Epic Games Store Employees: People Only Came for Free Games, Then Returned to Steam

Epic Games launched its Epic Games Store in 2018 to challenge the dominance of Valve’s Steam platform in the PC gaming space. Known for its promotions and free games, the storefront has attracted a large gamer base that quickly adopted the platform. However, two former Epic Games employees claim that the Epic Games Store saw only an initial spike in active users during the free game promotions, with gamers eventually returning to Steam. Many gamers find switching between multiple storefronts to be a cumbersome experience. While free game deals are an excellent way to attract customers initially, the Epic Games Store needs to make further improvements to retain those gamers.

Meanwhile, Valve’s Steam platform continues to break records for concurrent gamers. Just a few weeks ago, the platform reached 42,318,602 players on Sunday, March 22 of this year. This set a new record, surpassing the previous impressive 42 million concurrent players on January 11 earlier this year. At the time of writing, Valve’s Steam platform has 37,053,591 active players, indicating that a large majority keep returning, with no signs of slowing down.

The competition between PC gaming platforms will continue as Epic looks to invest more and attract additional gamers to the Epic Games Store. According to Bloomberg, the Epic Games Store grew to a record 78 million monthly active users on PCs. In comparison, Steam handles a similar number of users in just two to three days. Player spending on non-Epic third-party games last year was around $400 million, according to Epic, which is significantly lower than what Valve reports. Third-party game developers earn much less revenue from listing on the Epic Games Store compared to Steam.