Epic Games has long been attempting to set up the Epic Games Store as an alternative to Steam, which is why it has offered its infamous free weekly games since 2018. More recently, Epic has promised a Game Store overhaul in order to draw in more game publishers and players with new features, a refined UI, better game discovery, and even Linux support. Now, in a recent interview with PC Gamer, Newzoo analyst, Emmanuel Rosier, argues that it may be too little too late for Epic to claw back enough market share with a redesign,
The analyst echoes previous reports that said players were simply going to Epic for the free games and then turning around and going back to Steam when they wanted to buy a game they actually wanted to spend money on. The premise of the argument is that Steam is “inevitable,” meaning it is too big for new gamers to avoid and too entrenched for long-time and casual gamers to turn their backs on.
I don’t really see how they can turn that around, because Steam has become so inevitable. The Epic Games Store, they get players by giving free games, but people just go, they log in, they get the free games, they don’t even play them. You know, it’s almost like collecting games rather than actually playing them.Epic Games has since responded to the analyst’s comments, arguing that the “data tells a different story,” citing $400 million in third-party sales and 2.78 billion collective hours spent gaming on the Epic Games Store in 2025. He also says that the company expects the EGS redesign to drive that momentum further.Martin Keely, Vice President and GM, Epic Games StoreThe data tells a very different story. In 2025, players spent a record 2.78 billion hours playing third-party games on the Epic Games Store and player spending on third-party PC games grew 57% to an all-time record $400 million. With the improved Launcher that’s coming this year, that momentum is only going to accelerate.Rosier also argues that Epic Games is spreading itself too thin, focusing on both PC gaming and mobile on both iOS and Android. For a company like Epic, which also owns and develops the Unreal Engine and Fortnite, the increased scope may result in muddied waters and a lack of focus, especially when it comes to the Epic Games Store, which is effectively challenging Steam, one of the most ubiquitous entities in gaming on its home turf. It could also be argued that Steam’s private ownership has given it more flexibility to take risks, compared to Epic, which needs to report to investors, as a publicly traded company.The challenge I think Epic is facing is that they try to win everywhere in the past few years. They try to win against Steam, they try to win against Apple, against Google Play, and probably they run out of steam on where they cannot fight all these battles at the same time.At the same time, the analyst is less pessimistic about the outlook for Epic Games as a developer, stating that Epic “probably need to focus on what really matters…which I think is Fortnite. You can see they put a lot of thought in Fortnite right now. They are doing everything they can, and I think it’s working better when you look at the state of Fortnite today compared to six months or one year ago.” At the same time, however, it seems as though Fortnite is suffering something of a downturn, with Epic recently laying off 1,000 workers as a result of what it called a “downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025.”