If you're an indie developer deciding where to release your game, you've almost certainly stared at the numbers: Steam takes 30%, Epic takes 12%. On paper, Epic looks like the obvious winner. But this decision is about a lot more than the revenue split, and if you get it wrong, you could leave serious money on the table. I've watched dozens of indie launches play out across both platforms, and the reality is more nuanced than either storefront's marketing would suggest.
Let's break down every factor that actually matters, run the real math, and figure out where your game belongs.
Revenue share: the headline numbers
This is where most developers start, so let's get it out of the way.
Steam's tiered structure
- •First $10 million in revenue: Steam takes 30%, you keep 70%
- •$10 million to $50 million: Steam takes 25%, you keep 75%
- •Above $50 million: Steam takes 20%, you keep 80%
Epic Games Store
- •Flat 12% across all revenue levels, you keep 88%
- •If your game uses Unreal Engine, Epic waives the standard 5% engine royalty on EGS sales
For a detailed walkthrough of what Steam's cut actually means after regional pricing, refunds, and taxes, read our Steam revenue share breakdown.
The per-unit difference is significant. On a $14.99 game, you keep $10.49 per sale on Steam versus $13.19 on Epic. That's $2.70 more per unit on Epic -- roughly a 26% increase in per-sale revenue. If everything else were equal, this would be a no-brainer. But everything else is very much not equal.
Let's be honest about the tiers, too. Almost no indie game hits $10 million in revenue. The indie game revenue data makes this clear: the median indie game earns between $5,000 and $15,000 lifetime. So for practical purposes, Steam's rate is a flat 30% for indie developers. Epic's flat 12% applies to everyone equally, which is genuinely more developer-friendly in structure.
Audience size and reach
This is where the calculus starts to shift.
Steam has roughly 130+ million monthly active users. Epic Games Store has around 70 million monthly active users. But those raw numbers don't tell the full story.
Steam's 130 million MAU represents an audience that actively browses, wishlists, and purchases games as a primary activity. These are people who open Steam specifically to find something to play. The platform has over two decades of habitual buyer behavior baked in.
Epic's user base skews heavily toward Fortnite players and free game collectors. Epic's free game program has been brilliant for growing account numbers, but converting those users into paying customers for third-party indie games has been a persistent challenge. The active buyer base for paid indie titles on EGS is substantially smaller than the headline MAU figure suggests.
What does this mean in practice? Most indie developers who've released simultaneously on both platforms report that Steam generates 5-20x more revenue than Epic for the same title. Some report ratios as high as 50:1. These aren't outliers -- this is the consistent pattern across hundreds of indie releases.
A larger audience that actively buys indie games is worth more than a lower platform fee. The question is whether the gap is large enough to offset the revenue share difference. We'll do that math below.
Discovery and discoverability
Discoverability is where Steam has built an enormous structural advantage over the past decade, and it's the factor most developers underestimate.
Steam's discovery ecosystem
Steam runs multiple discovery systems in parallel. The Discovery Queue serves personalized game recommendations based on play history, wishlists, and browsing patterns. For many indie games, this is the single largest source of organic traffic. Our deep dive into Steam's algorithm covers how these systems decide which games get shown and which get buried.
Beyond the Discovery Queue, Steam offers:
- •Tag-based recommendations that surface your game to players who enjoy similar titles
- •"More Like This" sections on every store page, creating cross-pollination between similar games
- •Curators and curator lists that drive targeted traffic
- •User reviews that function as both social proof and a discovery signal
- •Wishlists that create a notification pipeline for future sales and launches
- •Search ranking that considers review quality, tag relevance, and historical performance
The net effect is that a well-optimized indie game on Steam can generate meaningful organic traffic without any external marketing spend. It's not magic -- you still need a strong capsule, good tags, and decent reviews -- but the infrastructure exists and it works.
Epic's approach
Epic takes a more curated, editorial approach to discovery. Their store features fewer games and relies more on hand-picked editorial placements, rotating sales, and the free game program to drive traffic.
This approach has some advantages: if Epic features your game, the spotlight is less diluted than on Steam where thousands of games compete for attention. The storefront is cleaner and less overwhelming for buyers.
But for indie developers who aren't selected for editorial placement, organic discovery on EGS is significantly harder. There's no equivalent to Steam's Discovery Queue algorithm that quietly surfaces niche games to interested audiences at scale. If you're not on the front page, you're largely invisible -- and most indie games aren't on the front page.
Epic has been steadily improving their discovery tools, including better search, browsing filters, and user reviews (which launched years after the store itself). But as of 2026, the gap between Steam's discovery infrastructure and Epic's remains substantial.
Developer tools comparison
The tools each platform provides can significantly affect your development workflow and your ability to engage players.
