The Epic Games Store is still not a profitable venture.
That's according to the platform's general manager, Steve Allison, who said on the witness stand in the Epic v Google trial – as reported by The Verge – that the storefront still isn't making enough money to get in the black. The exec said that the goal is still to grow the platform.
This news comes almost five years after the Epic Games Store was unveiled at The Game Awards in December 2018. It's hardly surprising given that the Fortnite maker has been ploughing money into the platform, paying huge minimum guarantees to developers and publishers to have their titles come to the storefront free to the consumer.
Word that the Epic Games Store was not profitable emerged back in 2021 as part of the company's lawsuit against Apple, in which the iPhone giant claimed it would have "lost" just under $600 million by the end of the year. Of course, it's hard to say that money is "lost" when it's an investment into a business. We're certainly sure that Apple would not describe money invested in its myriad platforms as losses in the long term.
Epic at the time said that its storefront would be profitable by 2023, which is not the case. Apple estimated that Epic would not be in the black with the Games Store until 2027.
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