Epic Games recently tried to shut down an analyst’s criticism of the Epic Games Store, which called it a bare-bones alternative to Steam and a place where people go to collect free games, then leave before even playing them.
When asked by PC Gamer about the current state and future of the Epic Games Store, Emmanuel Rosier, Newzoo’s director of market intelligence, painted a pretty picture of Steam’s competitor. Rosier believes it might not even make a comeback in the next update, which aims to make it five times faster. Rosier says that would’ve been essential upon release but now amounts to too little, too late.
Epic Games Store President Martin Keely reached out to PC Gamer with a much more positive account of things:
“The 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.”
I found it very interesting for the analyst to describe the Epic Games Store as something you visit once a week to collect a game that you’ll never even bother to play. That’s been me ever since the store launched, with the exception of one exclusive I bought, which, guess what, I never cared to play.
My friends all said the same thing, except for the part about having bought a game there once. To add insult to injury, a fellow Destructoid writer also told me he gets new games for free whenever they pop up, but he gets them via the website, without even bothering to install the launcher. Sometimes even ends up paying for those games on Steam because he forgot he had them on Epic.
I thought we really needed to have the launcher installed to get the free games, so Epic’s just triggered a chain of events that might very well cause them to lose yet another user as soon as this piece goes up. That being said, I’d really like to know whether your experience with the Epic Games Store is more in line with the billions of hours logged that Epic talks about, or if you’re just like me (and everyone I know). Sorry, Epic.
Tiago is a freelancer who used to write about video games, cults, and video game cults. He now writes for Destructoid in an attempt to find himself on the winning side when the robot uprising comes.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.destructoid.com/the-epic-games-store-is-definitely-not-dying-says-epic-whats-your-take/
