Steam vs Epic vs GOG: 16-Day Refund Gap [2026]

September 10, 2026

20 min read

Steam still sets the pace for PC gaming, but the argument over where to actually buy your games has not gone away. Valve’s storefront pulled in an estimated $11.1 billion in gross revenue during the first half of 2026, up 14.5% year over year, and hit an all-time concurrent user peak of 42,042,778 players on January 11, 2026. Epic Games Store keeps undercutting Valve’s commission with a flat 12% cut. GOG keeps selling DRM-free installers to people who want to own their games outright, not rent access to them through a launcher. Each platform made real changes in 2025 and 2026, and the gap between them now comes down to money, control, and what happens to your library if a company disappears. This comparison walks through the numbers platform by platform, so you can pick the store that matches how you actually play.

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Steam vs Epic Games Store vs GOG: What Changed in 2026

The three storefronts started 2026 further apart than they were a few years ago. Steam has leaned into hardware, not just software, with the Steam Deck’s compatibility program crossing 30,000 rated titles by late August 2026, split between 8,939 marked Verified and 21,067 marked Playable, according to tracking data compiled by GamingOnLinux. Epic Games Store spent the year trying to prove that a 12% revenue cut is a sustainable business, not just a launch promotion, while quietly loosening its weekly free-games program from a rigid schedule into more of an event-driven calendar. GOG, owned by CD Projekt, kept doing what it has always done: selling DRM-free installers backed by a refund window that is more than twice as long as its two bigger rivals.

None of the three platforms fundamentally rewrote their business model this year. What changed is the context around them. Steam’s dominance is now measured in hardware as much as software, thanks to a wave of Steam Deck-adjacent handhelds that all lean on Valve’s compatibility layer. Epic is defending its 12% cut against a Steam ecosystem that, per Icon Era’s 2026 statistics roundup, still commands somewhere between 70% and 75% of PC game distribution. GOG remains the smallest of the three by a wide margin, but it is the only one that lets you walk away with an installer file that works with no internet connection and no client running in the background, a pitch that matters more every time a publisher shuts down a live-service game or a storefront goes dark.

Platform Snapshot: How Steam, Epic, and GOG Position Themselves

Steam is the default. It launched in 2003 as a patching tool for Valve’s own games and grew into the largest PC game storefront in the world, with a catalog that spans nearly every genre, price point, and platform integration imaginable. Its pitch in 2026 has not changed much: the biggest library, the deepest community tools, and the tightest hardware integration through Steam Deck, Steam Input, and Steam Cloud. Developers accept Valve’s cut because Steam’s install base still delivers more organic discovery than any competitor.

Epic Games Store launched in December 2018 funded by Fortnite’s revenue, and its entire strategy has been built around a single number: 12%. Tim Sweeney has argued for years that Valve’s 30% baseline is an artifact of a pre-mobile, pre-cloud era, and Epic used aggressive weekly free games and paid exclusivity deals to force the conversation. By 2026 the exclusivity spending has cooled, but the 12% cut remains Epic’s core differentiator, and it is still the platform publishers point to when they want leverage in negotiations with Valve.

GOG, short for Good Old Games, launched in 2008 and has stayed a niche player by design. Owned by CD Projekt, the company behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, GOG built its identity around DRM-free downloads and classic game preservation, later expanding into modern releases while keeping the no-DRM promise intact. It will never match Steam’s user numbers, but for collectors, archivists, and anyone burned by a game becoming unplayable after a server shutdown, GOG solves a problem the other two do not even try to solve.

Full Specs Comparison: 12 Categories Side by Side

The table below lines up the categories that actually decide which platform fits your setup, from revenue share to VR support.

