Monthly active users rose from 32 million in 2019 to 56 million in December 2020, Epic announced in a blog post. That’s a big jump, but the Epic Games Store still has some way to go before it catches up with market leader Steam. Earlier this month, Valve announced Steam had over 120 million monthly active users. There are now over 160 million Epic Games Store PC users, Epic said. Daily active users are up 192 per cent to 31.3 million, with a peak of 13 million concurrent players in 2020 (up from seven million in 2019). Steam, on the other hand, hit 62.6 million daily active users, with peak concurrent users hitting 24.8 million last year. Epic’s surge in growth sparked an increase in purchasing and playtime, as you’d expect. The company said that in 2020, PC customers on the Epic Games Store spent over $700m, of which third-party games represented 37 per cent at $265m. Epic offers publishers and developers a higher cut of revenue than Valve. Epic hands out 88 per cent of the share to the developer / publisher, with Epic’s 12 per cent covering the operating costs of the store and its profit. By default, Steam takes a 30 per cent cut, although developers can keep 75 per cent of the revenue if their game generates $10m, and 80 per cent if the revenue exceeds $10m. Last year, the Epic Games Store community played 70 per cent more hours with a total playtime of 5.70bn hours in 2020 compared to 3.35bn hours in 2019. Again, for comparison’s sake, Steam saw 31.3bn hours of playtime in 2020, and the number of games purchased increased 21.4 per cent over 2019. The Epic Games Store’s huge growth is fuelled in part by the eye-catching free games it offers on a regular basis. Epic gave away 103 games in 2020 (for a value of $2407), with over 749m games claimed by users in the year. The most popular games on the Epic Games Store in 2020 included the company’s own Fortnite, as expected, as well as some games that launched first on PC on the platform, such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Borderlands 3. Looking to the future, Epic said it will expand the number of games on the Epic Games Store by providing developers with self-publishing tools for the platform. Epic added it’s improving existing features such as Wishlists and Achievements in 2021. Player profiles and a social overhaul are also in the works.
