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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

#201

Post by lotyrin »

golergka wrote: post #189
Waterluvian wrote: post #163

Fortnite's pivot from failed co-op zombie game to... well, this ... is incredible. I would love to have experienced that office environment over that year. I can only imagine that the pivot was a "well, we already have most of the game. What can do we do with it?" hail Mary as they considered what to do short of closure. I may also be misremembering how dire their situation was. But I thought it was quite dire.

Fortnite may have been dire as a product, but Epic was surely not in any kind of trouble as a company.

It's really odd to watch people see them as "the Fortnite company" and ignore/discount the Unreal engine, etc.

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

#202

Post by bigodbiel »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #134
aphextron wrote: post #43

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…

That's ironic, because PubG was miles better optimized and looking than DayZ Standalone or the mod.

funnier still, Fortnite initially was piggy-backing off DayZ the zombie survival formula ...

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

#203

Post by stupidbird »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #74

I'm surprised it made so much money. The game is free. Do people really pay much for the skins/characters?

I remember reading that the average player spends $80 on DLC for Fortnite — so there are a lot of people out there spending well over that to bring up the average from all those $0 players.

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

#204

Post by AgentME »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #159

Epic lied to Linux devs and stabbed us in the back. I have abandoned hundreds in marketplace assets and moved to godot because of all that money and still a refusal to address Linux as a platform for dev and shipping.

I see several people complain about Linux limitations in this thread. What are the Linux limitations exactly? A) Unreal dev tools can't be used on Linux, B) Unreal dev tools can't be used to purchase marketplace assets on Linux, C) Unreal dev tools can't use marketplace assets on Linux even if you previously bought them on Windows, D) Unreal dev tools on Windows can't make a Linux build if it uses marketplace assets.

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

#205

Post by zbuttram »

Waterluvian wrote: post #163

Fortnite's pivot from failed co-op zombie game to... well, this ... is incredible. I would love to have experienced that office environment over that year. I can only imagine that the pivot was a "well, we already have most of the game. What can do we do with it?" hail Mary as they considered what to do short of closure. I may also be misremembering how dire their situation was. But I thought it was quite dire.

The situation for Fortnite as it was may have been dire, but as a company I imagine UE4 licensing would have kept them in business at the very least.

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

#206

Post by Pica_soO »

munchbunny wrote: post #184
MattRix wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with any sense of these games work would see that modern games like Fortnite or Overwatch take more skill than typical arena shooters. You still need to have the raw mechanical aim skill, but now there are a host of other mechanical, tactical and cooperative skills to master on top of that.

Having played shooters since the arena shooter days... no, I definitely disagree. I like to compare arena shooters vs. Fortnite/Overwatch as chess vs. Settlers of Catan. Arena shooters were much more "open play" in the sense that there were few enough game mechanics that you could mostly guess your opponents' tactics and it often came down to execution and minute variations in the gameplay. The newer shooters add man…

There was a lot of meta-game you could not grasp as a newb in arena-shooters. You heard the opponent grab the shotgun shells, you knew he could either reach door a or door b in 5 seconds. So you grenade launched into Door A and flung yourself at Door B.

For newcomers this resulted in dying horrible most of the time, all the time.

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

#207

Post by Waterluvian »

lotyrin wrote: post #201
golergka wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite may have been dire as a product, but Epic was surely not in any kind of trouble as a company.

It's really odd to watch people see them as "the Fortnite company" and ignore/discount the Unreal engine, etc.

It just completely skips my mind that Epic has more going on for them than games. Not that I've really tried to understand their business units or offering.

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

#208

Post by kaoD »

elif wrote: post #192
kaoD wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to add gun mechanics. PUBG has the best gunplay I've ever played. For me PUBG fights are thrilling, like I was there getting shot at, while Fortnite's (or any other game for that matter) are plain old arcadey. I dislike the building mechanic too. I'd genuinely love for a developer to step up and do a better milsim BR but so far PUBG is king in that niche.

cod blackout is significantly better mechanically, and just as much of a 'milsim.' twitch has largely pivoted already.. CSGO has a BR now, too. PUBG doesn't have much special left, and its new peers haven't been very successful at unseating fortnite for popularity. The building mechanic you dislike, seems to me to be a crucial ingredient that makes so many love it [0]. The continually evolving meta-game and diverse g…

> cod blackout is significantly better mechanically, and just as much of a 'milsim.'

I beg to differ. It has a pretty arcadey gunplay (well... it's CoD). Nowhere near close to PUBG's ballistics. It's pretty much point and click. I can see the appeal, but it's not for me.

Calling it a milsim though...

> twitch has largely pivoted already..

At the time of writing PUBG has more viewers on Twitch.

> PUBG doesn't have much special left

Disagree. It's a niche, but one no game has been able to fill. Every single player I know that left for Blackout ended up coming back to PUBG. It's still its own kind of game.

> The building mechanic you dislike, seems to me to be a crucial ingredient that makes so many love it [0]. The continually evolving meta-game and diverse game modes also help elevate it above the chaff.

Mate, you don't have to defend Fortnite so vehemently. I know it's probably a great game, I just dislike it and no amount of talking will turn it into my type of game.

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

#209

Post by pbalau »

techopoly wrote: post #131
kevinventullo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be no Fortnite if it wasn't for Brendan Greene aka PlayerUnknown, who is basically single-handedly responsible for creating the Battle Royale game genre. I see no problem in him attempting to make some money on his creation before a AAA giant comes in and sucks the air out of the room.

It's been a point of contention recently, the question of who created battle royale. Perhaps Greene is responsible for the modern iteration of it, but the last-man-standing concept has been around in gaming since Bomberman in 1983. And the concept of battle royale in general was popularized with the Hunger Games and of course the film named Battle Royale. And, "battle royale" as a phrase was used by Ralph Ellison in…

I don't think the question is who started the genre, but who made it commercially viable. And I think pubg gets this

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

#210

Post by AJ007 »

lotyrin wrote: post #201
golergka wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite may have been dire as a product, but Epic was surely not in any kind of trouble as a company.

It's really odd to watch people see them as "the Fortnite company" and ignore/discount the Unreal engine, etc.

I actually see them as the ZZT company.
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