Five years after it took on Steam, Epic Games Store is yet to make a penny of profit

08.11.2023 - 19:07 / rockpapershotgun.com / Tim Sweeney / Steve Allison

Almost five years since it launched - and two years after Epic revealed they hoped to gobble up half of all PC gaming revenue - the Epic Games Store is still yet to turn a profit.

The reveal came during an ongoing legal battle between Epic and Google over the former’s efforts to dodge handing 30% of real-life money spent on V-Bucks in the mobile version of Fortnite to Google, as per the latter’s Google Play Store cut.

Epic’s move to direct players to buy the in-game currency directly from them by offering a 20% discount led to Google dropping Fortnite from its Android store in 2020, which resulted in Epic suing Google over alleged antitrust - which Google responded to in kind with a lawsuit for alleged breach of contract. And here we are.

In the midst of their latest legal tussle, Epic Games Store head honcho Steve Allison took to the witness stand and revealed that Epic’s much-touted Steam rival is still yet to make a penny of profit since launching in December 2018.

As reported by The Verge, Allison said that Epic still plans for growth - having said during its similar legal fight with Apple over Fortnite microtransactions in 2021 that it hoped to claim half of all money spent on PC gaming, as long as Steam didn’t “react” to the threat - but the store is yet to make any money.

Epic has since continued to sink millions into weekly free games and scooping up PC exclusives - including the recent Alan Wake 2 and Assassin's Creed Mirage - while offering users money back on games they buy via the Epic Rewards scheme. They stepped up their efforts to win over devs during the summer by announcing a new revenue sharing model that would give developers up to 100% of revenue for six months in return for launching their PC games exclusively on the Epic Game Store.

Just last month, Epic expanded the deal to devs who bring across their older or Early Access games via the Now on Epic programme, requiring them to bring across their whole catalogue or at least three games released via the likes of Steam or PC Games Pass before the end of October.

In September, Epic announced they would be laying off more than 800 people, blaming the job losses on needing to reach “financial sustainability” after heavy investment in evolving the company and making Fortnite a metaverse, which has been stymied by slower-than-expected growth for its battle royale shooter-turned-digital music festival.

“For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn,” said CEO Tim Sweeney at the time. (Sweeney, for his part, remains staunchly un-laid-off.) It seems like that is certainly true for the Epic Games Store too, and may remain that way for a while - even as Epic hopes to eventually see it turn a profit.