Recent court filings reveal that Epic's foray into digital storefront hosting still hasn't become profitable for them, despite their efforts to boost its user numbers.
Turns out that building a digital games storefront is actually pretty hard! Or at the very least, Fortnite and Unreal Engine developer Epic Games' attempt hasn't been going as smoothly as they expected. The ongoing Epic v. Google lawsuit over microtransaction fees recently revealed that, despite all their efforts to draw in customers, the Epic Games Store still hasn't become profitable in the 5 years since its launch.
According to The Verge's reporting on the case, Epic Games Store boss Steve Allison admitted as much during his testimony on Monday. He also drew attention to his email correspondence with Epic's former CEO Paul Meegan in 2018, when they first discussed launching the store. Back then he was pretty optimistic about the project, speculating that Fortnite's success could let Epic gain a strong foothold in the digital PC games market:
Fortnite blowing up definitely has created that potential Valve-Counterstrike moment at a scale that is much bigger than when that gave birth to what is now Steam.
Epic's 5-year forecast back in 2019 was even more confident, expecting the EGS to earn as much as 50% of all PC revenue after those 5 years, which is a hilariously bold estimate considering that even market leader Steam isn't anywhere close to that number. Evidently things didn't quite pan out the way they'd hoped.
The Epic Games Store Still Fails To Impress By Itself 5 Years Later
Not that I'm especially surprised. Epic's exclusivity deals and weekly free games offerings are compelling reasons to visit their store, but don't really translate to returning customers. The store and launcher are just too inconvenient and unappealing to use even 5 years later, especially compared to the main competitor Steam. And Epic seem uninterested in improving them. Why would anyone voluntarily put up with a worse user experience?
I mean, be honest with me here: Have you ever actually bought a non-exclusive game on the Epic Store? Or do you just log in once every week to claim the free games and then bail? Only time will tell if Epic's strategy of putting out new loss-leaders every week will get them the numbers they want by itself in the long term, but I'm far from convinced.