If you’ve ever wondered what it actually costs for one of these major video game services to give away “free” games, the Epic Games Store billed $ 11.6 million for the first 10 months of its existence.
The information became known on Monday as part of Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple Computer. Writer and video game historian Simon Carless said there was a table of 38 titles that were given away between December 2018 and September 2019 “Accidentally Published Early” as part of a wealth of process documents and exhibits.
Want to know how much $ the developers of these “free” Epic Games Store games got and how many copies were packed? Here are the first 9 months until September 2019. pic.twitter.com/5hkLb1VEjj
– Simon Carless (@simoncarless) May 3, 2021
The freebies rele ased during that period reveal interesting data on how much Epic Games paid for the privilege of giving out free games to attract new users. The first game released as part of this promotional boost, Subnautica
Other games like super meat boy, rhyme, For the honor, World of goo, and the Jackbox Party Pack, Epic made new users for about 50 cents each – in part because Epic paid far less (between $ 45,000 and $ 63,000) for these older titles than it did for games like Subnautica, Mutant Year Zero ($ 1 million) or the Batman Arkham series ($ 1.5 million).
Metro: 2033 Redux is listed as an Epic Zero Dollar cost to buyout, but this apparent anomaly appears to be a result of Metro Exodus‘Epic Games Store one-year exclusivity in 2019.
What the data doesn’t show is how much Epic paid for free for a week Grand Theft Auto 5 Freebies on the Epic Games Store it made in May 2020.
Trial of Epic and Apple’s lawsuit started on Monday (With scream from Fourteen days Fans who had made one of the public rooms available for the procedure). The two dragged themselves to federal court late last summer after Epic bypassed Apple’s app store selling in-game Fourteen days Currency to avoid paying royalties that Apple believes are too high and undeserved.
Apple has countered the fact that Epic and its “Coalition for App Fairness”, who protest Apple’s practices, are insincere trying to avoid fair and customary license fees for sales to an iPhone install base Numbering more than 1 billion devicesworldwide.