[OC] Epic Games Store grew users by 173% over 6 years. Third-party game revenue grew 1.6%. They trained 295 million people to grab free games and leave.
[OC] Epic Games Store grew users by 173% over 6 years. Third-party game revenue grew 1.6%. They trained 295 million people to grab free games and leave.
what about other stores? what if gaming industry sales simply nosedived after 2022 once the economy got worse. you need a better setting (i.e. more data) to arrive at any conclusion here. Also what is the data source?
SellingFirewood on
If a game is $29 on Epic and $39 on Steam, I’d still buy it on Steam.
Epic isn’t even bad, Steam is just that great.
carramos on
They trained 295 million people to make epic games accounts*
Savber on
Half of that is me telling my friends to make an account to grab free coop games with me.
zadiraines on
Never bought a single game on epic. Been hranÃch the free stuff for years.
Reesespeanuts on
Yeah so? When you’re giving out AAA games for free why wouldn’t you make an account. Durrrrrr
FrozenMongoose on
This does not tell the whole story. Fortnite is free and it is still massively popular and profitable for them especially in the teenage demographic. 3rd party Games are a loss leader for them to funnel people into their cash cows: Fortnite and the Unreal Engine. This is like implying that Costco trains people to go to their store to buy hotdogs.
No, they use the $1 hotdog as an incentive to get people in the store because once they are in their ecosystem they will usually buy other things. The difficult part is getting them in the store in the first place when many other stores exist.
Grizzly_Andrews on
There are literally docker deployments you can easily spin up and use to automatically check for free games and claim them
SalsaForte on
I’m one of them!
Got many good games for Free and never bought anything.
philbertagain on
Most of the time I grab the games but i rarely play them.
Once i did and later bought the game during a steam sale to have it in my real library.
Does that count as supporting the devs twice?
Forg0tton on
I tried to give the Epic score a chance. I just can’t fathom purchasing a game without seeing bone fide reviews from customers. I found myself looking up every game on Steam, checking the reviews and going back to Epic. It wasn’t worth the small sale.
That is a bare minimum feature for me. I grew up on the era of video game review magazines and how the trust of mainstream reviews slowly eroded due to thier incestuous relationships with publishers.
To not have that is a deal breaker. Maybe they do now, couldn’t tell you.
EchoingAngel on
I’ve never even played any of the free games I’ve gotten lol
sahui on
Why the negativity in the title? Im very glad i have 400 free games from them and im thankful
RookFett on
Epic sells games? Only saw the free games.
Muhahahaha
l_______I on
I bought one (1) whole game on EGS. It was THPS1+2 for very cheap (like $10?) in beginning of 2022.
furezasan on
i’ve grabbed a few games there but still haven’t launched anything… the time between these “purchases” is long enough to log me out of epic launcher and i have to find my password again.
Lurky-Lou on
I have dozens of free Epic games and think I only played the Battlefield 6 demo.
There were so many pop-up notifications that I ended up uninstalling it shortly thereafter.
Matttman87 on
I have purchased exactly 2 games on Epic, and the last time I bought a game there was years ago, Tiny Tina’s Wonderland Borderlands spinoff. Randy Pitchford signed a timed exclusive with Epic and I was impatient, and I regret it. But thanks to the free games on their store and from Prime membership, I have nearly 300 titles on my Epic account.
So yeah, checks out.
KingBlue2 on
How do the free games work? Does epic pay full or at least partially for each sale? If so, I’d imagine the launcher would be a huge loss for them
ChickinSammich on
There are times when I complain about monopolies but I bitch every time another company wants me to download their store and their launcher just to play their games.
PsylentKnight on
Because it doesn’t provide any value besides the free games. The games aren’t cheaper, it doesn’t have as many features, it’s slower, and makes your library less centralized
Altruistic-Resort-56 on
Their exclusives worked better than their free games. I wasn’t going to wait for Control or Mechwarrior 5 just to have them on a different storefront.
ROFLpwn01 on
As much as I like free games, I’d still rather pay money to play the games on steam
Pringless98 on
Can you please share the source of the underlying data? This seems really interesting!
Intranetusa on
The Epic platform is clunky and awkward to use. They spent all of this time and resources giving out free games and basically didn’t bother improving the platform itself to make it more user friendly.
Kazen_Orilg on
Im gonna be honest, most of the feee Epic games I got I late bought on Steam, because Id rsther spend money than launch Epic.
bill_gates_lover on
So did they just use the profit from fortnite to do this?
