News Epic Games Store

Arc

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Blankos Block Party now has a front page banner. :grimacing-face:

Also I came across this post when reading about Stadia shutting down that shows Destiny 2 DAUs across platforms. I'm not sure how accurate that post is, but Destiny 2 is the 19th most played game on EGS so it could give some guidance as to how popular games are on there (assuming the most played page tracks DAUs).

Usually I defend Epic on some stuff, but this is just plain stupid from all angles. Very disappointing and a signal of what's really important for the EGS, sadly.
Doing the exact opposite of Steam?
 

Arc

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Skyrim will be on EGS at some point in Todd Howard's quest to get it on everything. I'd guess it was meant to release a few days ago to coincide with the GOG and Nintendo Switch versions of the Anniversary Edition, but was delayed for whatever reason.

Also another NFT game is coming to EGS. I think that's five so far (Blankos Block Party, Grit, STG Football, Supremacy - Fight for Glory and Star Atlas).
 

Arc

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Yet another NFT game is coming to EGS.

Railgrade from Epic Publishing just entered the EGS marketing black hole a few days ago. Absolutely noone talks about it anywhere.
It's 6th on the EGS charts so it didn't completely bomb. It would have done much better on Steam though, especially since any half decent builder can sell hundreds of thousands of copies. The worst part is The Irregular Corporation was publishing it before Epic bought them ala PC Building Simulator 2.
 

fantomena

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ExistentialThought

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I do agree, in part, that Apple should not increase prices to weakening exchanges. Especially when the inverse, rarely, if ever, happens.

That said, I had to chuckle at this bolded bit:
"Imagine if a landlord told their small business tenant they had to increase their prices without any say in the matter or anywhere else to go. That is what Apple is doing to developers for no other reason than to pad Apple's bottom line. They are unilaterally imposing a price increase on developers across multiple countries without any justification. Developers don't have a choice but to comply because the App Store is the only way they can reach over a billion iOS users."
That already happens today, maybe not in a explicit sense, but landlords are always telling businesses renters they will have to pay more to keep renting a space with those business owners having little to no choice to pay since often the cost of moving is far higher than the increases. So then they raise their prices to offset the costs.

And that is to say nothing of landlords trying to constantly extract more and more and more from non-business renters who often are caught between a rock and a hard place since they cannot afford a home, cannot save for a home, and often have to live in certain areas for work. Unlike the business owner, they cannot even raise their worth in a system that dictates their worth for them. The point Tim is criticizing at, is just called capitalism, the market dictates the price and all that jazz. What, factor humanity into that calculation? Nope, does not happen in capitalism.
 
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Arc

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Arc

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We are so excited that Saints Row is finally out and in your hands. More than a million players have taken Santo Ileso by storm, and begun to build their criminal empires as The Saints.
Assuming an even platform split, the EGS version of Saints Row sold ~333k in seven weeks. In reality, 1 million sold in that time frame is terrible as Saints Row 4 sold 1 million in one week with the PC version's sales being cited as being particularly strong. The poor word of mouth absolutely kneecapped the game's sales.
 

fantomena

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F1 22 and Sniper Elite 5 released months ago and still not on EGS and F1 22 store page seems to be gone.

Sonic Frontiers is pre-orderable on Steam, no page on EGS, game website says that EGS page is "coming soon", this is horrible for EGS' SEO and EGS revenue.

Tons of cool looking (and many seems to sell well on Steam) are releasing on Steam these days, but not on EGS. And it seems like with exception of the few users at r/epicgamespc, noone cares or knows about multistore releases on EGS.

Curious how long the Epic Store staff will be on vacation.




Assuming an even platform split, the EGS version of Saints Row sold ~333k in seven weeks.
I don't think we should assume that, based on my social media and Twitch observations, very few people played it on PC. And those I saw played it were well known Twitch promoters (like Angry Joe).
 
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C-Dub

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EGS’s SEO was already bad. Search any multi-store release and the Steam page usually comes before all other platforms, including consoles.

Even former exclusives on Steam overtake the EGS version in a matter of hours.

SEO seems like a losing battle for Epic. You can’t influence Google with tricks alone, and Steam’s raw numbers means it will always come on top.
 

Arc

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F1 22 and Sniper Elite 5 released months ago and still not on EGS and F1 22 store page seems to be gone.

Sonic Frontiers is pre-orderable on Steam, no page on EGS, game website says that EGS page is "coming soon", this is horrible for EGS' SEO and EGS revenue.

