GTA 5 Attracted Millions of Players to Epic Games Store
The giveaway of Grand Theft Auto V on Epic Games Store has been a hit. Last year's promotion for the fifth installment of Rockstar Games' gangster series won the platform more users than any other free title.
Apple's court battle with Epic Games continues, bringing us interesting news from the gaming industry. Another document included in the evidence shows how big a helper for Epic Games Store has been... Grand Theft Auto V. When the title of Rockstar Games was given away in May 2020, the store owned by Tim Sweeney's company gained more than 7 million new users (via The Verge). Second-ranked Civilization VI attracted "only" 2.5 million users to EGS, and no other game came close to these numbers.
GTA V left all other Epic Games Store gifts in the dust.
Other charts illustrating the growth of Epic Games Store also leave no doubt about the importance of GTA 5 giveaway for the company. Nevertheless, even with such help, the store remains far behind the competitor. On Wednesday, Epic Games boasted 58 million registered accounts. Meanwhile, back in January, Steam already had a community of over 120 million users. What's more, it should be noted that already in December 2020 EGS reached 56 million users. In other words, over the past 8 months, the store has attracted only 2 million new people. For comparison: in 2020, this was the average number of fresh EGS accounts registered each month.
In this context, it is hardly surprising that Epic Games CEO does not expect profits from the company's digital store earlier than in a few years. For now, Tim Sweeney rather has to focus on resolving the dispute with Apple.
