In just the first 10 months of the Epic Games Store's existence, Epic paid over $11.6 million to offer free PC games that would draw in new customers, as revealed in a document from the newly-started Epic v. Apple trial. The data also shows that some games have been far more effective than others at pulling in shoppers, and possibly retaining the ones that were already onboard.
Each week the Epic Games Store offers one or more older titles for no cost, which are afterward cycled out to ensure that the freebies are a limited-time draw. That differs from its main rival, Steam, which doesn't have any giveaways, but typically doesn't need them since it's by far the most popular PC store and the de facto target for most publishers. In fact Steam's owner, Valve, has largely refused to budge on its cut of sales revenue, extending discounts only to the most lucrative games.
The document was obtained by game historian Simon Carless (via Polygon), who said on Twitter that it was "accidentally published early" along with other material from the lawsuit. The data covers December 2018 through September 2019, and breaks games down by aspects like buyout cost, total downloads, the number of new linked Epic accounts, and how efficient the spending was for user acquisition. The company's most expensive buyout was the Batman Arkham trilogy, valued at $1.5 million, which netted 513,912 new accounts at a price of $2.44 per person. One of the more efficient deals was World of Goo, which cost only $50,000 but grabbed 155,215 people for $0.32 each.
Metro: 2033 Redux is listed as having zero buyout cost, but this was likely a tradeoff for Metro Exodus being a one-year exclusive. Indeed, exclusives have been one of Epic's other major weapons, keeping titles off Steam until there's less profit to make. This has sometimes created anger among gamers - a second example being Remedy's Control, which was also a one-year Epic deal. Many PC players have their libraries dominated by Steam, and in some cases use Steam Link to treat their PCs like a console. There's no equivalent of features like Steam Link, SteamVR, or Steam Remote Play in Epic's store client.
The Epic Games Store has already lost $273 million through 2020. CEO Tim Sweeney has claimed that this was needed to grow the store as a business, but even then, it's not expected to turn a profit until 2027. Epic will moreover need to seize more of Steam's market share, and fend off Microsoft, which recently decided to match Epic's 12% revenue cut and join it in undermining Steam.
Source: Simon Carless (via Polygon)