The creators of 'Fortnite' now have more than 85 million people using their store to buy games on PC
- Epic Games, the company behind 'Fortnite,' has welcomed more than 85 million users to its PC gaming store since December 2018.
- Much of that success can be credited to "Fortnite." Since July 2017, a total of 250 million players have played "Fortnite" on PC, video game consoles, and smartphones.
- Steam, the most popular platform for PC games, has 90 million monthly users and 47 million active players each day.
The success of "Fortnite" has helped the game's creators carve out a major stake in the PC gaming market. During a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference earlier today, Epic Games announced that its digital storefront surpassed 85 million users in less than four months.
That's a whole lot of players. To put that number in perspective, Sony reported that more than 90 million PlayStation 4 consoles were sold between November 2013 and January 2019. The PlayStation Network has 90 million monthly users. Steam, the most popular platform for PC games, also has 90 million monthly users, and 47 million active users each day. It's been a few years since Steam reported its total number of users, and it's also important to point out that Epic Games didn't announce the number of monthly users of its digital storefront - only the total number of people who have signed up.
The rapid growth of the Epic Games Store is certainly tied to "Fortnite," the company's wildly popular free-to-play game. "Fortnite" has been nothing short of a cultural phenomenon since its launch in July 2017, garnering nearly 250 million active players across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, iPhone, and Android. Purchases for "Fortnite" are conducted using an Epic Games account, providing an easy introduction to the store.
The Epic Games Store launched in December 2018 with a small collection of games, but the library has been rapidly expanding. Epic secured a number of exclusive PC launches from major developers like Ubisoft, and lured in more gamers by giving away free copies of popular indie games to registered users. Epic Games Store users will also get a new free game every two weeks.
For developers, the Epic Games Store offers a more favorable revenue split on game purchases. Steam, Apple's App Store, and the Google Play Store charge a 30% fee on one-off purchases from their digital stores. The Epic Games Store takes just 12% of sales revenue for games in their store. For developers who use Epic's Unreal Engine software to create their games, Epic will also waive an additional 5% in royalty costs for Unreal games sold in the Epic Games Store.
Epic has already gained a sizeable foothold in the PC gaming market by offering a better deal to the companies making games and courting as many players as possible with free games. With time, Epic could become the go-to destination for new games on PC.