The Epic Games Store still isn't profitable, and users suspect the laggy launcher might have something to do with it
Nov. 7, 2023“Hmm… I wonder why?”
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As part of an ongoing trial, an executive has revealed that theEpic GamesStore still isn’t profitable, and after years of roasting the Steam competitor the PC gaming community has some theories about why that might be.
Take the video from Digital Foundry’s Alexander Battaglia below for example. Here, Battaglia demonstrates how you can launch Steam and get into a game ofAlan Wake 2in the space of about 10 seconds. The same process on the Epic Games Store takes the better part of a minute. Of course, the extra irony is that Alan Wake 2 isn’t even officially available through Steam - Battaglia’s usinga workaroundto get the game running throughValve’s platform.
That’snottheonlyinstanceofarenewedcomplaintagainsttheEpicGamesStore, but it is perhaps the most telling. This all comes in response to a comment from EGS boss Steve Allison during the Epic versusGooglelawsuit over Fortnite fees. AsThe Vergereports, Allison said on the witness stand that the store still isn’t profitable yet, and that the company’s current goal for the platform continues to simply be growth.
The elephant in this particular room is that the Epic Games Store just doesn’t seem to work as well as Steam does. Battaglia’s example is anecdotal - thereare otherswho’ve hadbetter resultsin similar comparisons - but it certainly tracks with my own experience using EGS. Between sales, free game giveaways, and titles I get as a games writer, I have over 1000 games on Epic, and simply navigating the library (much less installing or launching a game) has slowly become more and more of a nightmare over the years.
Once upon a time, I felt that the Epic Games Store was fine - it is, after all, just another window from which to launch your digital PC games. I don’t use most of Steam’s community features, so I don’t really miss them here, either. But as the years have worn on, the platform’s poor performance and laggy interface has grown increasingly more difficult to excuse.
Epic does offer generous revenue splits for developers, which at least makes it an attractive option for the folks making some of thebest PC gamesout there.
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