Steam generated an estimated $1.6 billion in December 2025 alone. The Epic Games Store made $1.16 billion for the entire year. That single stat tells you almost everything you need to know about how this rivalry is actually going.
The Epic Games Store launched in 2017 with a clear target on its back: dethrone Valve and give PC gamers a real alternative to Steam. Almost 10 years later, the gap between the two platforms hasn't shrunk. If anything, it's wider.
What Epic got right, and where it stopped
Epic's original pitch to developers was genuinely compelling. A 12% revenue cut compared to Valve's 24% slice is a meaningful difference for studios, especially smaller ones working on thin margins. The logic was sound: better terms attract more developers, more developers attract more games, more games attract more users.
The problem is that logic never reached the finish line. According to a report by Polygon, an Epic employee acknowledged that most users "come for the free games, then leave." Free game giveaways every couple of weeks can spike installs, but they don't build a loyal user base. They build a collection of accounts that exist solely to claim free keys.
Here's the thing: gamers don't care about revenue splits. They care about where their friends are, where their library lives, and whether the app actually works.
A store that still can't keep up with itself
Load up the Epic Games Store today and scroll through your library. You'll wait. Then you'll wait some more as the next batch of titles loads in. On hardware that runs modern games without breaking a sweat, a storefront from 2017 shouldn't be stuttering through a library list view.
Steve Allison, VP and GM of the Epic Games Store, told IGN in February that Epic is focused on making the launcher "feel fast and snappy and just be what you expect, frankly." A redesigned store is supposedly targeting a June launch.
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Epic has promised platform improvements before. A 2019 roadmap, preserved by Wccftech, outlined features that took years to arrive, and some, like user reviews, still haven't shown up at all.
That history makes it hard to take June deadlines at face value. The store has been "almost there" for years.
Steam isn't standing still either
What most players miss in this conversation is that Valve isn't coasting. Steam added Trading Cards back in 2013, which sounds trivial, but those small community hooks, profile customization, badges, message boards, user reviews, are exactly what turned Steam from a mandatory DRM launcher into something people actually want to open. Files found in Steam's beta just weeks ago suggest the platform is working on a feature that uses frame rate data from its millions of users to estimate how well a specific game will run on your PC. That's a genuinely useful tool built on infrastructure Epic simply doesn't have.
The key here is that Steam's advantage isn't just feature count. It's compounding. Every year Valve adds something useful, the gap between the two platforms grows a little more. Epic is trying to catch a moving target while still fixing basic performance issues.
The free games trap
Epic's free game program isn't going away, and it does serve a purpose. It keeps the platform visible and gives people a reason to check in occasionally. But visibility isn't the same as engagement, and engagement isn't the same as loyalty.
Steam's dominance comes from years of users building libraries, friendships, and habits on the platform. That kind of lock-in doesn't come from a rotating catalog of free titles. It comes from a platform that people genuinely prefer using. Right now, most PC gamers don't prefer the Epic Games Store. They tolerate it when they have to.
For more takes on the PC gaming space, check out our latest gaming news, and if you're weighing up platforms and peripherals, the latest reviews are worth a look before spending.
