News Epic Games Store
- Thread starter Blizniak
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- EGS revenue is much less than expected
- only 3 games reached the minimum guarantee so far
- epic recovered less than 37% of the money they spent on MG's
- they are phasing out 3rd party exclusives, probably because publishers are rejecting them
- epic paid lots of money to PC Gamer to promote EGS during the PC gaming show
- one of the main goals of EOS is to kill Steamworks
- epic wants to make EGS more popular by paying influencers
In other words: still a complete shit show
most devs like user reviews. Most devs WANT user reviews. because they can wither point to a good percentage as proof of a good game, or can point to an upwards trend when the first version of the game didn't meet expectations. For most devs who can't get an MC or OC review score, it is the only thing they can point to that their game is good and a standout from all the other games released.
Thanks a lot for your tl;dr, I really appreciate it
- EGS revenue is much less than expected
- only 3 games reached the minimum guarantee so far
- epic recovered less than 37% of the money they spent on MG's
- they are phasing out 3rd party exclusives, probably because publishers are rejecting them
- epic paid lots of money to PC Gamer to promote EGS during the PC gaming show
- one of the main goals of EOS is to kill Steamworks
- epic wants to make EGS more popular by paying influencers
In other words: still a complete shit show
With some of the decisions Epic has made, it feels like they're anxious to skip a bunch of steps to position themselves as a new center of mass for PC gaming, and that's impeding the store's ability to take hold. I think they have the capacity to with UE tools, having one of the biggest games on their platform, being a more buttoned-up kind of approach to PC games and generally being a very public-facing company.
But I think they kind of goofed by forgetting to give users a better reason to shop there beyond "it's free" or "it's only here". Like, right, someone has to want to buy these games too. Whoopsy daisy. Meanwhile, their strategy for user acquisition has been to attract people via free games or loss-leading discounts. In retrospect, that also doesn't seem like the best way to convert their Fortnite players into EGS customers.
But I think they kind of goofed by forgetting to give users a better reason to shop there beyond "it's free" or "it's only here". Like, right, someone has to want to buy these games too. Whoopsy daisy. Meanwhile, their strategy for user acquisition has been to attract people via free games or loss-leading discounts. In retrospect, that also doesn't seem like the best way to convert their Fortnite players into EGS customers.
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Link?
Also, are you sure only 3 titles have reached MG? I know Among Trees, Mortal Shell and Satisfactory at least did.
- EGS revenue is much less than expected
- only 3 games reached the minimum guarantee so far
- epic recovered less than 37% of the money they spent on MG's
- they are phasing out 3rd party exclusives, probably because publishers are rejecting them
- epic paid lots of money to PC Gamer to promote EGS during the PC gaming show
- one of the main goals of EOS is to kill Steamworks
- epic wants to make EGS more popular by paying influencers
In other words: still a complete shit show
It matches with what I've heard, basically EOS and media will be the new battleground. It won't be as flashy as exclusives every month but more like a silent war for the ''backbone'' structure of PC games, trying to get EOS on as many games as they can and then use the money to push for influencer and media to advertise the store or only talk about the EGS version of the game.
You're correct. One of the presentations from September 2020 shows they have had more success with MGs in general. I remember reading a deposition from one of the store operators that they have generally been more successful recouping MGs lately.
Sadly Valve is too passive to do anything to counteract EOS. I really do not want to have games go down whenever there is a Fortnite event or be strong armed into making an Epic account. Rocket League and Fall Guys requiring Epic accounts already left a bitter taste in my mouth.
To be honest, I don't see this as a really bad thing? it's a different type of war that doesn't affect most of us and we saw that once media don't get the paychecks, they stop talking about anything to move to the next thing.
EOS? but it's just another service even tho it needs stability.
I disagree. I want as little to do with Epic and their services as possible. I'm aware I can't completely avoid them since Unreal Engine exists, but the less I interact with them the happier I am. I already find it obnoxious that I am getting prompts to sign into Epic with a game I bought on Steam, and it's only going to get worse in the future when Epic pushes their account services.
Epic Games Store and Indie Games 3 Years Later
There are two little things I don't really agree with in your premise; As someone who works in the indie space and has a lot of friends making indie games, it's really not a nightmare because we can't access it. It's simply a non-issue. I promise you that the vast, vast majority of indie devs...
www.resetera.com
According to the OP on reddit it was in the documents. But these docs were from early 2020, so perhaps there are more titles at this moment. It's probably still a very small minority.
Epic's initial strategy was to convince devs and publishers to abandon Steam, not to provide us as consumers with a valid reason to use EGS over other storefronts. This is scummy as hell imo, therefore I hope Epic never becomes a major player in PC games distribution.
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The most played games listed updated for the first time since November 15. (The top sellers now updates daily and I don't care enough to give updates since the list typically consists of Rocket League, Genshin Impact and DLC for giveaway games at the top with everything else being multistore releases and exclusives).
