Epic CEO says it "heavily reinvests" in EGS users, takes a potshot at Steam chief Gabe Newell's "yachts and diamond teeth"

It’s no secret that Steam dwarfs the Epic Games Store when it comes to the amount of purchases and the number of active users. Epic’s never been shy of that fact. The company’s CEO, Tim Sweeney, has been equally unshy about criticizing some of Valve’s practices. Now, in the process of acknowledging how making a game free on EGS for a week increases sales on other platforms, including Steam, Sweeney appears to have taken a rather fierce jab at Valve boss Gabe Newell.

This all began last week following comments made by David Oshry, the CEO of New Blood Interactive. He revealed in a post on X that the while one of the publisher’s games, Blood West, was a free Epic game over the holidays, it “sold like 200% more on Steam that day.” He also described the Epic freebie promotion as “great advertising” for sales on Valve’s storefront. Oshry followed this up by saying that it was a “win win” situation, as New Blood let developer Hyperstrange keep any money made from the deal with Epic (which it’ll reinvest into new DLC), while the publisher benefitted from the spike in Steam sales.

Responding to coverage of Oshry’s remarks on X, Sweeney has acknowledged this as a trend, saying that going free on Epic is a feature that “developers have taken advantage of all along!”

“Being free for a week on Epic raises awareness everywhere,” he adds. “Games also on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, Steam, iOS, or Android see an uplift when it’s free on Epic.”

In a second response to the same post, Sweeney draws more comparisons between EGS and Steam and doubles down on his already very strong position on storefront monopolies.

“Epic and Steam compete for each customer and each sale. On some transactions, Epic wins. On more, Steam wins. But one thing is constant on every transaction: gamers and developers win by having more options and [a] better deal,” he says.

However, following up on this post, Sweeney talks more frankly about the benefits Epic gives to developers, and why some statistics are not representative of the actual number of transactions on the Epic Games Store. While not mentioning him by name, he also appears to take a snipe at Newell.

“Though Epic processes only around 7% as many third-party payments as Steam, that vastly underreports economic activity as devs on Epic Games Games store are free to process their own payments and keep 100%, and many major games like GTA do so.

“The more telling number is monthly active users, where Epic Games Store is 55%-60% the size of Steam. We heavily reinvest back into engaging users through the Free Games Program, putting our revenue back to work for developers in a way that those yachts and diamond teeth don’t.”

Yikes. Of course, Newell’s yacht fascination is well-documented – last year, he even acquired custom yacht builder Oceanco. The “diamond teeth” reference appears to be in reference to an image of Newell that’s been circulated in memes over recent months, in which he’s shown wearing diamond grills with a matching watch and ring. The image is almost certainly edited to include these accessories, and there’s no evidence of this being a real photo of Newell.

While Epic’s approach to regularly give away free games and let developers process their own transactions is of course commendable, Sweeney’s communication is often less so. However, it is very interesting to see that publishers and devs can use the Epic Games Store giveaways as launchpads for sales on other platforms too. Right now, a double act of Styx games are currently available for you to claim until Thursday, January 22 at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT / 5pm CET, at which point Rustler (a medieval tribute to old school GTA games) will replace it.