Steve Allison, GM of the Epic Games Store, is adamant that the imaginative and prescient was by no means to unseat Steam as the dominant participant. “Steam is a big half of the PC ecosystem,” he says. “It is not going away. We’re not going to topple Steam.”
However he is sure, nonetheless, that the Epic Games Store has made an impression in its eight years of operation. “PC gaming, by advantage of the competitors and by advantage of us current, has grown,” he says. “That progress per se might or might not be attributed to all of us competing, however gamers are shifting loads of their passion from consoles to PC.”
Naturally, Allison would love to make up some floor on Valve’s runaway lead. “In fact, we would be thrilled to be 50% or extra market share of PC,” he says. That could be a tall order, nonetheless. Proper now, the Epic Games Store has a roughly 35–40% share of month-to-month energetic customers (MAU) on PC, he says, however it accounts for under round 5–8% of spending.
Allison is definite, nonetheless, that there is room to develop. He thinks that doubtlessly, the Epic Games Store may seize 30%, 35%, and even 40% of PC market share over the subsequent 5 years. “I do not assume the battle has been misplaced in any respect.”
The query is how to flip the tide of battle in Epic’s favour. And one space that’s in dire want of reinforcements is the infrastructure of the Epic Games Store itself.
Allison is acutely conscious that gamers aren’t pleased with the relative lack of options on Epic’s retailer in comparison with Steam. “We get a lot criticism. I hate studying it, however I additionally respect it. It is not unfaithful.” He is aware of {that a} huge overhaul is required. “We have been constructing extremely quickly on high of a basis that was initially designed simply to help Fortnite and Paragon,” he says, “and we have continued to construct on a home of playing cards.”
Now, it is time to get these foundations so as, beginning with the sluggish Epic Games Store launcher. “It is actually sluggish,” admits Allison. “It is constructed on this previous framework… and we have poked at it and optimized it, and I believe we have performed the greatest that we may with that. So we determined in October final yr to rip the entire basis down and rebuild it.” The hope is that the rebuild can be completed by round Could or June, at which level the retailer library will load “pretty immediately”, offering a a lot improved person expertise.
Epic additionally launched textual content chat in January that works throughout the whole Epic ecosystem – the retailer, Fortnite, and apps. Plus, in round Could or June, the plan is to add voice chat and game-independent events, which means gamers can keep in a chat with pals as they navigate between video games. “It is not only a framework for the retailer, it is a framework that goes greater, and these variety of community results are actually huge targets of Tim [Sweeney]’s.”
Regional storefronts are coming, too. “It’s going to be actually good for our companions, as a result of they’ll do regionalized messages and be as subtle with us as they’re with another platforms,” says Allison. “We get requested for that loads.”
After which there are plans to increase gross sales of third-party video games by leveraging the business energy of Fortnite. Allison says they are going to be lining up round 100 partnerships, the place gamers who buy a collaborating sport on the Epic Games Store will obtain a free Fornite beauty.
Free video games
The continuing narrative round the Epic Games Store is that gamers come for the common sport giveaways, however then shortly head elsewhere with out opening their pockets. It is a narrative Allison is drained of. “After we see issues like that Dataisbeautiful Reddit post the place they’ve all these customers and no one spends cash, it is variety of bullshit. It is a problem for positive, however we’re positively on our means of making tons of progress.”
He’s fast to spotlight the leap in spending on third-party video games in 2025 – up 57% to $400 million. However at the similar time, Epic’s personal video games nonetheless account for the lion’s share of income on the retailer, which totalled $1.16 billion final yr.
There isn’t any doubt that the free sport programme has been profitable in attracting gamers. Allison notes that 70% of the hundred or so video games given away final yr hit their peak concurrent person file on PC in consequence. The Epic Games Store hit an all-time excessive of 78 million MAUs in December thanks to the giveaway of Hogwarts Legacy. “We added nearly 6 million new customers that we would by no means seen earlier than in that month,” says Allison.
