Every Thursday at 5 p.m. there is a free game in the Epic Games Store. In addition to indie games, such as the current free game 3 out of 10, there are occasionally real AAA highlights such as GTA 5 or the Football Manager 2020 for free.
However, the whole thing is quite expensive for Epic, as now emerges from new figures published in the ongoing legal battle with Apple.
Hundreds of millions lost to Epic
In order to be able to compete with Steam, Epic relies on two things: Exclusive titles and free games. It should be clear that it is not exactly cheap to lure customers into your store in this way. However, specific figures are now available for the first time.
How PC Gamer reported, the publisher paid around in 2020 alone $ 444 million to developers who offer their game exclusively or free of charge in the Epic Store for one year. As part of these exclusive deals, every publisher receives a promised amount, even if their game does not sell well – the so-called minimum guarantee.
In its year-end report 2020, Epic reported that it had raised around $ 700 million – but only 265 million of that were raised through third-party games. Quite a loss compared to the $ 444 million paid for exclusives and free games.
Although it should have financed some upcoming games, according to Apple Epic would be with it $ 330 million Have to reckon with costs that won’t come back if you add 2019. Overall, Epic should even be by the end of 2021 lose a total of $ 600 million with his store.
Epic CEO sees the situation positively
Epic boss Tim Sweeney commented on Twitter on Sunday after various sites reported the millions of dollars in losses:
Link to Twitter content
According to him, this is all part of a plan, because he actually celebrates the numbers as a “fantastic success”. After all, the money was a good investment to let the user base grow rapidly and thus to shake Valve’s monopoly:
“Apple calls this ‘losing money’, but spending now to build a great, profitable business in the future is exactly what an investment is! The same goes if you are building a factory, business or game.”
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