Category	Steam	Epic Games Store	GOG
Revenue share (developer cut)	70% (75% over $10M, 80% over $50M sold)	88% flat (12% commission)	~70%, negotiated case by case
Refund window	14 days, under 2 hours played	14 days, under 2 hours played	Up to 30 days, played or not
DRM policy	Steamworks DRM plus optional publisher DRM	Launcher-tied, no unified DRM-free option	DRM-free by policy, no launcher required
Concurrent user peak (2026)	42,042,778 (Jan 11, 2026)	Not publicly disclosed	Not publicly disclosed
Estimated market share	~70-75% of PC distribution	Single-digit to low double-digit %	Under 2% of PC distribution
Family sharing	Up to 5 accounts / 10 devices, one active session	No dedicated sharing system	No formal sharing slots, license-based
Cloud saves	Yes, Steam Cloud, per-title opt-in	Yes, Epic Online Services	Yes, via optional GOG Galaxy client
Handheld/Steam Deck support	30,000+ rated titles (Verified/Playable)	No official compatibility rating program	No official compatibility rating program
VR support	SteamVR, largest native VR catalog	Limited, case-by-case VR titles	Minimal, mostly non-VR catalog
Achievements	Native, deep, trading cards and community market	Native since 2020, smaller adoption	Optional, only through GOG Galaxy client
Free weekly games	No standing program, seasonal sales instead	Weekly/event-based free titles continue in 2026	Occasional giveaways, not a fixed schedule
Client requirement to play	Required (Steam client)	Required (Epic launcher)	Not required, installer runs standalone

Revenue Share: Epic’s Flat 12% vs Steam’s Tiered 30/25/20 Cut

Steam’s commission structure has stayed the same since Valve introduced tiered pricing in late 2018. A title keeps 70% of gross revenue on its first $10 million in sales through Steam, then the developer’s share rises to 75% up to $50 million, and climbs again to 80% beyond that threshold. The tiers apply per title, not per publisher, so a studio with several mid-size games does not get to combine sales to hit the higher brackets faster. It is a structure that rewards blockbuster hits far more than the long tail of smaller releases that make up most of Steam’s catalog.

Epic Games Store skips the tiers entirely. Every title keeps 88% of gross revenue regardless of how much it sells, a flat 12% commission that has not moved since the store launched. For a studio selling a $1 million game, that difference is worth roughly $180,000 more in the developer’s pocket compared to Steam’s base 70% tier, assuming Epic drives comparable sales volume, which is the part publishers still argue about. Epic’s bet has always been that a smaller cut plus a smaller audience nets out better than Steam’s bigger audience with a bigger cut, and for some mid-size releases that math has worked out.

GOG sits closer to Steam’s model than Epic’s, with a baseline revenue split around 70/30 in the developer’s favor, though CD Projekt has been willing to negotiate different terms for specific partners or catalog deals. GOG has never tried to compete on commission percentage the way Epic has. Its value proposition to developers is different: access to a smaller but famously loyal audience of collectors who buy games specifically because they are DRM-free, and who tend to be less price-sensitive during sales than the average Steam shopper.

Example: $1,000,000 in gross sales for a single title

Steam (70% tier):   developer keeps $700,000, Valve keeps $300,000
Epic (88% flat):    developer keeps $880,000, Epic keeps $120,000
GOG (~70% baseline): developer keeps ~$700,000, GOG keeps ~$300,000

Difference vs Steam at this revenue level:
Epic Games Store: +$180,000 to the developer
GOG: roughly the same split as Steam, terms vary by deal

Refund Policies: Steam and Epic’s 14-Day Rule vs GOG’s 30-Day Window

Steam’s refund policy allows a request within 14 days of purchase as long as the title has under two hours of recorded playtime, a rule that has stood largely unchanged since Valve introduced it in 2015. According to a 2026 breakdown from DealCheckpoint, playtime counts across online, offline, and shared-library sessions, and bundles can still qualify for a refund if none of the included items have been redeemed and combined playtime across the bundle stays under two hours. Steam Support retains discretion to approve refunds outside that window on a case-by-case basis, but the 14-day/2-hour rule is the baseline every player should expect.

Epic Games Store mirrors Steam almost exactly: 14 days from purchase, under two hours played. The similarity is not a coincidence. Once Steam set the industry standard, matching it became the safe default for any competitor, and Epic has not tried to differentiate on refund generosity the way it has on commission rate. Some third-party purchases or externally redeemed keys on Epic can fall outside standard refund eligibility, so players buying bundled keys through Epic should check listing terms before assuming the 14-day window applies automatically.

GOG’s refund window runs to 30 days, more than double Steam and Epic, and it applies even to games that have been downloaded and played, not just untouched purchases. That generosity comes with a catch: GOG reserves the right to deny refunds it judges to be abuse, such as a pattern of finishing single-player campaigns and then requesting a refund every time. For the vast majority of buyers making a one-off return, though, GOG’s policy is the most forgiving of the three, consistent with its broader positioning as the storefront built around trust and ownership rather than transaction volume.

