News Epic Games Store

madjoki

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His expectation was probably that Sony would abandon Steam for EGS' higher cut like Ubisoft did. Luckily for us that didn't happen. :)

No doubt GoW sold a bunch of copies on EGS, but I would be surprised if it was more than 5% of total sales. After more than 3 years, there's still no reason to buy a game on EGS over Steam, unless Epic plays Santa with €10 coupons. I'm pretty sure the absolute majority of sales on EGS happens with these coupons.
If $200 million doesn't make Sony abandon Steam, cut won't either, even if it was 0.
Sony definitely wants access to large new audience.

Hopefully this doesn't change with success :)
 

meschio94

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They also got some major F2P titles this year in Genshin Impact, Valorant, LoL etc. Genshin in particular always seems to hang around near the top of the top sellers list. And they had major giveaways in Battlefront 2, Rage 2, Alien Isolation, Control, Dead By Daylight, Prey, Tomb Raider.
the f2p games account almost nothing for revenue to epic, for example, i think all the riot games, don't use any of egs payment process, so if the user buy something in game, epic get th 0%.

I think only Genshin use the epic payment system, buut i'm not sure.

Ubisoft too, epic get a cut only for Games and dlc, MS nothing.
 
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Bonfires Down

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the f2p games account almost nothing for revenue to epic, for example, i think all the riot games, don't use any of egs payment process, so if the user buy something in game, epic get th 0%.
That's true, but I think they will still count F2P revenue as third party revenue in their report. Even though it's a bit of a dirty trick.
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Stoo. Caring. About. The. EGS. Top. Seller. Chart.

Since the moment I observed Shenmue 3 on top for 2 weeks, I knew it was bullshit.

Look at the list right now and tell me that Epic is not only having the list as a promo thing (hey guys, we bought exclusivity for this game, it's on top of the list because we wanna promote it).
Basically this, I mean, do you honestly believe FF7R is already out from one day to another? it was 4th literally yesterday, so yeah, do not take it as a very steady thing to check.
 

Arc

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As someone who tried to make heads or tails of the EGS top sellers chart, it's pretty much a lost cause to get any sort of meaningful data. You can basically guarantee the latest big exclusive or AAA multiplatform game will be at #1 with Genshin Impact and Rocket League being part of the top 5 and the remainder of the list being a mix of smaller exclusives and back catalogue titles.

Heck, I'm looking at the list right now and Rocket League and FF7R aren't even on it so ¯\(ツ)
 
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Bonfires Down

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As someone who tried to make heads or tails of the EGS top sellers chart, it's pretty much a lost cause to get any sort of meaningful data. You can basically guarantee the latest big exclusive or AAA multiplatform game will be at #1 with Genshin Impact and Rocket League being part of the top 5 and the remainder of the list being a mix of smaller exclusives and back catalogue titles.

Heck, I'm looking at the list right now and Rocket League and FF7R aren't even on it so ¯\(ツ)
Yeah, it's weird, but I chalk it up to incompetence on Epic's part rather than some conspiracy and I think the chart is mostly correct. What would they gain by removing FFVII and Rocket League?
 

Ge0force

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There is an obvious explanation to the weird behavior of that sales chart. Sales are so low across the board that a handful of people buying a game makes it shoot up the chart and a few people not buying a game makes it tank in the chart.
Your theory makes lots of sense. But there's also the fact that according to the sales chart, several games do better than Fortnite and RL. These are both generating tons of revenue each day, so I assume a lot of sales are required to beat these games.
 
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Alexandros

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Your theory makes lots of sense. But there's also the fact that according to the sales chart, several games do better than Fortnite and RL. These are both generating tons of revenue each day, so I assume a lot of sales are required to beat these games.
Is this the list we are talking about?


If so, it doesn't seem like Fortnite and Rocket League are included.
 

meschio94

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Your theory makes lots of sense. But there's also the fact that according to the sales chart, several games do better than Fortnite and RL. These are both generating tons of revenue each day, so I assume a lot of sales are required to beat these games.
Yeah they generate more income, on all platforms, Fortnite on pc is a niche, Rocket League is more popular on steam, on egs ? i don't think so
 

meschio94

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Alot more people is playing Rocket League on EGS sadly, but it is also f2p on there and you cant buy it on steam anymore Rocket League Playlist Population
Rocket league have rigth now on steam 35k conccurent players and 54k conccurent players peak

The numbers from the playlist population don't seem right, on that page steam players sum from all the row is about 19.500.

~15.500 are missed from the conccurent steam Rocket league players

i think the website rocket-league.com table under "steam" are accounts without a link with EGS

In the table with label "Epic:", i think they count even Steam gamers with an EGS account linked

Edit

if we take all the Epic table account, 40.300 and sub the steam conccurent players difference we have = 24.800 players on epic

But we don't know at this point if accounts from console players with egs link add too, probably yes.

