Epic will lose at least $ 330 million as a result of all those Epic Game Store exclusives and free games. But on Twitter, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney considers this an investment and looks surprisingly excited about losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
This information was also spotted reported by PC Gamer from the new court documents that emerged from the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic. While these two big companies are fighting in court, we all have a new perspective on the financial situation of the Epic Game Store. It’s not great!
Epic has spent $ 444 million to get exclusives and free games for the store. This money went to a bunch of “minimum guarantees” for publishers and developers. These minimums have been paid to publishers, whether a game sells well enough to cover it, which is why so many companies have taken Epic Game Store offers. A guaranteed amount of money is better than a possible loss. For example, to get Control on the Epic Game Store as an exclusive Epic paid $ 10.5 million. If we look at Epic’s End of year report 2020 and we do some calculations, we find that the players spent $ 700 million on the Epic game store in 2020, but the third-party games, the ones for which Epic made offers, represented only 265 million dollars out of the large number. So that’s leaving MILLION in advances and lows that Epic has not yet recovered. If you include the 2019 offers, Apple estimates them at $ 330 million.
According to Apple, in total, including expensive exclusives, free games and all other expenses, Epic Game Store will cost Fortnite the developer lost about $ 600 million by the end of this year and that the store will not become profitable until 2027.
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Epic, in a rejection, turns this around in a different way. His lawyers explained that all this is part of the plan. That this is just a big (VERY LARGE) investment in the rapid growth of the store and user base. Epic also claims that even with a revenue cut of less than 12% of transactions, the store will start making a profit in 2023.
In response to IGN reporting on the massive losses, Tim Sweeney seemed fine, even delighted with all the money Epic was losing. “This is right!” said Sweeney, “And it turned out to be a fantastic success in reaching players with great games and a fantastic investment in business development!” He also posted a great infographic on Twitter which looked nice, but didn’t even include how much money Epic was losing on the store.
The ongoing legal battle between Epic and Apple began in August 2020 after Epic quietly added a feature to Fortnite that allowed players to buy in-game V-Bucks through its own payment system, bypassing the Apple system and the usual cut of the manufacturer. by phone. This is a big no-no and shortly after doing so, the game was snatched from both Apple App Store and Google Play Store for Android.
Since then it is it was a back and forth in court between the two companies. Epic says other developers should be free to sell their own apps and services on devices like the iPhone without Apple’s involvement. Apple says nah. And so the legal struggle continues.
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