Tons of cool looking (and many seems to sell well on Steam) are releasing on Steam these days, but not on EGS. And it seems like with exception of the few users at r/epicgamespc, noone cares or knows about multistore releases on EGS.

Curious how long the Epic Store staff will be on vacation.



I don't think we should assume that, based on my social media and Twitch observations, very few people played it on PC. And those I saw played it were well known Twitch promoters (like Angry Joe).
Apparently F1 22 was pulled from EGS since there was no Steam < - > Epic crossplay and that's one of the things that is required to get on the store. I couldn't tell you what happened with Sniper Elite 5 since it has EOS and should facilitate cross play.

Sonic Frontiers is a weird one since the English site mentions EGS but the JP site doesn't. I assume EGS is in the cards, but I find it baffling they can't get a store page up.

Also I did the Saints Row split for simplicity. It likely skews higher on console due to the genre.
 

Arc

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For the past two years, Epic had a one use coupon in the fall. There was a coupon in 2020 for downloading Rocket League and one in 2021 when signing up for email notifications. There hasn't been any word about a fall coupon this year, but maybe they'll announce it 10 minutes after I submit this post. :shrugblob:

If Epic does skip the fall coupon, I wonder how their winter sale ones will be affected. I assume it will be the same 25% as Mega Sale back in May.

Also I came across this article that shows Ark was redeemed 17.7 million times on EGS in June 2020. It also mentions the number of downloads for the free Steam version. I think the Steam version had 25.5 million copies redeemed, but it's worded oddly and I am unsure if that number also includes the PS Plus promotion.
 

ExistentialThought

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For the past two years, Epic had a one use coupon in the fall. There was a coupon in 2020 for downloading Rocket League and one in 2021 when signing up for email notifications. There hasn't been any word about a fall coupon this year, but maybe they'll announce it 10 minutes after I submit this post. :shrugblob:

If Epic does skip the fall coupon, I wonder how their winter sale ones will be affected. I assume it will be the same 25% as Mega Sale back in May.
I am surprised Epic has kept the coupons going for as long as they have. Both the free games and the coupons have raised EGS to a higher height to fall from the longer and more frequent Epic uses these aggressive growth tactics.

My example of what I mean is Steam Flash Sales, those were something that were around for a while and customers came to expect them. When Valve shelved them, we still hear all these years later that Steam sales are not as good as they use to be. In comparison, I think Epics promos are even more ubiquitous with their platform, more than what Flash Sales ever were to Steam, and Epic runs a real risk of going against the expectations of users the longer those users have those expectations and the more frequently those expectations are met.

I think in case of Epic, if they had to pick what to carry forward longer and more frequently, the free games are probably where it is at as the coupons are likely a major lost for them and it creates incentive to not impluse buy since the deals can be significantly better at several points during the year. I still think they will pepper coupons here and there when there are major events or announcements.
 

Ge0force

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I think the free games are still the best way to keep people engaged with their store and to give them a decent library. Coupons may convince people to actually buy games, but these sales are always a loss for Epic.

Anyway, it's strange how fast EGS is becoming irrelevant. There's barely any news about it, and even former 'partners' like Square, Raw Fury and Annapurna are abandoning it. The store also still lacks several basic features like preloads after four years. Epic isn't even trying to compete with Steam, but I guess that was never their intention.

Of course there are still a handful of (permanent?) exclusives, mostly from their publishing label or by buying popular studio's. But it's easy for me to ignore these games. At least the constant money hatting has stopped. That's all I care about.

I'm still curious how EOS fits in Epic's future plans though. The amount of devs implementing EOS in their games is increasing at an alarming rate, even for games without multiplayer.
 

Ge0force

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Question:
Does Epic still give away games weekly?
Because in my opinion you don't even hear about those anymore.

Talk about the black hole of EGS marketing!
They do, but most of them are older games (fallout 3 recently) and cheap indies that have been bundled many times before.

But the black hole is real. No one is talking about PC Building Simulator 2 for example, except for a few sponsored streams. What the hell were these devs thinking when going with Epic... 🤔
 

C-Dub

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About the only thing I’ve seen for PC Building Sim 2 was the sponsored LTT video, which I switched off once they revealed it was sponsored by Epic.

It might as well not be out.
 

bobnowhere

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Railgarde came out as well and promptly disappeared into the black hole.

