When Epic Games launched its store, many called “Don’t need it, I have Steam.” However, the company shows with current user numbers that it is closely following Steam. Free titles like GTA 5 help with this.
What’s new? Epic Games has now spoken about the user numbers of the Epic Games Store. And they have recently skyrocketed due to promotions with free games. So high, in fact, that it now shows: although hardly anyone wanted the store at first, it is now closely behind the market leader Steam.
How many users does the Epic Games Store have in 2020?
These are the new user numbers: A campaign with free games that started in May was apparently a great success. As Epic explained in a press release on June 23, this raised the number of most simultaneous users to 13 million.
Currently, there are more than 61 million users monthly in the Epic Games Store.
What was the campaign like? When Epic gave away GTA 5 for free in the Epic Games Store in May, it caused the entire service to crash. So many people wanted to enter the shop simultaneously that the server hardware couldn’t keep up, and games and the shop were poorly accessible to not accessible for hours.
Many wanted to get the game for free. GTA 5 Online is still worth it in 2020 and is provided with many free updates. Many simply didn’t want to miss such a blockbuster. GTA 5 was free at Epic – then even Fortnite went down.
After GTA 5, other hits followed that were free in the Epic Games Store:
- Civilization 6
- Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
- ARK: Survival Evolved
No wonder many new and existing users registered in the store and simultaneously tried to redeem the offers. This leads to records for simultaneous users and also for monthly active users in the Epic Games Store.
This is what Epic Games says: “Since we launched the Epic Games Store, we have always wanted to create a huge event around our successful weekly ‘Free Games’ program to provide our players worldwide with something great, and we decided to go big.”
How is it looking at Steam? The numbers from Epic are already close to those from Steam.
The record for most simultaneous users on Steam is 24.5 million.
As PCGamer reports, Steam had nearly 95 million active users per month in 2019.
Although Epic Games is still a bit away from Steam. But not as far as one might have expected given the initial loud sentiment against the EGS.
At first, hardly anyone liked the store
This is how the mood was at first: At the launch of the Epic Games Store, some PC players were displeased. Many criticized that another store next to Steam was superfluous. This was also echoed in the comments here on MeinMMO:
- “Great, another launcher that no one needs and is no competition at all. Just like all the others,” wrote TimTaylor
- “Just because you have a well-running game, you think you can compete against an already established platform? How many have tried? None have succeeded. Why? Because everyone knows Steam and has gotten used to it. Why something new? If it isn’t something innovative now, then it won’t be anything,” wrote Vallo
With its actions and exclusive titles, Epic Games can apparently convince some players with the latest numbers that another store can definitely find a place in the market. So the mood among some PC gamers seems to have changed over the past months.
But it doesn’t always go that well. Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 was released on PC after its console release. For a month, the Western adventure was available for purchase and play in the Epic Games Store and the Rockstar Launcher. The title only arrived on Steam a month later.
However, Steam fans presumably went through with the Epic boycott for Red Dead Redemption 2.
