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Epic store boasts 2020 figures

llien

Member
The Epic Games Store saw its best year yet in 2020 growing to over 160 million users and up 192% to 31.3 million daily active players. The peak concurrent user record was broken reaching 13 million up from 9 million in 2019 while monthly active users grew from 32 million to 56 million. Users spent over 700 million USD on the store of which third party games accounted for 37% at 265 million. Playtime also increased 70% to 5.7 billion hours in 2020 compared to 3.35 billion in 2019.

Epic Games has also confirmed their intention to continue offering free weekly games throughout 2021. In 2020 the Epic Games Store gave away 103 different free games which were claimed over 749 million times. These games averaged a review score of 77% according to OpenCritic data and represented 2,407 USD value if taken at RRP. In 2021 Epic hopes to continue growing the store by introducing new tools that will help to bring more titles to the platform.

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TPU
 
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Fbh

Member
I think we already had a thread about this (though with a more negative Twist).
$265m does seem really low for combined third party games sales, specially in a year that saw digital games sales get a significant boost across all platforms.


But hopefully they keep at it. I personally don't mind the epic store, the free games are nice and between their regional pricing and $10 coupon during sales a lot of games are often like half as much as on steam (at least in my region).
 
Congratulations Epic, on growing your store's 3rd-party revenue numbers 5% over the previous year. When other platforms saw over 20% increases because of everybody staying at home due to quarantine. Heh.

EGS really seems to be just a Fortnite and giveaways platform, since outside of the few regions where they offer regional pricing better than other stores do does there's next to no reason to actually spend any money on there. They want to be a publisher-first store, and (want to) believe that stores succeed on publishers rather than players, but the fact of the matter is that players are the ones giving the stores (and publishers) their money. Steam and GOG have the right of it.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
Godfall as one of the most popular wow

I'm guessing a lot of potential console sales defected to the PC given the price difference to be honest. But I'm surprised to see it there. But then what does 'popular' mean? Still being played? Sales? Trending etc. Because the sub is dead on reddit.
 
Good for them. I still don't understand what was so wrong about someone trying to beat Steam. It's a free country.

I would have never found out how good Division 1 was if wasn't for Epic.

Because steam uses carrot tactic to lure customers in and put customer satisfaction as a priority. Epic instead tried to use stick and force people to buy on their crappy story by making games unavailable everywhere else and they tried to lure developers there by shifting whole customer-developer power balance wholly in developer favour.

What I don't understand is why would anyone want to buy anything on epic store considering the above.
 
I still don't understand what was so wrong about someone trying to beat Steam. It's a free country.
Well the world is bigger than one country, for one. (That country should be reminded of that more often, in my opinion, but that's beside the point here.)

It was never about it being 'wrong' for someone to be trying to beat Steam. But someone here is trying to beat Steam on the wrong metrics. Yes, by plain data points a store that has a hundred million total users, a few tens of millions of monthly active users and 13 million peak concurrent users seems like it does well. Except then you realize it includes the players and users of the most stupidly popular online shooter at this time, and of the 'hundred million users' only at most half so much as bothered to log in and claim one of the weekly free game giveaways, let alone buy something.

And it grew its non-Fortnite numbers by only about 5%. During the year of COVID. It doesn't paint a very good picture (well, good for them at any rate), if you look at data by what it represents, rather than just the numbers.
 

CitizenZ

Banned
The Epic Games Store saw its best year yet in 2020 growing to over 160 million users and up 192% to 31.3 million daily active players. The peak concurrent user record was broken reaching 13 million up from 9 million in 2019 while monthly active users grew from 32 million to 56 million. Users spent over 700 million USD on the store of which third party games accounted for 37% at 265 million. Playtime also increased 70% to 5.7 billion hours in 2020 compared to 3.35 billion in 2019.

