Epic Games Store's year one: $680 million spent on games, 108 million accounts registered

Since the Epic Games Store launched on December 6, 2018, users have spent $680 million on the platform. Of this amount, third-party titles account for $251 million.

These numbers exceed Epic’s initial expectations, EGS General Manager Steve Ellison told GameDaily.biz. Particularly impressive are the sales of third-party titles. Those turned out to be 60% higher than predicted a year earlier. Free titles are also downloaded at a pace that the company underestimated at first.

According to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the audience of EGS has reached 108 million people. A remarkable achievement for such a young service. For comparison, it took Steam 16 years to surpass 1 billion accounts, with its monthly active audience at the beginning of 2019 amounting to 90 million people.

How did EGS grow so quickly? Two solutions proved the most effective.

The first one is to give away free games every week. The company is continuing this practice throughout 2020. The second one is reliance on PC exclusives. 90% of the latest releases on Epic Games Store are exclusive to Epic’s storefront, accounting for a large part of its earnings.