Epic Games has long sought to challenge Valve's dominance in the PC gaming market, but an former engineer from Epic suggests that user loyalty to Steam is the primary reason for Valve's enduring success. Kiaran Ritchie, an ex-engineer at Epic, detailed his criticisms of the Steam platform on social media, arguing that Steam users are inherently resistant to alternatives.
Ritchie stated that even if a competing platform were objectively superior, Steam users would likely show no interest and might even perceive it as a threat. This sentiment, he claims, allows Valve to continue taking a 30% cut of game sales, which he described as being "siphoned out of the PC games industry into a black hole."
While Epic has attempted to differentiate its own storefront, such as by developing a faster-loading client, Ritchie believes these efforts are unlikely to sway the core Steam user base. He noted that the Steam client and its infrastructure are not overly complex, functioning essentially as a download service with a payment processor and additional features. The enduring appeal of Steam, according to Ritchie, lies in its user-friendly interface, centralized library management, familiar sales events, and social features like trading cards and achievements.
This perspective comes amid Epic's ongoing efforts to reduce marketplace commissions, which has also led to legal battles with Apple and Google regarding game distribution on mobile platforms. Despite Epic's legal victories against Google and a financial settlement with Apple, the challenge of unseating Steam on PC appears to be a more deeply rooted issue, stemming from the established preferences of its user base.