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Valve (steam) and Epic Games net worth compared

  • -6

In the games market Steam has always been the dominant force when it comes to digital purchases of games.  Epic Game store has popped out of nowhere just two years ago, ready to compete against the digital game distributor giant.  you'd expect Epic games would be a lot smaller of a company than steam.  You'd be surprised.  check out the net worth of both corporations.

Valve was valued at $10 billion.
Epic Games is worth just shy of $30 billion

5 years from now we might not see Steam as the leading market share of digital games.  given the immediate rise of Epic Games Store.

Epic Games haters, i guess it's only a matter of time till we welcome the new overlord of digital games distributor.

Replies • 12

Epic Games Store as the leading market share does not sound likely. They would have a seat, but in no way would beat out Steam. As it is, Valve and Steam started as more Indie and became the standard for digital market games, even have a partnership with HumbleBundle. Then with Epic Games, they have been around for a very long time with the Unreal Engine, Tencent, and Fortnite. With the massive funding from Fortnite and Tencent, Epic Games' 'worth' can be seen as quite very inflated, especially seeing as how they started with a giant net worth before they opened Epic Games Store.

The idea that Epic Games being a small company does not make sense. Epic Games started in 1991 and Steam started in 2003. Epic Games has Tencent; Valve just have themselves. The major difference is that Steam is a digital market for games while Epic Games made games.

When Epic Games Store came out, they focused Indies and their giant Fortnite fanbase, plus giving away games. This was positive all around for them but the great majority disliked them. As time has gone on, it has been seen as very beneficial for Indies, plus allows for two separate launches: Epic Games Store and Steam. Some even did Early Access on Epic to launch in full on Steam. So, yes, the end game is to be on Steam. The exclusivity of Epic Games Store is what brings drawbacks and as such makes it more of a test if the game can do well since they only accept games that they foresee selling well and give the devs an advance payment. Steam accepts all but doesn't help that much past that, but it is the most popular market.

Steam will most likely stay as the top digital games distributor, mainly off of reputation, deals, connection with humble bundle, and how everyone has it. It is the same scenario as Nintendo: everyone has it and will keep going with it even if something new comes out.

Playing games off of Epics launcher feels the same as playing a pirated game, with the exception of multiplayer games cause you get to play on official servers, but even then it's not the same as on Steam. 

Steam is unique with its' features and other companies and people somehow can't figure that out.
Then we get dumbasses suing Valve for having an underhanded "monopoly" over game distribution, also people like you saying that Epic is "just better", when it doesn't have nothing compared to Steam

We should differentiate between Valve and Steam. Valve was founded in 1996 while Steam was initially an online copy protection system explicitly for Halflife 2 which wasn't welcomed by most of Valve's customers. Today Steam DRM copy protection is an industry standard. Steam store is the entity which most people mean when talking about Steam.

Through the ubiquity of Steam DRM it is almost unavoidable to have a Steam account for activating bought game keys and thus landing on the Steam store. Despite Valve doing a very good job at normalizing Steam DRM there are still many games available on the Steam store which don't use this copy protection.

The question if Valve has a monopoly through Steam DRM and Steam store is subject to an ongoing lawsuit. Be it as it may fact is Steam store had an estimated 75% market share of online game sales last year.

As a privately owned company with no financial data published it is difficult to estimate Valve's worth compared to a company with shares traded on the stock market (and an obligation to publish their financials).



I was very reticent to use Steam, this system seemed very closed to users and developers.
And I came to it little by little. I think it’s a reflex that has set itself up to play the game even though I have some very interesting games on Origin, Uplay or Gog I don’t have the reflex to go there for a ride on these platforms and prefer my purchases of new games on Steam... so they scored a point.
I should get into the habit of using GOG Galaxy which would allow me to see the games as games without any particular "editor" and not like Steam games, games that are generally also available on GOG especially and other digital publishers.
The interesting point highlighted in this thread is the anti-piracy protection system developed by Valve which appears to be effective.
The legal concern is also particular, the Steam games do not belong to the players, and they therefore cannot dispose of them as they want yet they bought it well.

epic has the Unreal Engine, so it has a higher value. But epic's user experience is bad, except that sometimes epic games are cheaper than steam. epic will develop better but will not surpass steam

Epic Games might have higher value cause of above said reasons, but EGS..

 Epic Games has been spending the big bucks to compete against Steam. From free game offerings to signing exclusivity deals with third party developers, Epic has been somewhat successful at pulling more customers to its platform, but at what cost? As detailed in the company's court filings in the lawsuit against Apple, Epic reported a $181 million loss in 2019 and $273 million in 2020 on the Games Store alone.

They are losing a lot because of investments for now to be considered steams rival. They do have other products and funding to cover this, but still as game store they are losing on every front at the moment

Wow, you are an idiot. This is like saying Apple is the best at making games because they owned Apple Arcade and they are the most valuable company in the world. 

Epics for now only have games has main feature;(i know they are trying to implemente new feature)
Steam have community and workshop as main and strong feature;(i know there is alot of other things)
My point is if Epics start to get more features/copy a little the steam they might to get more influence in the market.

rainyn said:


Indeed strong arguments!