When Epic Games, hot off the success of Fortnite, opted to open the Epic Games Store in late 2018, it wasn’t clear if it would able to compete with Steam, GOG, and the other behemoths in digital game sales. However, it has certainly made its mark, as the Epic Games Store has racked up 108 million customers in just its first year and generated an impressive amount of revenue.
The enormous figure came as part of a larger information dump from Epic Games, where the company also shared that PC players have spent $680 million in the store so far, and $251 million of that were on third-party PC games. Additionally, more than $23 million in coupons and discounts were funded by Epic Games, and 73 free games were given away, amounting to nearly $1,500 in value. Epic Games will continue giving away new free games every week throughout 2020, without any strings attached for keeping them. Some also work on Mac in addition to PC.
Of the active players last month, about 17% of them are in the United States, with Russia, China, Brazil, and Germany rounding out the top five countries. Popular games include Epic Games Store PC exclusives such as Borderlands 3, The Division 2, Control, and Metro Exodus. Among the larger upcoming PC exclusives include the action-RPG Godfall, which will also be coming to PlayStation 5.
“In 2020 we’ll continue to lead the way in open and developer-friendly store terms, with 88 percent revenue sharing, support for developer and publisher payment systems, and keyless purchasing integration with Humble (with more PC stores coming soon),” Epic Games said in the announcement. “On top of that, we’re offering integration with Epic’s platform-independent and store-independent online services with more than 300,000,000 customer accounts and 1,700,000,000 friend connections.”
Epic Games only looks to get bigger in 2020, and the company also hinted at additional cross-platform games coming during the year. We’ve seen a growing number of multiplayer titles, including Fortnite, allow for players to enjoy gaming together regardless of which system they own. It’s something we think will only get more prevalent with the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at the end of the year.
