Epic says its Game Store has 58M MAUs, up from 56M at the end of 2020 and 32M in 2019; Steam's Valve had 120M MAUs in 2020
Nick Statt / Protocol :
Context & Ripple Effects
Epic's storefront disclosures now form a four-year arc. At launch it was framed as Fortnite's launcher with $251M in third-party sales; by January 2021 Epic was reporting 160M+ PC accounts, DAUs up 192% YoY, and $700M+ spent in 2020. Today's number is narrower — monthly actives of 58M, against Valve's reported 120M MAUs for Steam in 2020 — and the jump from 56M at end-2020 is the smallest yet.
The gap matters because Epic has been closing it slowly on the metric advertisers and publishers price: 32M in 2019, 56M a year later, 58M now. Meanwhile Valve's own baseline keeps rising — its 2017 disclosure already claimed 67M monthly players before reaching 120M.
First-order effects
- Epic can claim steady growth (32M → 58M in two years) but only marginal momentum since end-2020 (+2M), leaving it under half of Steam's 120M MAUs on the metric publishers compare.
- Valve needs no response this cycle: the comparison itself shows Steam's installed base still dwarfs Epic's despite years of Epic's exclusive-title push.
Second-order effects
- Publishers weighing Epic exclusivity deals now have a sharper picture: the reachable audience is growing far slower than Epic's account totals implied in January, so exclusives buy shelf placement rather than mass reach.
- Epic's own later reporting — third-party revenue up 57% to $400M in 2025 while player hours fell 14% — suggests the strategy is shifting from audience size toward spend per engaged user, which changes how future exclusives get priced.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, PC storefront competition settles into an asymmetry: Steam owns habitual reach, Epic buys incremental share through exclusives and payouts, and third parties arbitrage both — a structure where Epic remains a credible second buyer rather than a Steam replacement.
- Self-reported, selectively timed metrics (accounts one quarter, MAUs another, concurrents by Valve) are becoming the industry's standard disclosure practice, keeping regulators and developers reliant on figures each platform chooses to publish.
The trend: PC game distribution is consolidating into a two-tier market where Epic grows into a permanent, subsidy-backed challenger while Steam's engagement lead proves durable.