With 2021 in the rearview mirror, Epic has posted stats on the 2021 performance of the Epic Games Store and its plans for the year ahead. For those of you who regularly browse the store to see if there are free games available that cater to your tastes, the good news is that Epic plans to continue offering a regular selection of free games this year.
2021's selection of free games saw some fascinating numbers recorded by the company, such as the 89 games being worth $2,120 in total and multiple peak concurrent user records for 76 of these titles being broken on PC. In total, over 765 million free games were claimed by players.
Other interesting stats include a combined 6.2 billion hours being spent in-game through EGS, a 14% increase year-on-year on items sold during the annual holiday sale--over 159 million items to be exact--and over 194 million Epic Games Store PC users being registered in 2021, an increase of 34 million people when compared to 2020. You can delve into all the numbers on Epic's blog.
As for the future of EGS, Epic plans to further flesh out player profiles after introducing Epic Achievements in 2021. Library and download management is one of the store's top priorities, there'll be more options to help you arrange your library, and an option to organize and queue selected games for downloads. Other upcoming features include:
- Continued iteration on social features including voice on platform with game-agnostic parties.
- Community features starting with user-driven ratings and polls.
- Game Hubs to stay up to date on game updates and news from publishers on the games you own or follow.
- Expanding Epic Wallet to the rest of the world.
- Continued improvements to launcher speed and performance.
Epic has slowly been tweaking and modifying its store since it launched in 2018. Features such as Spotify integration and mod support were added over time, and timed-exclusivity deals were made for some of the biggest games of the year to appear on that platform. A few examples of that business strategy being used this year will be seen in games such as Sifu, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and Saints Row.