epic Store users spent $251 million on third-party games that year, which was store's first full year of existence. (These revenue numbers ignore the cost of coupons and advance payments to developers, which is how Epic secures exclusives.)
Right now, though, Epic is all about getting more people onto its platform, not making money—Fortnite covers that—and in that regard things appear to be going very well.
Ok, he's being "honest" on the small increase.
But WTF: "yeah, we're not trying to make money, we just want accounts (I'll never gonna say physical real human beings users when it comes to EGS' accounts), we're not trying to SELL games, so come on publishers and put you game on our store!"

This makes absolutely no sense.
 
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Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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I don't really see the reason why this article was made.
"We have more exclusives coming in the next two years than we have published to date," a company representative told PC Gamer when asked about its exclusivity strategy for the near future.

There's your answer. Damn sad, but expected after the low revenue last year.

Anyway, I will continue to boycott every game involved in Epic's moneyhats. Plenty of other great games to play on pc.
 

AHA-Lambda

MetaMember
Oct 9, 2018
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So, how's it going? Well, Epic says that it sold $265 million worth of third-party games on the Epic Store in 2020. Compared to a couple years ago, when Epic didn't have a PC game store at all, that's a huge increase.
wtf kind of quote is this, absolutely embarrassing stuff. If I wrote something like this at my work I'd be laughed at
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Here we go, I guess a 2020 full of empty reels (or no reels at all) and a clear descend of Exclusive numbers is not enough for people to not worry.

Will there be exclusives this year? of course there will be exclusives, it's not going to be 0 when we already got the monkey barrels game.
Will there be the same amount in 2019? no way.
Will there be big ones? 1, maybe 2. but I wouldn't expect anything really big.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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Of course Epic are going to have exclusives, but the onus is on developers to approach Epic. That means we're going to see publishers doing what they did in 2020 - hawk their terrible-looking games or ones they know are going to flop off to Epic.

There will be a few promising exclusives, like Hitman 3, but those will be in the minority. Most developers and publishers know what EGS entails now. If your game is going to sell badly on Steam you might as well not sell copies exclusively on EGS instead.
 

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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Here we go, I guess a 2020 full of empty reels (or no reels at all) and a clear descend of Exclusive numbers is not enough for people to not worry.

Will there be exclusives this year? of course there will be exclusives, it's not going to be 0 when we already got the monkey barrels game.
Will there be the same amount in 2019? no way.
Will there be big ones? 1, maybe 2. but I wouldn't expect anything really big.
You may be right. I hope you're right. But why would Epic say otherwise to a journalist? More empty promises isn't gonna help their reputation.
Of course Epic are going to have exclusives, but the onus is on developers to approach Epic. That means we're going to see publishers doing what they did in 2020 - hawk their terrible-looking games or ones they know are going to flop off to Epic.

There will be a few promising exclusives, like Hitman 3, but those will be in the minority. Most developers and publishers know what EGS entails now. If your game is going to sell badly on Steam you might as well not sell copies exclusively on EGS instead.
I expect that Epic is going for permanent exclusivity using their publishing label. Their terms are really good for developers, and if they can get bigger devs like Remedy on board, they won't have any problems convincing the most popular indies to accept their offer as well.
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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But why would Epic say otherwise to a journalist? More empty promises isn't gonna help their reputation.
Because people already think their store isn't going anywhere near their competitors and they are already labeling this PR strategy as a damage control?

The last thing they need is to be compared to Stadia, if PCGamer is giving them an space to sell themselves as "we are not done" they will get that opportunity.

Again, expect some more exclusives but nothing comparable to 2019 or even 2020, a lot of people will use the excuse of "covid delays" yeah, no, this trend has been happening since 2019 and the gradual declining number of exclusive announcements, also, surprising that this delays always affect the entities that usually seem to be in a worse position than others.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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[UWSL]I xpect that Epic is going for permanent exclusivity using their publishing label. Their terms are really good for developers, and if they can get bigger devs like Remedy on board, they won't have any problems convincing the most popular indies to accept their offer as well.[/UWSL]
I'd respect them more if they had a bigger financial stake in the games. Also, we'll see how well exclusivity goes when they not only need to profit on the games that actually release, but all the ones they took a risk on that didn't work out.
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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I expect that Epic is going for permanent exclusivity using their publishing label. Their terms are really good for developers, and if they can get bigger devs like Remedy on board, they won't have any problems convincing the most popular indies to accept their offer as well.
Remedy getting in bed with yet another Platform provider is nothing special. Did they ever have a game that was NOT exclusive to a system?
If the Epic deal was so good, where are the high-profile independent mid-size studios lining up to get under the Epic umbrella?

Larian for example, is always, ALWAYS struggling financially, but they don't go to Epic. maybe, MAYBE the publishing deal is really good but that is not all when you are trying to survive and sell games. EGS is poison and Epic hasn't proven yet that it isn't a 5-year vanity project. Larian and any other mid-size developer could face ruin if Epic runs from the PC market with their tails between their legs, again. Not even counting the fan backlash if larian would go Epic.

The whole publishing deal is a one-trick pony for most developers. they get in because they had success in the past. After abysmal sales for their first Epic published game, how many devs will get a continued publishing deal with the same "great" conditions?
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Their publishing brand is, once again, difficult to predict as we don't know how are they going to use those, keep in mind that the numbers of 2020 might have changed the potential outcomes, and while I have always defended the theory of those being just timed exclusives on PC due to revenue stream from additional places like the megagrants program, after those almost static numbers I could see a definitive change in their books to make them timed from the beginning.

They can't depend on consoles revenue and their Store hasn't been getting new CONSUMERS (not users, those are more than enough, free things are free after all)

So yeah, let's take it as a blank card and for the time being, all our theories are just that, theories without any real base.
 
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Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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Their publishing brand is, once again, difficult to predict as we don't know how are they going to use those, keep in mind that the numbers of 2020 might have changed the potential outcomes
What definitely changed the potential outcome is that many (if not most) popular independent AA and AAA developers have been bought by big companies like Embracer and Microsoft. In other words: there isn't much left for Epic to publish...
 
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Arc

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Hopefully no major exclusives announced.

This was their 2020 spring sizzle reel. It was mostly smaller titles, but they seem to be making a bigger deal about it this year so there might be higher profile games.
 

fantomena

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Dec 17, 2018
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If they do FF7R timed exclusive there's a chance I might cave in.

Im not gonna wait 2 years to play that game.
 
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