Free Games Cost Epic $11-million

“Money! It’s a drag” as Pink Floyd sang to the chagrin of their record company’s money people. Ok, jokes aside, I feel a little like those news reporters told to stand outside the local court for a quick news summary of a big trial in a small town. Someone stole an apple and called a farmer’s wife the wrong name. I don’t understand the news without being a little silly, I’ll be honest, but the court thing is true. As of Monday, the big Apple Vs Epic case (just Apple, not the whole of New York) has gotten underway.

Ok, being serious for a moment, the whole thing could take months for judges and lawyers to do that boring bit of the Law and Order thing. That doesn’t mean there isn’t news coming out of the courtroom, or Zoom meeting because we’re still in pandemic times. Spotted and shared by Simon Carless, founder of GameDiscoverCo, we now know the total amount Epic paid for 9-months of their free weekly games through the Epic Games Store. This is just how much Epic is paying developers/publishers for an expected number of keys (entitlements) from the free weekly game promotion.

Want to know how much $ the devs of those 'free' Epic Games Store games got, & how many copies were grabbed? Here's the first 9 months to September 2019. 👀 pic.twitter.com/5hkLb1VEjj

— Simon Carless (@simoncarless) May 3, 2021

For example, the money handed over to Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat was $50,000, with a total of 1.7-million accounts claiming the game that week. Similarly, when Batman Arkham from Warner Bros was made available the publisher received $1.5-million and it was claimed by 6.4-million accounts. Of course, you work out the numbers there and you see that per each entitlement (of these two examples) one publisher/developer made $0.52 from the agreement with the other making $2.44 per claim with the agreement.

Some would (and oddly are) argue the stupid viewpoint that “how can X developer agree to this if they are making such a small amount?” I think the better question to be asked is, could Double Damage have guaranteed themselves $125,000 in a single week from a single game any other way? Yes, with 2.1-million copies claimed to make them $2.99 per copy, that doesn’t seem like much. However, at that time they were also about to release the second game in the series and now they’d have a larger audience to market that toward.

It isn’t a small amount to any developer, especially small indie developers. It isn’t making the likes of Ubisoft millionaires either. There is one exception here though, the large lump sums are going to smaller studios. For example, $800,000 went to Playdead for Inside and $500,000 went to Slime Rancher developer Monomi Park. Epic paid $1-million for Mutant Year Zero to be free. To point out the other stupidity from people talking about this, it isn’t “free money” more or less, it is making X amount now over making Y amount over a longer period of time. Warner Bros or Ubisoft could leave that money behind, but could David O’Reilly or Edmund McMillen?

Over the 38 games listed, 9 months of the Epic Games Store offering free games in the early days, the platform holder spent approximately $11.6-million. While some will focus on those entitlements and the seemingly small number per claimant for each developer/publisher, those aren’t the important numbers to what is seemingly the big throwdown. The common point is that the Epic Games Store is fighting with Steam, and Epic in those 9-months gained 4.9-million users through this free game program by spending $11.6-million.

If you are more interested in the other documents released publicly, the link to all of those throughout the trial are here. For those looking to find the numbers shown here and others from the Epic Games Store that link is here. I’ll repeat myself so I’m absolutely clear, this case won’t be wrapped up by Friday. I’d even say it won’t be wrapped by the end of the month. Expect to see several headlines over the coming weeks with “shocking revelations Apple Vs Epic you won’t believe” from crap YouTubers and tame(r) headlines from written media.