On console probably even less people made a second account to play a game
 
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Morten88

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Rocket league have rigth now 35k conccurent players and 54k conccurent players peak

The numbers from the playlist population don't seem right, i think steam are accounts without a link with EGS

In the Epic i think count Steam gamer with an EGS account linked
oh yeah i didnt think of that, you could be right on that one.
 

fantomena

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Is it just me or is there a lack of "notable" releases on EGS for the past few weeks? With the exception of GoW and FFVIIR, there hasn't been much. While Steam has had FNAF, Ready or Not, GoW, MH Rise, Yu-Gi-Oh (f2p though, but still high ccu), Supraland Six Inches Under, Nobody Saves The World, Vampire Survivors and some I definetly have forgotten.
 
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Ge0force

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The case docs mentioned that Epic's goal was to get the 100 most played Steam games on EGS. Have they achieved this already?

Anyway, the lack of new 3rd party exclusives is great news. Epic is probably going all in on permanent exclusives using their publishing label, but this will definitely not be on the same scale as their initial money hatting streak. I also doubt these exclusives will gain them a noticeable amount of loyal customers.
 

fantomena

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Anyway, the lack of new 3rd party exclusives is great news. Epic is probably going all in on permanent exclusives using their publishing label, but this will definitely not be on the same scale as their initial money hatting streak. I also doubt these exclusives will gain them a noticeable amount of loyal customers.
So far, the announced (let's say "perma exclusives" even though we never truly know if they are perma exclusive) are niche games. The only "big" one can be the game from Playdead (Limbo, Inside dev).
 
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Arc

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Daemon x Machina will be next week's free game.

The case docs mentioned that Epic's goal was to get the 100 most played Steam games on EGS. Have they achieved this already?

Anyway, the lack of new 3rd party exclusives is great news. Epic is probably going all in on permanent exclusives using their publishing label, but this will definitely not be on the same scale as their initial money hatting streak. I also doubt these exclusives will gain them a noticeable amount of loyal customers.
They're still working on it as far as I can tell. When they took about top 100, they most likely mean GAAS titles such as Dead by Daylight and Naraka Bladepoint. I remember reading a leaked Bungie document stating Destiny 2 would show up on EGS at some point as well, but I'm not sure how accurate it was.
 

gabbo

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Daemon x Machina will be next week's free game.


They're still working on it as far as I can tell. When they took about top 100, they most likely mean GAAS titles such as Dead by Daylight and Naraka Bladepoint. I remember reading a leaked Bungie document stating Destiny 2 would show up on EGS at some point as well, but I'm not sure how accurate it was.
Wouldn't that necessitate several Valve games on EGS? Though at this point, we're more likely to see Valve titles on EGS because Valve is all about getting their games out there as much as possible before Epic put more of their own titles on the service
 

Arc

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Well obviously they aren't going to get Valve games, but other GAAS titles from third parties. I'm surprised PUBG hasn't shown up yet, especially since that was one of the titles they were trying to sign as a test flight game during their 2020 promotion where they gave away GTA V.
 

kio

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Well obviously they aren't going to get Valve games, but other GAAS titles from third parties. I'm surprised PUBG hasn't shown up yet, especially since that was one of the titles they were trying to sign as a test flight game during their 2020 promotion where they gave away GTA V.
Considering this whole thing only exists because of epic's blatant ripoff of PUBG I can't see they'll be too enthusiastic to release their game there.
 
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Stone Ocean

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Stop. Caring. About. The. EGS. Top. Seller. Chart.

Since the moment I observed Shenmue 3 on top for 2 weeks, I knew it was bullshit.

Look at the list right now and tell me that Epic is not only having the list as a promo thing (hey guys, we bought exclusivity for this game, it's on top of the list because we wanna promote it).
Hey, when you're selling like 5 copies, a game suddenly selling 7 is bound to light the chart on fire!
 
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ExistentialThought

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I think onboarding Steam's most popular games is such a stilted strategy regardless.

Taking the most popular games and throwing them on your platform does not suddenly make folks flock to your platform, especially when some of those games have likely seen the bulk of their lifetime sales by the point you get them on to your platform. I think Epic knows this, which is why they often give them away for free to juice their own numbers, but in the grand scheme of things they are giving them away for free from anywhere from a day or a week. Someone looking to buy X today is not going to care it was giving away for free years ago, they are going to buy where it either the cheapest, currently on sale, and/or their preferred platform. Again, I think Epic knows this, which is why they relied on coupons to be the cheapest, extend sales, and hopefully change folks' preferences, but I think it is a case of burning your candle from both ends.

