Epic Store Freebies Draw Early Traffic, Then Players Return to Steam, Say Ex-Employees

Two former Epic Games Store employees say the platform’s free-game promotions sparked an initial surge in users, but most players eventually migrated back to Steam, even as Steam logged record concurrent players (about 42 million) and Bloomberg reported Epic’s PC MAU at around 78 million. The piece notes that many users juggle multiple storefronts and that Epic pays developers less per sale than Steam, highlighting ongoing competition between PC game stores.