Epic Games Store saw a 57% increase in purchases for third-party PC games in 2025

Epic Games have release their 2025 Year in Review for the Epic Games Store, and they appear to be doing doing quite well compared to previous years. Be sure to check out our guide to play titles from Epic Games Store on SteamOS / Linux.

For 2025 they're reporting 317 million total PC users, with a 67 million average for monthly active users (-1%) and 31 million average daily active users (-2%).

Epic has a lot of cash thanks to the success of Fortnite, and they've been burning through it to get people into using their store along with giving out all those free games (100 given away free in 2025). So third-party PC game revenue is essential if they want the store to actually succeed and it appears they are starting to turn things around.

Epic reported $1.16 billion spent by PC players (+6%), with $400 million (+57%) spent on third-party PC games in the store. If we go back and compare to previous years for third-party game spending:

• 2025: $400 million
• 2024: $255 million
• 2023: $310 million
• 2022: $355 million
• 2021: $300 million
• 2020: $265 million
• 2019: $251 million

So not only have they turned that number around but it was clearly their best year yet for it.

An interesting point mentioned by Epic is how their free game giveaways can actually help Steam releases too.

The Free Games Program also continued to drive discovery and engagement. In 2025, players claimed 662 million titles through the program. Over 77% of games set an all-time peak CCU record on the Store during the week of their free offer. This delivered a measurable halo effect across the broader PC ecosystem, including a 40% lift in Steam CCU while the title was free on the Epic Games Store.

This halo effect they mentioned was backed up by New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry, who mentioned on X/Twitter back in January how "Blood West was free on EGS over the holidays and sold like 200% more on Steam that day".

Epic Game Store actually saw a decrease in hours spent gaming at 6.65 billion (-14%), with time spent in third-party games at 2.78 billion (+4) so players are spending more but overall gaming on it less.

The Epic Games Store itself is also set to expand with new social experiences and community spaces, along with enhancements planned to their cross-platform text chat with features like avatars, player profiles, and private messaging. They're also planning to add a "cross-platform library for players across PC and mobile, and we’re introducing regional storefronts with localized discovery" along with improvements on mobile too.

On top of that they're going to launch a new "official program to help developers sell more games on the Epic Games Store by leveraging the marketing power of Fortnite". They said players who buy specific games will "get a Fortnite cosmetic along with a matching character avatar for their Epic account profile".

See more in the Epic Games blog post.