Even though I completely hate blogs, I've decided to start this little thing that I will call "thoughts" or "opinions", where I will share my unfiltered opinions on certain things that concern me.
On Twitter, I keep seeing @TimSweeneyEpic cry about how Steam, and thus Valve, is a monopoly. Being the Valve fan girl that I am, I found these posts rather amusing because they were written in such a nonsensical way that only a schizophrenic alcoholic could come up with them, not a billionaire running a company in the same industry.
It would be okay if he were the only person who believed his own nonsense. However, Epic fanboys are genuinely 12, so they cannot do their due diligence and check whether what he's saying is actually true. So, in this post I will explain (idk for who) certain points they keep making and give the benefit of the doubt to both sides.
# Paid for exclusives
This point is first on the list because it's genuinely insane to me that people believe it is one of the EGS benefits. Yes, if you think from a one-sided perspective, it is really great: if you only use EGS, you get games, but if you're on Steam, you don't get that game because it's an Epic exclusive.
But if you have more than two brain cells, you would realize that if Epic didn't pay for exclusivity, everyone would get to enjoy the game, not just the people who play on EGS.
It's even worse from the developer's perspective. Since not many people are willing to use Epic Games, they're losing potential customers, and the only benefit they get is the exclusivity contract money. It speaks volumes when most exclusive games release on other platforms the day their contracts run out.
# Revenue split
Revenue split is probably the biggest thing people bring up when comparing Steam vs EGS, with Valve taking a 30% cut and EGS taking 12%, with Tim Sweeney calling 30% revenue splits predatory. People who bring this up are nowhere close to being developers, so I do not understand why they care. But even if they were, they would know 30% is the industry standard.
Yes, the industry standard is 30%, and yes, it scales drastically. Let's say you have 10,000 sales of a 40 dollar game. That's 400,000 USD in sales; however, Valve will take 120,000 USD as their cut, while EGS only takes 48,000 USD. That's a 72,000 USD difference.
We will ignore the fact that Apple, Google, Bilibili, GOG, and other platforms also take a 30% split and go straight to the why. It does make sense to argue that it's not fair they take this much if you think that both companies only publish games and do nothing else. Both EGS and Valve provide ecosystems to use with your game: one is called Steamworks (Steam Partner), and the other is called Epic Online Services.
So, what do they offer? Let's start with EGS. Epic Games Developer Platform offers:
- Publishing the game (obviously);
- Managing the store page, sales, and keys;
- Epic Online Services multiplayer (lobbies and sessions);
- Achievements, leaderboards, and statistics;
- Player user storage;
- EAC (the free version is very basic; to unlock most features, you need an Enterprise license);
- Player demographic analytics.
This is basically all that EGS offers to developers in their developer platform. I cannot share screenshots for either platform due to the NDA agreements every partner must sign, but finding screenshots or getting access to both is easier than you probably think.
Now, I'll list things Valve's Steam Partner offers:
- Publishing the game (again, obviously);
- Managing the store page, sales, and keys;
- Managing the publisher and developer pages separately;
- Achievements, leaderboards, and statistics;
- Player user storage (Steam Cloud);
- VAC (let's say it's better not to use this) and game bans (at the developer's discretion);
- Extensive analytics about every interaction a user has with the game;
- Extensive financial analytics;
- Role-based access to the partner account and its games;
- Ability to share and transfer the game between partner accounts;
- Publishing to Steam Next Fest (an annual fest for up-and-coming games, primarily from indie developers);
- Creating and managing game-specific forums;
- Full inventory and economy management (items, trading cards);
- Steam Market, where players can trade items from the game at any time (worth noting: Valve takes 5% on this, and you get 10% of the sale as the developer);
- Ability to publish per-platform builds (Windows, Linux, macOS);
- Wishlists;
- VR games are supported;
- Game-specific profile customization items.
This list is only from the perspective of a developer and is not complete for either platform. There are some things that I might have missed or omitted because I think they're insignificant. I've also condensed several points into one in some places because I don't think they deserve to be their own points.
From the player's perspective, there are several other great things going on on the Valve side, such as customizable player profiles; an economy where you can sell your items after you're bored with them (depending on developer decisions—this cannot be done in PUBG, for example); chats, broadcasting, guides, workshops with mods, and other features. EGS simply doesn't have any of this.
Also, I have to add that both the developer platform and the client itself on Epic Games' side feel awful and rather sluggish. The developer platform has broken views and sometimes simply refuses to load certain pages, and the client is built on Unreal Engine itself, so it feels awful, it crashes often, and the download speed often takes heavy dives for no reason.
An additional point I wanted to discuss is Unreal Engine. Since we're talking about predatory practices and Epic Games being all for stopping them, maybe they should reconsider having a licensing fee based on the store you're publishing on. Yes, having a royalty-based license is quite normalized at this point, but Unreal Engine takes it a step further and says that they won't take a royalty fee on sales made on their store.
After taking all these points into consideration, compare the ecosystems and think about which platform deserves your money and which doesn’t.
# Monopoly
"Valve is a monopoly" is the third biggest thing these people say. At this point, I start to believe that Tim Sweeney and his goons take their ideas from ChatGPT, since only a soulless clanker would come up with this nonsense. Not only is Valve not a monopoly legally, it’s also not a monopoly in the common sense. Yes, Valve has a dominant platform position, but it’s not paying for exclusives, for example, or actively trying to sabotage other platforms or any of that, unlike the other platform we're talking about. They just exist.
Real historical monopoly cases include AT&T, when they controlled nearly all telephone lines and equipment in the US. There isn’t much to add to this point, because I do not know who would ever come up with this crap.
# Great Things Epic Games "done"
Some people might say that Epic Games fought for consumers in court when they were suing Apple, and yes, at its core, it’s true that they were. But it was a marketing stunt with a good intentions as an unintended outcome. However, even in this case, they didn’t do anything; the judge in this case ruled in favor of Apple on 9 counts and in favor of Epic Games on 1 count related to third-party platform payments.
The fact that Epic Games made sideloading on Apple devices possible is completely false and made up. The court ruled in favor of Apple in the US regarding sideloading. Only in 2023–2024 did the EU Commission finally make the DMA enforceable and hold Apple accountable, and Epic Games had nothing to do with that.
# Ba-bai
I think it's a great point to end this post, because other points these people make are absolutely nonsensical, and trying to prove otherwise is basically giving in to the ragebait. I'd rather spend my time harvesting crops in Farming Simulator 2026 than argue on Twitter.