Epic Games Store has generated £523m since launch and attracted 108m users

Since its launch in December 2018, Epic Games Store has attracted 108 million customers, generating $680 million (£523m) in revenue.

According to an infographic (see below) disseminated by the developer (thanks, Gamedaily.biz), $251m (£192m) of that revenue was generated by third-parties sales, which means the remaining $429m (£330m) was raised by Epic’s own first-party titles, including Fortnite. 

The new PC online store offered 73 free games to players since launch, which have collectively been claimed 200 million times, prompting Epic to confirm it will continue offering free games each week throughout 2020, too. 

The store is by far most popular in the U.S. with 17.24 per cent of all users, and Russia, China and Brazil coming in behind with 10.15 per cent, 8.36 per cent and 6.46 per cent of the player base share respectively. Players from the UK represent the eighth biggest share at just 3.22 per cent.

The infographic also emphasised the platform’s controversial exclusivity titles have seemingly paid off, and says in terms of sales, World War Z, Satisfactory, Dauntless, Untitled Goose Game, Outer Worlds, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, The Division 2, and Control have been EGS’ “most popular” games.

Epic announced a slew of exclusive titles for Epic Games Store from partners as wide-ranging as Take-Two’s Private Division, Quantic Dream, Remedy and 505 Games. Following the success of The Division 2, Ubisoft has committed to launching more new titles, and back catalogue titles, on the store, too, continuing its partnership where titles are exclusive to UPlay and Epic Games Store. Shenmue III was also a timed PC exclusive on Epic Game Store and despite fan disappointment, developer Ys Net said at the time that “refunds will not be granted”, only reversing the decision after an angry backlash from fans.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney spoke out about Epic Game Store’s PC exclusivity deals in mid-2019, stating that the competitive decision to make games exclusive to EGS will ultimately improve the gaming ecosystem for PC players. He also insisted that whilst “unpopular” the “strategy of exclusives […] do work”.

“This question gets to the core of Epic’s strategy for competing with dominant storefronts. We believe exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry,” Sweeney told one unhappy commenter on Twitter. “For example, after years of great work by independent stores — excluding big publishers like EA-Activision-Ubi — none seem to have reached 5% of Steam’s scale. Nearly all have more features than Epic; and the ability to discount games is limited by various external pressures.

“This leads to the strategy of exclusives which, though unpopular with dedicated Steam gamers, do work, as established by the major publisher storefronts and by the key Epic Games store releases compared to their former Steam revenue projections and their actual console sales.”