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Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018

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

#61

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 mas…

"Gamers deserve better"? What is that supposed to mean?

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

#62
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry? PUBG sold 50 million copies. It is the 5th highest selling game in history. You can't honestly claim that's not mainstream.

Compared to Fortnite, 50 million isn't that much.

copies not dollars

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

#63
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry? PUBG sold 50 million copies. It is the 5th highest selling game in history. You can't honestly claim that's not mainstream.

Compared to Fortnite, 50 million isn't that much.

50 million copies, not $50 million. Assuming an average selling price of $30 and a 30% storefront cut, that’s about $1 billion in revenue.

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

#64
post #13
post #6

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

What about Mario clones? (platformers) Doom clones? (first person shooters) Warcraft clones? (real time strategy) ...

I agree with your point but a funny thing about this list is that I can think of earlier games in the genre for both FPS and RTS off the top of my head. Dune 2 is the earliest RTS that I'm aware of and Wolfenstein is probably the earliest example of an FPS. I'd say this probably strengthens your point rather than weakening it.

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

#65
post #5
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).

Huh? LoL is blatantly P2W, they sell two kinds of in-game advantages.

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

#66
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.

Besides PUBG, who else has done this in a successful way? Fortnite wasn’t the original but it blows the success of PUBG out of the water at this point. I’m okay with “PUBG + Fortnite” ~= “almost single handedly”. I think the key word in that quote is popularized — even if earlier games did it, these are the two to demonstrate widespread appeal.

Also worth pointing out that PUBG uses unreal, so Epic Games makes money off the royalties AND gets visibility into the PUBG sales data. It's very likely that seeing those numbers made Epic Games shift focus.

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to Fortnite, 50 million isn't that much.

50 million copies, not $50 million. Assuming an average selling price of $30 and a 30% storefront cut, that’s about $1 billion in revenue.

Sorry you're right, but 50 million copies is not much either, when compared to Fortnite.

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

#68
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.

Besides PUBG, who else has done this in a successful way? Fortnite wasn’t the original but it blows the success of PUBG out of the water at this point. I’m okay with “PUBG + Fortnite” ~= “almost single handedly”. I think the key word in that quote is popularized — even if earlier games did it, these are the two to demonstrate widespread appeal.

The order in video games, as far as I can make it was:

Minecraft (hunger game mod) > DayZ/H1Z1 > PUBG > Fortnite

At each step, the genre grew by 1 or 2 orders or magnitude. So while Fortnite is by far the largest BR game now, if you look at the log-graph, they each had an almost equal impact on getting to where we are today and are an important part of the genre's history.

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

#69

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 mas…

"Gamers deserve better"? What is that supposed to mean?

I understood it as "people who like this genre deserve a game that is not crap"

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

#70

Is anybody else bummed how Fortnite's success has drawn development away from the new Unreal Tournament? I don't care about Fortnite, I just want UT to continue to be updated. I don't think it's had an update since June.

Not just drawn development away, but they are no longer developing it.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/development-stopped-unr...

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