Valve vs. Epic: Ex-Writers Speak Out on the Brutal Reality of Private Gaming Monopolies

There is a version of this story that resembles a simple David vs. Goliath story, in which tenacious Epic Games charges at the gates of Steam’s massive, decades-old fortress with a lot of guts and a better revenue deal. The reality is much messier, particularly as of early 2026. Fortnite’s average monthly playtime decreased from 29 hours in 2023 to just over 15 hours in 2025, Epic laid off over a thousand workers for the second time in three years, and Tim Sweeney, the CEO who once claimed to be fighting for developer freedom, increased the price of Fortnite’s in-game currency a few weeks before informing his staff that the company was “spending significantly more than we’re making.” In the meantime, Valve is facing a $840 million lawsuit in the UK while quietly controlling about 75% of the PC gaming market. Neither business is quite the protagonist of its own tale.

Chet Faliszek’s recent remarks are so pointed because of this. Prior to leaving Valve in 2017, Faliszek wrote for Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, and Portal. In March 2026, he publicly questioned Epic’s decision-making on TikTok. His tone was more genuinely perplexed than triumphant: how does a business that makes over $6 billion annually get to the point where it must lay off 20% of its workforce? The question remains unanswered. The simple fact that managing a live-service gaming empire is more costly and unstable than it appears from the outside could be the solution. However, Faliszek’s conclusion—that Epic’s strategy has been based on burning money rather than creating something long-lasting—is more difficult to refute.

Epic has “had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season,” according to Sweeney’s own memo to employees. This is an open admission that the once-untouchable company has been having trouble keeping its audience’s interest. With average playtime and daily visits surpassing Fortnite for the first time, Roblox—and especially games like Grow A Garden—helped the platform reach its peak playerbase numbers in 2025. Writing about a game that was, only two years ago, the defining cultural force in online gaming for younger players is an impressive statement. Markets change. They can move quickly at times.

The more intriguing aspect of Epic’s strategy has always been the Epic Games Store. On paper, the 88/12 revenue split it offered developers was actually better than Steam’s long-standing 30% cut, and the claim that Steam’s commission acts as an inevitable tax on the whole PC gaming ecosystem is valid. Judge Whitehead accepted the plaintiffs’ definition of the market during class certification in 2025, allowing the US antitrust case Wolfire Games v. Valve to move forward. The plaintiffs define the market as PC game distribution, where Steam allegedly controls about 75% of sales. Approximately 32,000 publishers in the class have received certification. Valve’s actual behavior hasn’t changed as a result of any of that, but the legal pressure is increasing in a way that it hasn’t previously. In an effort to represent up to 14 million UK gamers who have bought games through Steam since 2018, the case was first filed in 2024 but was granted permission to proceed by a tribunal in January 2026. That is not a lawsuit for nuisance. How a platform can use market dominance to dictate the conditions of an entire ecosystem is an existential question.

The Epic Games Store never quite succeeded in outperforming Steam in its own right. With 78 million monthly active users as of December 2025, the store reported $1.16 billion in total PC player spending in 2025, up 6% year over year. In isolation, those figures are not insignificant. However, given Steam’s installed base, social features, library, and two decades of experience, they are a platform that users visit rather than inhabit. Commercially, there is a difference. The aggressive developer courtship, the exclusive offers, and the free game giveaways all made a difference without actually altering the game.

The difference between the two businesses as private entities is almost instructive when you watch this unfold. Gabe Newell is Valve’s boss. Epic responses to Tim Sweeney. Neither has a board that can compel an external strategic reconsideration, nor do shareholders demand quarterly explanations. This freedom is reciprocal. Faliszek contrasted Epic’s hectic, high-burn strategy, which left workers questioning whether they were truly safe after every successful year, with what he perceived as Valve’s more stable, if less ambitious, approach. It’s the kind of observation that seems like insider rumors until you see the CEO of the same company apologize twice in three years using nearly the same words.

Whether any of the lawsuits against Valve will significantly alter how Steam functions is still up in the air. Valve has substantial resources for a business that never really needed to go public, and courts move slowly. It appears more obvious that the PC gaming market’s structure, which is dominated by a single platform that players prefer and developers require, is not very healthy for anyone other than the two billionaires at the top. This is because the rival is more financially strapped than its revenue figures indicate. One side is squeezed by the developers. On the other hand, the players receive a disjointed and progressively more costly experience. Additionally, executives who were reassuring everyone a few months prior continue to offer severance packages and public apologies to the people who actually create the games.