Overview
- Player spending on third‑party PC games rose 57% to $400 million in 2025, total store spend reached $1.16 billion, and December monthly active users hit a record 78 million.
- Total gameplay fell 14% to 6.65 billion hours, while third‑party playtime grew 4% to 2.78 billion hours as Epic acknowledged a noticeable drop in Fortnite playtime year over year.
- Epic is rebuilding the launcher’s underlying architecture for summer 2026 to deliver faster load times and greater stability, with voice chat, avatars and game‑independent parties targeted for Q2 and a cross‑platform library planned for autumn.
- A new program will grant Fortnite cosmetics when buying participating games on the store, starting with Resident Evil Requiem on February 27; roughly 40 partnerships are planned for 2026 and 60+ for 2027 with firms including Capcom, miHoYo, Pearl Abyss, S‑Game, MintRocket and Kakao Games.
- Epic says it is chasing a sustainable PC share rather than trying to beat Steam outright, citing a 25–30% sales target for developers, while continuing free‑game promotions that saw 662 million claims in 2025 and preparing mobile store launches in Japan in March and Brazil in June.