Epic Games: Market Challenges and Future Opportunities in Gaming

Epic Games is striving to expand its audience and improve developer options in a competitive mobile gaming landscape.

### Epic Games' Battle with Apple: Market Share, Developer Community, and AI in Gaming
* 💰  Over the past four years, Epic Games has had to give up some market share in the mobile gaming industry due to its legal battle with Apple, despite the success of titles like **Call of Duty Mobile with 250 million downloads and billions in revenue**.
* 📱  Epic Games is now focusing on **expanding its audience beyond the young shooter demographic**, with plans to compete with platforms like Roblox and a recent entry into the **mobile market**.
* 🎮  The company is investing in AI technology for game development, with the potential for **code generation to streamline the process**, although the **ultimate success of this technology in creating fun and engaging games** is still uncertain.
* 💼  Amy Gu, a former investor in Epic Games, sees the company's legal battles as a positive development for indie developers, as it introduces **more competition and potentially better pricing** for game distribution.
* 💹  Epic Games' platform for user-generated content has been praised for its developer-friendly terms, but it still has room for improvement in terms of **feature parity with competitors like Roblox** and **algorithmic discovery for a broader audience**.
* 🚀  Gu is particularly excited about the trend of making user-generated games more accessible and social, aiming to **empower a wider range of developers** to create engaging gaming experiences.
* 🌐  The company is aggressively pursuing its goal of **100 million new installs**, leveraging its private status to make **bold moves in the market**, but faces challenges in expanding its user base and refining its platform to attract a **more diverse audience**.

What did you make of it? I mean, after four long years, how much has Epic had to give back, like let go, in terms of market share by taking on this battle? I mean, the costs are very large. In addition to the, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of legal fees, they also gave up market share. Right. Because in the last four years, you saw, you know, Call of Duty mobile, I think, had something like 250 million downloads, several billion dollars in revenue. And so it's really exciting, I think, for everybody. Tim Sweeney, the developer community, also their investors, to see them back in the mobile platform. But they've still got a long ways to go. I mean, you wrote a check for them when you were at a previous VC, Lightspeed Ventures, I believe. I think a bit like a focus of yours. Do you do you still think that this is

the company that you should be riding a wave on? Is Fortnite still dominant enough? Where else do you want to be sort of allocating to in this environment? Well, right now, I think that you see Epic games are very much trying to expand their audience. Right. With the launch of other than last year, GDC, they're really trying to, you know, expand beyond their young shooter audience into something more general, competing against Roblox. And so I think those are really smart moves. You know, obviously, Tim has been fighting the mobile battle for a while. I think it's exciting to see them come on to that platform, especially when they have games like Fall Guys that are really conducive to more of a mobile audience. And so I think that also in games, you know, we're looking at mobile. There's been a little bit more M&A activity in the mobile game sector. We're looking at the intersection of AI

and games right now. Some pretty exciting things have been happening. You know, Leonardo, I got acquired by Canva recently. That's more in the tooling space. A lot of game devs experimenting with using them. And so we are really actively investing in that space. Amy, it's great to have you back on the program. I mean, you make a really good point, which is on the developer side of the community. In our coverage, we kind of emphasize that this is about the consumer having options to access, but what does it mean for Marketplace for developers when there are more than one or two platforms in which you can access mobile games in particular? I think it actually, you know, I think Tim Sweeney is seen as a full hero to a lot of indie developers and choice and choice of platforms to launch games into. It's just better for developers having multiple competitors they can, you know, negotiate better pricing, etc.

before it's just Apple's 30%, you know, fee app store. And so I think this is a very, very much positive. But I think, you know, Epic had to go through a lot of hoops just to get their storefront launch and you know currently EU not the US Yeah the Android globally. And so again there are sort of at the forefront fighting this fight and it's going to be benefiting developers worldwide. Amy As you outline, you were previously an investor in EPIC. They have this goal or Tim has this goal, 100 million new installs in quite a tight time period. Just reflecting on your knowledge of the company in that leadership team, like is this a win for them? Like how are they doing now? They're certainly putting a lot of capital at work. You know, they're a privately held business and so Tim can be a lot more aggressive. And you know, when he launched up in and

they're sort of user-generated content marketplace. I would say they had the most advantageous payout of any sort of any platform, you know, better than Roblox at the time. And so that is, again, really great for developers. But I think that they have a long way to go in terms of feature parity with Roblox. Also, just the discovery algorithms, right? Because you have to remember the epic community primarily like shooting games. And so to really expand their audience to a much more general audience has to be baked into their algorithms as well in terms of discovery. And so they're working on all of that. And I think developers are patiently waiting for it. But, you know, the patient is finite, patience fighting. What's interesting is you were saying how you're looking at the AI theme within gaming, and much has been said as to how ultimately will suddenly have users of generated content so much more to be able to be built in. But I mean, whether or not games will be

building themselves, that's much more. You led the latest run and anthropic. How are you starting to see AI and gaming really start to lead to efficiencies or not? Is this still a long-term bet? Yeah, my partner Matt Murphy led the investment. It's the largest for Menlo, and we're really excited about it. So I think code generation is a pretty exciting application of generative AI loans, and so that could potentially be applied to game-making as well. Now, I think the challenge, and I think we saw this with the blockchain cycle, is that ultimately consumers care less about the technology. They want to play something fun. And so we have to prove, and I need to prove, that it can not only generate code but generate it in a way that's actually quite creative and something that consumers want to play. And I think that is still, you know, proof is out. We haven't seen anything quite yet.

There's a lot of really interesting attempts more, and I would say low fidelity 2D games. But, you know, I am we're very actively looking. A lot of the teams that are trying to push that technology in the absolute sort of the farthest can it can it can go in order to generate games. Amy, we just have 15 seconds. Just an area in gaming or adjacent you're really excited about right now? I am excited about user-generated games, whether it is more social, also, you know, easier to build. You know, most Roblox developers are semi-professional developers. And so I think this trend around making it even easier is a really exciting one. It gives consumers more choice.

Epic Games' Mobile Storefront and the Gaming Sector

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Epic Games' Market Share Battle and Expansion

Epic Games has given up market share and incurred significant costs, including hundreds of millions in legal fees, over the past four years.

The company's struggle has been highlighted by the success of competitors like Call of Duty Mobile, which gained 250 million downloads and billions in revenue.

Epic is now trying to expand its audience beyond young shooters, launching new games and targeting the mobile platform to compete with companies like Roblox.

The Impact of Multiple Platforms on Game Development

Canva's recent acquisition is driving investment in game development tools.

The presence of multiple platforms for mobile games is beneficial for developers, offering them better negotiation power and pricing.

Epic Games, under Tim Sweeney's leadership, is aggressively working to launch their storefront and expand global reach, aiming for 100 million new installs in a tight timeframe.

The User-Generated Content Marketplace in Gaming

The platform offers advantageous payouts for developers, better than Roblox, but still lacks feature parity and effective discovery algorithms.

The Epic community's focus on shooting games poses a challenge for expanding to a broader audience.

AI's role in code generation for game-making is promising, but proving its creative effectiveness in delivering fun gameplay is still a work in progress.

There is a growing interest in low fidelity 2D games and teams are pushing technology to its limits for game generation.

User-generated games, particularly on platforms like Roblox, are gaining traction with semi-professional developers.

The trend of making game development easier is exciting, as it offers consumers more choice.