Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 306 posts

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#41

Post by ethbro »

jVinc wrote: post #26
minimaxir wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be debated. Although Rust/H1Z1/PUBG were certainly popular battle royale games before Fortnite, Fortnite was the only one that brought it mainstream , outside the hardcore gamer ecosystem.

Battle royal was already popular enough for Epic to drop everything they had and shift focus to the genere without any doubt that it was the correct thing to do. To give them credit for the popularity of the genre is to rewrite history.

Wasn't the iPhone the first smartphone? /s

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#42

Post by munchbunny »

usaphp wrote: post #6

What does HN people think on the whole idea of stealing concept from PUBG? I am kind of divided on this topic.

I didn't even blink, there's tons of precedent everywhere for copying the concept and doing it better than the first person. Minecraft wasn't the first to do what it did (commonly Infiniminer gets that credit), neither was Unreal Tournament (Quake), neither was Starcraft (commonly Dune 2 gets the credit, but also Age of Empires came out, did well, but didn't become more or less an official South Korean sport), nor World of Warcraft (Ultima Online and lots of others).

Honestly, possibly because of my Silicon Valley biases, I tend to think that the idea isn't sacred, it's that the execution on the idea is what turns a good idea into a successful one, and Epic executed way better despite PUBG's initial momentum. They threw it away with performance problems, bugs, cheaters, etc. and Fortnite capitalized.

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#43

Post by aphextron »

I don't really like Fortnite, but I'm really really happy for Epic's success. PUBG was a flaming dumpster heap that only caught on because the Battle Royale mechanic is naturally fun and people were clamoring for that type of game. But it was an unqualified mess from a subpar developer, and that always annoyed me because gamers deserved better. Now Epic has been rescued from sliding into obscurity and they've got massive coffers to continue working on Unreal 4. Couldn't have worked out better.

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#44

Post by justwalt »

earenndil wrote: post #28
minimaxir wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be debated. Although Rust/H1Z1/PUBG were certainly popular battle royale games before Fortnite, Fortnite was the only one that brought it mainstream , outside the hardcore gamer ecosystem.

I disagree. PUBG was _insanely_ popular well before fortnite showed up.

Right. PUBG is still immensely popular with hundreds of thousands of steam players daily, and I believe it saw player growth in a recent month.

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#45

Post by sfilargi »

usaphp wrote: post #6

What does HN people think on the whole idea of stealing concept from PUBG? I am kind of divided on this topic.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think it was PUBG that came up with the battle royal concept. I believe H1Z1 had battle royal mode before PUBG existed.

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#46

Post by Cu3PO42 »

I think it is commendable that Epic used some of this profit to change their Unreal Engine Marketplace rates in favour of the developers. Similar to their store that is mentioned in the article, the revenue split is now 88/12.

This change will be applied retroactively to all past transactions [1]. My understanding is the split was previously 70/30 as common in other online stores—those should be some hefty payouts for some developers. In my opinion this is going above and beyond and would make me feel good about supporting Epic through purchase of cosmetics in Fortnite if I played the game, for example.

EDIT: I previously mistakenly referred to the UE Marketplace as store, which is now at best misleading since they did launch a proper game store last month. Thanks to jsnell for catching this.

[1] https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-announces-unrea...

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#47

Post by jjeaff »

tudelo wrote: post #5
sand500 wrote: post #4

Hopefully this shows others that you can make successful games without pay to win mechanics.

Of course there are games that already have proven this, most notably League of Legends (which is also mentioned in the article).

I'm thinking candy crush was pre-league of legends. It brought in $1B revenue for 2018, which is the highest ever and still growing.

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#48

Post by pssflops »

Reedx wrote: post #7

> ...has popularized the battle royale category — think Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games — almost single-handedly... Almost single-handedly? This is a bizarre claim and it's like rewriting history.

Is it even more odd that I can't figure why they did not reference the literal movie 'Battle Royale' that the concept was roughly based on?

Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

#50

Post by nikanj »

disishhsha wrote: post #30

$3B profit doesn’t really seem consistent with $15B valuation. Tech companies these days seem valued at 20x revenue or more. Why would they bother raising $1.25B at that price? I suppose Fortnite is a fad, so there is a pessimistic case to be made to cash in as much as possible.

”Tech companies” is a wide umbarella. An enterprise-oriented SaaS can justify a high multiplier like that, because their churn rate is low. Video games are a much more volatile business, and the valuation multiplier reflects that.
Post reply on HN