Monday marked the first day of the big Epic versus Apple lawsuit. Apple argued that Epic is just being opportunistic and that opening up the App store would leave it vulnerable to hacking and privacy concerns. Epic argued that Apple’s iOS was essentially a walled garden, locking in users and developers alike to onerous terms of use.
The case is likely to drag on for months, but it’s already bearing fruit--at least, for the rest of us. Hundreds of court documents are providing us with a rare insight into Epic’s business, something we wouldn’t otherwise have ever been able to see since Epic isn’t a public company.
Those court documents paint a pretty grim picture if you’re an Epic investor. The Epic Games Store is operating with huge losses in an effort to compete with industry giant Steam, with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney confirming in testimony that the EGS is “hundreds of millions of dollars short of being profitable.”
Sweeney added that he doesn’t expect the Epic Games Store to become profitable for another “within three or four years,” which makes 2024 the first year that the EGS might operate in the black. Revenue generated in 2018 was just $2 million, while the EGS generated $233 million in 2019.
One of the more interesting documents is just how much Epic spent on its free games giveaways. We already knew that Epic lost $330 million on the Epic Games Store from earlier court doc leaks (a loss which Sweeney called a “fantastic investment”), but we didn’t know how much Epic spent on each individual game.
The biggest winner was Subnautica, which was one of the first games given away on the EGS. It cost Epic $1.4 million to give away over 4.6 million copies.
it doesn't look like these losses are going to stop Epic from giving away more free games, though. The latest freebie is Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, which is free on the EGS until May 6.