Steamworks
Steam's developer toolkit is mature, comprehensive, and frankly hard to compete with:
- •Steamworks API for achievements, leaderboards, cloud saves, matchmaking, and anti-cheat
- •Steam Workshop for community modding, which extends your game's lifespan dramatically
- •Steam Input for universal controller support
- •Steam Remote Play and Remote Play Together for local co-op over the internet
- •Steamworks SDK with robust documentation and an active developer community
- •Detailed analytics covering traffic sources, conversion rates, wishlist data, and revenue breakdowns
- •Community features including forums, guides, screenshots, and artwork sharing
- •Playtest feature that lets you run public betas with a separate app ID
These tools aren't just nice-to-haves. Workshop support alone can triple a game's lifetime by enabling community content. Achievements and trading cards drive engagement. The analytics dashboard gives you actionable data on what's working and what isn't.
Epic Games Store tools
Epic's developer tools have improved over the years, but the suite is leaner:
- •Epic Online Services for matchmaking, voice chat, and cross-platform features (available even outside EGS)
- •Achievements (added after the store's launch)
- •User reviews (added later as well)
- •Mod support through Epic's mod marketplace
- •Cloud saves
- •Store page analytics (more limited than Steam's)
Epic Online Services deserve special mention because they're available as a free, standalone SDK regardless of where you sell your game. They're solid for multiplayer features. But as a complete publishing toolkit, Steamworks still offers significantly more depth, better documentation, and a larger community of developers who've solved every problem you'll encounter.
Marketing support and events
Both platforms offer marketing support, but they do it very differently.
Steam's event infrastructure
Steam runs a calendar of events that indie developers can plug into:
- •Steam Next Fest (multiple times per year) lets you publish a free demo and get significant visibility during a concentrated promotional window. For many indie games, Next Fest is the single biggest wishlist-building opportunity before launch.
- •Seasonal sales (Summer, Winter, Autumn, Spring) drive massive traffic. Participating with a meaningful discount puts your game in front of millions of browsing shoppers.
- •Genre-specific festivals and themed events surface games in focused categories.
- •Daily Deals, Midweek Madness, and Weekend Deals offer promotional slots that Valve selects editorially.
- •Store page events and announcements let you notify wishlisters and followers directly.
The key advantage here is that these events are systemic. You don't need to be hand-picked for most of them -- you just participate and the platform's traffic does the work.
Epic's marketing approach
Epic's marketing support for indie titles has historically centered on:
- •Free game program: Epic pays developers an upfront fee to make their game free for a limited time. This generates massive download numbers and exposure, but the direct revenue benefit comes from the upfront payment rather than ongoing sales. For indie developers who get selected, this can be a meaningful cash injection.
- •Editorial curation: Being featured on Epic's storefront carries significant weight because fewer games compete for attention. But being selected is harder and less predictable.
- •Epic Games Store sales: Epic runs seasonal sales similar to Steam's, sometimes with aggressive coupon promotions that Epic funds. These can drive purchases, but the total buyer traffic during these events is smaller than Steam's equivalent sales.
- •Exclusivity deals: In the early days (2019-2021), Epic aggressively courted developers with upfront minimum guarantees in exchange for timed exclusivity. These deals have become less common and less generous for smaller indie titles, but they still exist for notable upcoming releases.
If Epic approaches you with a guaranteed minimum, that changes the entire equation. A guaranteed payment eliminates risk, which has real value -- especially for a small studio that needs certainty. But don't build your strategy around receiving an offer that may never come.
The math: does 12% beat 30% when Steam's audience is 2x larger?
Let's run the actual numbers. Assume a $14.99 indie game that would sell 10,000 copies on Steam over its first year.
Steam scenario (30% cut)
- •10,000 copies x $14.99 = $149,900 gross
- •After 30% cut: $104,930 developer revenue
Epic scenario (12% cut), assuming the same game sells only half as many copies on Epic
- •5,000 copies x $14.99 = $74,950 gross
- •After 12% cut: $65,956 developer revenue
Even with Epic's vastly better revenue share, Steam generates 60% more developer revenue in this scenario -- and a 2:1 Steam-to-Epic sales ratio is actually generous. Most indie developers report ratios of 5:1 or worse.
At a 5:1 ratio (more realistic for most indie games)
- •Steam: 10,000 copies, $104,930 developer revenue
- •Epic: 2,000 copies, $26,382 developer revenue
Steam generates nearly 4x more developer revenue despite taking 2.5x the percentage.
The revenue share only favors Epic when your Epic sales volume is at least 75-80% of your Steam volume -- and for the vast majority of indie games, that simply doesn't happen. Use the Revenue Calculator to model these scenarios with your own price point and projected sales.
Multi-platform strategy: should you do both?
Yes. In almost every case, you should release on both platforms. The question isn't whether to be on Epic, but how to prioritize your effort and timing.
The Steam-first approach
Most indie developers benefit from launching on Steam first (or simultaneously) and treating Epic as supplementary revenue. Here's why:
- •Wishlists build over time. Your Steam Coming Soon page should go up months before launch. Every wishlist is a potential sale notification on day one. There's no equivalent buildup mechanism on Epic that's as effective.
