Epic launched its Epic Games Store again in 2018 in aggressive style, paying out hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to safe exclusives in a bid to steer PC players away from Valve’s all-encompassing Steam. Six years later, Steam effortlessly maintains its vice-like grip on the PC gamer consciousness.
So, how is the Epic Games Store really doing? How has its technique modified over the years? Can it ever topple Valve when it comes to PC gaming market share? Are Epic Games Store exclusives really useless? And aren’t folks simply logging on to seize a free sport as half of Epic’s compelling giveaways, earlier than heading straight again to Steam?
It was with all this in thoughts that I interviewed Steve Allison, VP and GM of the Epic Games Store, about the retailer’s 2025 and what’s coming in 2026. Our chat started with a runthrough of final yr’s efficiency, which Allison pointed to all through. The headline right here is that $400 million was spent by gamers on third-party PC video games in the Epic Games Store in 2025, up a powerful 57%. This determine was down about 18% final yr, which, Allison mentioned, means 2025 noticed a “profound and optimistic change.” In complete, $1.16 billion was spent by PC gamers on the Epic Games Store, up 6%. The Epic Games Store hit 78 million Month-to-month Common Customers (MAUs) in December 2025, an all-time report. However the 67 million common MAU is down 1%, and the 31 million common DAU is down 2%.
Allison mentioned Epic had seen one thing taking place on Steam when it gave a sport away free of charge. As you’d count on, concurrent person numbers rise for a sport on the Epic Games Store when it’s half of a free giveaway (over 77% of the 100 video games given away free of charge final yr set all-time peak concurrent customers data on the Epic Games Store on PC). However the giveaways additionally trigger a concurrent participant spike for the sport on Steam, of round 40%. Allison places this down to Steam gamers who maybe have already got the sport of their library and see protection of it on-line as a result of it’s gone free on the Epic Games Store, and their mates are speaking about it, in order that they reinstall and dip again in. Typically they only purchase it on Steam outright.
However Epic faces an uphill battle right here, largely as a result of the Epic Games Store itself simply isn’t pretty much as good to use as Steam for an entire bunch of causes. To fight this, Epic is rebuilding the retailer on PC so the launcher is quicker and doesn’t use as many reminiscence assets. “It ought to really feel quick and snappy and simply be what you count on, frankly,” Allison mentioned. The brand new and improved Epic Games Store ought to ship by June.
Epic’s imaginative and prescient for the Epic Games Store — and its level of distinction with Steam — is that it’s a multiplatform retailer. Which means one retailer linked throughout PC, Mac, iOS, and Android, and even different video games. An enormous half of that is voice and textual content for events impartial of video games, a bit like the console expertise, however on PC and cellular. As most PC players know, group is just about non-existent on the Epic Games Store, and Allison acknowledged that. Boards are coming to the retailer, which sounds primary however has been in the works for a while. Count on Epic to make some noise about boards in the subsequent few weeks.
After which there’s Fortnite. The battle royale behemoth. The all the things sport. Fortnite is essential to this Epic Games Store push. It plans to use Fortnite to persuade PC players to get their video games from the Epic Games Store moderately than Steam. To try this, it would faucet into the advertising energy of Fortnite, providing a Fortnite present (a Fortnite beauty together with an identical character avatar for his or her Epic account profile) with a purchase order of a sport. Upcoming companions embrace Capcom, miHoYo, Pearl Abyss (Crimson Desert), S-Sport, MintRocket, and Kakao Games, as the first to take part. Allison expects this to have a big influence on gross sales.
After operating by the stats, I requested Allison some questions on the particulars, some current Epic Games Store controversies (Alan Wake 2, for instance!), and about the grasp plan. Right here’s the Q&A in full:
IGN: The notion on-line is that the majority of your MAUs are utilizing the retailer to launch Fortnite, however you might be suggesting that the stats counter that notion. However how precisely so?
Steve Allison: Our common month-to-month lively customers on third-party exceeds our common month-to-month lively customers on Fortnite. Now so much of these customers — it relies upon on the way you outline month-to-month lively customers — however in phrases of participant hours, sure, you are proper. It is variety of 60, 66, 33 or 65, 35. However in phrases of MAU, buying, stuff, possibly making transactions free of charge video games or no matter, the MAU is flipped in the different path. So we’d like to improve conversion by all the work that we’re doing. That is what that is all about.
IGN: Equally there’s that notion on-line that individuals love your free video games program, they dip in to seize the free video games and go away. You have to’ve seen this notion on-line. Are you seeing that shifting? Is there something in the stats that implies that?
Steve Allison: I believe the reply is, not solely true, proper? The common conversion price for a brand new participant that is acquired by the free video games program is about 16-25%. Relies upon, however a minimum of 16% over time. It is a fairly excessive conversion price for scale. In order that’s one reality. The opposite is, you bought to return to that 35% of participant hours coming from video games utilizing their very own IAP (their very own cost options for in-app purchases). We all know anecdotally speaking with Riot, speaking with EA, the relationship on that spend is with the developer or the writer. We do not see it they usually’re spending with them comparatively at the anticipated price that they might assume. So there’s extra commerce coming by the retailer than that argument would suggest.
