Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

[legowarrior]

Forget it @Brad_Grenz, it’s Qt3.

[meeper]

If DayZ trips you up so much you can argue the PUBG case instead. It went from ~3m players to what, 1m?

You’re the one using the DayZ example - it went from 45k peak concurrent players to sub-10k peak concurrent users five years later. But you’re saying that a game with 11M peak concurrent users is going to go to 0 in three years. Unless you’re being hyperbolic about your three years comment.

[Bateau]

You’re looking at concurrent players like it’s be all end all of statistics. DayZ had huge presence on twitch and YT at the time, and as I already mentioned, it’s closely connected to PUBG.

As for Fortnite, no one said 0, that never happens (except maybe with Evolve and Lawbreakers lol). Pubg lost 70% of its average playerbase in a year. And if you’re wondering why I’m using concurrent players now, it’s because the game sells microtransactions and the number of active players has a direct impact on revenue. And yeah I give Fortnite 3 years before it loses enough players that Epic can no longer use it to fund its other activities.

[meeper]

You’re looking at concurrent players like it’s be all end all of statistics.

I’m saying concurrent players is as good a measure of the health of a game as we have. It says nothing about the velocity of player growth nor the acceleration, but how else do we measure the popularity of a video game to play other than hours played? Streamers or hours streamed on YouTube might give clues to the velocity or acceleration, but itself isn’t representative of revenue earned by the developers/publisher.

And yeah I give Fortnite 3 years before it loses enough players that Epic can no longer use it to fund its other activities.

That seems to be moving the goalpost pretty far based on a reasonable interpretation of your original comment, but it’s an assessment that is at least in the realm of reason. I’m sure Epic understands that their golden goose isn’t going to generate cash forever, but for now it’s given them the sort of coin that allows them to pursue the sorts of business ventures that they’d otherwise be unable to explore. It’s certainly rational that it’s going to stop laying magic eggs at some point.

[Bateau]

What I said now is the same thing that I originally said, I don’t know how else you’d interpret it. Unless you actually thought that I meant 0 players, but that’s on you.

In any case, we’ll see the situation in a few years.

[meeper]

What I said now is the same thing that I originally said, I don’t know how else you’d interpret it. Unless you actually thought that I meant 0 players, but that’s on you.

How in the flying fart can that be on me when you say:

I was talking about the Store, not company as a whole. I give Fortnite ~3 years max.

You made a vague claim and are now saying that you were only discussing a narrow subset of a particular point you didn’t elucidate because of course it was so obvious.

[KallDrexx]

You are still heavily cherry picking examples. Ok so you want to ignore Warframe which kicks off the f2p checkbox. What about Dota2? What about League of Legends? These are all PVP games that have lasted well over 3 years that are still remaining consistent or increasing in player counts and raking in shit tons of cash. These games had zero change with the influx of Fortnite or PubG.

You act like there can only be one cash cow of a game out there and those games have very little staying power. History of the mobile and PC market show that’s just not always the case. There is room for all of these these games to continuously rake in tons of cash unless the developers severely cut their limbs off.

And even if Fortnite drops to a 10th of the player count they will still be writing crazy bonus checks to their employees off of it (my friend who went to Epic this year never being in the game industry was promised a $40k profit sharing bonus this year alone) because Fortnite isn’t a game that needs a lot of money to remain stupidly profitable.

So your “I give it 3 years” is easy to say because it’s a cheap shot where you can say “see told you so” or pretend like it never happened.

[Bateau]

Once Fortnite well dries up it’s game over for Epic and their store. They’ll go back to living off engine licenses and Steam will roll them over.

That’s what I originally said. Get another fucking interpreter I guess.

Ok so you want to ignore Warframe which kicks off the f2p checkbox.

I’m done lol. How do you not get why WF isn’t comparable?

Also:

These are all PVP games that have lasted well over 3 years that are still remaining consistent or increasing in player counts and raking in shit tons of cash. These games had zero change with the influx of Fortnite or PubG.

Yeah, one PVP game is clearly a substitute for another in a completely different genre.

So your “I give it 3 years” is easy to say because it’s a cheap shot where you can say “see told you so” or pretend like it never happened.

Considering I’m not an analyst that’s beholden to investors I’ll take as many cheap shots as I want.

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Out of curiosity, why do people keep saying:

“I’m done.”

In arguments like this, precisely before writing more stuff?

Not calling out any individuals. I’ve seen it happen several times in discourse here on qt3.

I think only Brad Wardell has said “I’m done,” and then actually disappeared.

[TheWombat]

If Epic can develop a diverse enough library, I think you will very likely find that a portion of their Fortnite players will happily try out some other game they have seen streamed or which has popped up on the store front page and caught their attention.

Only if it plays on mobile…

[Cormac]

I think only Brad Wardell has said “I’m done,” and then actually disappeared.

