812
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
812 points (97.0% liked)
Games
32584 readers
1261 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I have no idea why this is newsworthy. Epic's own 2019 documents and testimony in the Apple trial showed that the company did not expect the store to be profitable until 2024 or even 2027. The strategy of heavy investment and operating at a loss to turn a profit later worked for Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft, and many others. Even this week, there are headlines like "Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Achieves Breakeven Cash Flow".
Spotify has never turned a profit, at least not yearly.
That could be true, making it an even stronger argument.
But all the other companies had in mind something else besides "gotta beat the other guys" and actually brought something to the table.
You can't deny that Epic taking 12% revolutionized the industry, with Microsoft following suit and even Valve making some small changes. As Gabe himself said on the competition, "it keeps [them] honest". That's a win for game creators.
For the gamers, we got many free games and I think the Epic freebies inspired Microsoft to offer similar deals with Game Pass, Amazon with Prime, and even GOG recently gave away a pretty notable game, Blacksad, which was uncharacteristic in relation to their past giveaways.
Pretty sure all those were offering games with their subscriptions long before Epic store was a thing.
But, on the other hand, every other thing they did outweighs the rest - exclusivity, shitty launcher, and spyware.
I am also not sure if any game given away by Amazon Prime really interested me at all.