It has been revealed during the ongoing antitrust legal battle with Google that the Epic Games Store still isn’t profitable, 5 years later.
The comments were made by Epic Games Store General Manager Steve Allison, who said that the store isn’t profitable yet (via The Verge). “The goal is still growth”, he revealed.
The Epic Games Store first incentivized developers coming to its platform by introducing a more generous revenue split with 88% of sales going to the developer. In comparison, Steam only offered 70%, but changed its program to a tier-based program soon after Epic Games’ announcement.
In an October 2019 document, it was revealed that Epic Games had planned to grow to 50 percent of all PC revenue. Such an aggressive deadline was predicted by Epic Games’ generous revenue split compared to Steam, in addition to the company buying PC exclusives on the platform.
To date though, and off the top of my head, Borderlands and Alan Wake 2 seem like the only big exclusives I can think of on the Epic Games Store.
It’s unclear where the Epic Games Store goes from here with its strategy, but it’s obvious that changes need to be made.
In September 2023, Epic Games laid off around 830 employees with two-thirds of the cuts being “in teams outside of core development” while 250 more people are leaving the company as a result of divestitures from both SuperAwesome and Bandcamp.
For more from Insider Gaming, check out the news that Blizzard is looking for more independence with its games.