So is it secure to say that the free video games programme will stick round? “Yeah,” says Allison, earlier than shortly qualifying himself. “I imply, effectively, something can change. We have had some years the place I’d say we have ‘gone huge’, for positive, however our common funding there I contemplate our advertising and marketing finances. The impact on new customers and retention is so profound that I believe it will be a troublesome dialog to say we should not do that anymore. And we preserve the finances proper round someplace between $20 and $30 million. We do not do loads of different advertising and marketing.”
Beneficiant deal
Attracting gamers is one factor, however attracting builders is kind of one other. “Getting content material right here is basically laborious,” admits Allison, who says the free video games programme was all about scaling the viewers so as to make the retailer extra engaging to sport makers. But the Epic Games Store nonetheless lags far behind Steam in phrases of third-party titles, with round 6,000 in contrast with the 120,000 or so on Steam’s platform.
“Getting content material right here is basically laborious”
Epic presents beneficiant phrases for builders, with an 88/12 income break up relatively than the 70/30 break up that is normal in lots of different areas of the business. Plus, in June final yr, Epic announced a brand new deal whereby builders would preserve 100% of the income share till the first $1 million – a goal that resets every year, which means smaller titles would possibly by no means have to pay Epic a penny. Allison notes that this sort of factor may make an important distinction for a lot of smaller studios. “There’s tons of builders that put out tons of content material yearly that do not see loads of cash. So each greenback actually counts for these studios.”
It is troublesome to see what else Epic may do at this level to appeal to extra builders when it comes to cost phrases. However the elephant in the room is Steam’s huge market share, making it an apparent first port of name for builders that need to attain as many gamers as potential. The technique now, it appears, is to not make builders select between the two shops, and as a substitute encourage them to embrace each.
“Our progress is not about the exclusives,” says Allison. “Our progress is going to come from shifting the share of gross sales on video games transport in each locations. So we now have to give gamers actually good causes to do this.”
Slowly, regularly, the builders are coming. “One of the issues we observe is the high PC releases yearly, and what number of of these really got here to each locations,” says Allison. “In earlier years, if we did not have a partnership, an unique – which we do not actually do anymore, have not for years – we would be in the 40% zone.” If some of these high performers do not come to the Epic retailer, it is “fairly profound”, he says, like with Helldivers 2. However this yr, he says, “we now have about 70% of these necessary PC video games, and we have missed much less of the profound ones. And so this has been the greatest yr we have ever had on that entrance.”
Steam Machine
However there is a cloud on the horizon in the kind of Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine. Though the console/PC hybrid will technically have the opportunity to present entry to any PC storefront, will probably be up to customers to reconfigure it to achieve this, and therefore it is doubtless that the majority will follow Steam.
“I imply, I am shopping for one, I believe it is fairly cool”
However Allison is not fazed by the chance of hundreds of thousands of new consoles attached to Steam. “I imply, I am shopping for one, I believe it is fairly cool,” he says. But he is sceptical about how giant of a market the Steam Machines will discover. “They have to hit a quantity of unit scale that they have not actually had.” He compares it to the PC handheld market. “I like my Steam Deck, I even have an Asus to play on different platforms like ours, however proper now, the quantity appears to be actually complementary {hardware} for hardcore Steam customers versus excessive quantity. So we’ll see what occurs. However that is both going to be a risk to our purpose of getting to 30% spend share, or it is simply going to assist PC gaming an increasing number of. I hope it is the second.”
One space that might doubtlessly see lots of progress for the Epic Games Store in the close to future is cell, thanks to the varied rulings and offers which can be opening up storefronts on iOS and Android. Allison says there are strikes behind the scenes to join up the varied variations of the Epic Games Store on PC, Mac, iOS and Android.
“Cellular can be an enormous vector of progress,” he acknowledges. “However like I stated, I believe we now have room to get to 100 million MAU on PC over the subsequent 4 years, and I believe we now have loads of room to get to 20– 30% spend share. So you may see us being fairly aggressive on our spend share on PC.”