September 2023 PCG Article Links and Discussion

[Brian Boru]

you misunderstood that I was talking about Steam, Epic and PC gaming

Oh you're right, my bad. I thought we were continuing the Epic financials chat—no worries

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh you're right, my bad. I thought we were continuing the Epic financials chat—no worries

That was a part of it, but what is causing them to lose money has nothing to do with consoles or mobile. It's all about their costly battle with Valve (a battle Valve isn't even fighting, by the way). And so the part of their financials that is relevant to the discussion is the PC side. They are making vast sums of money on console and mobile. They are losing money on PC.

My post was ridiculously bad and unfocused. Let me try to clarify my thoughts on this:

I was talking about the huge loss leader, the store, and why I think they should just stop with the massive expenditures, which in some cases are making them less popular instead of more popular. The store will grow over time if they take care of it and improve it (drastically). But they aren't doing that. They are trying to buy customers for a terrible store, and it's dragging the whole company down.

Step one: fix the store. Step two: be financially responsible and let the improved product grow organically. If they have the money after they fix the store to try to buy customers, fine, but don't lay off 800 workers so you can bribe customers into coming to an inferior product.

Bottom line, no one should spend a fortune on marketing for a bad product. I'm sure there has been a case here or there where that worked, but I'm uninterested in one-offs. I'm talking about the responsible way to go about things, and most of the time marketing a bad product causes you even more problems than just wasting money.

But none of that matters because Tim Sweeney has a planet-sized ego. He doesn't just want a nice and successful store. He wants to defeat Valve. Well guess what? He's failing colossally and throwing him employees overboard to stay afloat so he can continue the pursuit. Great guy, that one.