The PC marketplace increased its registered users by 34 million in 2021, up to 194 million total, with a daily active user peak of 31.1 million. Epic Games Store now hosts 917 titles - almost doubling its catalogue over the past 12 months - with $840m spent. Epic says that “more than $300m of this” was on third-party games - which means that a larger $540m was spent on Epic’s own published games. (This sounds to me like a lot of Fortnite V-Bucks.) Looking ahead to the rest of 2022, Epic unsurprisingly said it would continue its offer of weekly free games - a popular way to get new users signed up to its storefront. Improvements to download management are on the way, with the ability to prioritise and queue selected games. Library improvements will let you better filter and organise your game collection. You’ll also be able to view your library outside the Epic Games launcher. User profiles which let you view playtime, user-driven ratings and polls, game hubs and cross-game party chat are also on the cards. Currently in closed beta, the store’s self-publishing tools are also expected to get a full release. PC Store Cross Play will “make it easier than ever to launch a multiplayer PC game across multiple PC stores, including Steam,” Epic wrote.
