- Opened: 2018
- Owner: Epic Games
- Active users per month: 56 million.
- Games on the platform: 471
- Owned games: Fortnite, Infinity Blade, Shadow Complex, Unreal Tournament, Robo Recall.
In 2020, Epic Games launched a campaign to give away free games. This move attracted a huge number of new customers to the Epic Games Store and Epic Games Launcher platform. Now the number of registered users on PC is more than 110 million. This means that Epic Games has overtaken Steam.
During the year, Epic Games Store users 75 games about 200 million times and received more than $23 million in gift coupons and discounts.
The most popular games on the service were Cyberpunk, Red Dead Redemption 2, Fortnite, Satisfactory, Anno 1800, World War Z, Untitled Goose Game, The Division 2, Control, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, The Outer Worlds.
The store is available as a website and through the Epic Games Launcher app. It does not currently have features such as achievements or virtual reality headset support.
Epic Games’ own games will be available exclusively through this store, and the company plans to fund releases only through their store, using revenue guarantees for developers who choose these terms, with Epic paying the difference if the game fails to meet revenue expectations.
To promote their own store, Epic Games ran a promotion offering one or more free games per week starting in 2018.
Eventually, the storefront will offer user reviews, but developers will include this feature to avoid misuse of actions such as review-bombing[2]. Additional planned features include cloud saving and achievements; however, Epic Games has no plans to add any “in-game features” like Steam cards designed to drive sales.
Where possible, Epic Games plans to expand its “Creator Support” program, launched in Fortnite Battle Royale, to other games offered in the store. Players will be able to support a streamer or content creator chosen by the company based on submitted apps. Supported creators will be able to earn revenue from microtransactions made through the Epic Games Store from players who support them, incentivizing content creators. In Fortnite, creators received about 5% of the value of microtransactions.