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

151–160 of 306 posts

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

#151

Post by disishhsha »

ethbro wrote: post #52
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.

The impression I get is that the video game industry is extremely hit / miss. Hence the large graveyard of publishers and developers who at one time made excellent, well-selling games. (E.g. Interplay Games) Money comes cheaply at times of hits. Money comes much more expensively at times of misses. So it behooves Epic to build up a war chest if they can.

It does speak to a pretty conservative mindset - when you just made $3B cash free and clear, selling some of that golden goose for $1.25B.

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

#152

Post by Reedx »

lghh wrote: post #121
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…

While I agree that PUBG is a dumpster heap technically, it really is a legitimately fun game. I enjoy it much more than Fortnite, and if it performed halfway decently it would be one of my favorite games of all time. I think Fortnite's success is great and it is very clear why it is more popular than PUBG could have ever hoped to be, but I will always be partial to the slow, suffocating, horror of feeling alone in th…

Yeah, a lot of it really comes down to personal preference. PUBG, H1Z1, Fortnite, Blackout, CS:GO... gameplay wise they all have significant differences.

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

#153

Post by rchaud »

The interesting part of this article was that Epic intentionally circumvented Google Play Store and required Android users to download the launcher from its own website. Hopefully this leads to more app developers skipping Google Play and launching solo. Of course most apps won't have the name recognition of Fortnite, but I can't imagine discover-ability inside of the Play Store is any better.

I got a new phone recently and had to re-download some apps; Imagine my shock when I opened Google Play and saw that it had become like Google search; crawling with ads for some of the worst, lowest-rung "apps", all of which appear to be some variant of Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Who honestly wants to fork over 30% to Google for that?

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

#154

Post by swebs »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #46

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 fo…

>I think it is commendable that Epic used some of this profit to change their Unreal Engine Marketplace rates in favour of the developers

Now if only they made the marketplace actually available to developers. There is literally no way for me to buy assets from my Linux workstation. They disabled the ability to buy from their webpage to push people through their launcher, but they refuse to release it on Linux for some reason. I guess they don't mind the missed sales? It's pretty much the reason why I ditched it for Unity.

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

#155

Post by Viker »

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…

You are just nit picking. He is talking about the closing circle game mechanics. Yes simple but yet genius.

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

#156

Post by sharpneli »

diminoten wrote: post #73
minimaxir wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I added "outside the hardcore gamer ecosystem". PUBG was incredibly big yes, but parents weren't asking questions about their children's addiction to PUBG and talk shows didn't have long segments about PUBG. Fortnite became a place for people to hang out: https://twitter.com/anoopr/status/1071921080485457920

I think it's hard for gamers to really appreciate what Fortnite is. It's a whole new thing, that's never happened before. It's bigger than Pacman, Pokemon, Mario, Tetris, Angry Birds, etc. My brother, a college football player, plays it. My sister, an Instagram addict and high schooler, plays it on her phone while shopping at, I dunno, Forever 21 I guess. This is new, and worth paying attention to.

Minecraft. Pokemon Go. These things come and go. There is always some new fad.

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

#157

Post by izacus »

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.

This is free market at it's best - a company taking a concept, building a better product and offering it to the customers. It's like Sony building a better portable cassette player, Samsung building a better TV, Apple offering better headphones and Valve Software building a better first person shooter.

Trying to block or interfere with this, like IP laws tend to do these days, will cause stagnation and break the main reason why free market has proven to be the most people-serving economic system.

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

#158

Post by ryanSrich »

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…

PUBG is a technical mess (but getting better). However, it's a marvel of game design, especially if you've spent more than a few hundred hours playing. The design of the new map (Vikendi) is insanely good (save for a few issues with loot spawning) — in size, topography, speed, etc.

They've been able to capture the realistic military style sim, but without the massive player overhead required to learn and be good at those games. The gun mechanics are some of, if not the best I've ever played.

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

#160

Post by username3 »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #46

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 fo…

Epic can do 88/12 without gift cards. After paying retailers for selling Steam gift cards, Valve gets less than 30.
Post reply on HN