One review:

 
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Arc

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I am surprised Epic has kept the coupons going for as long as they have. Both the free games and the coupons have raised EGS to a higher height to fall from the longer and more frequent Epic uses these aggressive growth tactics.

My example of what I mean is Steam Flash Sales, those were something that were around for a while and customers came to expect them. When Valve shelved them, we still hear all these years later that Steam sales are not as good as they use to be. In comparison, I think Epics promos are even more ubiquitous with their platform, more than what Flash Sales ever were to Steam, and Epic runs a real risk of going against the expectations of users the longer those users have those expectations and the more frequently those expectations are met.

I think in case of Epic, if they had to pick what to carry forward longer and more frequently, the free games are probably where it is at as the coupons are likely a major lost for them and it creates incentive to not impluse buy since the deals can be significantly better at several points during the year. I still think they will pepper coupons here and there when there are major events or announcements.
I don't think Epic will ever stop the free games or coupons. There was a document from the Apple trial that showed their free game budget from 2022 onward was only $20 million which is easily covered by a few days of Fortnite sales. The coupons were the main thing hurting their profitability and they already nerfed them during the last Mega Sale by going from a flat $10 to 25%. I think they can keep the percentage coupon indefinitely, although it may eventually have a lower discount or limited uses.
 

gabbo

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I am surprised Epic has kept the coupons going for as long as they have. Both the free games and the coupons have raised EGS to a higher height to fall from the longer and more frequent Epic uses these aggressive growth tactics.

My example of what I mean is Steam Flash Sales, those were something that were around for a while and customers came to expect them. When Valve shelved them, we still hear all these years later that Steam sales are not as good as they use to be. In comparison, I think Epics promos are even more ubiquitous with their platform, more than what Flash Sales ever were to Steam, and Epic runs a real risk of going against the expectations of users the longer those users have those expectations and the more frequently those expectations are met.

I think in case of Epic, if they had to pick what to carry forward longer and more frequently, the free games are probably where it is at as the coupons are likely a major lost for them and it creates incentive to not impluse buy since the deals can be significantly better at several points during the year. I still think they will pepper coupons here and there when there are major events or announcements.
Epic tried to build their store using sales and tactics to make the sales bigger and flashier. And that doesn't even include the inherent issue with endless free games. The value proposition for EGS is intrinsically linked to the idea of sales and free games. For the end user, EOS and anticheat aren't exactly value-adds in 2022. Steam/Steam Store wasn't built on capital 'S' sales., and definitely not on free games The Flash deals were mourned because they gamified the existing Steam summer/winter sales to an extent, but weren't the only reason to go use steam or buy during a sale as a whole.

Epic seems content to lay in the whole they've dug for EGS and are using other shitty business moves to try and shore up its existence.
Also, remember EGS was started "for the devs",and that approach will obviously lead to issues when the customer base and the target audience aren't the same
 
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manchego obfuscator

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wonder how Santa Ragione feels about their game being given away for free at launch. otoh, it probably wouldn't have been a huge seller even on Steam, and they probably got an additional moneyhat on top of the one they got for EGS exclusivity in the first place, so hopefully they'll make out OK. I liked Wheels of Aurelia and Milky Way Prince, and I hope they can stay around.
 

Arc

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Interesting thread on how a small game on EGS outsold the Steam version in the past year. Mike's theory is that the Epic userbase skews towards younger Fortnite users who are more interested in cartoony games than the average Steam user. I think that's reasonable, but I also think the fact that Epic's library is much smaller than Steam's and there is a front page carousel that lists all games on sale (when a major event isn't going on) are also possible factors that help give it more exposure compared to Steam.
 

ExistentialThought

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Interesting thread on how a small game on EGS outsold the Steam version in the past year. Mike's theory is that the Epic userbase skews towards younger Fortnite users who are more interested in cartoony games than the average Steam user. I think that's reasonable, but I also think the fact that Epic's library is much smaller than Steam's and there is a front page carousel that lists all games on sale (when a major event isn't going on) are also possible factors that help give it more exposure compared to Steam.
Not saying Mike did not consider this as a reason. My initial guess is Family Man was part of the Humble choice back in May 2021. Folks who wanted it could get it as part of of the Choice for cheap, or if they did not want it, could trade/sell it off. This likely satiated the Steam key market. From a glance, the game is going for as cheap as 0.35USD on the shady key sites. In either case these folks would only show as activatations and not sales, and that is still not factoring if they are sitting on keys meaning you could not even look at activations to tell this story unless you know how many keys are in the wild versus what has been activated.