Whatever your feelings on the Epic Games Store, one thing’s for certain—a whole lotta people grabbed the platform’s weekly freebies over the past 12 months. At least, according to Epic’s fancy 2020 year-in-review infographic.
Posted earlier today, Epic’s recollection flaunts some staggering numbers regarding the platform’s past year. Headlining the showcase is news that over 160 million people bought something from the Epic Games Store last year (up from 108 million in 2019), spending over $700 million altogether.
Epic Games Store now has 160m PC customers.There were 56m monthly active users in December. $700m spent on the store in 2020. Of which:- $265m was third party games- $435m was Epic published games (Fortnite)https://t.co/zJJQ7q32E1 pic.twitter.com/v5WCwpSaAyJanuary 28, 2021
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But the Epic Games Store is probably best known for its free giveaways, and boy, did people take advantage of those. More than 103 free games were given away in 2020, an amount that would’ve cost about $2,407 to buy at full-price. Over the year, those freebies were claimed just over 749 million times.
Epic has also listed the most popular games on the store over 2020. The usual suspects are there (obviously Fortnite is still doing gangbusters for the studio), but it’s pleasant surprising to see the likes of Satisfactory, Snowrunner and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1&2. More shocking still is Godfall, a thoroughly serviceable slasher-looter that Dave Meikleham called “gorgeous, hollow, and rarely abrasive” in his review.
The blog post also runs through the storefront’s feature growth over the past year. When it launched, the Epic store was widely panned as being rather barebones—and while it’s still lacking when compared to something like Steam, the last 12 months saw the store add wishlists, branch out its mod support, and add a number of less flashy improvements like greater currency support ands self-service refunds.
So, what’s next? Ending the post with some 2021 spitballing, Epic says it wants to make it easier for developers to make it onto the store. There’s also some kind of “social overhaul” in store, with improvements to wishlists and achievements alongside player profiles and more “community-oriented” features.