The Epic Games Store officially turned 5 years old in December, and while some of the fiery debate surrounding the storefront has died down, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a success yet. As part of their lawsuit against Google, Epic admitted the EGS still isn’t profitable and now they’ve released their 2023 Year in Review stats, which they obviously try to spin in a positive way, but don’t really look that promising.
On the positive side, Epic Games Store users rose to 270 million in 2023, up 40 million from 2022, monthly active users topped 75 million in December, and overall spending was 950 million, up 16 percent. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, it turns out pretty much all that growth comes from Epic’s own games, most notably the unstoppable Fortnite – when you take Epic’s own games out of the mix, spending on third-party games was only $310 million, a 13 percent year-on-year decline. This decline in returns for third parties happened despite the EGS catalog growing significantly, with over 1,300 titles being added.
In other words, the Epic Games Store basically remains the place you go to get Fortnite on PC, but beyond that, despite Tim Sweeney’s insistence it’s catching up with Steam, it actually lost standing in 2023. Beyond Epic’s own games, the top titles on EGS in 2023 were Dead Island 2 (an Epic PC exclusive), GTA V, and the free-to-play Genshin Impact. The Epic-funded exclusive Alan Wake 2 didn’t make the top 5, but it was in the top 10 alongside games like Hogwarts Legacy and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Epic also continued their focus on giving away lots of freebies in 2023, with a slightly-absurd 568 million free games being claimed. The 86 free games released in 2023 represented a value of $2,055 per Epic.
Other than Fortnite, did you play anything on the Epic Games Store in 2023? I have no particular beef with EGS, although the launcher mostly went neglected in 2023 aside from trying out Star Trek: Resurgence. I suspect next year will be largely the same.