Epic Games has also confirmed their intention to continue offering free weekly games throughout 2021. In 2020 the Epic Games Store gave away 103 different free games which were claimed over 749 million times. These games averaged a review score of 77% according to OpenCritic data and represented 2,407 USD value if taken at RRP. In 2021 Epic hopes to continue growing the store by introducing new tools that will help to bring more titles to the platform.

6mrJgZKsoN28K3a7.jpg


6cZskIYrcW1iWdWh.jpg


YF1eZ9T6brpbEdVN.jpg



TPU

What a second, you have 160 million users and they spent $1.60 on 3rd party games? Ubisoft must be thrilled.
 
The Epic Games Store saw its best year yet in 2020 growing to over 160 million users and up 192% to 31.3 million daily active players. The peak concurrent user record was broken reaching 13 million up from 9 million in 2019 while monthly active users grew from 32 million to 56 million. Users spent over 700 million USD on the store of which third party games accounted for 37% at 265 million. Playtime also increased 70% to 5.7 billion hours in 2020 compared to 3.35 billion in 2019.

Epic Games has also confirmed their intention to continue offering free weekly games throughout 2021. In 2020 the Epic Games Store gave away 103 different free games which were claimed over 749 million times. These games averaged a review score of 77% according to OpenCritic data and represented 2,407 USD value if taken at RRP. In 2021 Epic hopes to continue growing the store by introducing new tools that will help to bring more titles to the platform.








TPU
I already posted those results.

This is pretty much Epic using "big numbers to wow people" tactic to hide their lack of growth in paying customers.

They gave away over 700 millions of games for free to have their third party revenue increase by less then 20 millions USD during the pandemic year where whole industry is booming (without pandemic boost it's likely that their 3rd party revenue would be lower)

They are also bragging about having 160 millions of users - which mean their users spent an average of 1,65 USD in their shop on third party content. And they have 265 M of revenue - that's equvalent of selling 4400k copies of 60$ game. Let that sink in - Cyberpunk alone did more on pc.

Pretty much what is happening is that people log into their store - claim games - and don't buy anything unless they have no choice or epic gives coupons that make price attractive.
 

llien

Member
What a second, you have 160 million users and they spent $1.60 on 3rd party games? Ubisoft must be thrilled.
It does not sound bad to me at all, I've expected worse from "free games galore" business.

i actually like using the Epic client. people can shit on it all they want but it's not bad at all. The free games have been great too. I actually use Epic more than Steam now.
You don't have to use their client.
GOG's client (if you have that :)) has official plugin that can grab epic store games.
 

llien

Member
What I don't understand is why would anyone want to buy anything on epic store considering the above.
I can say for myself, in the following order:
1) gog.com (cause fuck DRM)
2) epic store (cause fuck filthy monopolists, and spare me from arguing about semantics please)
3) mkay, nobody else left, fuck you steam, you can have my money
 
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johntown

Banned
I would use Stadia before EGS. The only reason they have anyone is because they moneyhat games. No one actually likes their crappy platform and if they ever overtook Steam it would be a dark day for PC gaming.

As I have said before just stop moneyhatting the games and I have no issue with EGS. Compete like GOG or Origin does and improve your platform. If EGS wants to bankroll the development of these games I have no issues with that.

Steam is no a monopoly. There is GOG and Origin. People go to Steam because it is the best platform not because there is no other option.
 

thief183

Member
Recently I'm using EGS more than steam, I mean I only use steam for Fctorio and Hunt Showdawn, the rest is GOG or EPIC.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
700M USD isn't that kind of low, how do they even pay for those free games. Is it all Fortnite money or is it all included in it?
 

John Wick

Member
Congrats to Epic. More competition is better for the consumer. Fantastic the free games they have gave away last year. Hopefully it continues
 
Good for them. I'm currently enjoying elite dangerous in vr for free thanks to them and I probably never would have paid for it.

By the way, stars are flipping massive.
 

