There is a version of the Epic Games Store story that sounds genuinely compelling. A well-funded challenger arrives to break Valve's stranglehold on PC game distribution, offering developers a far better cut of sales revenue and handing out free games to build a loyal audience. On paper, it is exactly the kind of competition a healthy digital marketplace needs.
In practice, according to Dave Oshry, chief executive of indie publisher New Blood Interactive, it is closer to an elaborate way of advertising for Steam. And he has the sales data to prove it.
The Christmas Experiment
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with RPG Site, Oshry recounted what happened when Blood West, a supernatural stealth shooter published by New Blood's partner studio HyperStrange, was offered for free on the Epic Games Store over Christmas. His expectation was that the giveaway would cannibalise Steam sales during Valve's busy winter sale period. The opposite occurred: Blood West's Steam sales rose approximately 200% over those two days.
His conclusion was characteristically direct. The Epic Games Store, he said, functions less as a competitor to Steam and more as a free billboard for it. Players see a game on EGS, decide they want it, and then go and buy it somewhere they actually feel comfortable spending money. As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, Oshry's framing was blunt: you could offer developers 100% of revenue, but a percentage of nothing is still nothing.
The numbers behind his scepticism are worth stating plainly. When New Blood took over publishing for Blood West, HyperStrange retained control of the game's EGS listing. Oshry says he declined to take it on because monthly sales on the platform were not even reaching five copies.
What Epic Actually Offers
To be fair to Epic, the company has not been standing still. The Epic Games Store's current distribution terms are genuinely developer-friendly. Effective from June 2025, developers receive 100% of the first $1 million in net revenue per product each year, under the store's revised standard distribution terms. Once a product crosses that threshold, the standard 88% to developer and 12% to Epic split applies. Compare that to Steam, where the standard developer cut sits at 70%, and the contrast is striking.
Epic has also been growing. Spending on non-Epic games on the platform grew 57% in 2025 to a record $400 million. Monthly active users hit 78 million in December 2025, an all-time platform record. Those are not the metrics of a platform in freefall.
Yet context matters. Steam continues to dominate the PC gaming market with approximately 75% market share, generating $10.8 billion in revenue in 2024. EGS's $400 million in third-party game spending, impressive in isolation, is a fraction of what Valve moves through its platform on a comparable basis. The gap in active users is similarly large: Steam maintains 147 million monthly active users, against EGS's 78 million December peak.
The User Experience Problem
Oshry's sharpest criticism is not about numbers but about product quality. He argues that Epic has had roughly eight years to build something genuinely better than Steam and has not done so. The free game giveaways and the generous revenue split were conceived as hooks to bring players and developers across; the idea was that a superior store experience would then retain them. That superior experience, in his view, never materialised.
This is a fair critique, even for those sympathetic to Epic's mission. The company has fought important regulatory battles, including its well-publicised antitrust cases against Apple and Google, which have expanded the rights of developers to use alternative payment systems on mobile. Those wins have real value for the industry. But winning in court does not automatically translate into winning the hearts of PC gamers who have a decade of library, friends lists, and community features already embedded in Steam.
GOG: Beloved, Embattled, and Under New Management
Oshry's comments on GOG were warmer, if not exactly encouraging. He praised the platform's preservation work, including its one-click mod installers for classic titles and its hosting of large community projects. He noted, however, that GOG's sales now represent just 1 to 5% of Steam figures, down from a previous 5 to 10%.
The platform's decline as a share of developer revenue can be traced to a single decision by Valve: opening Steam to retro games. When Steam was primarily a home for new releases, GOG's niche as the destination for classic titles was protected. Once Steam dropped that distinction, the competitive logic that sustained GOG's early growth largely evaporated.
GOG has since changed hands. The platform, originally founded in 2008 as a subsidiary of CD Projekt, is now independently owned by a former CD Projekt executive who has been vocal about his intentions to improve the user experience. When coverage of Oshry's remarks circulated, GOG responded directly, agreeing that "game preservation only works if people care." The response was part rallying cry and part acknowledgement that the platform's survival depends on converting goodwill into actual purchases.
Oshry himself is not unsympathetic. He acknowledges GOG's DRM-free model and its preservation work as genuinely valuable. His concern is structural: a platform that everyone roots for but few people use as their primary store faces a slow erosion regardless of its ideals.
What This Means for the Market
The real question raised by Oshry's comments is not whether Epic or GOG can dethrone Steam; few serious observers believe either can in the near term. The more interesting question is what kind of competitive pressure actually changes Valve's behaviour.
Epic's legal victories have arguably done more to improve developer conditions across the industry than its store ever has. The antitrust rulings that forced Apple and Google to allow alternative payment systems were partly enabled by Epic's willingness to absorb enormous legal costs. That matters, even if the EGS itself remains a secondary destination for most players.
For Australian indie developers and small studios distributing globally through markets subject to ACCC oversight, the broader principle holds: platform competition is worth preserving even when individual challengers struggle. A world where Steam faces no meaningful rivalry is a world where Valve sets its own terms, indefinitely. Oshry's verdict on EGS may be damning, but the alternative to an imperfect challenger is no challenger at all. That, for developers and consumers alike, is the harder problem to solve.