Bobbitto on
Can confirm I’ve never bought anything from Epic. In fact I’ve even claimed some games on Epic to try them out and pick them up on a Steam sale later.
HyoukaYukikaze on
That’s what happens when the only two things your “store” has going for it are free games and bringing console exclusivity bullshit to PC.
v3ritas1989 on
You are interpreting without taking the entire situation into account. Mainly, that their push to get more meaningful third party content by outperforming the competition on cost for game studios has been torpedoed by massive social media ad campaigns using half-truths, banalities, old shoes and situational misshaps to get the consumer on the side of their established competition who basically has a monopoly and therefore controls price and consumer interest/access.
You can see in your chart where they capitulated at +41% because of the community pressure, just like most of the other publishers did around the same time. Coming to an agreement to also publish their products on the competition platform. It could have been something that would have improved the competition, games and game development.
Which is kinda ridiculous if you think about it. Gaming communities only feel more and more retarded to me having seen this play out in real time.
noatoms on
Can’t even tempt me with free games. Suck it Tencent.
BlackandRead on
Steam is great but the hate for Epic reminds me of the console wars. You don’t have to pick a side, it’s not a team sport.
acasualfitz on
Whenever I go to actually play a game I got for free on Epic, I’ll check if it’s cheap on Steam and just buy it there if it’s <$10. So it helps someone!
nvrslnc on
I mean that’s kind of awkward to compare. Users cumulate over the time while revenue is the yearly realized revenue which gets reset every year, I’d assume?
Kumquat_of_Pain on
GOG is still the most consumer friendly though.
Character-Education3 on
Marketing departments without guardrails are a real drain on profits you say.
aj12maxwas on
There were games I got to play because of epic that I liked so much I bought them on steam and played them again on there just for the achievements.
GroundbreakingBag164 on
I own a single game on Epic and that’s Alan Wake 2
I’m so utterly uninterested that I don’t even bother with the free games anymore
Plexaporta on
I only have free games there.
No plans on spending any money.
Abject_Egg_194 on
I’m not sure if I’ve bought a game on EGS, but somehow my EGS library is bigger than my Steam library, which I started 20+ years ago.
![[OC] Epic Games Store grew users by 173% over 6 years. Third-party game revenue grew 1.6%. They trained 295 million people to grab free games and leave.](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/41scova48zbg1-1536x976.png "[OC] Epic Games Store grew users by 173% over 6 years. Third-party game revenue grew 1.6%. They trained 295 million people to grab free games and leave.")
49 Comments
And I thank them for it. There have been some kick ass games I’ve played for free that normally wouldn’t have been on my radar.
Epic store still not as good as steam.
Nice free games thought.
Anything for free in today’s economy is amazing
Why are we only looking at third party revenue? If everyone is joining EGS to play Fortnite why would we expect the third party revenue to rise?
Blessed be the weekly free games!
BLOONS TD 6 is fantastic!
I grab every free game, but I think I’ve played only 1.
no they didn’t
they just want the user base, revenue doesn’t matter
Its also used for 3d assests, most if which are also free as well.
If you are tech-savvy and want to automatically claim the free games: [https://github.com/claabs/epicgames-freegames-node](https://github.com/claabs/epicgames-freegames-node)
what about other stores? what if gaming industry sales simply nosedived after 2022 once the economy got worse. you need a better setting (i.e. more data) to arrive at any conclusion here. Also what is the data source?
If a game is $29 on Epic and $39 on Steam, I’d still buy it on Steam.
Epic isn’t even bad, Steam is just that great.
They trained 295 million people to make epic games accounts*
Half of that is me telling my friends to make an account to grab free coop games with me.
Never bought a single game on epic. Been hranÃch the free stuff for years.
Yeah so? When you’re giving out AAA games for free why wouldn’t you make an account. Durrrrrr
This does not tell the whole story. Fortnite is free and it is still massively popular and profitable for them especially in the teenage demographic. 3rd party Games are a loss leader for them to funnel people into their cash cows: Fortnite and the Unreal Engine. This is like implying that Costco trains people to go to their store to buy hotdogs.
No, they use the $1 hotdog as an incentive to get people in the store because once they are in their ecosystem they will usually buy other things. The difficult part is getting them in the store in the first place when many other stores exist.
