An analyst has concluded that the Epic Games Store cannot "recover" in its long-running duel with Valve's Steam, a verdict Epic's own leadership rejects outright.

The claim, reported by Yahoo Finance, frames Epic's PC storefront as structurally unable to close the gap with Steam, which continues to dominate the PC games market. The analyst's specific reasoning and methodology were not detailed in the report, but the core assertion is blunt: the Epic Games Store has lost the contest for PC storefront supremacy and will not win it back.

Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison disputed that reading. "The data tells a very different story," Allison said, according to the report, pushing back against the notion that the storefront is in terminal decline.

The exchange marks the latest round in a dispute over the Epic Games Store's trajectory that has run since the storefront launched in December 2018. Epic entered the PC market with an aggressive strategy: timed exclusivity deals, free weekly game giveaways, and a 12% revenue share for developers, positioned against Steam's then-standard 30% cut. Valve has since introduced tiered revenue sharing, dropping to 25% for titles earning over $10 million and 20% above $50 million.

For developers and publishers, the stakes are operational rather than rhetorical. The Epic Games Store's 12/88 split remains the most favorable major-platform terms in PC distribution, and its free-games program has paid out to partners in exchange for titles given away to users. But Steam's scale — its user base, its community features, its workshop and review infrastructure, and its discovery algorithms — continues to anchor the majority of PC revenue for most studios, which is precisely the dynamic the analyst's assessment points to.

Epic has previously reported steady year-over-year growth in Epic Games Store users and spending, alongside continued investment in storefront features that Steam has long offered, including achievements, mod support and improved search. The company has also leveraged its ecosystem advantages: free titles through the store drive engagement with Epic accounts, which span Fortnite and the Unreal Engine marketplace.

The analyst's "can't recover" framing raises the practical question of what recovery would even mean for Epic — matching Steam's market share, achieving profitability on the storefront's own terms, or simply sustaining growth that justifies continued exclusivity spending and free-game payouts. Epic has scaled back some of that spending in recent years after layoffs and cost cuts across the company in 2023, when it cut roughly 830 jobs, citing over-spending relative to its financial reality.

Allison's rebuttal suggests Epic's internal metrics — presumably user counts, spending per user, or third-party revenue — support a more optimistic read than the analyst's external estimate. As with any analyst projection of private company performance, the figures driving each side's conclusions should be treated as estimates rather than disclosed financials; Epic does not break out storefront-level profitability.

For studios weighing launch strategies, the disagreement matters less than the underlying reality it describes: Steam remains the default first stop for PC releases, while the Epic Games Store functions for most publishers as a secondary channel with better revenue terms but a smaller audience. Exclusivity deals still exist but are rarer than at the storefront's peak in 2019 and 2020.

The open question is whether Epic's data-backed optimism shows up in the numbers it chooses to disclose next. Watch for Epic's next annual Epic Games Store year-in-review roundup, where the company has historically published user counts, spending totals and third-party revenue — the closest thing to a scoreboard this duel produces.