Epic has spent a lot of money building a PC gaming store that, if I’m being charitable, could best be described as “functional.” But Epic isn’t giving up on the Epic Games Store. In fact, it has a big roadmap that includes a list of upcoming features that will sound very familiar to anyone who has used Valve’s Steam store.
On June 18, as part of Epic’s Unreal Fest event in Chicago, the company behind Fortnite laid out its future plans for its now seven-year-old storefront and promised a big redesign as well as a list of useful features that are still, shockingly, not included in EGS. As documented by Reddit user ImAnthlon, photos from a talk about the next 12 months of the Epic Games Store listed some of these features as “Up First.”
- Third-party patch notes
- Epic parties (likely party chat)
- Library management and storefront improvements
- Cross-region gifting
- Fortnite Chunked Installation
- Pre-Registration for F2P Games
- Storefront Rearchitecture
Further down the line, Epic is promising written user reviews, player profiles (yeah, this is still not a thing), discovery improvements, publisher coupons, search improvements, and a public release of a redesigned “Version 2” of the Epic Games launcher and store. Beyond that, Epic says it’s working on third-party communities (perhaps forums), new API tools, universal controller support, and better notifications and social discovery.
And look, this all sounds good. But it also all sounds like features directly inspired by Steam. Now, if I were in charge of a digital PC gaming store that wasn’t Steam, I, too, would look at what Valve has done and copy their homework. It just seems odd to me that it has taken Epic nearly a decade now to implement features that Valve has had for many, many years. I’m also not excited to see how Epic integrates AI into the store or how it is used in coding it.
In 2021, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney claimed the store had lost over $300 million, but that was all part of a “fantastic plan” to build the store up and grow its business. Five years later, it seems like Epic still has a long way to go to compete with Valve’s beloved Steam.