- •Launch momentum matters. Steam's algorithm rewards strong launch performance with sustained visibility. Concentrating your marketing push on Steam -- where the audience is larger and the discovery systems amplify momentum -- gives you the best chance at a strong first week.
- •Reviews compound. Early Steam reviews improve your algorithmic standing, which drives more traffic, which drives more sales and more reviews. This flywheel effect is unique to Steam's ecosystem.
When to add Epic
Release on Epic at the same time as Steam unless you have a specific reason not to. The marginal effort of publishing on a second platform is relatively small compared to the total development effort, and any additional revenue is welcome. Just don't split your marketing attention. Focus your launch campaign, influencer outreach, and community building on Steam, and let Epic sales come as a bonus.
The one exception: if Epic offers you an exclusivity deal with a guaranteed minimum that covers your development costs. In that case, the guaranteed money may be worth more than the speculative Steam launch revenue, especially for a small team with limited financial runway. Evaluate those offers on their merits, but don't turn down guaranteed money out of platform loyalty.
What about GOG, itch.io, and others?
GOG takes 30% (same as Steam) but has a smaller, more niche audience. It's worth being there for the DRM-free crowd, but don't expect significant revenue unless your game specifically appeals to that community. itch.io lets you set your own revenue split and is great for very indie or experimental titles, but the audience is a fraction of Steam's. Neither platform should change your Steam-first strategy.
The honest recommendation for indie developers
Here's what I'd tell any indie developer asking me where to focus:
Steam is your primary platform. Not because Valve is a more virtuous company or because 30% is a fair cut (it's steep, honestly). Steam is your primary platform because that's where the buyers are, that's where the discovery infrastructure works, and that's where your marketing efforts produce the highest return.
Release on Epic too. The extra revenue is real, even if it's a fraction of your Steam income. The 12% cut means you keep more of every Epic sale, and the effort to publish there is manageable.
Don't let the revenue share tail wag the strategy dog. A better per-unit deal means nothing if the volume isn't there. Focus on the platform that drives total revenue, not the one with the prettiest percentage.
Build your store page for Steam's systems. Optimize your capsule for CTR, nail your tags, build wishlists aggressively, and participate in Steam events like Next Fest and seasonal sales. These are the levers that actually move your revenue needle.
Take an Epic exclusivity deal if the guaranteed money makes sense. But don't count on getting one, and don't turn down Steam's audience without a very compelling financial reason.
The platform landscape could change. Epic could improve its discovery systems, grow its paying audience, or resume aggressive exclusivity spending. But you're making decisions now with the data available now, and the data points clearly toward Steam as the primary revenue driver for indie games in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Is Epic Games Store worth it for a small indie game with no marketing budget?
Honestly, the impact will be minimal. Without external marketing driving traffic to your Epic page, organic discovery on EGS is limited. You'll likely see a trickle of sales. That said, the effort to publish on Epic is relatively low once your game is built, so it's still worth doing for the incremental revenue. Just don't divert any marketing budget or attention away from Steam to support your Epic launch.
Has Epic's free game program helped indie developers long-term?
For developers who participated, the upfront payment was often the primary benefit. The exposure from being a free game does generate wishlists and awareness for future titles, and some developers report a "halo effect" where paid DLC or sequels benefit from the free game's visibility. But the free game audience tends to be less engaged than paying customers, so the long-term conversion to loyal fans varies significantly.
Should I use an Epic exclusivity deal to fund my development?
If the guaranteed minimum covers your development costs and you trust the terms, it can be a rational choice -- especially for a studio that needs financial certainty. The trade-off is real, though: you lose access to Steam's audience during the exclusivity window, and some vocal players react negatively to exclusivity. Weigh the guaranteed money against your realistic Steam revenue projection (not the optimistic one), and make the decision that keeps your studio alive.
Will the revenue share gap between Steam and Epic narrow over time?
Valve has shown no indication of reducing their 30% base rate, and Epic has no reason to increase their 12%. The competitive pressure from Epic hasn't changed Steam's pricing, likely because Steam's value proposition (audience, tools, discovery) keeps developers publishing there regardless. The more relevant question is whether Epic's audience and tools will grow enough to close the volume gap, which would make their lower cut matter more. That's happening slowly, but it hasn't fundamentally changed the calculus yet.
Ready to optimize your Steam store page for maximum revenue? Run your game through the Steam Page Analyzer for a detailed breakdown of your CTR potential, tag coverage, and conversion signals. Then model your cross-platform revenue with the Revenue Calculator using realistic assumptions for both Steam and Epic sales volumes.
For deeper dives, read our Steam algorithm breakdown, indie game revenue benchmarks, and revenue share explainer. Browse our genre-specific optimization guides for strategies tailored to your game type, and check the Steam Page Leaderboard to see how top games optimize their store pages.