Back when the Epic Games Store launched as a competitor to Steam, it made frequent use of free game giveaways to help entice users to try the platform. Whether it was an indie darling like Super Meat Boy or something more mainstream like the Arkham trilogy of Batman games, there was plenty to see. However, Epic Games recently held a series of giveaways featuring “The Vault,” big-name titles that were only revealed when people could download them.

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This major giveaway kicked off strong with Grand Theft Auto 5, the latest entry in the long-running open-world crime simulator. The giveaway got the Epic Games Store so many new players that it wound up crashing the game on that platform. Following up on that major hit was Civilization 6, Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, and ARK: Survival Evolved. With the help of these giveaways, the Epic Games Store has reached an average of 13 million users playing at the same time and a monthly active user total of over 61 million.

“Since launching the Epic Games Store, we’ve always wanted to create a huge event around our very successful Free Games weekly program to give something awesome to players worldwide, and we decided to go big,” said Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison. “We invested in acquiring the rights to give four of the biggest games in the world away free. In 2020, we’ve been growing at a historic rate. Epic Games Store partners have a huge audience of players to sell their games to and receive 88% of the revenue, instead of only 70% as on other platforms.”

13 million users doesn’t hold a candle to Steam’s record of 22 million concurrent users, but it still shows just how powerful the Epic Games Store is. As Epic CEO Tim Sweeney noted in a recent interview, competitors like Humble Bundle and GOG have been around for longer and opened their stores with more features than the Epic Games Store had. However, they’ve struggled to get a fraction of a single percent of Steam’s market share while the Epic Games Store has managed to claim about 15% of the market.

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Source: PC Gamer