Epic Games Store isn't shy about its shortcomings. Vice president and general manager Steven Allison flat-out admitted that the platform "sucks," and the team has pledged to finally focus on quality-of-life features and performance. An extensive roadmap was recently laid out, including new library interactions, cross-region gifting, patch notes, player profiles, reviews, discovery improvements, universal controller support, a notifications overhaul, and a move away from Unreal Engine.
Like the shopping cart that took years to add, many of these features are fairly basic and should have been prioritized much earlier, but it's still a step in the right direction. However, even with these long-overdue changes, analysts like Newzoo director of market intelligence Emmanuel Rosier aren't convinced that the storefront can close the gap.
"I don't really see how they can turn that around," Rosier said in an interview with PC Gamer. "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."
That's perhaps the biggest problem facing the Epic Games Store. It has accrued monthly peaks of 78 million active users, but turning those players into a genuine audience is something the storefront has struggled with. Free games are an effective way to bring people through the door, but if users simply claim them and leave, Epic isn't building the kind of daily habit that has made Steam so dominant.
Worst of all, the storefront isn't just unpopular because of how much it lags behind the competition. Tim Sweeney's constant posting on X in support of Elon Musk and AI, alongside his frequent criticism of Steam, has positioned him as a reviled figure among the PC gaming community. That's only compounded by EGS exclusivity deals, which Epic has spent "a lot of money" to secure. These have proven incredibly unpopular, with Lords of the Fallen 2 facing backlash so intense after signing an exclusivity deal that CI Games bought out the deal to launch on Steam.
Sweeney himself even admitted that "a lot of them were not good investments."
Other storefronts, such as GOG, have shown that having a niche can set you apart from Steam. Rather than trying to replace Steam outright, GOG has carved out its own audience with DRM-free initiatives and preservation programs, demonstrating that multiple storefronts can coexist and even thrive. Epic, meanwhile, has spent years positioning itself against Steam, creating a faction mentality that has brought the console-war ethos to PC launchers.
"The challenge I think Epic is facing is that they try to win everywhere in the past few years," Rosier continued. "They try to win against Steam, they try to win against Apple, against Google Play, and probably they run out of steam where they cannot fight all these battles at the same time."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/epic-games-store-cant-recover-analyst-says/