As usual the list primarily consists of F2P games and free giveaways. Dead by Daylight is #2, which I find a bit surprising since I thought it would easily be #1 due to how popular it is on Steam. Valorant is #9 and League of Legends is #21 so Riot seems to be doing pretty well on the platform. Farming Simulator 19 is also on the list, but not 22. Also Battlefront 2 is on the list but not Battlefield 2042. (To be fair, BF2042's playerbase has collapsed on Steam).
Of course, I have to preface that we don't know Epic's methodology for determining the most played games, but I would guess it is based off number of weekly users as there was a slide in the Apple trial that showed a similar ranking with that metric.
As usual the list primarily consists of F2P games and free giveaways. Dead by Daylight is #2, which I find a bit surprising since I thought it would easily be #1 due to how popular it is on Steam. Valorant is #9 and League of Legends is #21 so Riot seems to be doing pretty well on the platform. Farming Simulator 19 is also on the list, but not 22. Also Battlefront 2 is on the list but not Battlefield 2042. (To be fair, BF2042's playerbase has collapsed on Steam).
Of course, I have to preface that we don't know Epic's methodology for determining the most played games, but I would guess it is based off number of weekly users as there was a slide in the Apple trial that showed a similar ranking with that metric.
Epic is apparently doing daily giveaways again this year for their holiday sale. There are supposed to be 14 days of giveaways so they will end the year at 87 games given away. For comparison, they gave away 73 free games in 2019 and 103 free games in 2020. I'm guessing they'll keep the program throughout 2022 as well since it's a pretty cheap way to keep user engagement up.
pretty much, as I said, their freebies is a way of weekly engagement alongside coupons (if done) so it's a way to ensure people will revisit your place at least from time to time and it's also a way to ensure media talks about you because, let's be honest, only time they talk about this store is when freebies and that's pretty much about it.
Honestly IMO with that much games given out, I think its making harder and harder to convert those users that claim free games to paying customers. They already have more than enough games for them to play for a long time and I think those users will be trained to expect games on EGS going free so they wont be in a rush to purchase any games there.
Yeah, I understand the reasoning behind it (negate Steam's games library advantage) but giving so many games completely free doesn't get customers into the habit of buying.
I'm pretty interested to see their 2021 infograph. I'm going to guess they end the year at about 200 million accounts, 70 million MAUs (helped mostly by the new Fortnite chapter) and around $450 million in third-party spending. The actual third-party revenue will probably be about $400 million since there was a slide in documents from the trial that they add customer taxes and VAT to the spending total which boosts numbers about 10%. For comparison, I think Steam will end 2021 at about 135 million MAUs since just glancing at peak users on SteamDB shows about a 10-15% increase from 2020.
Exactly. It keeps more and more people from actually buying indies/singleplayer games because they are expecting to get them for free later.
Shenmue III being free on Epic.
Is it even possible to perform a chef's kiss with jackal paws?
Which was one of the main points of Tim's frequent rants against Steam, lol.
Comedy gold.
The indie games are too damn cheap
An average indie title these days is priced $8.72 on Steam. During the last Summer Sale the price went down to the mind-boggling $4.63 and…
Sergey: I think we made every single one of our free game tickets back, buddy.
Sweeney: You’re damn right. Thus creating the self-sustaining economy we’ve been looking for.
Sergey: That’s right.
Sweeney: How much fresh cash did we make?
Sergey: Fresh cash! Uh, well, zero. Zero if you’re talking about U.S. currency. People didn’t really seem interested in spending any of that.
Sweeney: That’s okay. So, uh, when they run out of games, they’ll come back in and they’ll have to buy more games. Keepin’ it moving.
Sergey: Right. That is assuming, of course, that they will come back here and buy.
Sweeney: They will! They will because we’ll re-distribute these to the internet. Thus ensuring them coming back in, keeping the money moving.
Sergey: Well, no, but if we just re-distribute these, people will continue to play for free.
Sweeney: Okay…
Sergey: How does this work, Tim?
Sweeney: The money keeps moving in a circle.
Sergey: But we don’t have any money. All we have is this. … How does this work, dude!?
Sweeney: I don’t know. I thought you knew.
Sergey: I thought you– WHAT? I thought you were on top of this!
Sweeney: You’re the one who came up with the plan!
Sergey: I– did I come up with this plan?
Sweeney: Last night, dude! With the D&B Power Club card and the–
Sergey: I blacked out. I blacked out that night.
Sweeney: Shit dude, I’ve been following your lead!
Sergey: Aw, Jesus… aw, shit. Okay, we–
Sweeney: We have no money and no inventory. There’s still something we can do. That’s still a business somehow.
Sergey: How does D&B’s do it? They’ve got a complicated system worked out and I cannot begin to understand it.
Sweeney: How does a self-sustaining economy work?
Sergey: I don’t understand how the U.S. economy works much less some sort of a self-sustaining one. I don’t understand how finances work.
