Well That Didn’t Go According to Plan
The Epic Games Store burst on to the scene only a little over a year ago. It immediately marketed itself as a direct competitor to Steam. It seemed as though that Epic Games was going to try and smash the stranglehold that Steam has had on the PC market for so long. While a lot of people did not pay much mind to the Epic Games Store initially, the new online market exploded in popularity and was able to rake in $680 million in profits just in its first year. However, despite its astounding success, Epic Game might be hurting the PC market rather than adding a dose of healthy competition.
According to the NPD Group, an American marketing team, the sudden arrival of The Epic Games Store could be responsible for a drop in PC games sales. Since Epic Games launched its own store to compete with Steam, overall sales of PC games have dropped by 2%. While this is by no means catastrophic, it is noteworthy. There are multiple reasons why people could be buying fewer games, but it is likely that the Epic Games Store has played a role in the drop in sales.
It would appear that previous PC gamers have decided to make the switch to console or to just buy fewer games all together in order to avoid the confusion and hassle of having multiple games on various online markets. For instance, a PC user might only want to stick to using Steam or Origin for the simple sake of convenience. The rise in free to play games could also play a role in this as well. Nothing is written in stone.
Regardless of these numbers, it will be interesting to see how much Epic Games will grow this year.