The Epic Games Store still isn’t profitable.
That’s according to Epic Games Store boss Steve Allison, who was speaking during a court hearing on Monday.
As reported by The Verge, the exec was talking during the current Epic vs Google court case. Here, Allison said while the Epic Games Store still isn’t profitable, the company’s focus remains on “growth”. Additionally, according to emails shared during the trial, Epic had hoped to claim half of all gaming revenue for PC games.
Epic launched its own storefront just shy of five years ago, in December 2018. At this time, the store featured a 88/12 percent revenue split in favour of developers, something it still touts today. This was notably different from its competitors, specifically Steam owner Valve which at the time of Epic’s storefront debut generally took about a 30 percent cut of revenue.
In the time since the Epic Games Store’s launch, the company has released a variety of incentives to entice customers and developers to use its storefront over others. This includes weekly giveaways for games (you can currently snap up Turnip Boy Commit Tax Evasion, if you so wish) and PC store exclusivities such the recently released Alan Wake 2 (pictured above).
Meanwhile, as recently as August, Epic announced its First Run program. This opt in scheme offers third-party developers 100 percent of revenue for six months, in exchange for game exclusivity on its storefront.
Once this period of exclusivity ends, the split will revert back to the store’s original set up of 88 percent going to developers, and 12 percent going to Epic.
Elsewhere in the company, Epic is one of the many to announce layoffs this year. In September, Epic confirmed reports of widespread layoffs, saying the move would affect “around 830 employees”. It stated that approximately two-thirds of those job cuts were in teams “outside of core development”. This included almost half of Bandcamp’s staff ahead of the online record store’s sale by Epic Games to music licensing and distribution platform Songtradr.
