The Epic Games Store launched in December of 2018, and since then, the digital PC storefront has seen massive growth. Though it’s still lagging behind Steam when it comes to usability and features, its exclusivity deals and attractive weekly giveaways have been major factors contributing to its growth. The storefront currently has over 160 million registered users (of whom 56 million are monthly active users)- but even so, it hasn’t yet turned a profit for Epic Games.
In a recent court filing (via ResetEra), it was revealed that since its launch about two and a half years ago, the Epic Games Store has lost Epic over $450 million- $181 million in 2019 and $273 million in 2020, with projections of losses for 2021 currently standing at $273 million. As with any new venture, those losses are attributed to the heavy investments Epic has made in the storefront to capture a larger piece of the marketshare, and though they will continue to lose money on it for the foreseeable future, they expect it to become profitable starting in 2023.
Meanwhile, other interesting details have also emerged from the court filing. The 12% revenue cut that Epic takes from each game sold on its storefront has been one of its headlining factors, especially for developers, since a 30% revenue cut is the standard across the entire industry on pretty much all other digital storefronts. That smaller revenue cut, however, is apparently been enough to cover operating costs for the storefront.
Interestingly enough, Epic has recently said that the Epic Games Store is going to have more exclusives over the next two years than ever before, so the company is still aggressively making investments to ensure a larger userbase. It remains to be seen how well that will pay off.
