But, yeah people today still hate Epic for nothing. they even make a group and give really bad reviews to games that recently exclusive or exclusively released on Epic. Just why bruh why, LEAVE THE GAME ALONE. Epic offer cheaper games with a laggy and very bad launcher with no achievements and no community/workshop. Epic dont need You. Hate Epic DONT hate the game. I bought some games on Epic coz the fact its cheaper than in Steam (of course this game not on Steam coz its exclusive). Just go away haters. For me Epic's promotion is somewhat generous by sharing AAA games with some of the DLCs just by registering an account (The fact that Epic paid the game Devs better than Steam).
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I dislike the way they go about with the exclusives, but other than that, I don't care. Thing is, I like steam, I like using just one launcher, and my backlog is so big that I can wait for any new game to become cheap enough on steam before I get it. I don't even mind missing out on getting it free on Epic.
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I spend 166,09€ since launch and I'm pretty happy with it.
Tbh. I'm more willing to buy new games on epic than on steam. I don't care about achivements and communitystuff because I mostly play singleplayer games and if the devs get a bit more money thats great.
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I just can't believe that it's been years and they still lack shopping cart functionality on their store, it's so weird. I still prefer to buy on Steam because it's cheaper in my region and the extra services are worth it, you don't realize just how good the Steam client is until you have to play games somewhere else (looking at you controller options).
That said I appreciate the freebies and don't mind the timed exclusives as long as they stop pulling that last minute crap.
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Hey, that's me! I bought exactly one game with a 10 € off coupon for 5 € ;)
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plus the cost of the exclusive "bribery" deals, and they keep only 12% of the 3rd party sales, so they spending much more than their income from 3rd party sales, that is clear.
I have a feeling valve got more income just from steam market fees.
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If you exclude Fortnite, Epic is making considerable losses.
According to the publisher for Control, their money-hat alone was $10 million. That's a third of Epic's entire take of third-party revenue for the whole of 2019.
When you add in all the freebies, the payment charges, development & maintenance, etc the losses will be considerable.
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Yeah, it's the age target then, still main concern about how they would expand the currencies as in my country it still using USD which is still pricey than my country currency
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As Tzaar said I think the most useful data would be average per paying customer. How many of those 160 million (like me) don't spend anything on the store?
I'm not anti-EGS, but I am pro-Valve for actively supporting and having a client that runs on Linux. I have a GOG account in a similar situation - loads of freebies but no Linux client (at least GOG has Linux versions, unlike EGS). Bottom line is I've too big a backlog on Steam to really care about other stores. Maybe when I've run out of games to play ...
Also, from my perspective, the $10 Epic coupons is hurting Indie sales. When I see a game I want for sale on Steam I will check its historical low price. If the same game has been for sale on EGS it's historical low will be obscured by the coupon, and psychologically I don't want to pay much more that the historical low, but I do want to buy on Steam. So I just end up not buying the game at all.
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That is a strange way to twist one of the most positive things about EGS, so that it is negative after all. Sales are a good thing for customers, and the coupons have given us extremely good prices.
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The numbers seem impressive at face value but, actually, are quite poor in reality.
For 2019, the Epic Store's first full year in operation, third-party (i.e. non-Fortnite sales) were valued at $251 million from 108 million users.
With the figures for 2020, the admittedly impressive growth in users of nearly 50% on 2020, generated $265 million in sales - representing a less than 6% increase on 2019. This means the average Epic customer in 2020 is spending considerably less on third-party games ($1.63) than in 2019 ($2.32).
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2020-year-in-review
In this case, even adding in first-party revenue doesn't help. In fact, it's even worse.
In 2019, 108 million users generated a total of $680 million.
In 2020, 160 million users generated "over" (and presumably close to) $700 million.
So a near 50% increase in users generated a touch over 3% increase in revenue (note: that's not profit either).
If you exclude Fortnite revenue, Epic is undoubtedly making a significant loss on running the store - the lower cut, the money hats, the paid-for freebies, the payment service charges, the cost of development and maintenance, etc.
