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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

#81
post #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...

Oh no, sad to hear this. Still regularly shoot around with my gf on classic UT2004...

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

#82
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TF2 was arguably Valve’s first testbed in this space.

TF2 was their first major release that was free-to-play with purchasable cosmetic items, but their games have never been pay-to-win. They were historically pay-once-to-own, free to continue playing.

Not sure where I mentioned it being pay-to-win? I put ~1500 hours into TF2...

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

#83
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'm confused, Epic just launched their store this month. What games are these "previous transactions" for? Do you have a specific list of games that sold with the previous 70/30 cut, and for how long? EDIT: From what I remember, the only games on the Epic launcher were Unreal Tournament, Paragon, Fortnite and Shadow Complex.

The OP was talking about the Unreal Engine Marketplace (for selling game assets to developers), not about the Epic Games store (for selling finished games to players).

I see the source of your confusion though, since the article was never talking about the UE Marketplace.

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

#84
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.

Plenty of games have had elimination modes for a long time. This is really just an evolution of that adding the mechanic of the map edges closing in.

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

#85

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…

The issue with Dayz, H1Z1 and PUBG was that they were made by developers that 1. knew very little about engine optimizations and 2. rushed to add features as quickly as possible with no foresight.

This lead to all 3 games being laggy, which is quite bad for a shooter. It also lead to the pace of development slowing down to a crawl after a few months, which I assume was due to their spaghetti code being hard to work with.

Epic at least has experience with game engines and development, and have managed to keep up the pace and performance.

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

#86
post #71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always saw it as inspired by the Hunger Games, which in turn captured the zeitgeist of the post-2001 and post-2008 society.

It's almost certainly the other way around since Battle Royale was published in 1999 and the Battle Royale film came out in 2000. Both probably take some inspiration from Lord of the Flies

But why did the genre blow up only now? I think that the mass culture projects massive amount of anxiety present in todays societies, and it is also visible in video games. I don't see how a bleak and dystopian game of dog-eat-dog, everyone on its own, 1 player wins and the 99 others lose, would be so popular in say 1995.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe not compared to a free game like Fortnite, but 50 million copies is huge when it comes to video game sales. The 50 million number is from Xbox and PC only.

GTA V is the top grossing game of all time and sold 90 million copies on 3 platforms. Minecraft has sold 150 across way more platforms and has been around way longer.

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of games have had elimination modes for a long time. This is really just an evolution of that adding the mechanic of the map edges closing in.

Elimination mode is more generic. The battle royale subgenre started with the Minecraft hunger game mode, and grew more popular by H1Z1: King of the Hill, and then by PUBG.

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

#89
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TF2 was arguably Valve’s first testbed in this space.

TF2 was their first major release that was free-to-play with purchasable cosmetic items, but their games have never been pay-to-win. They were historically pay-once-to-own, free to continue playing.

Tf2 is somewhat pay to win. You can buy additional weapons with different stats or abilities.

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

#90
post #10

> Epic grossed a $3 billion profit for this year What does this even mean? Net income? Top line gross profit (meaning minus COGS), which is normally like 80% GM for heavily software enabled businesses? Ugh, tech reporters.

    > What does this even mean? Net income?
Not sure what exactly it means, but it sounds like A LOT.

The number of employees at Epic appears to be ~700. I do hope that the people who did the work are getting paid handsomely. They should be, right?

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