The Epic Games Store nearly doubled its user base over 2020, a year that saw huge growth for gaming platforms across the board thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns. Epic has published a rundown of its performance over the past year, and the numbers are certainly impressive.
Epic says it now counts 160 million PC users for the Epic Games Store. After seeing a peak of seven million concurrent players in 2019, the store topped out at about 13 million in 2020. In December, monthly active users hit 56 million, again nearly doubling the figure from the previous December, 32 million.
The Epic Games Store’s free games program gave away 103 games over the course of 2020, and those were claimed a total of 749 million times. But Epic says that not everyone was there just for the freebies: PC customers spent more than $700 million USD in the Epic Games Store last year, with some $265 million (37%) of that going to third-party games rather than Epic-published titles.
The Epic Games Store catalogue expanded from 190 games in 2019 to 471 last year, and the store has added features such as Open Critic reviews, self-service refunds, new currencies, modding support, and wishlisting. Epic says more features are on the way, and you can track their development on the Epic Games Store Trello board.
Epic says that features like a ‘social overhaul,’ achievements, and player profiles are currently in the works.