Epic Games Store 2021 Year in Review

With 2022 underway, we can look back on the last year of the Epic Games Store and share what happened along the way. Just as we did last year, we’ve looked at all of the data and gathered it together for a retrospective. The Epic Games Store continued to grow in 2021 and we’re excited about what we have in store for 2022. 

We’re proud to be part of a growing community of developers, publishers, players, and creators who made 2021 another humbling year for us. There are now over 194 million Epic Games Store PC users, an increase of 34M from 2020. Daily active users peaked at 31.1M, and peak concurrent users reached 13.2M. December’s monthly active users peak reached 62M users, an increase of 11% from last year’s peak of 56M.

Players bought more games and played them for longer in 2021. We now have 917 titles for sale on the Epic Games Store, nearly doubling what we had available to customers in 2020. About $840M was spent through the store in 2021, up 20% from 2020. Third-party games represented 36% of all sales with more than $300M in player spending, a 12% increase from 2020. 

We continued to give away free games each week. Many developers and publishers collaborated with us over the year to give away 89 free games worth $2,120. Over 765 million free games were claimed by players, bringing those titles to a new audience. 76 free games broke their peak concurrent user records on PC, with an average of 13 times their all-time records! That’s incredible engagement.

This year’s holiday sale was bigger than ever. Over 31M people participated in the event, snagging over 159 million items during the event, a 14% increase over Holiday Sale 2020.

If you played a game from the Epic Games Store in 2021, you were part of a community that spent 6.2 billion hours in-game. We hope you had fun. 

Shipped Store Features in 2021

By far the most anticipated feature for the store was the Shopping Cart, which we released in December. Players can now have up to 50 items in their cart at any moment. We also shipped Epic Achievements and added an Achievements Profile Page for players to track their progress. So far, 25 titles have added achievement support. 

In addition, we also made the following updates:  

• Updated navigation to easily find everything the Epic Games Store has to offer as well as a new way to quickly launch into your most recently played games.
• Social Panel improvements with improved Presence to see what your friends are playing.
• New views for discovery of New Releases, Top Sellers and Coming Soon as well as Categories/Genres for products on the store.
• Improved Wishlist support with optional email notifications to never miss when your next favorite game is available.
• Added Epic Games wallet for US & Canadian customers, letting players load money directly into their Epic Games account, allowing for quick and easy payments.
• Improved product pages that allow more information and media to be reviewed prior to adding to wishlist or adding to cart.
• New Epic Games Store Newsletter Email (sign up in your profile settings).
• Support for 43 currencies, with 13 new currencies added in 2021.

Developer and Publisher improvements coming in 2022 

Last year, we talked about improving the Epic Games Store’s publishing tools, with the desire to eventually provide complete self-publishing tools to developers and publishers using the platform. We took a huge step in that direction in August when we launched our Publishing Tools in a successful closed Beta. 

In the Closed Alpha and Closed Beta Programs, we welcomed hundreds of new titles to launch on Epic Games Store via our soon to be released Self Publishing Tools that made the launch process efficient and seamless for partners. Epic Games Store partners can expect a full release of our Self Publishing Tools in 2022.  Players on Epic Games Store will benefit by having more great games to choose from as we continue to grow the catalog of games available on the store.

Other key partner updates this year include Developer Portal improvements and PC Store Cross Play courtesy of Epic Online Services.  PC Store Cross Play will make it easier than ever to launch a multiplayer PC game across multiple PC stores including Steam, Epic Games Store, Windows Store, GOG and more!

What’s planned for Epic Games Store players in 2022?

First up, we’re excited to confirm that weekly Free Games will continue in 2022. 

Epic Achievements were the first step to bringing fleshed-out player profiles to the store. Profiles will give players a place to see all of their achievements in one place, track their playtime across their library, and more.

We’ve heard a lot of feedback from players regarding Library and Download management, and we’re going to be actively addressing those in the coming year. That includes the ability to prioritize and queue selected games for downloads, more options to help you filter and organize your library, letting you see more of your games in the library view, and the functionality to view your library outside the launcher. 

Plus so much more: 

• 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

You can keep up with our progress and all planned features by bookmarking the Epic Games Store Roadmap.

Games Coming to Epic Games Store in 2022

A number of huge games will be coming out on Epic Games Store in 2022. New franchises and long-awaited sequels are all ready to be wishlisted. Here are a few games you can look forward to playing in the coming year.

• Forspoken
• Dying Light 2 Stay Human
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
• Sifu
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction
• Rumbleverse
• STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN
• Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
• Saints Row
• UNCHARTED™: Legacy of Thieves Collection

Thank you to everyone who has bought or downloaded a game from us since we launched the Epic Games Store. We’re empowered by your continued support, and we can’t wait to introduce you to a whole slate of exciting games and experiences from many talented development and publishing partners in 2022.