Newzoo Analyst Doubts Epic Games Store Can Close Gap With Steam Despite Planned Redesign
Key takeaways
- Newzoo analyst Emmanuel Rosier says Epic's storefront redesign is unlikely to challenge Steam's market dominance.
- Epic's free game giveaways have not driven lasting engagement and sometimes boost Steam sales instead.
- Fortnite's crossover-heavy current season is seen as a genuine bright spot for Epic as a developer.
Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo, has delivered a stark verdict on the Epic Games Store's future, telling PC Gamer that he does not see a realistic path to recovery for the platform regardless of the redesign Epic has been promising throughout 2026. The planned overhaul — which includes a faster interface, tailored recommendations, and a streamlined browsing experience — has been positioned by Epic as a meaningful step forward, but Rosier argues that structural market forces make meaningful gains against Steam nearly impossible at this stage.
Central to Rosier's skepticism is Steam's deeply entrenched position in the PC gaming market. He pointed out that Epic's long-running free game giveaways, while initially drawing users to the launcher, have failed to translate into sustained engagement. In some cases, he noted, free Epic titles actually lift sales figures on Steam, as players prefer to consolidate their libraries in one place rather than juggle multiple storefronts. 'I don't really see how they can turn that around because Steam has become so inevitable,' he said.
Rosier also identified what he described as strategic overextension on Epic's part. In recent years, Epic has simultaneously pursued battles against Steam on PC, Apple on iOS, and Google on Android — antitrust disputes and marketplace competition included. Rosier suggested that fighting on so many fronts at once has stretched the company's focus and resources thin, making it harder to win decisively on any single battlefield.
Despite his pessimism about the store, Rosier offered a noticeably warmer take on Epic's identity as a game developer. He pointed to Fortnite's current season as evidence that the company is channeling creative energy effectively, highlighting a wave of crossover cosmetics featuring Sonic the Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Kingdom Hearts' Sora, and Persona 5's Joker. 'You can see they put a lot of thought in Fortnite right now,' he said, adding that the game appears to be in a stronger position than it was six or twelve months ago.
On the hardware front, Epic's Steve Allison confirmed earlier this year that Xbox had welcomed the idea of bringing the Epic Games Store to its devices from day one — a move that could expand the storefront's reach even if it doesn't fully close the gap with Steam on PC. Whether that kind of platform expansion changes Rosier's calculus remains an open question, but his overall read is clear: Epic's store may survive, but a genuine challenge to Steam's throne looks increasingly unlikely.
The bigger picture
Rosier's assessment cuts to a problem Epic has never quite solved — the difference between acquiring users and retaining them. Free game giveaways are an expensive acquisition tool that, according to Newzoo's data, hasn't built the habitual daily engagement that keeps Steam's ecosystem so sticky. Valve benefits from years of social infrastructure: reviews, wishlists, friends lists, and Workshop integration that make Steam feel like a community rather than just a shop. Epic has none of that at comparable depth, and launching a faster storefront does nothing to close that gap overnight.
The competitive implications extend beyond Steam. If Epic's store continues to stagnate, publishers who once valued it as a negotiating lever against Valve lose that leverage. Exclusivity deals — the strategy Epic used aggressively in its early years — drew significant backlash and didn't produce the ecosystem loyalty Epic needed. Now, without that tool wielded as forcefully, and without a compelling social layer, the store risks becoming a secondary destination even for players who already have Epic accounts through Fortnite.
The Xbox partnership angle deserves close attention. Bringing the Epic Games Store to Xbox hardware could give it a lifeline in the console-adjacent space where Steam does not operate natively — but that's a very different audience from the core PC gamer Epic originally targeted. Readers should watch whether Epic doubles down on Fortnite as its primary revenue engine while quietly repositioning the store as a secondary offering, effectively conceding the PC marketplace war without ever officially saying so.
We're covering this one because it captures a tension that's been simmering for years — the gap between Epic's ambitions and the reality of what the Epic Games Store has managed to deliver. Newzoo isn't a fringe voice; their market intelligence shapes how publishers and investors read the landscape, so when one of their directors says he doesn't see a recovery path, that matters. We also think it's worth separating the two very different stories here: Epic as a storefront operator versus Epic as the studio behind Fortnite. Those are genuinely different companies with different outlooks, and the press often collapses them into one narrative. The Xbox partnership is a thread we'll be watching carefully — it could be a quiet pivot that reframes what 'success' means for the Epic Games Store. For anyone who plays on PC or follows digital distribution, this is a story worth understanding.
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