There are literally docker deployments you can easily spin up and use to automatically check for free games and claim them
I’m one of them!
Got many good games for Free and never bought anything.
Most of the time I grab the games but i rarely play them.
Once i did and later bought the game during a steam sale to have it in my real library.
Does that count as supporting the devs twice?
I tried to give the Epic score a chance. I just can’t fathom purchasing a game without seeing bone fide reviews from customers. I found myself looking up every game on Steam, checking the reviews and going back to Epic. It wasn’t worth the small sale.
That is a bare minimum feature for me. I grew up on the era of video game review magazines and how the trust of mainstream reviews slowly eroded due to thier incestuous relationships with publishers.
To not have that is a deal breaker. Maybe they do now, couldn’t tell you.
I’ve never even played any of the free games I’ve gotten lol
Why the negativity in the title? Im very glad i have 400 free games from them and im thankful
Epic sells games? Only saw the free games.
Muhahahaha
I bought one (1) whole game on EGS. It was THPS1+2 for very cheap (like $10?) in beginning of 2022.
i’ve grabbed a few games there but still haven’t launched anything… the time between these “purchases” is long enough to log me out of epic launcher and i have to find my password again.
I have dozens of free Epic games and think I only played the Battlefield 6 demo.
There were so many pop-up notifications that I ended up uninstalling it shortly thereafter.
I have purchased exactly 2 games on Epic, and the last time I bought a game there was years ago, Tiny Tina’s Wonderland Borderlands spinoff. Randy Pitchford signed a timed exclusive with Epic and I was impatient, and I regret it. But thanks to the free games on their store and from Prime membership, I have nearly 300 titles on my Epic account.
So yeah, checks out.
How do the free games work? Does epic pay full or at least partially for each sale? If so, I’d imagine the launcher would be a huge loss for them
There are times when I complain about monopolies but I bitch every time another company wants me to download their store and their launcher just to play their games.
Because it doesn’t provide any value besides the free games. The games aren’t cheaper, it doesn’t have as many features, it’s slower, and makes your library less centralized
Their exclusives worked better than their free games. I wasn’t going to wait for Control or Mechwarrior 5 just to have them on a different storefront.
As much as I like free games, I’d still rather pay money to play the games on steam
Can you please share the source of the underlying data? This seems really interesting!
The Epic platform is clunky and awkward to use. They spent all of this time and resources giving out free games and basically didn’t bother improving the platform itself to make it more user friendly.
Im gonna be honest, most of the feee Epic games I got I late bought on Steam, because Id rsther spend money than launch Epic.
So did they just use the profit from fortnite to do this?
Can confirm I’ve never bought anything from Epic. In fact I’ve even claimed some games on Epic to try them out and pick them up on a Steam sale later.
That’s what happens when the only two things your “store” has going for it are free games and bringing console exclusivity bullshit to PC.
You are interpreting without taking the entire situation into account. Mainly, that their push to get more meaningful third party content by outperforming the competition on cost for game studios has been torpedoed by massive social media ad campaigns using half-truths, banalities, old shoes and situational misshaps to get the consumer on the side of their established competition who basically has a monopoly and therefore controls price and consumer interest/access.
You can see in your chart where they capitulated at +41% because of the community pressure, just like most of the other publishers did around the same time. Coming to an agreement to also publish their products on the competition platform. It could have been something that would have improved the competition, games and game development.
Which is kinda ridiculous if you think about it. Gaming communities only feel more and more retarded to me having seen this play out in real time.
Can’t even tempt me with free games. Suck it Tencent.
Steam is great but the hate for Epic reminds me of the console wars. You don’t have to pick a side, it’s not a team sport.
Whenever I go to actually play a game I got for free on Epic, I’ll check if it’s cheap on Steam and just buy it there if it’s <$10. So it helps someone!
I mean that’s kind of awkward to compare. Users cumulate over the time while revenue is the yearly realized revenue which gets reset every year, I’d assume?
GOG is still the most consumer friendly though.
Marketing departments without guardrails are a real drain on profits you say.
There were games I got to play because of epic that I liked so much I bought them on steam and played them again on there just for the achievements.
I own a single game on Epic and that’s Alan Wake 2
I’m so utterly uninterested that I don’t even bother with the free games anymore
I only have free games there.
No plans on spending any money.
I’m not sure if I’ve bought a game on EGS, but somehow my EGS library is bigger than my Steam library, which I started 20+ years ago.