Even after five years, the Epic Games Store is not profitable

On Monday, the legal battle of the giants began. Publisher’s lawsuit Fortnite after three years, she reached the court, which is supposed to decide whether Google Play Store represents an illegal monopoly on Android devices. In 2021, Apple went through the same process, which was also sued by Epic Games.

Epic Games’ COO testified during yesterday’s court case Steve Allison. We learned from him that The Epic Games Store is not profitable. The platform has not reached the number of users and sales volume to be profitable.

The original plan was for the store to start showing a profit this year. In the previous legal battle with Apple, there was talk of losing more than 300 million dollars. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called this part of a fantastic plan that helped grow the business.

The company launched its video game business in December 2018. According to Allison, the business is solely focused on growth. Because Epic invests in free-to-play games as a promotional strategyas well as trying to lure developers and publishers with better terms.

Due to Valve’s traditional 30% stake in Steam, the Epic Games Store was launched. Founder Tim Sweeney has de facto declared war on Steam, offering game creators a more generous revenue split than Steam, taking only 12%. Newly, if the conditions are met, Epic will give publishers 100% of the earnings for half a year. It’s in exchange for exclusivity.

Allison revealed in court that after the launch of the Epic Games Store, the competition responded by giving developers more money. He mentioned that the standard is no longer 30% as before and listed Valve, Microsoft’s Windows Store, and Discord. When asked where the 30% fee came from, Valve simply had to mimic the physical retail split where retailers would buy games at lower prices and add 30% on top.

It was recently confirmed that The Epic Games Store will continue to give away games. In the third quarter of this year, an average of 2.4 million people registered on the Epic Games Store per month. At the end of 2022, the Epic Games Store had 68 million monthly active users. By the end of this year, Epic wants to have up to 70 million monthly active users.

You may remember as Fortnite was three years ago removed from the App Store and Google Play Store after Epic attempted to circumvent the terms of mobile platforms with its own microtransaction payment gateway. Fortnite players had a choice between a more expensive and a cheaper option. Since then, Epic has been fighting in court, trying to get margins cut.

Apple has partially backed off from its strict terms. But neither company won in court, so Fortnite did not return to the App Store. On iOS devices, it only works within the cloud, while for Android, the game can be downloaded from Epic’s official website.