DRM Policy: GOG’s No-DRM Promise vs Launcher-Locked Libraries

This is the category where the three platforms diverge the most, and it is arguably the single biggest reason anyone chooses GOG over its larger rivals. Every game GOG sells ships DRM-free by policy. You download an installer, run it, and the game works with no authentication check, no background client, and no internet connection required after the initial download. If GOG shut down tomorrow, every game already installed on your machine would keep working exactly as it did the day before.

Steam takes a hybrid approach. Valve’s own Steamworks platform includes DRM features that tie a game’s launch to an active Steam login, and individual publishers can layer additional protection like Denuvo on top. Not every Steam game uses DRM, plenty ship clean, but there is no storefront-wide guarantee the way GOG offers one. In practice, most Steam games require the client to be running, even if that requirement is more about matchmaking, achievements, and cloud saves than active piracy prevention.

Epic Games Store does not advertise a DRM-free option at all. Nearly every title sold through Epic is tied to the launcher for installation, patching, and often for launching the game itself. Epic has never positioned itself as a preservation-focused platform the way GOG has, and its DRM approach looks closer to Steam’s launcher-dependent model than to GOG’s install-and-forget philosophy. For anyone building a library they expect to still run in ten years without an active internet connection or a company’s continued goodwill, GOG remains the only one of the three built for that specific use case.

Pricing and Regional Cost Comparison

None of the three platforms charge users anything to create an account or browse the storefront, so pricing differences show up in game prices, sale frequency, and how commission structure trickles down to what you actually pay at checkout.

Cost factor	Steam	Epic Games Store	GOG
Account/storefront access	Free	Free	Free
AAA game list price (typical)	$59.99-$69.99	$59.99-$69.99 (price parity with Steam)	$59.99-$69.99
Major sale events	Seasonal sales (Summer, Winter, Autumn) plus Steam Next Fest demos	Mega Sale (typically spring), event-based promos	Seasonal sales tied to CD Projekt’s calendar
Free weekly/periodic games	None as a standing program	Continues in 2026, shifted toward event-based cadence	Occasional giveaways, irregular schedule
Regional pricing model	Localized per-country pricing, PPP-adjusted in some regions	Localized per-country pricing	Localized per-country pricing
Bundle/key resale support	Restricted to official Steam keys	Restricted, third-party keys vary by publisher	Supports DRM-free installer resale via license transfer in limited cases

List prices for new releases have converged across all three stores. Publishers set the retail price, not the platform, so a $69.99 game on Steam almost always costs the same $69.99 on Epic and GOG. Where the stores actually differ on cost is discovery: Epic’s periodic free games and Steam’s frequent seasonal sales both function as informal discount mechanisms that shape how much the average player spends per year, even though the sticker price on any single title rarely changes between platforms.

User Base and Market Share: Steam’s 42 Million Concurrent Peak

Steam’s scale is not close between the three platforms. Valve’s storefront hit an all-time concurrent user record of 42,042,778 players on January 11, 2026, a figure confirmed at GDC 2026 and reported without a specific blockbuster launch driving the spike, according to multiple 2026 statistics trackers including Icon Era’s concurrent player report. Monthly active user estimates vary by source: some 2026 aggregator reports cite 132 million, others put the figure closer to 147 million, and analyst Simon Carless of GameDiscoverCo has estimated Steam may be approaching or exceeding 198 million monthly active users. Given the spread, the most conservative published figure, 132 million monthly active users, is the safer number to cite as a floor rather than a ceiling.

Market share estimates for PC game distribution put Steam somewhere around 70% to 75%, a range that has held roughly steady for several years despite competition from Epic, GOG, and console-adjacent storefronts. Epic Games Store does not publish detailed concurrent user or market share figures, and independent estimates put its share of PC distribution in the single digits to low double digits, well behind Steam but still meaningfully ahead of GOG, which typically ranks under 2% of overall PC distribution by most third-party estimates.