Just in general though, I think Epic is a very reactive company, rather than a proactive one. At the core of what they work towards it tends to be a reaction to what either a competitor is doing or what is trending. Honestly, I am not sure what they would do without a competitor or someone there they can point to as a means of differentiating themselves (e.g. Unity vs. Unreal, PUBG vs. Fortnite, Steam vs. EGS, etc.). To be fair, a lot of companies are like this, but I think it spills into their store strategy which means rather than creating the environment a popular game can organically appear, they try to force it. And hey, sometimes this strategy not only works, it works really well (e.g. Fortnite).

Heck, I think Epic buying Mediatonic for Fall Guys was a reaction to its initial explosive success and I would be curious if upon reflection, they still think they made the right choice. )Anyway I could keep ranting, but I will stop there before this becomes a even bigger wall of text.
 

fantomena

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EGS is now also missing out on Warm Snow and Warno. Nothing on Lego Skywalker Saga either. EGS staff must be on vacation.
 
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fantomena

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Somehow Freedom Games managed to get themself accepted into the store and are "flooding" it with games, taking up a lot of space.
 

Mor

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194 million users
62 million MAU
13.2 million peak concurrent
$840 revenue total
$300 million third party games
Last year:


Yeah, it barely gets paying users, 35M grow is low, really low
 
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ExistentialThought

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194 million users
62 million MAU
13.2 million peak concurrent
$840 revenue total
$300 million third party games
Holy toledo, 300M in 3rd party spend is way worse than even my worse predictions. I said anything under 400M would be disasterious. 300M is important to contextualize that the number of 3rd parties has drastically increased on the store, meaning the dollars are being spread thinner across more games.
 

AHA-Lambda

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300m out of 840m, and that’s real spending so will include discounts (but not the cost of that to epic)

fucking hell

oh well Daemon X Machina today and more free games for 2022 😂
 

Ascheroth

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That's 36m profit* at 12% in the entire year.

*realistically more cause epic makes 100% on exclusives until they get their money back, but also less because their 10$ discounts aren't included.
If we ignore the exclusivity stuff for now and take those 36m as pure profit, it takes only 3.6m coupon uses throughout the year to evaporate all that profit again. Yikes.
 

ExistentialThought

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Holy moly, the more I think about it, the more I just do not understand what they really hope to accomplish if customer spend has been stagnant for years now. Why would you continue to throw coupons and free games at customers in an effort to increase spend? Even if you do increase spend, these folks are clearly not buying in a way they will sustain after you stop promotional spend. I assume at this point, they must be giving free games and coupons to folks since they are more worried about gaining and retaining customers, but for a non-subscription based service to resort to these tactics, it is almost going to continue to be a question of how you would ever expect earn a profit when you have the lowest rates in town?

At this point it makes sense why are are pivoting to publishing, with this strategy leaked from the Apple trial. The store-only path is not shaking out for them. Publishing will increase their margins, but they will have more costs upfront to support development. I suppose they need to keep the store going and retain customers so they can ensure they have an audience to sell their published games to, but again, I just think they are burning the candle from both ends if this is their actual strategy.
 

thekeats1999

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The more I think about that figure the more horrific it gets. $300 million was spent on third party games, the small print says this doesn't take into account vouchers, funding deals and so on. So that means that third parties havn't even received $300 million. Yes there are more day and date games there that release on steam. But in that year how much was actually spent by epic to get the exclusive deals? For something like FF7R I could imagine that being in the 10's of millions bracket alone.

So if they had spent $150 million on deals then the only profit they have received is 12% of 150 million minus coupons minus running costs and so on.
Kingdom Hearts was less popular than Kena.

Let that sink in.
I will say that I am looking forward more Kena than Kingdom Hearts. I know I have a better chance of getting some form of discount from them than I do SE. Unless SE do some form of heavily discounted bundle for Kingdom Hearts I won't be biting.
 
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Ge0force

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Only 300M spent on 3rd party games, despite a huge increase in games is a terrible result. No doubt the majority of this was spent using coupons.

Since I strongly dislike Epic's vision and strategy for EGS - especially the money hatting - I can't be more happy with this result.


Edit: A new round of coupons already? Wasn't the last round less than a month ago? Epic must be really desperate 😂
 
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manchego obfuscator

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$300 million in third-party revenue is honestly pathetic given how much Epic has been spending on the store. No wonder they're shifting away from exclusivity deals; I would guess that most of the EGS exclusivity deals announced in 2021 were actually signed in 2020, before their strategy changed.

Besides the obvious Squenix releases (KH, TWEWY Neo, Stranger of Paradise, FFVIIR), I don't think that much else was announced as an EGS exclusive last year? Off the top of my head, I can only think of:

  • Tchia
  • Star Trek Resurgence
  • Sifu
  • Sonic Colors Ultimate
I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but I'm reasonably sure there were significantly more EGSclusive announcements in 2019 and 2020.