The Epic Games Store will keep giving away games in 2022

Epic Games has published its annual Epic Games Store Year In Review, a roundup of significant statistics about the digital storefront and its customers. It’s full of handy self-reported tidbits from Epic, which says in 2021 there were over 194 million PC customers on the Epic Games Store spending $840 million, and a healthy amount of people spending no money at all, with 765 million free games claimed from the 89 titles the service offered from a rotating selection at no cost. According to Epic, more is on the way.

In a section looking forward to 2022, Epic states that weekly free games will continue, in addition to other much-requested improvements, like voice chat and parties, community features like user-driven ratings and polls, and improving launcher speed and performance.

For those unfamiliar, the Epic Games Store offers a weekly selection of games users can download for free with their Epic Games Store account. The games are announced ahead of time, and available for a short window before new ones take their place. Claim a game within its availability window, and it’s yours to keep in your Epic Games Store library, to download and play whenever you wish.

The games are only “free” because of payments Epic Games makes to their developers, some significantly larger than others, all in the interest of attracting new customers in a space still dominated by its competitor, Steam.

This week’s free game is the mech action title Daemon X Machina which can be claimed from Jan. 27 until Feb. 3.