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It’s really dumb of them to start the fight with apple and google, cutting off a significant money supply, while literally pouring hundreds of millions into launching EGS.
Guy’s got balls, but, not good at strategy. While either venture could end up boosting long-term profits, they’re both a major money sink in the near term, and fort nite is just one game.
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Thanks for the 3rd party sales figures. These are a good addition to the discussion.
I dislike the idea of "average customer" though. It's true that on average a customer spent $1.63, but the average customer obviously spent nothing. The question is how much money Epic spent (for example on free titles) vs. how much money it made. Obviously the revenue grew little, but if the cost of the store didn't grow, then it's still good.
Since Epic decided to continue the free game programme for another year, it seems that it does see a benefit from that. Of course, it's possible that just having more registered users feels valuable, but it's also possible that older customers ordered less this year, and new ones made up for it, in which case these new users are valuable for the bottom line (but Epic will also have to think how to retain old customers).
Frankly I think that the free games are bad for the industry, just like bundles were bad for the industry. The value of a game is very low now, and anyone who isn't a hardcore gamer can just make do with free or low cost options.
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Obviously the revenue grew little, but if the cost of the store didn't grow, then it's still good.
Not necessarily. If my customer base grew by 50% but revenue by only 6%, when revenue in gaming increased pretty much across the board due to the pandemic anyway, then that's a worrying sign. If those customers were also not only considerably more active (which they were) and still spent less anyway, I'd find that even more alarming.
And given the freebies alone this year, we can be fairly certain costs grew.
While Epic doesn't provide a specific breakdown, we can reasonably infer that it is making a loss on third-party sales, at least.
Epic takes a cut of 12% on third-party revenue. For 2020, third-party revenue was $265 million - meaning that Epic's cut was just $31.8 million before any expenses. In 2019, Epic made $30 million from third-party sales. So adding 50 million+ users has driven a tiny $1.8 million increase in Epic's third-party take. That is not a good sign, imo.
It's also important to remember, the Fortnite money would be there whether the EGS existed or not. So really, it's not particularly relevant to a discussion of the success, or lack thereof, of the EGS. But that's obviously not the full story.
From $31.8 million, Epic has to pay payment service providers (at the low-end that's 2~3% so potentially a quarter of Epic's 12% cut straight away), development & maintenance costs, the money-hats (Control alone got $10 million in 2019), and the costs of the freebies it gives away.
Considering the games given away this year, most notably Total War Saga: Troy, which was given away on its release day, it isn't unreasonable to assume that the cost of exclusives and freebies for 2020 ballooned massively meaning heavy losses for Epic on third-party games.
And, if you really want to stick the boot in, to put Epic's third-party revenue into perspective, just one indie game on Steam, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, generated nearly as much in revenue (maybe more) as all the third-party titles on the Epic Store combined, and that's not even taking into account the fact that you're comparing just 4 months of sales for Fall Guys and 12 months of sales for everything (third-party) on the Epic Store.
I agree that free games are bad for the industry btw, and Epic is a case in point. The real question for Epic is what happens if and when Epic turns off the freebie taps, do they have enough to keep customers engaged with a relatively featureless platform that relies heavily on other platforms to pick up the slack for it?
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Sorry for not having responded sooner (I'm not all that active here these days).
I think that Epic will continue giving free games until they think they're competitive enough with Steam at the feature level. Looking at the roadmap (having one publicly available is one of the best features of the store), two important upcoming updates are achievements and the ability of devs to self-publish. I'm not sure what the latter means for curation, but I assume it will continue at some level. Still, Epic themselves say that the goal is to add more games. I think that once they add a shopping cart, gifting and user reviews they're likely to consider it a fully developed store. I think that at that point they will try to leverage the user base better.
