The Epic Games Store posted a loss of around $ 181 million in 2019, an expected loss of $ 273 million in 2020, and projected to lose around $ 139 million in 2021. This is evident from documents in the Apple versus Epic Games lawsuit.
A major expense for Epic Games is the minimum guarantees ; amounts of money that Epic Games gives as a sales advance to publishers or developers in exchange for an Epic Games Store Exclusive . In 2020, for example, 444 million dollars went there. This is evident from published court documents that Eurogamer has searched through .
Epic states that “at this early stage in the life of the EGS, it deliberately spent a lot of money on marketing and bringing in new users to gain market share.” Epic expects its digital store to be profitable by 2023. The 12 percent that Epic Games collects from each transaction would be enough for the store’s day-to-day costs.
Apple, adversary in the lawsuit over the 30 percent App Store remittance, is critical of the numbers. “Epic does not expect the EGS to gross profit until 2027 at the earliest, but it may never be profitable. Until then, it should at least be funded or get money from other parts of its business.”
Apple further accuses Epic Games of the lawsuit as a means to combat waning interest in Fortnite. Epic would have seen that happen and decided that Fortnite should become a platform for other developers to create content for. That would then be for sale in Fortnite and Epic could put a percentage of it in his pocket.
The 30 percent that Epic would only have to hand over to Apple for transactions in the iOS version of the game would pose an “existential problem” for Fortnite. Epic denies the whole story. In May of this year, a judge will consider the case.
