News Epic Games Store not expected to return a profit until 2027

What a colossal investment of money.

I've downloaded most of the free games, but I haven't played most of them. I also haven't bought any games through the Epic store - I would if they offered cheaper prices than Steam - but most of the time I just buy games at the Steam sale when they're cheap.

 

You said it! Wow..

 

I must have 20-35 of the free game giveaways ... never played them. Never bought anything.

I much prefer playing with friends through Steam.

 

Just like on Steam it is the game publisher who decides the basic price on the Epic store.

 

Epic's mistake is treating their distribution system as a distribution system, not a social platform for playing games - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

 

Bear in mind Epic makes around $4billion between Fortnite and licensing of Unreal Engine per year. Meanwhile their part-parent company Tencent made $24billion in profits in 2019. This is money they can burn and continue to burn until they have at minimum an even stake to Valve, although I suspect they'll just keep shovelling money at it until they get a defacto monopoly.

 

That only applies to games available on Steam, the rest of them are no cheaper on Epic either because publishers don't want to undercut their precious console pricing.

 

I've gotten as lot of free games on Epic too, but I have also purchased a few. Most were for my kids, but I did get Crysis remastered recently. I buy a lot of games via CD Keys, but I have seen cases where Steam was actually cheaper than them. I'm not sure how the exclusive thing is going to help them in the long run. It's all a bit over my head strategy wise. Obviously, if you're the only market for something, you control the price. Competition is good for the consumer. I don't support exclusives on a philosophical level, but if they limit my choices, I am going to cave on the titles I can't do without,

 

The game publisher has the monopoly on deciding the price rather than the store, so the ideas of control and competition don't really apply to digital game stores.

Same thing as when you buy a CPU on Amazon Marketplace or Ebay, it won't matter to the buyer how the two "compete" because the price is controlled by the actual seller.

 

That’s true for almost everything. From Dr Pepper to chainsaws, the store has no say in the price. If there is only one place to purchase an item, it is usually overpriced. If there are two gas stations across from each other, they’re USUALLY very close in price. That’s just the facts, whether it’s fair or not. Competition in general, is always good for the consumer; that’s why capitalism is the most successful form of society. It’s just a basic principle of the universe.

 

If you and me each start a bakery on the same street then yes, we compete against each other and the consumer can benefit from the existence of that competition.

But if you and me each start a digital game store and EA sells Battlefield #69 for £49.99 in each of our stores then no, we do not compete with each other and the consumer can't benefit.