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Do you know what got me thinking is what do they consider first-party sales in the store? You can't buy in-game currency on the store and you can't purchase the battlepasses on the storefront either. Those are all in-game. So are they considering 3rd party games that they didn't get timed exclusives on? I can't see the other $435 mil being from the small bundles for RL or FN.
Or do they consider store purchases anything purchased in the f2p games on PC purchases on the storefront? You would think that amount would be higher than.
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I'm pretty sure they consider in-game transactions for Fortnite, plus the sales of Epic's other games, as first-party revenue because the game is run through the Epic Launcher and uses Epic's payment system.
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I feel that if they included Fortnite in those sales numbers it would be a lot higher. I read one article that said it supposedly made $400 mil in April of 2020 alone. This does include all platforms but that is pretty damn high for one month. I can't find anything that shows actual Fortnite earnings overall for 2020 though. I found an article from June saying projected Epic revenue for 2020 was $5 billion total. That's a damn lot of money. June Article
Also what games does Epic sell that are 1st party? Rocket League, Fortnite, Dauntless, and a few others that I'm not sure if Epic actually owns them is Rogue Company, The Cycle, and Diabotical are all F2P so only sales for those are in-game not on storefront except for a few cosmetic bundles. Plus the last few years they've always mentioned Fortnite revenue separate from the other revenue.
Not sure what they are including unless they actually broke it down better but no matter what I don't think Epic is hurting for money.
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Ya I don't think Epic will dislodge Steam but it is giving them some competition which in reality is good for gamers because that's how we see improvements. I think the hate for Epic is funny because I bet a lot of the people still out there trying to look tough with the hate for them still claim the games and I bet are playing them too. There's not really a way to prove if they've put time into the games since we don't have profiles on there yet.
I just don't care anymore where I get my games. Whoever is the cheapest gets my money. Valve hasn't got as much from me in the last year as they use to since so many other sites have better deals quite often. Hell for having a Humble monthly sub I get up to an extra 20% off games. Then you have GMG, Fanatical, Games Billet, Games Republic, and others with so many competing sales.
As for Epic Tim Sweeney isn't one to want to lose money so I'm pretty sure they have it all figured out on money. They also have the Unreal Engine they make money off of too. I found this for their sales in 2019.
"In 2019, Epic Games reported $4.2 billion in revenue and $730 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA, a key measure of profitability). Revenue for 2020 is forecast to be $5 billion, with EBITDA of $1 billion."
Sony also invested $250 million last year. I'd love to see how much overall Epic made in 2020 and not just on PC sales.
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Yep, Steam really changed its way in the last year because of the EGS. Like they just didn't give a damn about the events anymore and... yeah that's about it ;)
(Sorry, just find it funny to still read the 'competition is a good thing' point a year in and Valve has litterally done nothing.)
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Actually, Valve has done something. We have finally seen updates to the Steam client. The new library, the point system, and remote play together. Valve has said for years we were getting a client update but nothing ever happened. Epic launched its store in 2018 and all these updates to the steam client came after. Not saying it's why the updates happen but I somewhat believe it helped push it forward.
If you think competition doesn't matter then you need to look at Madden football for example. EA has had the rights to the NFL for games for years and those games have just become utter trash. They don't even try anymore. Hell, the last game still had assets from the previous years. Like it said 2019 when it was the 2020 game. It's the only true NFL football game to play so people just buy what they can get. When there was competition from 2k Sports EA got scared and dished out a shit load of money to take away the better franchise.
The Epic Store does need improvements but they keep gaining business each year. They are doing something right. They did say their major focus this year is the profiles, achievements, wishlists, and a social overhaul. I know they won't dethrone Steam but I won't deny them my business if they have a deal for something I want.
Overall I'm here to play games and if I have to download a client to play it then so be it. I want to play Ubisoft games I have to use Uplay, Sony games I buy a Playstation, Nintendo games I buy a Nintendo, etc. PC at least it's just a free client and not a whole new system.
