Epic vs Apple trial reveals cost of exclusives and ‘free’ games

the courtroom battle between Apple and Epic Games has started, and already the process has revealed details that these companies usually hold close to the vest. One item is how much Epic pays publishers to donate their games on its high end pc game store. In return for freebies that entice players to create accounts and install the software (before, hopefully, stick around to pay for other content), the company pays tens of thousands, if not millions, for the rights.

GameDiscoverCo’s Simon Carless searched the documents (which you can see for yourself here) to find a list of numerous Epic Games Store giveaways spanning roughly nine months spanning 2018 and 2019.

At the high end, Epic paid Warner Bros. $ 1.5 million to donate the Batman Arkham Collection, with nearly 6.5 million people collecting it. According to Epic’s tally, the promotion attracted 613,912 new accounts, meaning it paid 2.44 cents per user acquired – not a bad rate. Subnautica was the first game offered by Epic and drew the most 804,000 users for a buyout price of $ 1.4 million.

Another Carless document underlines reveals the cost of creating a game exclusive to the Epic Store on PC. For Borderlands 3, Epic made $ 146 million in advances, covering guaranteed minimum fees of $ 80 million and more for marketing, bundles, and fees. According to Epic’s account, it made $ 80 million in the first two weeks of availability, with over 1.56 million players, more than half of which were new to the Epic Games Store.

The edge unearthed documents revealing that Fortnite generated $ 9 billion in profits for Epic in 2018 and 2019, while CEO Tim Sweeney’s testimony said it had gross revenue of $ 5.1 billion in 2020. The trial is just beginning, and although the feud is over who controls how apps are distributed and what should be the allocation of revenue between platform owners and developers more information than we’ve seen before about how money flows across the industry.