Happy New Year and Welcome to 2021!
We’re only a few weeks into the New Year and what better way to kick things off than to confirm that weekly free games are going to continue on the Epic Games Store in 2021! It’s been an incredible year of growth for us on many levels so we’re excited to share details about 2020.
As we look back at 2020 on the Epic Game Store, we wanted to take a moment to thank all of our partners who helped us bring joy to so many gamers around the world over the past year. Adapting to constantly changing challenges is no easy feat and we’re grateful for this community of developers, publishers, players and creators.Thanks to this community, the Epic Games Store saw historic growth in engagement across the board. There are now over 160 million Epic Games Store PC users. Daily active users are up 192% to 31.3 million daily active players, with a peak CCU 13 million concurrent players this year (up from 7M in 2019). Monthly active users in December rose from 32 million in 2019 to 56 million.
This surge in player growth has also led to an increase in purchasing and play time! In 2020, PC customers on the Epic Games Store spent over $700M of which third party games represented 37% at $265M. Last year, the Epic Games Store community played 70% more hours with a total playtime of 5.70 billion hours in 2020 compared to 3.35 billion hours in 2019.
We’re making strides to offer more titles on the store by onboarding more developers and introducing their titles to the Epic Games ecosystem. The Epic Games Store grew from 190 games in 2019 to 471 in 2020. We released 103 weekly free games which were a big part of the titles that made their way to the store. In 2021, we’re going to rapidly expand the catalog of new titles available on the Epic Games Store even further by providing developers with self-publishing tools for the EGS Platform and we’ll be releasing details on those specific plans soon.
Check out more year-end results:
Shipped Store Features in 2020
Wishlisting was a major feature initially released in February 2020 and continued to see incremental improvements throughout the year. We followed with the release of Mod Support which continues to incorporate more mod-supported titles on the Epic Games Store. We also shipped numerous Storefront visual improvements in 2020, including changes to the Discover and Browse options, as well as an updated Carousel in December 2020.
We’ve also added:
- Open Critic Reviews
- Self-Service Refunds
- 19 new Currencies
- Direct Carrier Billing in numerous countries
- Offline Sign-In
- Launcher performance improvements (Big help for Mac)
- Improved browsing for Add-On content
- Early Access Messaging
- Price-Based Filters
There have been substantial infrastructure changes that have not been in plain view for our PC customers to see. One such change is toward our Epic Games Store developer publishing tools. Continuing to improve our publishing tools has provided the opportunity to bring more games to the Epic Games Store in 2020 and as we march toward complete self-publishing tools, we expect to see even more new titles published. Disclaimer: Yes, we’ve mentioned self-publishing tools three times now because it’s just that important! More Games. More Options. More Fun.
What’s coming in 2021?
Much of the development work this year is centered on opening the store to developers that want to publish titles on the store. We want a smooth, seamless experience for developers looking to bring their titles to the Epic Games Store. This unlocks the ability for Epic Games Store customers to purchase the games they want, when they want while developers enjoy a much fairer revenue share split.
We’re improving existing features like Wishlists and Achievements in 2021. There’s a major priority to release more community-oriented features that provide a more personalized experience.
Here’s a quick glance at features we’re working on:
- Wishlist Improvements
- Social Overhaul
- Achievements
- Player Profiles
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You can stay up to date on features coming to the Epic Games Store by bookmarking and checking out the official Trello.
To the Epic Games PC community and developers, we thank you for continuing to support the Epic Games Store, we wish you all the very best! We’ll have a number of surprises coming in the year in addition to major game releases so buckle up for a fun time!
