Since its launch in 2018, the Epic Games Store has been fighting an uphill battle amongst the PC launcher titans like Steam and GOG. Back in February, Epic Games revealed that the storefront will receive a bit of an overhaul to improve the user experience. Interestingly enough, a Newzoo market intelligence analyst thinks that despite these improvements and owning the biggest entity in gaming, Fortnite, it may be too late for any type of credible recovery.
Signs of Life?
PC Gamer.com spoke with Emmanuel Rosier, who is the director of market intelligence at Newzoo. Within this interview, Rosier claimed that there doesn’t appear to be any possible way for Epic Games to turn things around and compete with Steam. “I don’t really see how they can turn that around,” Rosier says, “because Steam has become so inevitable. The Epic Games Store, they get players by giving free games, but people just go, they log in, they get the free games, they don’t even play them. You know, it’s almost like collecting games rather than actually playing them.”
When asked about what Epic Games has been doing to get them in such a bind, Rosier replied “The challenge I think Epic is facing is that they try to win everywhere in the past few years”. He went on to explain how Epic’s battle is on multiple fronts, facing competition like Google Play, Amazon, and Apple as such examples.
The Quick Fix
It isn’t all doom and gloom for Epic, as they still own one of, if not the biggest, properties in gaming: Fortnite. And this is the thing that Rosier believes could be the golden goose for Epic and could be the thing that injects life into the Epic Games Store if executed properly.
“I think that’s an important trend I see with Fortnite,” Rosier says, “they are not afraid of other games. It’s funny because it’s a gaming platform that’s not even competing anymore with other games. Because if you are launching a game, it makes sense to do some marketing within Fortnite. I was thinking, I’m almost surprised that GTA 6 is not doing an event in Fortnite to show the trailer, you know? Why not at this point?”
There is a lot that can be said about the power that Fortnite holds not only as a game, but as a marketing platform. The game exists well beyond the textbook definition of what a video game used to be and now exists as a virtual platform where popular events take place. And if Epic really leans into using other gaming IP to their advantage as they have been, that would certainly be a draw to the platform overall.
New and Hopefully Improved
I think it is fair to say that Steam is too big a titan to topple in the world of PC gaming. The idea here is that many gamers have expansive pre-built libraries that exist on the Steam platform, and it has become the poster child for PC gaming overall. Pair that with the ease of use the platform offers, along with a plethora of sales users can take advantage of, and Epic Games has a lot cut out for them if they think they can overtake Steam as the top storefront in the PC gaming world.