Foilz

Banned
good numbers and i appreciate the free games. I honestly have never played one of the free games ,at this point its a game just to collect the free games
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Because steam uses carrot tactic to lure customers in and put customer satisfaction as a priority. Epic instead tried to use stick and force people to buy on their crappy story by making games unavailable everywhere else and they tried to lure developers there by shifting whole customer-developer power balance wholly in developer favour.

What I don't understand is why would anyone want to buy anything on epic store considering the above.
Whose to say that customer developer power balance is good for us or Devs ?

Most Dev's seems happy. Customers gets the game. And if customers don't like their store (which I don't) then they have no option but to not use it. There is no one stopping Steam doing the same but they know they don't need to.

Making games unavailable everywhere else ? Have we forgotten that we are on PC and everything is accessible. Downloading a 50 mb storefront is small cost to pay against if Dev's gets more money
 

mxbison

Member
Honestly it's not a bad store. For browsing it's much better than Steam since it's not filled with 50 new games a day of which 48 are shovelware shit.

Needs better controller Support and something like Big Picture mode though.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I think we already had a thread about this (though with a more negative Twist).
$265m does seem really low for combined third party games sales, specially in a year that saw digital games sales get a significant boost across all platforms.


But hopefully they keep at it. I personally don't mind the epic store, the free games are nice and between their regional pricing and $10 coupon during sales a lot of games are often like half as much as on steam (at least in my region).
Why does 37% of their total sales going to non-exclusives seem low? Exclusives are only obtainable on Epic and the others could be gotten anywhere. The exclusives are more likely at higher average prices too. I think that is a good number for them and it shows that people are either coming for the exclusives or free games and buying games on Epic they could get elsewhere. Over 1/4 of a billion dollars worth of those games.
 

ClosBSAS

Member
Steam badly needs some competition. At least epic are giving some semblance of that.
lol 700m spent on fortnite, 265m spent on third party games. steam probably has 4 times that amount of money on third party titles. Steam has no competition still, when it begins to, itll make some changes and win again.
 
Why does 37% of their total sales going to non-exclusives seem low? Exclusives are only obtainable on Epic and the others could be gotten anywhere. The exclusives are more likely at higher average prices too. I think that is a good number for them and it shows that people are either coming for the exclusives or free games and buying games on Epic they could get elsewhere. Over 1/4 of a billion dollars worth of those games.
Because not only is it low as an absolute number (as mentioned, just Fall Guys alone made more money than that on Steam), but it's also a horrible number in relative terms. They boast their userbase increasing massively, their "monthly active" users increasing 75%, and... third-party spending increased just 5%.

People that do come to that store, don't tend to buy things. They take their freebies, they play Fortnite and Rocket League, and do nothing else. It may be a decent platform for the exclusive titles that are on there, it may be a good source of free games if you're strapped for cash and don't care for alternative, DRM-free means, but as a store, it's a complete and utter failure. At least thus far.
 

Sentenza

Member
265 millions aren't even money they made on third party, it literally says "total user spending". It means Epic gets 12% of that amount, which nets just something north of 30 millions.
Fun fact: if Epic paid even just 10 cents to the dev/publisher for every free game they gave away, that would still amount to roughly 70 millions.

Their growth in revenue is almost flat in a year where basically everyone else boomed e despise having a significant peak in active accounts (but let's be real, there's a lot of bots reclaiming freebies there, as well).
I have no idea in what sort of delusion some people must be to think these are great numbers.
 

llien

Member
People that do come to that store, don't tend to buy things.
This story just came from nowhere and right into negative (mostly nonsensical) narratives.
Figures are pretty good, given either of these circumstances.

Congratulations to China on getting 160M people to willingly install spyware on their PCs by offering free shit.
Oh, stop the BS, unlike with Steam, GOG's integration with Epic store is officially supported.
Don't like their client => don't install it.
 

Sentenza

Member
Figures are pretty good, given either of these circumstances.
No, they really aren't.
The disproportion between the investments they are pouring into this thing and the financial returns so far have been abysmal.

Not that I'm sorry about it.
Fuck Epic, honestly.
 
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