Steam’s August 2026 hardware survey reinforces just how dominant the platform has become as a data source for the entire PC gaming industry. Developers use Steam’s public numbers, from wishlist counts to concurrent player data, as a proxy for PC gaming trends generally, which gives Valve outsized influence over how the whole industry reads demand even for games that never launch on Steam at all.

Steam Deck Compatibility and Handheld Support

Handheld gaming is the one area where Steam’s advantage over Epic and GOG has become close to unbridgeable in 2026. Valve’s Steam Deck Verified and Playable rating program passed 30,000 total rated titles by August 31, 2026, broken down as 8,939 Verified and 21,067 Playable, according to tracking published by Handheld Atlas. That number has grown fast: the program sat at roughly 25,010 rated titles in January 2026, meaning Valve added close to 5,000 newly rated games in about seven months.

Milestone	Date	Verified	Playable	Total rated
20,000 games rated	June 2025	N/A	N/A	20,000
25,000 games rated	January 2026	7,518	17,492	25,010
30,000 games rated	August 31, 2026	8,939	21,067	30,006

Neither Epic Games Store nor GOG runs an equivalent official compatibility rating program for handhelds. Games bought on either platform can still run on a Steam Deck or a rival handheld running SteamOS, Bazzite, or a similar Linux-based build, but without Valve’s per-title testing and certification, players are left to check community forums like ProtonDB rather than an in-client badge. That gap matters more every year as handheld PC sales keep climbing, and it is a structural advantage Epic and GOG cannot close without building their own hardware-testing pipeline from scratch.

Exclusivity Deals in 2026: Has Epic Backed Off Timed Exclusives?

Epic’s exclusivity strategy defined its first few years, funding timed console-style exclusives on PC that kept titles off Steam for months or years at a time. That approach softened by 2025 and 2026. Tim Sweeney has described Epic’s current posture as more selective, favoring strategic partnerships and showcase titles over the blanket checkbook exclusivity deals the company signed in its early years. The dollar amounts involved in Epic’s exclusivity spending have not been fully disclosed for 2026, but industry coverage consistently describes the pace as slower and the scope as narrower than the 2019-2021 period when Epic was signing deals for major releases across the board.

Steam does not typically sign exclusivity contracts the way Epic has, but it still ends up with a form of de facto exclusivity for a large share of PC releases. Most publishers simply launch on Steam first, or launch on Steam only, because that is where the majority of the addressable PC audience already is. A mid-size studio choosing where to spend limited porting and QA budget will frequently prioritize Steam over Epic or GOG simply due to reach, which produces the same practical outcome as a formal exclusivity deal without any contract behind it.

GOG has never played the exclusivity game at Epic’s scale, though CD Projekt’s own titles have occasionally launched with GOG-specific bonuses or DRM-free day-one availability that Steam and Epic versions do not include. GOG’s exclusivity strategy, to the extent it has one, is about format rather than timing: offering a DRM-free version of a game as an incentive, rather than paying to keep a title off competing storefronts entirely.

Family Sharing, Cloud Saves, and Account Management

Steam’s Family Sharing feature lets a primary account share its library across up to five accounts and ten devices, though only one shared session can be active at a time, and some titles with third-party anti-cheat or VAC protection carry extra restrictions. It is the most fully built-out sharing system of the three platforms, letting households split the cost of a large library without needing separate purchases for every family member, as long as everyone is not trying to play simultaneously.

Epic Games Store has no directly comparable family sharing program as of 2026. Accounts function largely as individual entities, and any informal sharing happens outside any structured system Epic provides, governed only by its general terms of service rather than a dedicated feature. For households that rely on Steam’s sharing model to stretch a game library across multiple players, Epic’s lack of an equivalent is one of the more practical reasons to keep a primary library on Steam even while buying individual titles on Epic during sales.

GOG’s DRM-free model technically permits installing a purchased game across as many devices as a household needs, since there is no client-side check limiting simultaneous use, but that flexibility comes from the absence of DRM rather than a purpose-built sharing feature. License terms still nominally restrict use to the purchasing account holder, so GOG’s approach is less a family sharing system than a side effect of its no-DRM philosophy. On cloud saves, all three platforms support the feature in some form: Steam Cloud is opt-in per title and deeply integrated, Epic uses its own Epic Online Services backend, and GOG offers cloud saves through the optional GOG Galaxy client, which is not required to play GOG games but is required if you want cross-device save syncing.

