The question of how much Epic pays publishers to give away their games to the Epic Games Store has worried many. Such generous “promotions” encourage players to create accounts and install EGS on their PC, although over the past 13 years, most of the players have become accustomed to Steam.
Simon Carless of GameDiscoverCo looked through the docs (which you can browse here yourself) to find a list of some projects between 2018 and 2019.
For example, Epic paid Warner Bros $1.5 million to access the Batman Arkham Collection, which was bought by nearly 6.5 million people. According to Epic’s calculations, this move resulted in an increase in the user base by 613,912 people.
They paid 2.44 cents for each user attracted, which is not a bad bet. Subnautica was the first game to be given away by Epic, and it attracted 804,000 users for a $1.4 million ransom.
But for Borderlands 3, Epic paid $146 million upfront, covering an $80 million minimum guaranteed collection. Such a big game justifies the means. Epic returned $80 million in the first two weeks, bringing account growth by 1.56 million.
