“The Epic Games Store is dying” bundles three different questions into one headline: Is the service about to close? Is it becoming a stronger competitor to Steam? Is the store business profitable? Those questions need different evidence. Here is what the public record can—and cannot—tell us as of October 13, 2026.
The short answer: no evidence of an imminent shutdown; mixed signs on competition; no public answer on profitability
Epic’s 2025 year-in-review reports record PC monthly users and more playtime in third-party games. It also reports lower total gameplay hours and slight declines in average daily and monthly users. That is not evidence that the store is about to close, but it also does not support a claim that every measure of engagement is growing. The year-in-review does not disclose the store’s operating profit or loss.
The most defensible reading is: a shutdown has not been established; competitive momentum varies by metric; and the store’s profitability cannot be determined from the public figures reviewed here.
Put the 2025 metrics side by side
| Metric | Epic’s reported 2025 result | What it does—and does not—tell us |
|---|---|---|
| PC monthly active users | 78 million in December, an all-time high | A December peak is not the yearly average. |
| Average monthly active users | 67 million, down 1% year over year | This answers a different question from the record month. |
| Average daily active users | 31 million, down 2% | A small decline in the average daily audience. |
| Total gameplay hours | 6.65 billion, down 14% | Overall time played across the store fell. |
| Third-party gameplay hours | 2.78 billion, up 4% | Time in partner games increased. |
| PC player spending on the store | $1.16 billion, up 6% | Store-wide spending, not the store’s net income. |
| Spending on third-party PC games | $400 million, up 57% | Epic’s reported measure; see the accounting-scope caveat below. |
These figures come from Epic’s own annual report. They are useful operating indicators, but they are not an independently audited profit statement or a like-for-like market-share comparison with Steam. Epic says total gameplay hours declined while hours in third-party titles increased. So neither “everything at Epic is shrinking” nor “every measure is growing” accurately reflects the full table.
Why you should not simply compare $400 million with $255 million
Epic says third-party PC game spending reached $400 million in 2025, up 57%. Its 2024 year-in-review reported $255 million for third-party applications using Epic Payments and explicitly excluded publishers that processed purchases through their own payment systems. The 2025 report describes consumer spending more broadly and separately notes games using their own payment solutions.
That means the two public dollar figures do not, by themselves, make a clean bridge from $255 million to $400 million. Quote the 57% as Epic’s stated year-over-year change; do not recompute it from the two headline amounts as if their scopes were identical. When comparing platform spending, the payment channels and included titles matter as much as the dollar sign.
The “cannot recover” quote is not Newzoo’s official market forecast
In an August 2026 PC Gamer interview, Emmanuel Rosier, Newzoo’s director of market intelligence, gave his personal view that Steam’s position and Epic’s free-game-led use pattern made a recovery difficult. The article later added a response from Epic Games Store general manager Martin Keely, who pointed to Epic’s 2025 records in third-party playtime and spending. It also included a Newzoo disclaimer: Rosier’s remarks were not based on Newzoo data or analysis and should not be treated as the firm’s market assessment.
That distinction matters. An analyst’s interview opinion is not automatically the research firm’s formal forecast. Epic’s rebuttal is also a company statement based on company-reported results, not an independent audit. Rather than treating the exchange as a winner-takes-all debate, ask what each claim measures and who produced the evidence.
Why user counts alone do not settle platform competition
A game store is a two-sided platform connecting players with game developers and publishers. A larger audience can make a store more attractive to developers; a stronger catalog can, in turn, attract players. Research on platform competition says the picture also depends on factors such as network effects, exclusive content, whether games appear on multiple platforms, service quality, revenue sharing, and how the platform is governed.
Landsman and Stremersch’s empirical study of video-game consoles found that platform outcomes were shaped not only by the number of applications, but also by whether publishers placed games on multiple platforms and by platform maturity. Their study concerns consoles, not the Epic-versus-Steam PC storefront contest, so it cannot establish which PC store is winning. It does offer a useful caution: a single count of accounts or games is not a complete scorecard.
Free giveaways can bring people to a platform. Whether those people return to play, spend money, and attract developers over time is a separate question. Epic says players claimed 662 million free titles in 2025. That measures the scale of claims; it does not tell us how many recipients became repeat players or whether each giveaway produced lasting value.
What happens to your library if the store gets smaller?
The annual metrics and interview reviewed here do not guarantee future access to purchased games, and they do not predict that Epic will close its store. How a game works can depend on its account requirements, online services, and other game-specific conditions. It would be just as unsupported to promise that every library item will remain accessible indefinitely as it would be to say the games are about to disappear.
Before buying a duplicate copy out of concern, check:
- Whether there is a current service outage. Epic’s official status page separates components such as store browsing, ecommerce, and account services.
- Whether a game can be installed or its save data backed up. Keeping an installer does not guarantee that a title requiring account authentication or online services will keep working.
- What would actually transfer if you rebuy elsewhere: save files, DLC, friends, mods, online servers, and refund eligibility can all differ by game and platform.
What to watch next
Look for multi-year trends in average activity, third-party playtime and spending, continued developer releases, and measurable improvements to launcher reliability and game discovery. Independent data separating a short-lived login spike during a giveaway from repeat play months later would help answer whether free claims become durable engagement.
The public material reviewed here does not disclose the Epic Games Store’s current operating profit, the net cost of the free-games program, long-term return rates by game, or a Steam comparison calculated on the same basis. Without those measures, we cannot determine whether engagement gains translate into store profitability or whether the competitive gap is narrowing. The practical approach is to distinguish company-reported metrics from independently verified outcomes.
Sources and research
- Epic Games Store 2025 Year in Review — 2025 engagement, spending, playtime, giveaways, and catalog figures. This is Epic’s own report.
- Epic Games Store 2024 Year in Review — states that the $255 million third-party spending figure excluded publishers using their own payment solutions.
- PC Gamer: Can the Epic Games Store turn things around? — interview opinion, Epic’s response, and Newzoo’s disclaimer.
- Rietveld, J. & Schilling, M. A. (2021), “Platform Competition: A Systematic and Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature”, Journal of Management. A review of 333 platform-competition articles.
- Landsman, V. & Stremersch, S. (2011), “Multihoming in Two-Sided Markets: An Empirical Inquiry in the Video Game Console Industry”, Journal of Marketing. This is a console-industry study, not direct evidence about PC stores.
Checked October 13, 2026. Company-reported annual figures are not treated as an independent audit or as a like-for-like comparison with Steam.