Another big reveal came today from the legal battle between Epic Games v. Apple. This time we learned a little bit about what it takes to buy off six months of exclusivity for the Epic Games Store. Specifically, we learned just what it took to make Borderlands 3 a six month Epic Games Store exclusive.
According to internal Epic finances from October 2019, Epic Games paid a total of $146 million (USD) to Borderlands 3 publisher 2K. Of that $146 million, $115M was for Borderlands 3 itself with $80M being a guarantee no matter how many copies the game sold. There was also a $15M commitment to marketing along with $20M in "non recoupable fees."
The remaining $31M went towards securing two additional titles from 2K that would be given away for free through the Epic Games Store. This includes $11M for Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and $20M for Civilization VI. This is quite the premium paid for the free games when you consider just how little Epic Games gave to other studios for their free game offerings.
According to the document, Borderlands 3 reached $100M in revenues within two weeks of being on sale through the Epic Games Store. This includes $77M sales through the Epic Games Store directly and $23M sold through retail outlets and other resellers such as Humble.
With Epic Games taking their 12% revenue share from the $77M made through the Epic Games Store, they walked away with $9.2M in net revenues. All of this was enough to recoup the guaranteed $80M minimum. In the two weeks after launch, Epic reportedly had 1.56M Borderlands users.
