Spending on third-party games via the Epic Games Store fell 13% in 2023

Epic have outlined their 2024 plans for the Epic Games Store, which includes a new download manager, a proper offline mode, pre-loading of games, and a focus on game discovery in general.

These plans were outlined in the store's 2023 year-in-review, which paints a mixed picture of Epic's storefront's growth over the past 12 months.

"In 2023, we focused heavily on the back-end developments for the Epic Games Store in order to deliver our partners some highly requested features. While we still have many developer-focused features to ship, in 2024 we are shifting the majority of our attention to improving game discovery, and the player experience overall," says the roadmap.

The download manager planned will apparently let you control timing of updates, schedule downloads, and reorder the download queue. Offline mode, meanwhile, will include "the ability to deliberately switch to an offline state".

Epic also plan to add new social improvements, support for subscription-based games, and dynamic bundles so you can get savings when purchasing bundles where you already own some of the included items.

The update also includes a look at Epic's 2023 in numbers, offering the same stats as last year's review of 2022. It's interesting to compare. The number of PC users of the Epic Games Store grew from 230 million in 2022 to over 270 million in 2023, for example, but although overall spending on the store grew from $820m to $950m, spending on third-party PC games fell by 13% from $355m to $310m. This is in spite of 1300 new games being released on the platform, an 88% increase in available games.

In other words, happy days for Fortnite and Epic's other games, but a more mixed bag for the robust health of the Epic Games Store overall.