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Ugh, Steamworks really needs something to compete with EAC - VAC just isn't doing it and it seems to be a big component in developers picking up EOS. EOS games generally have much worse support for Steam Input / input devices, cloud saves, and Proton, all of which matter for me.
I was skimming through one of their documents (again) and on page 7 they mention spending on free giveaways until 2025 (under the Free Game Buyouts tab). Looks like they're cutting their budget though as the free game buyout is only $20 million a year from 2022 onwards. They spent $17 million on giveaways in 2019, and planned to spend $129 million in 2020 and $40 million in 2021.
Of course this document is nearly 18 months old so plans can significantly change.
Edit:
Looks like it's finally happening.
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holy shit , they are actually making fucking Fotnite PR out of adding basic eshop feature after three years of having an eshop
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Wow, it's so Meta!
If they were any good they'd have a Poetry performance live in fortnite with poems etc about Fortnite, stores, creativity etc and call it "Metaverse" but they won't because they're cowards.
If they were any good they'd have a Poetry performance live in fortnite with poems etc about Fortnite, stores, creativity etc and call it "Metaverse" but they won't because they're cowards.
The only sizzle reel that I expect from Epic is one that contains only games that Epic is publishing. It'll probably include first footage of Alan Wake 2.
Introducing the Epic Games Store Shopping Cart
One small step for shopping carts, one giant leap for the Epic Games Store
www.epicgames.com
It's the follow up to Hyper Light Drifter.
I think they're publishing this game too since the EGS Twitter page retweeted this and Embark Studios has showed up in their database.
Halving the Free Game spend makes me think they will possibly drop the number of games per week and/or stop doing free giveaway events like the X days of Christmas.
Seeing their P&L though never ceases to amaze me, like having $1B+ on cumulative losses with a 12% on third party revenue will never not seem risky. Excluding continuing costs, they would need over $8.3B+ in third party sales to recover their losses. By Tim's admission their profits target 5-7%, so assuming a 6%, doubles that third party sales threshold to $16.6B+ to recoup their cumulative losses.
Of course, the main way they forecast their store becoming profitable is converting games into Epic published titles, hence the shift in the mix between Store and Publisher Revenue in their gross revenue. What is even more funny is their actual costs out pace their store revenue alone, or in other words, they anticipate their costs to be more than what they make from third parties on the store, in their own dang forecast! Look at 2027 for the most extreme example in how third party store revenue shrivels and they can have higher margins since they have a lower revenue share as a publisher. Even if their agreements are generous as a publisher, I cannot help but think it is funny how they are planning on chasing after a lower revenue share model in order to become profitable and how they will likely never be called out because they have seemingly managed to PR the hell out of all of this and folks will silo the publisher and storefront efforts instead of consider them as a whole business model.
I could keep harping on this and point out a lot more on just that one page, but dang.
I think the game by Embark Studios is being published by Nexcon. The official Twitter account for Embark is following the CEO and several Nexcon Twitter pages. The game is probably running on Unreal Engine.
The moment they stop the free game giveaways, is the moment their store is largely forgotten. Everyone expects the $10 coupons too, so that can’t end either if they hope to sell some games.
Funnily enough, aside of FF7R that was already known for a long time and AW2 which has been said here too, EGS isn't getting anything remarkable for a second year, so.... yeah, lol.
Timmy blew his entire budget on a bunch of Nomura games that are years old due to other exclusivity deals, very sound investment.
You might have spoke too soon since the Star Trek game and Rumbleverse were announced as exclusives.
FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE is "starting at" 80€? I thought Epic was supposed to lower prices, or at least not increase them. It's not even true next gen game.
The utter brazenness to sell a port of a 2 year old game above full price is astounding. Is this like "we know that barely anyone is actually going to buy the game, so let's make it super expensive to fleece the few suckers who will fall for it"?
I hope the PC gaming community ignores this game as hard as they did with Kingdom Hearts. I'm so done with Square Enix, they won't see another cent from me in the near future. What a shitty, greedy company they are.
Community - MetaSteam | April 2021 - So NieR Yet So FAR
On June 13. https://www.pcgamingshow.com/
metacouncil.com
I said it would be 70€ back in april (althought I always keep forgeting that that $70 becomes 80€ for some inexplicable reason), and with that (as i said then) the interest of a 2 year old port is gone
They need to bring back Fortnite skins included with game purchases if they want these new prices to fly lol
I was promised cheaper games ... by a man who loves the sound of his voice. He swore that prices would trickle down, he swore this time was different and it would work (unlike all the previous times that it failed).
Sadly Square never does above 50% for Japan IP for PC/Steam, so 40€ will be chepeast it gets.
It will be an enormous flop if so.
Well if you look at it in a 3 dimensional way
If something is trickling down from the US
all the way through the planet
it will come out on the other side and at that point the trickle down has become a trickle UP.
As a global company centered in Japan Square Enix rightfully realised that Japan is sorta on the opposite side of the US and implemented Timmies trickle down directive to a T.
Admirable.
