It's been just a little over seven years since Epic threw the gauntlet at Valve, launching its Epic Games Store as a direct competitor to the Steam platform on PC. Right away, Epic tried to lure the game development community with a far more appealing revenue share split (88%-12% in favor of the developers, versus Steam's 70%-30%) and fans with a combination of exclusive games (which are more or less gone now, except for rare exceptions), free games and discounts (those are still very much happening), and more.
At the end of 2025, we can safely say that Epic's massive efforts and expenses successfully carved a sizable user base for itself. Earlier this year, Epic confirmed that the community had grown to host more than 295 million users in total. However, it did not impact Steam in the least; Valve's platform has continued to grow at an impressive pace, surpassing 41.6 million concurrent users two months ago. That's users who were online at the same time, a figure that can be verified independently thanks to the existence of SteamDB. The same cannot be done with the EGS, but it is believed to be far lower.
Besides mere figures, though, core gamers still tend to be quite dismissive of Epic's Store, whereas they are really fond and protective of Steam, perhaps at times even more than they ought to be. Why? This specific question was answered by The Astronauts founder Adrian Chmielarz. In an interview with FRVR, he claimed that Valve's Steam feels more like a home thanks to its feature set, whereas the EGS is still merely a shop:
People are not, basically, using EGS as their home, it’s not home to them. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but EGS doesn’t have written reviews. They don’t have the forums. There’s nothing to do there but to buy. So that will always lose to a shop that is also emotional and you can basically engage with the shop.
EGS is a shop, and Steam is a community. There’s actually so much happening in that community hub for every single game, much more than I ever imagined, and it’s no wonder that people sort of get invested emotionally in Steam. And then they feel like, ‘Okay, my home is here, so my personal library is here’. So when something is released exclusively to Epic, something they want to play, then it’s a problem for them because now I’m gonna [have to] cheat on my home library with some other shop.
It's a fair explanation. While Epic has improved its store over time, introducing the long-awaited gifting feature for Black Friday 2025 and, a few days ago, a cross-platform text chat, it still lacks the community features mentioned by Chmielarz. Overall, Epic's improvements to its platform have been too slow to catch up with Steam, especially since Valve hasn't rested on its laurels and continues to refine its own ecosystem.
It should be noted that The Astronauts actually did take the timed Epic Games Store exclusivity deal for Witchfire, as discussed in a previous exclusive interview with Wccftech. The game eventually launched a year later on Steam. In the FRVR interview, Chmielarz stated that the company was running out of money, making the deal vital to keep the company independent. Ultimately, he claims everyone got what they wanted: Epic got an exclusive game for a year, The Astronauts got the money to keep afloat, and the Steam community got a more polished game, albeit a bit later.
Do you agree with Chmielarz's takeaway on why many PC gamers prefer Steam? Let us know by voting in the poll and commenting below.
In other news, The Astronauts has just released a major update for its roguelite first-person shooter game, Witchfire, which is still in early access.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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