Epic Games Store will continue weekly free games in 2022

rockpapershotgun.com:

Epic have put out their year-in-review, looking at how the Epic Games Store performed across 2021. The takeaways: the store now has 194 million PC users, up 34 million from 2020; the number of games on the store is now 917, nearly double from the year before; and the weekly free game giveaways will continue in 2022.

Here's a breakdown of the key stats from the post, which you can read in full here:

That's some hardy growth, although I'm fairly sure Epic wouldn't post figures in decline. The rest of the post talks about the features that were added to the store in 2021, including the long-awaited shopping cart, plus achievements, new tools for discovery, and new supported currencies.

Finally, there's talk of what's to come in 2022. "First up, we’re excited to confirm that weekly Free Games will continue in 2022," it begins. (This week's free game is mech battler Daemon X Machina.) Beyond that, there will be "fleshed-out player profiles", the ability to prioritise and queue game downloads, new community features and a few other bits and bobs. There's a roadmap on Trello for keeping track.

I don't use the Epic Games Store much, bar when there's an exclusive that forces me to. Still, I'm glad that it exists and is growing, because I want Steam to have a decent competitor. That feels more important than ever, given GOG is losing money and Battle.net will presumably vanish in the next few years.