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Surely all of those changes are really head on with the EGS and not meant to only increase revenue. Granted remote play together is a selling point and not meant to glue customers to the Steam brand, but I also think that the 'thing' that happned in 2020 might be a major factor why that was pushed ahead rather than the non-existent feature in the EGS.
Where are the Steam exclusives? Where is Valve binding devs and publishers that for years snuggly used Steam to grow? All those things seem rather odd given how aggressive Epic is right now.
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Remote play together had nothing to do with COVID. It came out in 2019. Steam is the big boy in town. They don't need to lock in the exclusives. I'm not sticking up for Epic and what they did in the beginning with Metro Exodus but exclusives are nothing new. Also Epic offered the money and the publishers took it. If you were making a game and it was looking to sell well and a company came and offered you a ton of money to release on their site first and exclusive for a year I doubt you would turn it down. It's not like the games don't come to Steam later. Epic is trying to build customers and a piece of the market so they look at what could do that. Exclusives on games that people want.
Borderlands 3 sold 2 million copies on just the Epic store when it was an exclusive. All those people that said "fuck Gearbox and Epic" and how the game won't do well but it still did pretty damn good. Most people don't care about where the game comes from. They just want to play it and they will do that if they really want to.
People can hate on Epic all they want as it's their right. For myself, I could care less if a game is exclusive through them. Like I said before whoever has the cheaper price gets my money. I also have started buying more keys through third-party sellers over the Steam store since they have been cheaper a lot more often. GMG has XP awards you get when you buy games from them. I'm gold tier there so I get a max discount on games they sale, Humble I get up to an extra 20% off of games for being a humble monthly subscriber and Epic has given me $10 coupons for games. I don't get anything like this from Steam.
Steam is great and my main game client but I just find it so funny that people hate Epic so much and still redeem the games and act like they are sticking it to the man. You do realize that when you redeem those games it just makes Epic look better it shows their numbers increase. If people really wanted to screw Epic then they should stop redeeming the free games.
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Actually just redeeming the freebies and not buying anything else hurts Epic financially. Once Fortnite stops coughing up money they'll have to change course.
My point was that people argue that 'competition is better for the customer' and so far I fail to see it. For me the EGS rarely offers a better deal than Steam, Humble or GOG. Plus Steam didn't have to change their 'game' because EGS is around. If anything they have just doubled down on what they did before. Competition is only good for the customer if the competitor understands how to fight the 'alpha male'. For that the EGS would have to be a better store than Steam, the launcher needs to be better than Steam's and they need to put games on sale all the time. A bunch of freebies and exclusives won't hurt Steam in the long run. Especially it won't change people's mind when it comes to brand loyality. Epic had a chance to change the PC digital market for games and they pretty much missed it, but people still argue like they did. I rest my case.
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If they missed it then why do their numbers keep rising each year for active concurrent daily users? If a company isn't improving or doing a good job people don't keep coming back. Yes, Epic should have more features and I'm not sure why they didn't launch with certain expected features but they have been updated the store and it has improved. This year they tell us it's all about social updates.
If anything they have just doubled down on what they did before.
If they doubled down on what they did before then that's called a change. All those things I mentioned before that have been added since EGS came around are changes. Part of me feels like we may have never even seen these changes if EGS wouldn't have shown itself. It's the only other store that has been aggressively trying to get part of Steam's market hold. I have no proof that we got these changes because of EGS but you also have no proof we didn't.
EGS has only been running since 2019 and they have grown in users and sales since then. It takes time to really build something new. Steam wasn't the only way to get games when they launched but they came in when there wasn't much competition.
So I'll mention this for my final thing. My 12yr old son is a PC gamer. He has played games since he could basically hold the Wii controller in his hand. He loves playing games and he looks at clients and storefronts as just ways to play what he enjoys. He doesn't have the mentality of one place is better than the other because they all basically do the same thing for him. Give him access to play what he wants. So this last year many console gamers have become PC gamers. They understand what it's like to have exclusives and PC exclusivity on clients is not the same. It's a free launcher and they can play all the games they want and not have to drop another $400 on a different system to play all the PC games.
