I too have been thinking about Epic's strategy moving forward. Basically I am wondering if they have some sort of long-term plan or if EGS is just a zombie because Sweeney is too proud to admit failure. I have a few scenarios in mind:
1. Epic does have a long-term plan for EGS. Maybe they are counting on the Fortnite kids eventually moving to traditional gaming and being accustomed to EGS. Maybe they are waiting for Valve to mess up and they want to be there ready to take advantage of any mistake. Or maybe there's another plan in place that we can't think of.
2. Epic is using EGS as a weapon for its legal battles against Apple and Google and they don't care if it ever becomes profitable. Maybe they have a skeleton crew running it and it costs so little to run that they don't mind if it doesn't make a profit.
3. EGS has failed, there is no plan in place but Tim Sweeney is too proud and stubborn to let it go.
3.
As ExistentialThought said, 1 is funny because data suggests the Fortnite kids aren't growing up and buying $70 games, they're still playing Fortnite. There is also evidence that the industry as a whole is facing an existential (sorry) crisis with a handful of games hogging up the majority of overall playtime.
Their next big play is the mobile store and I have
zero idea how that'll work. My gut feeling is it won't turn out great because Fortnite isn't big enough for the mobile audience to care. Also Microsoft is throwing their hat into the alternate app store ring later this year and Candy Crush is a much bigger deal on mobile than Fortnite.
I’m confused. Is this their big Summer sale? thought it was normally timed to coincide with Steam’s Summer sale.
If this is it then oof. No coupons out of Tim’s pocket means this sale’s going to be a massive dud.
Epic has two major sales: the Mega sale in May/June and the Holiday sale in December. They actually tried to avoid the Steam summer sale. They had been doing coupons for five years during those big sales and this is the first time ever they haven't done a coupon.
Effectively the prices are the same as Steam, barring the 5% rebate, but you can often get cheaper prices via key sites so there is no good reason to buy directly from EGS any more.