By consulting some court documents related to the diatribe between Epic Games and Apple, we discovered how the marketplace managed by the Fortnite authors has ended the last few years with an economic loss. Epic has promptly specified, however, that more than losses, its investments are to be projected over the long term.
With the release of new documents from the clash between the two giants of entertainment and technology, we learn more details regarding the expenses and earnings of the Epic Games Store between December 2018 and June 2019. By isolating this period of time, it has been found that the company led by Tim Sweeney was able to make profits only thanks to a single exclusive among all those proposed on the digital store.
Metro Exodus was probably the heaviest exclusive released on the Epic Store in its first year of life. The news aroused the angry reaction of many users who awaited the arrival of the horror game on Steam, and it certainly did not help the fact that the decision was formalized about two weeks before the debut on the platform of Valve. This may have held back the sales of the game, which managed to generate less than a third of what Epic invested to have it exclusively. The company later regretted this move by apologizing to the players.
Only one game managed to cover the costs relatively quickly, and this is Satisfactory, which managed to place around 500,000 copies within a week of launch. To date, the title of Coffee Stain Studios (former authors of Goat Simulator) has exceeded the threshold of one million units sold.
As stated by Tim Sweeney, Epic Games continues to invest in its store and hopes to finally make it profitable in the course of 2023.