This is one reason I also loved PC gaming. Yes, Steam is my main client but that is because I have 11 years on it and a massive library. It doesn't stop me from buying games on every other client though. I'm constantly looking for deals and if a game is cheaper in a different spot then they get my money. It's all about the games and playing them. Brand loyalty doesn't win you prizes or make you cooler it just makes you mad because something else wants to compete against something you love and you think is the best no matter what. I lived through many years of listening to the petty console war bs and it's the dumbest thing ever. Now when it comes to PC gaming it's a sad thing to see especially when it's always PC MASTER RACE. You have the ultimate gaming device for just the cost of one machine and free clients to access all these games you can so go and enjoy it. There are worse things out there than a stupid free client to give you more choices.
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Where are the Steam exclusives? Where is Valve binding devs and publishers that for years snuggly used Steam to grow? All those things seem rather odd given how aggressive Epic is right now.
People tend to forget how Valve started out. They forced people into Steam by making Half Life 2 and Counter Strike exclusive to Steam, during a time when no one understood why we should need to create an account and install a launcher just to play a game. And people hated them for it. Valve is the big player on the market right now and they just don't need to do any exclusivity to be successful. But they started by doing exactly that. They were as aggressive as Epic is today. So it's actually kind of funny to see people defend them and criticise Epic for doing something very similar. The sad truth is, many people are so loyal to Steam, they would reject Epic no matter what. The EGS without exclusivity deals would be just as hated, but less successful.
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The EGS without exclusivity deals would be just as hated, but less successful.
That's the only part I disagree with you. I was fine with Epic and even welcomed the Steam competition until they started with the exclusives. In fact - that's when the whole hate thing started as I remember it.
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Half-Life 2 was only a timed-exclusive. Appearing one year after on the original X-box. Just wanted to mention it. And it was only their own games which were exclusive for a time. Every other publisher was free to sell a steam key or just the box. So nothing like the aggressiveness of Epic exclusitivity deals nowadays.
On theother points, you're totally right. I was going full hatred at Valve, for forcing us to use a Steam account back in the days when it was released. Few years later though, they totally convinced me to spend money on their store. Despite me only going for the "Arrrr-releases", almost from the start when i got my first PC. Their great deals, community features and cd-key redemption quickly conviced me to spend money there.
On the other hand, EGS has only managed to convince me to redeem their free games until now. MAybe that will also change in some time? IDK :)
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what got me to use steam is that I bought some game that required steam, then totally forgot about it for several years. As so often was the case, the discs disappeared, but when I wanted to play it again, I was able to log into steam and, HEY, MY GAME IS STILL HERE!!!!
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it's actually other way around. Valve created steam almost by accident - they developed Half Life and counter-strike, but they wanted some kind of method for providing easily downloadable patches that included anti-cheat and anti-piracy measures. At the same time they had some problems with their publisher, so they added a digital storefront, but that wasn't their initial goal for steam, it was almost an afterthought.
Their digital storefront did well, and after a few years they opened it up to other developers/publishers. The fact that they had a working digital store with anti-piracy and the ability to push through updates, made them very attractive to game-makers, who could utilize these newfangled features without having to develop it themselves.
In other words, Valve lucked into steam
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I have taken the free games I was interested in, did not really give them a go yet, apart from some multiplayer stuff I tried with friends. I have been very against their exclusivity deals and was completely against buying from them, at least until their store offers an experience on similar level as Steam does. But it is true, that with time this resolve has faded and I have already been hovering over some of those sweet coupon deals couple of times.
In the end I have not purchased anything yet, since I have always thought of my massive back log and the fact that I am waiting for the opportunity to upgrade a GPU before I get into any of the more recent graphics intensive games.
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It's the most desperate business strategy I have ever witnessed. I just wonder when the Fortnite bubble will burst. A lot of people will hurt financilly on that.
