Steam has been the king of PC gaming for many, many years.
Pocketed billions of kroner
So it is by no means surprising that it costs money to challenge them, money Epic Games has and more than happy to spend. We often report the free games from the Epic Games Store, and not without reason: many of the games are fairly new to be completely free, and usually they are of good quality as well, but it costs:
Last year alone, Epic spent $ 3.7 billion to guarantee the rights to the free games, which can only be downloaded for a specified period, but which are the player’s as long as the game is launched from the Epic Games Store.
This cost Control
And what about Control, Remedy’s critically acclaimed paranormal third-person shooter that put RTX on the map? It cost Epic 9.49 million euros (96 million kroner) to secure PC exclusivity.
Tim Sweeney, Epic CEO, believed in 2019 that exclusivity is “the only strategy that works to change the 70/30 status quo on a large enough scale to permanently change the gaming industry”. Sweeney refers to Valve’s 30 percent share of game sales they take from the publisher.
Many games did not reach the minimum sales
All this comes to light in connection with Apple and Epic’s battle in court in relation to the App Store monopoly on iOS.
The mobile and PC manufacturer’s estimate is that it will take many years before Epic Games makes money on the store “if ever”. Epic itself believes they will be profitable with this part of the business in two years, many years before Apple thinks it will happen.
As it is now, Epic does not make money at all on the service, no wonder when they give away games on a large scale that are often sold for several hundred kroner in other stores.
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