When we had 0 interest rates companies could make a bunch of big long term bets because money was cheap (ZIRP - Zero interest-rate policy).
Epic also happened to be sitting on the Fortnite money hose, so taking on Steam (and this money hose) made total sense as a business.
But not we don’t have 0 interest rates and Epic have made a bunch of layoffs
- https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/layoffs-at-epic
And they’re still not profitable:
Best monthly numbers I can find are old (specifically for Epic)
- 132 million monthly players (https://www.demandsage.com/steam-statistics/)
- 10 million in 2019, but not clear what % is just Fortnite (https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/DX-3712.pdf)
It’s no longer cheap to take on Steam. Do you think at this point Epic still has a decent chance of making this a two player market?
Personally I don’t use it at all. How do people feel about it? Any loyalty or friends networks there outside free games and fortnite?
I buy games from Epic all the time because it is cheaper than Steam and I prefer 5% cashback over useless Steam trading cards.
Epic needs more publishers on its store front. Many good games have not released there.
All games that I purchased on Steam this year, I would have bought from Epic, had those games be available there.