Yesterday, during the trial of Epic Games and Apple, expert witness Lorin Hitt shared statistics on paying players in Fortnite. It turned out that 24.2% of battle royale users made purchases in it.

Lorin Hitt from the Wharton School of Business tried to prove that the browser can circumvent the ban on billing in the App Store. He stated that for at least eight games from the list of the top 25 projects at the box office in the store, you can buy content outside of iOS.

Apple prohibits developers from not only implementing their own payment systems, but also generally telling users about discounts outside of iOS. For example, they cannot be sent emails with an offer to buy a subscription or game currency on the game’s website cheaper than in the App Store. Also, you cannot specify similar information in the application itself.

According to Matthew Weissinger, marketing director of Epic Games, Fortnite has practically nowhere else to grow on consoles. The authors of the battle royale see the biggest opportunities for growth in mobile. He explained this by the fact that everyone has smartphones, unlike consoles and gaming PCs. Weissinger also added that before Fortnite was removed from the App Store, there were only 2.5 million people on iOS DAU titles — 10% of the total DAU…

According to internal documents, Epic Games negotiated the purchase of 4-6 titles. Moreover, it is not completely clear from the wording: is $200 million the price tag for all the games or for each of them separately? If this is the price for one game, then in total the company was ready to spend up to $1.2 billion on Sony PC exclusives.

The owners of the Epic Games Store planned to earn about $500 million if 80 of the best-selling Steam games appeared in their store. The company developed the plan in 2019. In it, Epic Games also explained that without these bestsellers, it would be problematic for her to get a large share of the PC market. However, we note that by the end of the year, the company had agreed only with the developers of…

Epic Games has revealed data on the distribution of games from December 2018 to October 2020. In the graph, the company showed how many newcomers came to the Epic Games Store after these promotions. The distribution of GTA V was the most profitable — over 7 million new users. In second place was Sid Meier’s Civilization VI — 2.5 million people.

By the spring of 2020, there were five sales in the Epic Games Store. The largest was during the winter holidays in 2019, when gamers left $21.8 million in the store. But a few months later, the most “unsuccessful” sale took place in the store — $ 5.7 million. Later, Epic Games held another sale, but it also collected several times less than the Christmas one — $ 9.9 million.

On July 27, 2020 — two and a half weeks before Fortnite was removed from the App Store — Epic Games sent the Project Liberty roadmap to the board of directors. This is a plan that described the company’s actions to combat the 30% commission in the App Store and Google Play.

One of the fundamental points that Epic Games defends is the permission to use third—party payment systems in the App Store. According to the company, this will “put an end to Apple‘s monopoly”, and users will receive more convenient and cheaper payment methods inside applications. That’s just such an innovation will affect all iOS applications, not just games like Fortnite.

Shortly before the start of the confrontation with Apple, the head of Epic Games asked Microsoft to make multiplayer on Xbox consoles free. He sent a letter with this idea to Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox.

Walmart planned to launch its own game streaming service called Project Storm. It was supposed to be released on Windows and support launchers like Steam, Epic Games Store, Origin and Battle.net . It was also assumed that games in Project Storm could be obtained through subscription and direct purchases.

In 2019, immediately after the launch of the Epic Games Store, the owners of the store developed two scenarios for its development: aggressive and cautious. In an optimistic scenario, Epic Games hoped to get 50% of the PC market (but it depended on whether Steam would react to the company’s actions). In the pessimistic — to keep only 8% of the PC market.

On May 11, the head of Epic Games sent a letter to Yves Guillemot, the head of Ubisoft. He wrote that in the last 48 hours, 70% to 90% of fraudulent transactions in The Division 2 have passed through the Epic Games Store (EGS).

During the hearing on the case, the head of Epic Games admitted that he would be satisfied if Apple decided to soften the conditions in the App Store only for his company. Apparently, it was about reducing the commission by 30%.

We continue to share details of the trial between Epic Games and Apple. During the hearing, Epic Games also disclosed financial figures for 2018-2019. Among them: the revenue of individual projects, the profit of the entire company and the number of staff in different directions.

For the first six months since the release of Borderlands 3, it was only available in the Epic Games Store. In case of failure of the game, it could cost Epic Games $ 115 million, but already in two premiere weeks, the loot shooter managed to earn the lion’s share of the amount.

Giveaways in the Epic Games Store are in great demand among gamers. However, only a small part of the audience buys games in the store after them. Epic Games estimated that in the first nine months of EGS operation (December 2018 – September 2019), such users brought her only $53 million – this is 33% of the total revenue of the store.