Epic Games‘ ongoing trial with Apple over anti-trust concerns have brought to light some new information about the Fortnite developer’s business practices, communication with partners, and the early days of the company.
One such revelation that has come out is a record of precisely how much money was paid to the developers and publisher who had a game featured in many weekly free giveaways.
In total, the amount of money that Epic Games paid to developers and publishers for making their games available for free in the first nine months of the Epic Games Store came to $11.6 million.
How Did the Epic Games Store Spend $11.6 Million?
Epic had bought 38 games for free distribution by September 2019, following the store’s launch in December 2018, and these games in turn were claimed 104.57 million times by customers. Each game’s buyout price varies, going from $50,000 to $1.5 million — the latter price tag belonging to the Batman Arkham Trilogy, the highest acquisition price as of September 2019.
Epic’s logic behind these purchases is that by giving away these high-profile games, they’ll expand their new users and retain their user base — a philosophy that seems to have been confirmed in practice. Epic Games’ records also indicate data on how many new users signed on for each free game, allowing them to see how cost-effective each purchase was.
As of right now, the data states that Epic’s most successful free game was Subnautica, which brought on 805,052 users. Epic paid $1.4 million for Subnautica.
While this business model has attracted scores of new members to the Epic Games Store, it has not exactly paid out — as of now, only approximately 7% of users who claim free games go on to spend any money in the Epic Games Store. CEO Tim Sweeney’s strategy appears to be about hooking players now, and easing off the high-priced free games later, once they’ve established a hopefully loyal customer base.
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