The Epic Games Store has spent years positioning itself as a serious challenger to Valve’s Steam platform, leaning on a developer-friendly revenue split, aggressive free-game giveaways, and high-profile exclusivity deals. Yet a review of Epic’s last six annual reports suggests those efforts have not translated into meaningful growth in third-party game spending.
Data compiled from Epic’s own yearly “Store in Review” blog posts shows that spending on third-party titles increased by just 1.6 per cent between 2019 and 2024. Over that five-year span, revenue from third-party games rose from $251 million to only $255 million, despite significant fluctuations along the way.
Third-party revenue increased steadily from 2019 through 2022, reaching a peak of $355 million. That year marked an 18 per cent increase over 2021, but momentum quickly faded. Revenue fell 13 per cent in 2023 to $310 million, followed by a further 18 per cent drop in 2024. By the end of the period, spending had effectively returned to its original level when the store first launched.
User growth tells a very different story
The stagnation in spending contrasts sharply with the platform’s expansion in users. Epic reported that its PC user base grew from 108 million in 2019 to 295 million in 2024—an increase of 173 per cent. The growing divide between user numbers and actual purchases has fueled speculation that many accounts are created primarily to claim free weekly games rather than to buy new releases.
That theory is reinforced by the limited impact of several high-profile exclusives. Titles such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Tetris Effect, Kingdom Hearts, and Alan Wake II failed to meaningfully lift third-party revenue. Of those games, Alan Wake II remains the only major release still not available on Steam.
Structural challenges remain
Criticism of the Epic Games Store has also focused on its launcher, which many users consider slower and less feature-rich than Steam’s client. While Epic has added essential features over time, it continues to lag behind Steam’s ecosystem, which is often described as the dominant—if not monopolistic—force in PC game distribution.
Financially, Epic’s broader store revenue has grown, but largely for reasons unrelated to third-party sales. Total revenue increased by roughly 60 percent between 2019 and 2024, rising from $680 million to $1.09 billion. However, spending on third-party games accounted for less than half of that total every year and has represented a shrinking share since 2022. Analysts widely believe that microtransactions from Fortnite account for a substantial portion of Epic’s overall store revenue.
Epic is expected to publish its 2025 post-mortem in the coming weeks, which may shed light on whether the company plans to adjust its long-running strategy. For now, the numbers paint a mixed picture: a rapidly growing audience paired with stubbornly flat third-party spending, raising fresh questions about whether Epic’s approach can ever meaningfully challenge Steam’s dominance in PC game sales.
