In December 2018, Epic Games made waves in the global gaming industry when it launched Epic Games Store, a modern PC digital game store system, offering a series of features designed designed to benefit both the gaming community as well as game developers. For example, the policy of providing free games every week to customers, and giving up to 88% of store revenue to developers.
To attract more customers, Epic Games recently added game self-publishing support for developers on the Epic Games Store. The company even offers developers 100% of the revenue from their games on the store for the first 6 months, which applies to both new and previously released Steam exclusive titles as well. like other stores.
For gamers, the Epic Games Store continues to not only offer at least one new game for free every week, but also has a rewards program that supports up to 5% cash back on purchases, so gamers can Use this money to buy the game later.
The result of these generous policies is a huge buzz and enthusiastic support for the Epic Games Store within the gaming community. However, in terms of economic efficiency, after nearly 5 years, this can be temporarily considered a failed project when Epic Games has not earned any profit from the Epic Games Store at all. This is information revealed by CEO Steve Allison during the trial between Epic Games and Google over conflicts related to Play Store policies.
Allison claimed in court that the Epic Games Store is still not profitable after nearly five years. The CEO said the store’s goal right now is growth. However, this is clearly not good news for a project that has attempted to compete with other digital game store platforms in general, including big names like Valve’s Steam. Epic Games Store is still growing, but if it continues to be unprofitable, how can this platform maintain competition with competitors?