Five years since its launch, the Epic Games Store remains unprofitable

The Epic Games Store still isn’t profitable, according to Epic Games.

Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison said so on the stand on Monday, during the opening day of the Fortnite maker’s antitrust court battle with Google.

He said the goal for the Epic Games Store is still growth, The Verge reports.

Epic launched its PC games marketplace in December 2018 as a rival to Valve’s dominant Steam platform.

In a bid to take market share, Epic offered game makers a more generous revenue split than Steam, with 88% of sales going to the developer and 12% to Epic.

In comparison, Valve has traditionally taken a 30% share of game sales on Steam, although in 2018 it introduced a revenue share tier system which offers more to developers if their games meet certain sales thresholds.

Epic has also spent heavily to secure major third-party timed exclusive releases, and has invested millions on its weekly free game giveaways.

In August it announced a new Epic Games Store exclusivity scheme.

The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.

Another Epic Games Store scheme which will see developers getting a 100% revenue share for the first six months by bringing their older titles to the marketplace was revealed in October.

The previous month, Epic announced plans to lay off around 830 employees, or 16% of its total workforce.

It increased the price of Fortnite V-Bucks and some real money content packs last month, and will start charging for the use of Unreal Engine outside of video game development next year.