Can the Epic Games Store turn things around? ‘I don’t see how they can recover at this point,’ says Newzoo analyst
Epic Games has unveiled plans to modernise its digital storefront, promising a significantly faster launcher alongside improved navigation, personalised recommendations, and direct access to patch notes. However, industry analysts remain unconvinced this late-stage overhaul can reverse the company's competitive struggles. According to Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo, Steam's entrenchment in the PC gaming market has become virtually insurmountable, creating a structural disadvantage that improved features alone cannot overcome.
The core problem lies not in technology but consumer behaviour and platform consolidation. Epic's strategy of distributing free games successfully draws users to log in and collect titles, yet most players never actually engage with them. More telling, this free-game approach has occasionally backfired—boosting sales on Steam instead—as players opt to maintain unified libraries on a single platform rather than fragment their collections. Without solving this underlying preference for consolidation, Epic faces an uphill battle despite its technical improvements.
- Epic Games announced launcher improvements (faster performance, better recommendations, integrated patch notes) but industry analysts question their effectiveness.
- Analyst Emmanuel Rosier argues Steam's market dominance is insurmountable; Epic's free game strategy attracts users who collect without playing, failing to build genuine engagement.
- Consumer preference for unified libraries undermines Epic's position—free giveaways have even driven sales to Steam instead of retaining players on Epic's platform.
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Epic Games runs its own online shop for PC games, the Epic Games Store, which competes with the much larger and long-established Steam, owned by Valve. Epic has just announced an overhaul aimed at making its store faster and easier to use, with better navigation, personalised suggestions and clearer update information. The move follows years of criticism that the platform has lagged behind rivals on basic features.
Epic's main tactic for winning users has been giving away free games regularly, which does bring people to log in and claim titles. Analysts who track the games industry, such as Newzoo, say this hasn't translated into people actually using the store day to day, since many gamers prefer to keep all their games in one library rather than split them across platforms.
The wider question is whether Steam's dominance in PC gaming has become too entrenched to challenge, regardless of what features a rival offers. This matters because a healthier level of competition between stores can affect prices, the cut developers pay on sales, and how much choice players have over where they buy and play games.