Epic will keep giving away free games in 2022

theverge.com:

One of the hallmarks of the Epic Games Store is its regular offerings of free games, and the company confirmed in a blog post that it will continue give games away in 2022. Some of the games Epic has offered in the past have been quite notable, including Control, Civilization VI, and even the store-crashing Grand Theft Auto V, so it seems likely the company will make some good freebies available this year.

Epic also announced that its store has more than 194 million users, up 34 million year over year. Valve hasn’t released its own year-in-review numbers for Steam, so it’s hard to directly determine how well Epic is competing, but comparing peak concurrent user counts indicates Epic still has a ways to go to catch up. Epic reported a peak of 13.2 million concurrent users, while Valve’s Steam stats page currently lists a record peak of nearly 27 million users in just the past 48 hours.

Following the long-awaited addition of a shopping cart in December, Epic is also promising that it will continue to add features to the store. Updates to look forward to include profiles, giving players the ability to prioritize downloads, and making improvements to the speed and performance of the Epic Games Launcher.