"My goal on PC isn't to topple Steam": Epic Games Store boss says beating Valve isn't the plan – just getting "enough market share on PC that you have to be here no matter what"
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Epic Games Store vice president and general manager Steve Allison says he isn't trying to "topple Steam," nor is Epic's store a PC-only destination. Rather, on PC, he wants Epic to have enough users that developers "have to be here."
Asked if the end goal of the Epic Games Store is to beat Steam as a PC gaming destination, or if it's closer to new GOG owner Michał Kiciński's vision of coexisting in a sustainable niche, Allison leans toward the latter.
Epic says only 16 to 18% of people claiming free games on the Epic Games Store buy games there afterwards
New GOG owner reckons it doesn't have to beat Steam outright, just do a few things better: "People will come"
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"First of all, I agree with Michał [Kiciński's] statement on that stuff," he begins. "We look at it the same way. If you look at what we said when we launched the store in 2018, we always said we expect to expand to mobile. We couldn't get to it for good reason for some time, but our differentiation is going to be a multiplatform games-first ecosystem across PC and mobile. So I'm excited that we're finally getting there and starting to connect the dots. But my goal on PC isn't to topple Steam.
"I'm really proud of what we've done here. If you look back at where we were in 2018, Steam had about 67 [million] monthly users on it on average. We were at zero. Today, we're at about 67 to 68 million monthly active users on average, and Steam has grown to like 140 million monthly active users. Our competition in the space has pushed PC gaming to pretty impressive growth overall and that's, I think I would say, and [Epic CEO] Tim [Sweeney] would say, pretty awesome."
(It's unclear when in 2018 Allison was referring to, but for clarity, in a January 2019 blog post, Valve said Steam had 90 million monthly active users, with 47 million daily active users.)
The Epic Games App came to iOS in December and Android in January, giving Epic's store a dedicated mobile companion. In the past year, games on both mobile and PC, like Wuthering Waves, Genshin Impact, and Honkai: Star Rail, have become a large part of the store's third-party presence, with all three of these ranking in the store's top five "Mythic" games in the yearly review. Allison is keen on growing in the mobile space, but also wants a significant presence on PC.
"I would say our goal is to have enough market share on PC that you have to be here no matter what you do," he says. "That, from my perspective, is a predictable average market share of 25 or 30% of your sales or more. And if we do that, we will be multiple billions of dollars on third-party games, and Steam just depends on how much [sharing] happens there.
"What I will tell you is that 60% of our players are what I call dual users. They use both the Epic Games Store and Steam. Obviously we have a bunch of users come in and grab free games, but they also buy, because of Epic Rewards or regional pricing or great deals. And the goal is, let's give players more reasons than that. Because they only buy 1.2 to 1.4 games per year. For those players, it's not really a question of if they're going to buy a game, it's where. So wherever we have the same game available at the same time, we need to make sure we're giving them every reason to think about buying it here. So the Fortnite crossovers, the player-facing features, all that stuff's super critical to get out the door on that front."
As part of its yearly report, Epic announced that multiple games – including releases from Capcom, Genshin Impact maker miHoYo, Crimson Desert studio Pearl Abyss, Phantom Blade Zero dev S-Game, Mintrocket, and Kakao Games – will see exclusive Fortnite cosmetic deals through the Epic Games Store. If you buy specific games through Epic, you'll get a special cosmetic in Fortnite. "Developers have been asking us to tap into Fortnite," Allison says, and this is a new way of doing so while pushing the Epic Games Store.
"Steam is winning with its ease of use" but not on quality, says new GOG owner pondering how to "take the market" from Valve
Epic says only 16 to 18% of people claiming free games on the Epic Games Store buy games there afterwards
New GOG owner reckons it doesn't have to beat Steam outright, just do a few things better: "People will come"
I asked Allison how he wants the Epic Games Store to be different from Steam, noting existing differences like a more favorable revenue split (88/12 to Steam's 70/30 baseline).
"To the same point as the GOG founder, we really want to show the world what we've been running at," he says, "which is really this connected, multiplatform store ecosystem that brings more players together. As you may know, Tim's a big believer in networking effects and Metcalfe's law. And when we enjoin all these players where they can kind of interact with each other across these ecosystems and the games that they're playing, we think it's going to be a profoundly different thing.
"As we start to finally get to the player-facing work, we get to kick that off fresh. We get to look at what's in the market. It's not just what's on Steam, it's what's on consoles, and even to invent new ways of doing things. These features will have a 2025, 2026 and on viewpoint, and in some cases, on legacy platforms, you don't get to turn those things over very often. So I'm pretty excited about the social framework as we start to evolve that. I'm excited about all the other features we're going to ship, because we're taking that view of how the work is going to go forward."
Epic says only 16 to 18% of people claiming free games on the Epic Games Store buy games there afterwards, but "for cost per new user, it's hard to beat."