With revenue of $820 million last year, the EPIC Game Store officially opened its platform for self-service games!

Relying on the pride of giving away a number of well-known games for free, the Epic Games Store has received widespread attention since the "store opened", and Epic will also conduct a year-end statistical review every year, and the recent Epic report card has finally been released.

On the evening of March 9, EPIC Game Store released its 2022 annual review, announcing some of the platform's data since the year.

According to Epic, players spent a total of $820 million on games, including Epic's games, in 2022, down 2% from $840 million in 2021, but players spent $355 million on third-party apps, up 18% from $300 million in 2021.

It can be said that in the context of the global game industry recession last year, the performance of the Epic Games Store is still remarkable.

    99 games were given away last year, and the platform's users are still growing

According to the data disclosed by Epic, the Epic Games Store was able to maintain stable development last year, mainly due to two points, one is the steady growth of users, and the other is gradually filled with content and rich game libraries.

First of all, at the user level, according to Epic's data, the Epic Games Store will have more than 230 million PC users in 2022, an increase of 36 million compared to 2021. This means that Epic now has 723 million cross-platform accounts. At the same time, Epic also revealed that in 2022, the number of daily active users on the Epic Games Store reached a maximum of 34.3 million, and the number of monthly active users reached a maximum of 68 million, exceeding 62 million in 2021.

Since the launch of the Epic Games Store, it has inevitably been compared by players with the Steam platform, but it is not difficult to see from the data that after several years of development, Epic has precipitated many users in it.

And the reason why we can retain users and retain players naturally depends on the constantly enriched and growing content, that is, the number of games.

According to official statistics, in 2022, publishers and developers launched 626 new PC games on the Epic Games Store, bringing the total number of games in the store to 1,548, a significant increase in the number of games players can play on the store compared to 2021.

At the same time, in addition to these games on the shelves, another unique job that the Epic Games Store attracts players is to give games.

According to statistics, in 2022, the Epic Games Store has given away a total of 99 games for free, with a total value of $2240. Epic said the 70 games in the program broke their once PC record for concurrent players, an average increase of 25 times over the previous record, and that players claimed nearly 700 million free games last year.

Vigorous games, vigorous discount promotions, and rejuvenation from time to time, the Epic Games Store was still active in the field of vision of players last year, and its ecology can be said to have basically taken shape.

In addition to these games sent out, Epic also ranked the games with the highest player consumption and engagement in 2022.

Among them, the mythical games on the list are "Genshin", "Rocket League", "Tina's Wonderland", "GTA" and "Fortnite"; The legendary games on the list are Final Fantasy 7 RE, Red Dead Redemption 2, Jelly Guys, Master, and Sopranos; The games on the Epic list are Valorant, Borderlands 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Ghost Playman: The Game, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Dying Light 2, FIFA23, Far Cry 6, Dead by Daylight, and God of War.

It can be found that no matter which level, the proportion of single-player games in the list is not high, a large number of popular, head online games are entrenched in it, including both "Fortnite" and "Rocket League" such as Epic's products, as well as third-party games such as "Genshin" and "Valorant", it can be seen that the general trend of online game globalization development is still relatively obvious, and from another point of view, a large number of excellent online games joined, which is also one of the important reasons for the continuous rise in the number of Epic platform users.

In addition, Epic also announced the most anticipated games, which are "Witchfire", "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor", "Honkai: Star Dome Railroad", "Dead Island 2", "Suicide Squad", "Red Sky Island", "The Last of Us: RE", "Hades 2" and so on.

    Self-service distribution tools are out, a boon for small and medium-sized developers

In addition to reviewing the results of 2022, Epic also announced a blockbuster news on the evening of March 9, that is, the Epic Games Store will launch a self-publishing feature.

According to Epic's official introduction, any developer and publisher can use the tool to publish games in accordance with the requirements of the Marketplace. The process is similar to that of a major digital app store, starting with logging in to a dedicated website or creating a developer account, filling in taxes, payouts, and paying a $100 submission fee per game. After that, it's time to create a dedicated page for the game, submit game ratings, and cooperate with the platform to review the content.

Of course, Epic also puts forward some basic requirements for listed games, such as games with multiplayer mode must support cross-platform play features on all PC stores, such as enabling the achievement system, regional distribution of age ratings, etc.

At the same time, in addition to the huge user level mentioned above, the Epic Games Store also brings some "benefits" to game manufacturers, such as the Epic Store only takes a 12% cut, publishers can get 88% of the revenue after selling games through the Epic Games Store, and for in-app purchases, publishers can choose their own or third-party payment methods to obtain 100% of the in-app revenue amount.

In addition, Epic also stated that for games developed on Unreal Engine, engine royalties will be waived for purchases made in the Marketplace using Epic's payment providers, although in-game purchases and the use of custom payment vendors' products will not exempt the engine royalties.

It is foreseeable that with the opening of Epic self-service publishing tools, there will be a large number of game manufacturers to bring products to the Epic Games Store in the future, and independent games also have a new choice, after all, one more platform, one more revenue, and for players, one more platform is actually one more choice channel.