I got 222 games on epic games store but haven't bought any at all.

I always felt there was promise to a new store with a big backing to challenge Steam. I think Steam is great and it's my primary PC games store, but I see the concern of only having one real player in the market. But EGS simply hasn't done it. It feels like they recognized the reasons Steam is such a huge player in the space; it's not just the library and the sales, but the level of consumer-focused support and features the platform offers. And that's the key, Steam is a platform, not just a store.

EGS has never become a platform. It's missing features, it's social features are anemic, it's like they put some effort in to get it off the ground and not broken, and then have just hoped giving away free games will somehow magically convince people to spend money there.

I think there's reasons to be concerned about Steam, but you cannot ignore how broadly consumer friendly the platform is. Their hardware initiatives only highlight what a complete package their ecosystem is and they're loaded with some of the most consumer-friendly choices in the industry.

EGS is stuck in no-man's land. Steam is a better platform, GoG is more consumer-friendly. Humble has Choice which can be a good deal. Fanatical does a better job with sales and credit from purchase. EGS just kind of sits in a no-mans land with no compelling features other than you don't need to spend money to get games, which is great for us but a terrible business strategy for Epic.

Revenue increasing by 1.6% is loosing to inflation...

Waiting for them to cut their losses within the next couple years. Sunset the money-losing platform and revoke all the free game licences

GoG is generally the better alternative to steam than epic.

Steam isn’t perfect but it works and has a decent consumer oriented service. GoG is doing great with conservation and drm free options but their launcher isn’t amazing. Pair either with Heroic games launcher or similar for a great experience on almost any OS

Its almost like half-assing a store front that runs like shit, lacks the most basic features and is generally perceived to be user-hostile is a bad way to attract business. When the freaking open source Heroic Game Launcher does a better job hooking into Epic's servers than their own damn launcher its time to do something. Take one of those millions of dollars you rake in every year and actually invest in the platform for cripes sake!

1. Reduce auto-signouts. This creates friction and forces users to take extra steps to access the game they wish to play. This causes users to go "nah I didn't really feel like playing that right now anyways"
2. Embed system requirements for games into the launcher. Users want to know if they can even install a game before clicking install
3. Show details about a game that a user has clicked on. Seriously if you're going to give away a hundred free games a year, folks aren't going to know jack shit about 90% of the indie titles you're surfacing. Most of the free titles I've actually played I've played because the marketing screenshots and description sounded cool, and I don't want to cross-reference between a web browser and a web-browser-wrapped-into-an-executable-that-runs-like-shit-but-installs-my-games-sometimes
4. SHOW THE GODDAMN DOWNLOAD SIZE AND INSTALL SIZE BEFORE BEGINNING THE DOWNLOAD!!!! My god this is not rocket science, its barely even computer science. Its literally the most basic feature of any software installer developed in the last 50 years, show an estimate for about how much hard drive space is needed. If I have 50GB free on a laptop with a 256GB drive in it, its just russian roulette for if I'll install a game or have to manually sort out my drive being filled to 0 bytes remaining by a game download that never would've completed anyways.
5. Stop forcing updates. If someone's launching a game that needs an update, let them launch it without updating. Also make it easier to force it to check for updates/apply already released updates. The background polling has entirely missed major game updates for my wife's Fortnite, and since those can be 30+GB downloads we'd really much prefer to run those updates when she isn't sitting down to play a bit of Fortnite.
6. Actually enable user reviews. Yes this requires moderation which requires workhours and therefore money. This is the kind of thing that that 10% cut of all sales you take is supposed to pay for. Users want to know what they're getting into before buying a game and committing to installing it and trying it out, let them!
7. Optimize the crap out of your launcher. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it can't be gestures wildly at everything this. Reduce the filesize of the webpages, run a few fewer javascripts, use better image compression, just most importantly make the launcher not run like its full of molasses

The part that annoys me the most is Epic could simple reduce the free games to bi-weekly and rebudget those same dollars into platform improvements and actually create a viable platform that people don't hate. Just look at Steam, its got some glaring issues (online DRM, massive illegal gambling problems, cyberbullying, unclear & inconsistent policies on adult content, rampant shovelware, etc. etc.) but by not being a pain in the butt to use, and having some decent company policies that aren't obviously anti-consumer they have an entire fandom devoted to them. Its just wasted potential. If Tim Sweeney felt like it he could actually build an incredible platform and actually compete with Steam, but instead they just engage in the most disjointed corporate bullshit possible

I am curious how much of their growth is attributed to cheaters creating infinite accounts to claim free games so if they get banned on one account they just switch to another one.

Dead By Daylight has this problem where the game was free for like a week on Epic games, and if you play with a cheater in the game (pretty common because the anticheat is nonexistent), its almost always from an Epic account with some random character username.

I dont even login to get the free games anymore. Fuck 'em they aren't interested in making a good experience.

I have hundreds of games on epic. I get the free game every time it changes. Never paid for a single thing from them.

Who'd have thought making things free while making a big noise out of it, taking over what people liked and expected elsewhere, not offering tangible improvement and showing spite towards competition would cause them to not show healthy growth. Also makes me wonder who finances them.

Their entire plan is giving away AAA games for free to lure people in and then make all that money back later by raising prices or subscription models. Its been quite obvious but people just use their shitty store anyways.

I've never even claimed a "free game" from those assholes. Fuck 'em.

I only have an account to accumulate the games they give away for free every week that I never actually play because they aren't on steam.

I caved and bought Alan Wake 2 and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memories because I lost hope of them ever coming to Steam. The few exclusives they have explains the minimal growth pretty succinctly. I hope nobody involved is surprised

the free games store

I really want to see what percentage of 'users' licenses are actually paid, and/or what average percentage of 'users' titles are just free. I have precisely one game I have paid for on Epic (Satisfactory, because I was excited for first person factorio) but I have over 100 titles in my library. I have to wonder how many of those free games I would have to download before the server costs completely eat the profit from that one copy of Satisfactory.

Makes sense, I have an account because it's fun to collect the free games even if I never play them, but I can't see myself spending money there.

Users are the product

Let’s get those numbers down. We all knew Tim Sweeney was a creep, but he also just announced that he’s a pedophile and a nazi.

Login. Get free game. Log out.

That's it lol.

Don't they have Fortnite?

I bought a couple things on epic early on because I thought competition would be good. But epic kind of sucks and has no Linux support, so I stopped.

I only have an account at all because the Witcher III wasn’t in a Steam sale when I bought it.

Not number of users, mind you, that's the increase in mass of the exact same users.

Besides Epic giving out free games, I also have Luna that has weekly free games to claim. They got plenty of good games to claim in Epic Store. Never claimed a single game. Don't even have Epic Store account and have no will to do so. Fuck Epic. Their business model is shit. They do not want to compete with Valve, they just want to extort them with attraction of free games and release store exclusives.