How long can Epic afford to throw money at the Epic Games Store?

Enlarge / Free for you, not so free for Epic… (credit: Epic Games)

The bitter court fight between Apple and Epic is primarily focused on the mobile-gaming landscape and Apple’s iron-fisted control of the iOS App Store. But recent court filings in that case have also given the public a rare glimpse into just how much money Epic is throwing at the Epic Games Store as it struggles to make a dent in the PC marketplace.

The raw numbers, as reported in a “Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” document Apple filed last week, show massive incurred and projected losses for Epic’s game download hub, which launched in late 2018. Documents and testimony from Epic itself show a $181 million loss for the store in 2019 and projected losses of $273 million in 2020 and $139 million in 2021.

You might think Epic is incurring those losses because it only takes a 12 percent cut of third-party game revenues, compared to the industry-standard 30 percent cut on other digital storefronts. On the contrary, though—in its own court filings, Epic says that 12 percent revenue chunk has been “sufficient to cover its costs of distribution and allow for further innovation and investment in EGS.”