Epic Games has said that there are already about 500 million accounts registered in its system. This is a major milestone in the company's history, especially as it develops its own Epic Games Store (EGS). The company is trying to compete with Steam by bringing new players to Fortnite and Rocket League. However, Epic did not share more details about the quality of those 500 million users. It is not clear how many of these accounts (nodes) represent users of Epic Games' own games (such as Fortnite) and how many used EGS.
Epic Games has invested a lot of money in its game store. Attracting users not associated with Fortnite occurs through the distribution of free games. So, at the peak of the next distribution of GTA5, I had to close the store. Most likely, users registered multiple accounts to get GTA5 multiple times. Therefore, it is quite possible that many users may have 3-4 knots. I would also like to note the lack of profit from EGS. In the course of proceedings between Epic Games and Apple, documents were uncovered indicating a lack of income from the game store. The numbers were not as rosy as the company filed.
If we compare earnings with Steam, whose main competitor EGS considers itself to be, then the advantage will be in the direction of Valve. But in terms of the number of registered nodes, EGS is catching up with Steam. At the beginning of 2020, according to the SteamDB portal, 667 million accounts were registered on Steam. As EGS aims to continue giving away games for free in 2022, the number of registered nodes could grow significantly.
But to make the interface more user-friendly EGS, apparently, is not in a hurry. The store has existed since 2018, and only at the end of 2021 did a basket appear in it. Summing up the results of the last year, they promised to add new features to the store to make it more convenient. This may also affect the influx of users to the platform.
At the same time, in terms of helping developers, both directly and in providing tools, Epic Games is doing much better. For example, the number of downloads of Unreal Engine in 2021 increased by 40% compared to 2020. And it creates almost half of the announced next-gen games (48%, according to the press release). The Matrix tech-demo powered by Unreal Engine 5 has been downloaded over 6 million times. In addition, in film production, the use of Unreal Engine tools in 2021 increased by 1.5 times compared to the same 2020.
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