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Epic Games has hit out at market analyst SuperData, accusing the company of “wildly inaccurate reports” that it insists “do not accurately reflect Fortnite’s performance”.
Last month, SuperData released a fresh analysis, stating that despite a 25 per cent dip in revenue over the year, Fortnite was 2019’s most successful game for the second successive year, netting $1.8bn (£1.38bn) revenue across the period. However, Epic Games has now refuted the company’s analysis, stating SuperData’s reporting is “wildly inaccurate” and uses a “questionable methodology”.
“SuperData does not and has not ever had access to Epic’s Fortnite revenue data, and SuperData’s reports do not accurately reflect Fortnite’s performance,” an Epic representative told GI.biz. “We are disappointed that SuperData has repeatedly published wildly inaccurate reports about Fortnite based on what we believe is questionable methodology.
“While we do not and have not publicly shared revenue numbers for Fortnite, we will say that SuperData’s reports do not align with reality.”
Interestingly, however, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney positively cited the analyst firm’s figures only last month (thanks, ResetEra).
Super data reported that Epic reached 17% of PC users in our first full year, versus Steam reaching 37% in year 16 years or so. Not a bad start IMO!
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) January 6, 2020
In response to the statement by Epic Games, SuperData said it has “a proven methodology and validation process” and stands behind its analyses.
Epic Games recently appointed Nike’s formal chief digital officer Adam Sussman as its new president. Prior to his senior position at Nike Sussman was senior VP of global publishing at Zynga, and served as senior VP of publishing at The Walt Disney Company for DIMG Games. He has also worked for EA Mobile and 2K’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive.
Since its launch in December 2018, Epic Games Store has attracted 108 million customers, generating $680 million (£523m) in revenue. $251m (£192m) of that revenue was generated by third-parties sales, which means the remaining $429m (£330m) was raised by Epic’s own first-party titles, including Fortnite.
The new PC online store offered 73 free games to players since launch, which have collectively been claimed 200 million times, prompting Epic to confirm it will continue offering free games each week throughout 2020, too.
The store is by far most popular in the U.S. with 17.24 per cent of all users, and Russia, China and Brazil coming in behind with 10.15 per cent, 8.36 per cent and 6.46 per cent of the player base share respectively. Players from the UK represent the eighth biggest share at just 3.22 per cent.
