Originally released as Steam Greenlight, a fan-voted publishing service in 2012, the current iteration of the platform’s self-publishing arm, Steam Direct, has been a huge unlock for supply on the platform. Punctuated by the store’s standard (and industry leading) 88-12 revenue share, the new self-publishing tool is designed to give small developers the ability to launch and release their own games straight to EGS without having to work directly with Epic itself.Īn analysis of Steam’s own self-publishing service gives us insight into the inspiration behind the launch. The major development I alluded to earlier solves this exact problem, as the company publicly announced a self-publishing service for EGS. By that logic, the battle Epic needs to fight is not only at the top of the funnel, but at the bottom as well. A healthy marketplace needs to be sustained by a diverse and consistently growing array of genres and titles. That’s particularly true considering EGS has less than 1% of the titles that Steam has. Even with more of a diversified publishing budget, the battle for marketplace dominance won't be entirely won by having a more successful game in the No.
#Epic games number free
The other concern I have with leaning too heavily on Epic’s publishing model falls on marketplace concentration that is, will a small portion of the games generating a large portion of the revenue turn EGS into a hits-driven platform rather than a self-sustaining marketplace? It also doesn’t help that the common narrative around EGS today is that its value is derived from first-party Epic titles and free games, while Steam is often hailed for having a large, diverse library of content (even if a majority of that content isn’t high quality.)ĭata from the Epic v Apple antitrust case has already shown us that nothing besides the biggest games made an impact in the pre-publishing, minimum guarantee-centric era for EGS. I expect to see growing results here with the launch of Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake II later in 2023, but the budgets and development timelines for these games may not bear fruit for some time.
#Epic games number cracked
Epic-published Fall Guys cracked EGS’s top games, but smaller titles like PC Building Simulator 2 and Touch Type Tale II weren’t major needle movers (though to be fair they were never intended to be).
To some degree, it’s still too early to tell if I was right. In my analysis of Epic’s prior year, I was convinced the solution to the problem was further development of the company’s publishing arm. This is a far cry from the 75% revenue attribution seen when EGS launched years ago, but still indicates a pretty heavy reliance on a small handful of first-party titles - relative market share, though, indicates room to grow in other areas. EGS General Manager Steve Allison said as much in a recent interview with Axios, where he admitted the store derives almost half (in the range of 40 to 45% of revenue) from EGS exclusive titles. Third-party contribution to EGS is improving YoY, but not fast enough to offset the slowdown in spending from Epic’s own first-party title. Despite third-party spend increasing, total spend inclusive of both first and third-party games was down 2% YoY. One year later, and the proof is in the numbers.
While this development isn’t surprising - Valve’s own games dominate two of Steam’s top five slots - it does emphasize a core issue I pointed to in my analysis of the store’s 2021 performance early last year: EGS is a top-heavy marketplace with an over-reliance on first-party games.
Epic-owned properties like Fortnite and Rocket League in addition to Genshin Impact - which is not available on Steam - and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (EGS deal) top the charts. This is mainly that GaaS-powered, first-party titles and platform-specific releases continue be the most popular games on the store. The company offered players 99 new free games, which were downloaded by over 700 million timesĪs analyst Simon Carless noted in his coverage, a deeper look at the metrics reveals a trend for EGS that we’ve been seeing play out since its launch in late 2018. Spend for third-party games increased 18% YoY to $355 million, while first-party spend was down 14% YoY to $465 million Total games on EGS grew by 626 titles, bringing the total to 1,548 MAUs and DAUs peaked at 62 million (up 6 million YoY) and 34.3 million respectively The post revealed some now-familiar numbers around usage and spend - and one big publishing announcement I’ll touch on in a bit - that further help put EGS’s uphill battle against Steam in perspective: Epic Games released its annual Year In Review for Epic Game Store (EGS), revealing in detail some key statistics about its Steam competitor’s 2022 performance.
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