More Epic Games Store Exclusives Are Coming

Epic Games is attempting to take marketshare from Steam in part by signing games to be exclusive, at least for a period of time, to the company’s Epic Games Store. Titles like The Division 2, Metro Exodus, and Borderlands 3 launched as timed-exclusives for the Epic Games Store. Looking ahead, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said the company will continue this strategy, but he observed that this effort worked best for bigger titles.

“We’re really honing our strategy based on what we observed worked really well in previous launches, and what didn’t work really well,” Sweeney told PC Gamer. “A handful of major exclusives really moved the needle … and the smaller games, especially games that had a smaller audience that was typically on Steam, we found that a lot of those players weren’t willing to move over.”

Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison said the launch of Borderlands 3 on the Epic Games Store as a limited-time exclusive “crushed” expectations, though specific numbers were not shared.

Looking ahead, titles that Epic funded–including Alan Wake 2 and new games from Limbo developer Playdead and The Last Guardian studio genDesign–will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for “a long time,” Allison said. Other games headed to the Epic Games Store as exclusives in the time ahead include PC Building Simulator 2, new titles from Fall Guys studio Mediatonic (which Epic owns), as well as a title from a “small studio” that will be revealed at GDC this month.

Finally, Allison pointed out that some publishers don’t need to take a deal from Epic to convince them to release their games on the Epic Games Store. Allison pointed out that Rockstar Games launched Red Dead Redemption II on the Epic Games Store a couple weeks before Steam because Epic’s store pays developers a higher share of revenue compared to Steam.

Epic shared new statistics about the Epic Games Store this week, including how it ended 2022 with 230 million users on PC and almost 725 million cross-platform accounts. The Epic Games Store reached 68 million monthly active users in December 2022. A total of $820 million was spent on the Epic Games Store in 2022 (which was down 2% year-over-year). Spending on third-party PC games in the Epic Games Store, meanwhile, jumped by 18% to $355 million.

The top titles on the Epic Games Store in 2022 based on spending and engagement were Genshin Impact, Rocket League, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, GTA V, and Fortnite. Check out Epic’s blog post to learn more about the Epic Games Store’s achievements in 2022.