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It’s not a bad idea, but it is risky. Quite a few businesses have entered new markets or gotten rid of small competitors by underpricing their goods/services and taking a loss. It’s actually illegal in most countries.
Giving lots of free gifts... may not technically be selling at a loss, but it comes pretty close.
Thing is, you need very deep pockets to pull it off, and the question remains, when Epic stops subsidizing their store, will they have a loyal enough and large enough customer base to cover the losses?
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I don't think it's a bad strategy (in the short term), just that is the most aggressive it could be, which, IMO isn't necessarily a bad one. It just hasn't proved itself in history to be a long-term success. I am totally aware that Sweeney et al. make big bucks right now, but how will that look like in 5 years? There were quite a few businesses in recent history that had runaway big successes, only to then disappear, because reality caught up on them. I can't for the life of me see this going anywhere. To Epic's disadvantage we don't have those so called 'whales' in the Western market, that Asian companies thrive off for a longer period to stay afloat.
I just recently read that the average 'customer' (which is basically every single registered user on EGS) has spent 5 dollars per account. Not talking about the approximately 750 million games they've given away to all those users. At some point that well will look all dried up. Agro marketing will only take you so far.
There's a reason why the game Control had up to over 80% more copies sold on Steam, and everyone was talking about the game when it hit Steam. Because most PC gamers weren't even aware that the game was on EGS, or didn't care. The numbers speak for themselves.
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Free games should have been the focus, not exclusives to bring in Steam players. Free games alone would have attracted many new potentially paying customers - but I think they created so much distrust, dislike or even hate with the toxic timed exclusives. Many of those upset gamers (I'd count myself among them) now just collect the free games, but have no intention of ever spending a dollar there. It's like they threw their name away first and then started trying to create good will with the giveaways. Why not just start off creating good will? I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling no need to support them despite the freebies. It's possible I'd have spent real money there by now if it'd not been for the exclusives (and if the price was right).
A few other points:
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Epic is a store I will never support. They can give away all the games they want, I will never own an epic account. I do not support their practices so nothing they do will ever matter to me. Besides, I have enough games on Steam to keep me busy for a lifetime and then some.
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Took all free games they were giving away. Won't launch single one of them ever. There's no difference between torrent and epic store as for me. Just to keep things civil, I've stopped pirating games more than 10 years ago. Still I won't use epic nor torrent even if the game isn't on Steam. Dev's loss. I don't care. Epic store is hot harbage in terms of functionality. I'm sure everyone knows their customers using Steam forums for game related issues and that EGS doesn't even have a freaking cart. Yet they want to compete with Gaben. GL with that shit.
If their service would've look at least close to everything Steam can provide I'd give it a shot. As long as that circus remains an unborn child of lazy goofball EGS employees, I think I pass.
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Their customer generation is just growing up. It will become very big in years to come.
They have League of Legends, Fortnite, now pushing Valorant, bought Rocket League. In short, they are trying to dominate e-sport, which is becoming bigger and bigger.
Epic with Tencent behind their back will be more than fine.
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I love epic . Great free games to play . All the competition and customer wins.
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All the Fortnite kids will start buying some games eventually like someone wrote on another thread. They took the risk against the big dog, they can't go back now no matter those numbers.
What I don't understand is the extreme fanboism. Example, Zombie Army 4 is now on Steam and now they're claiming EGS killed the player base for that one when Zombie Army Trilogy never had a consistent player base and I'm aware of that since I won ZAT here so yeah.
Competition is good no matter what.
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I’m all for fair and honest competition. I’m even ok with exclusives. But I’m not a fan of dumping, which is where a large company takes a loss to undercut their opponents to try to force them out of business or to change their business policies
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According to Epic, their game store had 160 million users and generated $700 million in sales, last year.
That averages to less than $5 per user!
2/3rd of their revenue is first party games
Oh, and they gave away almost 750 million copies of non-free games. Meaning they gave away a paid game for every dollar they earned
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