Overview
- Epic’s 2025 review reports third-party spending up 57% to $400 million, third-party playtime up 4% to 2.78 billion hours, total hours down 14% to 6.65 billion, 78 million PC MAU in December, and 317 million total PC users.
- Epic is rebuilding the Epic Games Launcher’s underlying architecture, targeting May–June 2026 for faster load times, greater stability, and lower resource use.
- Player-facing features roll out in phases starting in Q2, including voice chat, game-independent parties, private messaging, player profiles, and tests of community forums, with a cross-platform PC–mobile library planned for autumn.
- Epic will tie Fortnite cosmetics and EGS avatars to purchases of partner titles from studios such as Capcom, miHoYo, Pearl Abyss, S-Game, MintRocket, and Kakao Games, with plans to scale to roughly 100 collaborations per year over the next 18–24 months.
- EGS boss Steve Allison says the goal is not to beat Steam but to reach a predictable 25–30% share of developers’ PC sales; Epic cites 662 million free-game claims in 2025 and a typical 40% lift in Steam CCU for titles offered free on EGS.