The legal dispute between Epic Games and Apple goes into the next round: The process started on Monday, May 3, 2021. In the coming weeks it should now be clarified whether Apple’s business practice of withholding 30 percent of all sales in the App Store is considered lawful.
At the same time, on May 3, 2021, some documents from the process were made public, revealing many internal figures and company secrets of Epic Games. We offer you an overview.
How much Epic does the free games cost
Video game journalist Simon Carless posted a leaked spreadsheet on Twitter that apparently shows what Epic Games is paying publishers for their weekly free games.
Link to Twitter content
This is how the payment system for free games works: The graphic reveals that Epic pays a one-time fee to the developer or publisher for the free games. For example, Epic transferred a one-time fee of 1.4 million US dollars for Subnautica.
The number of times the free game was accessed can also be seen: Subnautica was subsequently used by a total of 4.6 million users of its own library – on average, the developer only receives around 30 cents per game given away. So if you’re one of those people who pull up games in order to wash extra Epic money into the developers’ pockets: that works rather poorly than right.
New Epic Store users per free game: The table also shows how many new users have registered for the Epic Store with each new offer. Indie games like World of Goo were particularly worthwhile here, which brought in three times as many new users with an investment of 50,000 dollars.
The platform Celeste, on the other hand, is likely to have turned out to be a flop for Epic: Here the publisher paid 12 dollars for each new user.
Exclusive Borderlands 3 deal cost nearly $ 150 million
In addition, the specific amount has now become known that Epic had to shell out for the one-year exclusivity of Borderlands 3: All in all, you paid here nearly 150 million US-Dollar an Publisher 2K Games.
The sum consists of a minimum sales guarantee, marketing obligations and non-refundable fees. In addition, there are the costs for the free games Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (11 million dollars) and Civilization 6 (20 million dollars) – so that was a multiple of what you get for other AAA titles such as the Batman Arkham games paid.
Sony earns money on crossplay
What should be common knowledge: For a long time Sony took a stand when it came to crossplay between the PlayStation 4 and other consoles. While Xbox, Switch and PC players played Fortnite, Rocket League and Minecraft together, PS4 players had to stay outside.
The Verge shows a letter from Epics Vice President Joe Kreiner to Sony, in which he wants to convince the console manufacturer of crossplay: In return, he offered marketing data or free in-game goodies with which Sony could advertise its PS Plus subscription. But in vain, because Sony blocked.
It wasn’t until August 2019 that Sony opened up to crossplay because they found a way to make money with it: The Japanese are the only company to charge a fee, if a publisher wants to implement crossplay with a PlayStation console in his game – this was confirmed by Epics CEO Tim Sweeney on the first day of the trial.
What’s next with the Epic Store?
It was recently announced that Epic is currently suffering huge losses with its store:
more on the subject
Epic: Loss in the three-digit million range, CEO sees it positively
On the first day of the trial, the Epic boss confirmed that the publisher is currently losing a lot of money through aggressive marketing spending on exclusive deals and free games. However, “Tim Sweeney expects to be profitable within three or four years.”
Table of Contents