Wumpus seems to have stuck to his “I’m outta here” statement.

[KevinC]

Out of curiosity, why do people keep saying:

“I’m done.”

In arguments like this, precisely before writing more stuff?

Not calling out any individuals. I’ve seen it happen several times in discourse here on qt3.

Human nature. Surely to see the same behavior elsewhere? People say just one more turn and end up playing until a quarter to three. They swear they’re finally done with a bad relationship but end to getting back together yet again. This time, they really are going to eat healthier… but they don’t.

They really mean to be done with the argument, but they fail their Will save and get sucked back in by another comment they just can’t ignore.

[legowarrior]

I don’t think I have that I was out, but I will say that it’s exhausting arguing with the Chicken Littles of this forum.

[KallDrexx]

I’m done lol. How do you not get why WF isn’t comparable?

Because while DayZ is comparable according to you it’s only comparable by a single metric, DayZ isn’t comparable by a lot of other metrics (like polish, monetary backing, influence it has on the industry, ability to create really nice microtransactions, the ability to iterate and add neat things that people like such as music creation, etc…). Fortnite is constantly pumping out content that DayZ devs could only dream of, and in a way that shows knowledge of their user base and how to keep them engrossed.

There are so many other factors that are leading to DayZ’s decline more than just “it’s BR and other BR games have come out”. So yes Warframe, Dota2 and others 100% compare. Maybe not on every point but enough points to be a comparable, more than DayZ has in common.

Hell you ignore the fact that Dota 2 and LOL are both still hugely popular and cash cows after so many years despite Dota2 coming out after LOL and many other games in the same genre coming out well after. Dota 2 was released in 2013 yet in that same time LOL went from 32m players in 2012 to 67m players to 2014, to 100m players in 2016. That clearly shows that genre alone does not obsolete older titles by itself.

WOW is another example of a game that has been massively profitable and has done a decent job of maintaining it’s player base (though it’s starting to decline after a decade and a half), outliving many games in the same genre that released before and after it did.

[BloodyBattleBrain]

will save lol.

and yeah, one.more turn…guilty as charged.

I put an alarm now. for example, 2 hrs for an aow 3 game. no distractions, no browsing.

very unamused when the mrs interrupts, and she always does…

[geewhiz]

I was thinking that younger people tend to play games that are the rage at the time. One plays fortnight because all your friends do. It is your social life in that sense.

I would suspect that only a small percentage will start buying other genre games through the Epic store. When another game becomes the new thing than there will be a shift but Epic seems to be betting on getting that crowd who plays only one main game to start buying others. I would think there should be some type of push in their strategy to get people to try other genres. I feel like that is a major factor that is missing in all of this. Not sure how you help people get into other games. I would like to see that happen for the hobby as a whole.

[meeper]

One thing that I think is potentially missed in all of this is that the EGS has the potentially to significantly expand the size of the PC player base. You’ve got kids playing Fortnite on PC who have never used a PC for anything else. My 7-year old nephew had no idea games were even available on PC until one of his friends asked him to play Fortnite with him!

This is completely independent of whether you support Epic, their (rapidly changing) exclusives policy, or whether the store/platform/thing has feature X. As a PC gamer, I can’t help but be cautiously optimistic that this might continue to expand our hobby at a time when PCs in the home are being replaced by tablets and Chromebooks.

[Bateau]

DayZ’s playerbase got absorbed by PUBG, because both games shared many elements that many players found interesting (ffa pvp, looting, gearing). Warframe on the other hand has no direct competitor, thus it can’t be used in the same example.

As for your LOL/Dota example - BuT fOoTbAlL iS sTiLl pOpuLaR tOdAy eVeN tHoUgH bAsKeTbAlL iS pUlLiNg HuGe NuMbErS. That’s what your argument is. Do I have to explain your flawed reasoning further? If you want to address numbers, address the PUBG ones. Hell, you might even want to explain why Rings of Elysium isn’t taking off? I mean, PATH OF EXILE is doing extremely well, why isn’t RoE? Do you see how fucking annoying it is when someone is being obtuse on purpose?

[Spect]

Wumpus seems to have stuck to his “I’m outta here” statement.

Don’t forget @amandachen who also gave a lasting “I’m outta here” and stuck to it. I actually miss her insight.

[dsmart]

First of all, not even remotely comparable. Second, do you know how many players DayZ had? Where is it today? Do you know the bleed rate of playerbase for PUBG since Fortnite came to the scene, and then Apex?

Fortnite has been out long enough that competitors had time to come up with similar products. Apex is just the first big hit.

That’s not relevant. You gave Fornite “~3 years max”. You have no data to backup that claim. I gave the first example that came to mind of a F2P game that’s 6 yrs already and still going strong - even with engagement drops, stiff competition from BR games etc