IGN: This touches on one thing the Larian publishing director was talking about on social media recently, which is that giving everybody all the things free of charge may bump numbers however does not create a viable storefront from which to promote premium experiences. And I believe that is his level, the conversion not simply to play however to pay for brand spanking new video games. However you might be suggesting that maybe is not the case?
Steve Allison: It is not the case. He was making an attempt to body Alan Wake in that context and it is simply not true. Alan Wake bought very well and Treatment’s assertion there was on… we did not speak to Treatment about it. They did that on their very own to guarantee that the world knew that wasn’t true. Now, from a market share standpoint, we see some volatility there. So typically it’s going to be as small as a % or two, and typically it’s going to be 25 up to 40% in some circumstances. So what we’d like to do is set up consistency and get rid of volatility. So it is actually essential for me that we get to… if we get to 20, 25, 30% of share predictably on all simultaneous ships, we will probably be $2 billion in third-party and that, together with the folks utilizing IAP, proper, so it would be extra. So our purpose is admittedly to be constant. And so doing all the participant work that is anticipated of us goes to drive conversion. And simply in context of this dialog, that is one of the largest issues we’d like to do so as to create that consistency.
IGN: Mentioning Alan Wake, one of the issues that is not in your publish is exclusives. Alan Wake too was a real unique. Are you continue to on this sport? Are they nonetheless priceless for you? Is that this one thing we’re nonetheless going to see shifting ahead or do you are taking the place that truly there are higher methods for you to function the retailer than to have real exclusives in the method that Alan Wake 2 was?
Steve Allison: A pair issues. In order that was undoubtedly a technique early. There’s so many releases on PC and we may add a thousand video games and strike out a thousand occasions. So we centered on the most impactful content material we may onboard, after we had some limitations on what number of issues we may carry on board. It is actually essential. Now we have 6,000 video games on the catalog now. We have executed lower than 150 offers for exclusives in the historical past of the retailer. That is the first level I’d make. And 120 of these offers we did in 2019. After which as we moved into self-publishing, we have variety of floated away from that technique.
In the case of Alan Wake, we even have a third-party publishing workforce that’s half of the retailer group. We’ll fund initiatives in another way than these minimal guarantee-based offers. We’ll fund initiatives, we’ll assist them carry the video games to market throughout all platforms, however the PC SKUs will probably be unique in that case. However we now have eight, 9 titles that we’re funding by Epic Games Publishing proper now. Aside from that, we’ve not executed a minimal guarantee-style deal in about three years. So our technique shifted there. But when we fund and publish the title, the context is so much totally different than the dialog that occurs on how we did issues in 2019. And we personal that. That was actually profitable for us. Issues have modified and the publishing companies, these video games will probably be unique from the retailer.
IGN: It might be nice to get some perception on the long-term play right here. You are up towards Steam, which is a large competitor, very tough to shift, not simply in phrases of the stats, however the mindset. And I’ve at all times heard, not simply anecdotally however from Epic people who the Epic Games Store is just not worthwhile. Is the purpose to develop larger than Steam? Is that truly possible? Are you worthwhile? Are you able to ever be worthwhile on this enterprise?
Steve Allison: So there is a couple methods of it. If you speak about Steam, you speak about all the things together with their first-party video games. When you speak about the Epic Games Store, first-party plus third-party, and also you simply credit score the retailer with 12% of the income that comes from Epic’s first-party video games, which is not how we do accounting, however we typically do these views internally, the retailer is go break even and fairly, marginally worthwhile.
On the third-party facet on its personal in isolation, proper now we proceed to make investments. Now we have a ton of work to do. We put money into these packages for builders. We’ll proceed to put money into content material by publishing. And that funding goes to present up as sunk prices. However it’s all in the context of scaling. But when we get to 25, 30% market share, which is our plan… sure, if we do such an incredible job that we push share previous Steam or no matter, I believe we’ll be tremendous comfortable. However our purpose is not to dance on high of Steam’s grave or something like that. It is to set up a constant place the place builders can count on to promote 25-30% of their video games. That can, after we get there, we will probably be worthwhile in third-party and we’ll be very worthwhile with third-party plus first-party.
Third-party is the place we’re investing. We obtained to do all this work. Bear in mind additionally it is like 60% of our viewers makes use of each. 40% doesn’t. There is a bunch of that viewers on Steam that may by no means flip, however we proceed to get a cohort of gamers which might be discovering PC gaming for the first time. They’re shifting from console. We’re going to have totally different function units, totally different alternative round the multi-platform retailer. It is all about establishing the constant efficiency of market spending, like 25-30% now. And if we blow previous that, we’ll be tremendous stoked, however as soon as we get there we’ll be in good condition.
IGN: So, simply to make clear, is the Epic Games Store worthwhile?
Steve Allison: First-party, very worthwhile. First-party plus third-party, if you happen to credit score the retailer 12% of first-party’s income prefer it was a buyer on the retailer, worthwhile… barely.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.