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Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable (kotaku.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[+] -10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Well not to discourage them but I like Epic games because every Thursday they give me a free game sometimes two. Hell all the 100 games I own on their platform I gotten for free. So maybe that's why it's not profitable?

Beyond that I see no monopoly every game on their I can find on Steam and so far have had no issues with it.

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  • [–] 94 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    They literally pay for exclusivity. It's weird that people seem to selectively ignore that every time someone brings up their desire to get free games from them.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This is the main reason why I never made an account, despite the free games.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Epic still has to pay the developers even if they give away the game for free. I'm happy to help bleed Epic dry by taking their free games. But I will never ever spend a single cent on their platform.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You're lying to yourself. They pay a fixed amount for the giveaway and it doesn't matter if the games are claimed. If anything, you owning a game on Epic means you're more likely to mention it to your friends and possibly get them to use the platform and spend on it.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They pay a fixed amount based on expected/average number of units given away. If that number is higher, devs can get more money.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Can you provide any evidence for this? The documents from the Apple trial showed fixed and round figures for every single giveaway.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes, but those buyout prices aren't negotiated in a vacuum. When the number of entitlements goes up, studios will demand higher buyout prices. There's a reason free game quality has been lackluster lately. Studios demand a higher buyouts and Epic doesn't want to spend too much money, so they go with smaller titles.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I'm pretty sure the prices are based on the projected sales using industry knowledge and tools like SteamSpy, created by Epic's head of the publishing strategy at the time. It's not common that a publisher participating in a giveaway would get to use their own figures from a prior giveaway to change the price offered by Epic, while the others' figures are available only for the games in those leaks. In other words, claiming many copies in the present is extremely unlikely to have any effect on the future buyout prices.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I mean, I get why people hate this, but some games would literally not exist if not for that exclusivity funding. For example, the newly released Alan Wake 2 is completely funded by Epic. I'd say at that point, the exclusivity is fair game.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago

    Epic funding games development was only a recent thing. For the most part, they were buying exclusivity for games that were already set to be released or were already in active development. The other reason why this was hated was because they bought exclusivity for games that were crowd-funded back when the store was newly opened.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    After Control's success, I'd imagine AW2 still would've been made even without Epic's exclusivity/publishing deal. If anything, Control's timed EGS exclusivity hurt their numbers until they eventually hit Steam.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    every game on their [sic] I can find on Steam

    Oh yeah? Find these:

    3 out of 10

    A Knight's Quest

    Alan Wake Remastered

    Alan Wake 2

    Assassin's Creed Mirage

    Battle Breakers

    Binary Smoke

    Castle Storm 2

    Core

    Corruption 2029

    Crime Boss: Rockay City

    Dangerous Driving

    Dauntless

    Dead Island 2

    Diabotical

    Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed

    Goat Simulator 3

    Grit

    Infinitesimals

    John Carpenter's Toxic Commando

    Kid A Mnesia Exhibition

    Kingdom Hearts series

    The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

    Ooblets

    PC Building Simulator 2

    ReadySet Heroes

    Rocket League

    RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures

    Salt and Sacrifice

    Saturnalia

    The Settlers: New Allies

    Shoulders of Giants

    Sins of a Solar Empire II

    Space Punks

    Star Trek: Resurgence

    Tchia

    The Crew Motorfest

    The Expanse: A Telltale Series

    Tortuga - A Pirate’s Tale

    Touch Type Tale

    Witchfire

    The Wolf Among Us 2

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  • [–] 54 points 2 years ago

    I don't know about any of the others, but at least Rocket League and Fall Guys are great examples here.

    Both games already existed and were extremely successful on Steam.

    Both games got bought by Epic and we were told they were going to get continued support.

    Both games were then REMOVED from Steam.

    Both games then started suddenly having objectively worse monetization. Both communities grew a pretty negative opinion of the changes.

    Both games are objectively less popular now, though at least some of this is just age/fads.

    But both games are just objectively in a worse spot than they were before. All Epic did was make them objectively worse.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This list is just another argument against epic... artificial exclusives. For a FUCKING LAUNCHER. Even fucking Playstation, EA and Ubisoft opened up.

    Fuck Epic.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Fucking Playstation is not better than Epic with handling exclusives lmfao come on now

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They are literally releasing their games on another platform that actually requires them to put money into the project again to develop a port. So yeah, even PS atm is better than Epic.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So Playstation releasing some of their games literally years later as often sub-par ports is better than being able to play a game day 1 native on PC? I'd love to hear to the logic for that lol

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's better than keeping them artificially locked behind a launcher for no reason whatsoever, yes.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Lmao

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So just let me get that straight.

    You also don't like exclusives and want ppl to be able to play the way they want.

    ...and somehow Playstation - actively releasing their games on PC, investing time, money & effort - are worse than Epic who just want to lure ppl to their store/launcher and actively taking away the choice of playing method?

    Alrighty then...

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Epic also releases their games on PC lol

    And they release them day 1, without the multiple year wait from console release, and not as shitty ports. Fuck yes that's better than PlayStation, it's a no-brainer.

    I'm truly baffled that anyone could have this take seriously. PC =/= Steam.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Wow... Seriously? No they release it for their launcher exclusively not for pc.

    If you're talking platforms Sony is WAY MORE OPEN than Epic ever will be, we can just pray they fail hard and this practice doesn't become the norm (again)

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    No they release it for their launcher exclusively not for pc

    So anything that only releases on Steam is also an exclusive and "not for pc"?

    If you’re talking platforms Sony is WAY MORE OPEN than Epic ever will be

    Because Epic Games Launcher is only PC? Then Sony is also better than any company that releases only on Steam for PC?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Yes. If it's paid to ONLY be on Steam.

    If we follow your "logic" yes.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Lmao

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    Okay I'll give up after that one.

    Sony & Xbox once used to have exclusives for their platforms. Xbox opened up completely and releases everything to PC as well. Sony opened up later and now brings their games to PC as well. Sometimes a year later, sometimes a month. So they're multi Plattform now and you can choose where and how to play it.

    EA and Ubisoft decided to open up their LAUNCHERS and give you the choice where to buy& play - it's not completely open, because often you'll still need their browsers but it's a step in the right direction.

    So the trend seems to be to open up more to reach more people and sell more games that way.

    EPIC on the other hand is completely closed, buying exclusives for their launcher or for a certain time. It's a shitty approach to force people to their store and they still aren't profitable - that's the only good thing about epic proofing that this approach doesn't work anymore.

    Are Sony/Xbox/EA/Ubisoft perfect? No. - but they all get that being more open is the way to go. They don't do it because they're nice or want us to be happy with games - They do it because it's profitable, but coincidentally that's a good trend that's worthy of support.

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  • [+] -11 points 2 years ago

    Okay, fair, there are some exclusives. But reading through these, wow, nothing of value is lost.

    Most importantly because for the newest ones like AW2, they're just on a 1 year Early Access release in a lot of ways. Every time someone I know bought a game there, I was grateful they did the paid (as in, they pay, not get paid) bug testing work for the poor devs. And then once it releases on other stores, you can buy a somewhat patched-up version, and usually for 25%-50% off.

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