{"id":1123876,"date":"2026-02-01T22:34:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/HiyyL2qs6CCXTKqegYrC3E"},"modified":"2026-02-01T22:34:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:34:41","slug":"epic-gave-away-nearly-600-million-games-in-2024-and-its-not-slowing-down-for-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/epic-gave-away-nearly-600-million-games-in-2024-and-its-not-slowing-down-for-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic gave away nearly 600 million games in 2024, and it’s ‘not slowing down’ for 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With 2024 now well behind us, the Epic Games Store has shared its annual look back at the year that was<\/a>. On the whole, it sounds like a pretty good year for Epic, which saw the number of games on its store, and the number of people using it, both take big jumps.<\/p>\n

The Epic Games Store rang up 295 million users in 2024, an increase over 2023 of 25 million, and the “Epic ecosystem” grew as well, to 898 million “total Epic cross-platform accounts,” up by 94 million from the 2023 number. What really surprised me, though, is that 1,100 new games were released on Epic in 2024, taking the total number of games on the storefront to over 4,000. Frankly, I didn’t realize there were 1,100 games on the Epic Store in total.<\/p>\n

That’s still a far cry from Steam, which saw nearly 19,000 new games arrive in 2024, but it’s definitely movement in the right direction. Epic credited that growth of its game selection to continued adoption of its self-publishing tools, the Epic First Run exclusivity program and Now on Epic program for older games (which has been extended to January 31, 2026), growing daily and monthly active user numbers, and Epic’s generous revenue share options.<\/p>\n

Epic ran into unexpected financial issues in 2023, saying it was “spending way more money than we earn” and laying off 800 employees<\/a> as a result. Nonetheless, the game giveaways continued apace in 2024, with more than 595 million free games claimed\u2014up from just under 586 million freebies<\/a> in 2023\u2014averaging out to $2,229 in “total value per player.” Epic also confirmed that “the program is not slowing down and will continue in 2025, on both PC and mobile.”<\/p>\n

The Epic Games Store launcher is still a little rough around the edges: Epic said in its 2023 year in review<\/a> that it had made performance improvements “reducing loading time to a third of the prior load time according to benchmarks from Q1 2023 for 95% of users,” and it’s definitely better than it used to be (for me, at least) but still a little sluggish, particularly when dealing with large libraries. Work on that will continue in 2025: The download manager expected in 2024 is set slated for the first quarter of 2025 (so, soon), enabling users to “control the timing of updates, schedule downloads, and reorder your queue, amongst other quality-of-life changes.”<\/p>\n

Other notable features on the way include gifting, preloading, an overhaul of search and browse functionality “with several under the hood improvements,” and new social features including “all new voice chat, text chat, game independent parties, invite\/join\/play and looking-for-group features across all Epic Games Store supported platforms.”<\/p>\n

Epic also shared a rundown of its top PC games in 2024, and while specific numbers aren’t included it’s interesting to see how they break down across three separate categories. Farming Simulator 2022 raised my eyebrow, but 2023 and ’24 editions weren’t released, and the most recent version, Farming Simulator 2025, didn’t come out until mid-November 2024.<\/p>\n

Mythic<\/h2>\n