Epic Games Store: Results of 2023
Own projects grew; 3rd-party titles dropped in revenue.
The number of EGS users has grown to 270 million - 40 million more than last year.
The total number of accounts in the Epic ecosystem reached 804 million.
The peak DAU on the platform in 2023 was 36.1 million users. MAU reached 75 million - last year it was 68 million.
In 2023, more than 1300 games were released on the Epic Games Store, bringing the total number to 2900 projects.
Users spent $310 million on games from third-party developers (-13% YoY). $950 million was spent on games from Epic Games (+16% YoY).
The company gave away 86 games in 2023 through the Free Games program. Their total retail value was $2055 with an average Metacritic score of 75. In 2023, users claimed 586 million copies of free games.
Genshin Impact, Rocket League, Dead Island 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and Fortnite were the most successful projects on the platform in 2023.
In 2024, the company promises to add preload for pre-orders; subscription support; dynamic bundles. And also - launch on iOS in Europe.
Wow... is my math right here. At an average cost of $24 ($2,055/86), the 586M free games hold a total value of $14Bn. Obviously this doesn't represent true lost revenue since the perceived value of the games to users was $0 and that was the price they were willing to spend, but it does indicate a pretty significant investment in growing EGS's business. Even though EPIC has spent serious money on getting free games in the past, it's clear that they didn't spend anywhere near this much. I'd be curious about seeing more information around their free game strategy - both in how much they're spending, how they choose games, and what type of engagement these games get from claimants.
While steam is this big thing, Epic Games is growing positively