The lawsuit between Epic and Apple keeps giving us some juicy industry news. This time, thanks to some shared documents, we learned how much Epic paid for some of its exclusivity deals and free games.
The list tells us, for example, that Epic paid $ 1.4 million for Subnautica to give it away for free. Team Meat’s Super Meat Boy cost only $ 50,000 while Funcom’s Mutant Year Zero cost $ 1 million.
Putting aside the indie games, Epic paid $ 1.5 million to Warner Bros. for the Batman Arkham series to be free on the Epic Games Store. Ubisoft, on the other hand, only made $ 63,000 for For Honor.
Overall, Epic spent about $ 12 million to release 38 games for free in the first nine months. This figure only includes free games until September 2019. Considering this, this is not a low number.
Interestingly, the document shows that Epic mostly cared about user acquisition. To calculate this, we have to divide the purchase price of the game by the number of new Epic accounts secured. For example, in the case of Subnautica, which was downloaded 4.4 million times, the user acquisition cost was calculated as $ 1.74. So Epic says it is worth $ 1.74 to get a single user who downloaded Subnautica.
When we calculate it this way, for example, the Mutant Year Zero mentioned above cost Epic $ 5.05 per user. Super Meat Boy, on the other hand, costs $ 0.52 per user.
2K & Borderlands Deal
Let’s give another shocking number. According to some other documents, the Borderlands 3 exclusivity deal cost Epic $ 115 million. 80 million of this amount was given under the minimum guarantee. While additional, 15 million was given as a marketing commitment plus a one time non-refundable $ 20 million exclusivity fee.
It doesn’t end there. The rights to Borderlands 3 were part of a larger agreement with 2K Games, which allowed Epic to offer Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and Civilization 6 as free games on the Epic Store. The Handsome Collection was valued at $ 11 million, while Civilization 6 cost $ 20 million.
Because the game brought more than that in its first two weeks of sale. In the same period, a 12% cut of EGS generated net income of $ 9.2 million. As a result of the deal, 1.56 million EGS users played Borderlands, and 53% of them were using the platform for the first time.
Recently, it was revealed that Epic lost hundreds of millions of dollars in its fight against Steam. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has stated that the Epic Games Store will not profit for at least another three or four years. As further details come out of the Epic vs Apple case, we will continue to keep you posted. Stay tuned!
