Don’t get me wrong here. I love free games. Given my current economic situation, I can’t really look a gift horse in the mouth. However, I wonder how many Epic employees would still be there if it didn’t give away the games. Maybe the store would be profitable. We’ll just never know.
Epic Games posted a blog post comparing themselves to competing storefronts like Steam and GOG. In it, it mentions that 86 games were given away that retails around $2,055. Those games were downloaded over 580 million times. I wonder what that all comes down to.
But how many people stuck around to play games from Epic? The company stated it reached 75 million monthly active users in December. That’s up 10% from last year. However, back in 2021, Valve reported 132 million monthly active users by the end of the year. That was 2 years ago. Steam concurrent users went from 27.4 million to 33 million by January 2023.
Epic still shared some more good news for the store. People were spending more there. Spending went up 16% which brought in $950 million. Of course, games like Genshin Impact, Dead Island 2, and Fortnite were gonna help drive those numbers up.
While the Epic Game Store still isn’t a behemoth like Steam is, all Epic wants to do is grow. The company is constantly trying to get people on board with giveaways, more favorable revenue splits, and much more.
What would it take to get you to shop on Epic?
Source: IGN
