Epic Games Store just posted massive growth numbers — jumping from 108 million users in 2019 to 295 million in 2024. But here’s the catch: third‑party revenue only grew 1.6% in the same period, according to a post on Reddit.
The reason? Epic leaned so hard into free game giveaways that it trained millions of users to log in, claim freebies, and never spend a dime.
Online discourse be damned (particularly on Reddit); the Epic Games Store has come under scrutiny in recent days as users compare its growth between 2019 and 2024. During that period, the platform grew by 173%, rising from 108 million users to more than 295 million.
The Epic Game Store problem
For those who do not know, the Epic Games Store is Epic’s answer to Steam, Valve’s PC storefront that dominates the market. Steam is the go-to platform for most PC players, in part because it simply works and does not get in the way of the user experience.
Steam was not always that way. When it first launched in the early 2000s, it faced heavy criticism, but that is a story for another time.
The Epic Games Store launched in 2018 and immediately tried to take market share from Steam by offering developers a better revenue split and by locking down exclusive releases. That approach did little to win over players, and Epic has since moved away from it, but does still provide a better revenue split.
I want you guys to understand how misleading the numbers are.This is Epic Games users, which could effectively just mean accounts created, a number that can be artificially inflated to “sound big.” (pic 1)This is completely unlike Steam’s concurrent player count, which offers… https://t.co/M6mYdFXvnK pic.twitter.com/3Ptkzxbo0oJanuary 8, 2026
Instead, Epic leaned heavily into free games to bring users onto the platform. While that strategy worked in terms of sign-ups, it also turned the store into a place many people only open to claim giveaways before closing it again, which is something I also do.
It is easy to point and laugh at Epic here, but the platform does, or at least did, offer a worse overall experience than Steam in almost every way. It launched without many basic features, and while it has spent years filling in those gaps, for some users, it has all come too late.
For example, Epic only added reviews in 2022, wishlists in 2021, achievements in 2021, gifting in 2025, and messaging in 2025 after removing them four years ago. It still does not offer family sharing or mod support, and this is just a few things; the list goes on.
Is this an Xbox PC problem as well?
It is easy to draw some parallels between the Epic Games Store and Xbox PC. Both are competing with Steam, and both lack features by comparison, but that is largely where the similarities end.
While it is easy to be cynical about Microslop, the Xbox app relies heavily on subscriptions through Game Pass rather than giveaways. PC Game Pass has seen 45% year over year growth, which shows that even with its feature gaps, there is an engaged audience willing to spend money rather than just opening the app to claim free games and leave.
While this is not directly tied to Xbox PC, console players also show a strong willingness to spend, especially on shooter titles. Even though PlayStation is estimated to outsell Xbox hardware by roughly 3 to 1, Xbox users still turn out in large numbers to buy certain games, which you can read more about here.
Unlike Epic, Xbox is also investing heavily in a cross-device ecosystem across cloud, console, and PC. The long-term goal is for future Xbox hardware to blur the line between console and PC, bringing Xbox and Steam libraries together in one place. That vision is what keeps me in the Xbox ecosystem, as it offers a more open and flexible future than a closed platform that simply repeats the same cycle each generation.
The future of PC gaming is Steam for now
Unfortunately for Xbox and Epic, PC users have had it very good for a long time with Steam. Its user-focused approach and stable feature set mean it has not given players many reasons to leave, which is likely why both Xbox and Epic now seem more focused on carving out their own lanes rather than trying to directly replace it.
In Xbox’s case, the next generation of hardware is expected to support multiple storefronts, including Steam and Epic. For Epic, it has taken a different route by allowing things that Steam does not, such as NFT-based games, and by publicly supporting the use of AI in development. Tim Sweeney (Epic’s CEO) has also criticised Steam for requiring developers to disclose AI usage.
What once felt like a space where Epic and Xbox could not exist now feels like one where coexistence is possible, and that is fine. While neither platform is likely to take meaningful market share from Steam, neither of them needs to in order to succeed on PC.
That reality is reflected in how I use it. I still open the Epic Games Store to claim free games, while spending most of my time working through my Steam and Xbox backlog, often forgetting Epic is even there. That does not make Epic a failure, especially since it brought in over $1.09B in revenue in 2024. By comparison, Steam pulled in $1.6 billion in December alone. While Epic may never reach the same scale or goodwill as Steam, it does not need to in order to remain successful.
For many, Epic has become the “free game launcher” rather than a real storefront. Steam remains the place people actually buy and play, while Epic’s strategy left it with hollow growth. Whether you see this as clever marketing or a failed experiment, one thing is clear: Epic taught its audience to rarely open their wallets.
Do you use Epic Games Store and if so, how? Let us know by commenting and taking part in our poll below:
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