VR Support and Community Features Compared

Steam remains the default storefront for PC VR by a wide margin. SteamVR supports the largest catalog of native VR titles among the three platforms, and Valve’s own hardware roadmap, including reporting around a next-generation Steam Frame headset, signals continued investment in VR as a core part of the platform rather than a side feature. Epic Games Store carries a smaller number of VR titles on a case-by-case basis, largely dependent on individual publisher decisions rather than any dedicated Epic VR initiative. GOG’s catalog includes essentially no meaningful VR presence, consistent with its focus on traditional single-player and classic titles rather than emerging hardware categories.

Community and discovery tools follow a similar pattern. Steam’s achievement system, trading cards, community market, curated recommendation algorithm, and Steam Next Fest demo events give it the deepest set of discovery and engagement tools of any PC storefront. Steam Next Fest runs multiple times per year and has become one of the most effective ways for indie developers to get playable demos in front of a large audience ahead of launch. Epic added native achievements in 2020 and has continued building out social features since, but adoption and depth still lag Steam’s ecosystem. GOG offers achievements as an optional layer through GOG Galaxy, its companion client, but because the core storefront experience deliberately avoids requiring any client at all, GOG’s community features stay secondary to its DRM-free value proposition rather than a primary draw.

Review aggregation and discovery also diverge across the three. Steam’s own review system, blending user reviews with playtime data, sits alongside third-party aggregators that weight Steam’s scores differently than Metacritic or OpenCritic, giving Steam an outsized role in how a game’s reputation forms in its first weeks on sale. Epic and GOG both rely more heavily on external review aggregators and less on in-house review systems with the scale Steam has built over two decades.

Real-World Scenarios: 5 Situations Where Each Platform Wins

Picking a platform usually comes down to a specific use case rather than an abstract preference. These scenarios cover most of the decisions PC gamers actually face in 2026.

Handheld PC gaming: Steam wins outright here. A 30,006-title Verified/Playable compatibility database, native Steam Deck integration, and support across rival handhelds running SteamOS-based builds make it the only realistic choice for anyone buying a Steam Deck, ROG Ally, or Legion Go and expecting a library to actually run well.
Building a long-term, offline-safe game collection: GOG is the clear pick. Its DRM-free installers keep working with no login, no client, and no ongoing dependency on the storefront staying in business, which matters most for classic and single-player games you expect to still play a decade from now.
Indie developer choosing where to launch first: Epic Games Store’s flat 12% commission gives smaller studios more revenue per sale, which can offset Epic’s smaller audience for developers who are not relying on organic discovery through Steam’s storefront algorithm.
Household splitting a game library across several players: Steam’s Family Sharing, covering up to five accounts and ten devices, has no real equivalent on Epic or GOG, making Steam the practical choice for multi-person households trying to avoid buying the same game multiple times.
PC VR gaming: Steam again, by a wide margin, thanks to SteamVR’s catalog size and Valve’s continued hardware investment, leaving Epic and GOG as afterthoughts for anyone shopping specifically for VR titles.
Chasing free games on a budget: Epic Games Store’s continuing weekly and event-based free game giveaways, even in their looser 2026 form, still hand out more no-cost titles per year than Steam’s occasional promotional freebies or GOG’s irregular giveaways.

Migration Guide: Moving Your Library Between Steam, Epic, and GOG

There is no way to transfer a purchased license from one storefront to another. If you bought a game on Steam, it stays a Steam license permanently, and the same applies to Epic and GOG. What you can do is consolidate the experience of managing multiple libraries, and move your actual save data and settings so switching platforms for a specific title does not mean losing your progress.

Back up cloud saves first. On Steam, confirm Steam Cloud is enabled per title under game properties before uninstalling anything. On Epic, check that Epic Online Services cloud sync is active in the launcher settings. On GOG, install GOG Galaxy if you want cloud sync, since the standalone installer does not sync saves on its own.
Locate local save folders as a manual backup, since not every game supports cloud sync reliably, especially indie and older titles that predate storefront cloud save standards.
If a game is DRM-free on GOG, download the offline installer and store it outside any client-managed folder, since that installer is your permanent, storefront-independent copy of the game.
Install GOG Galaxy 2.0 if you want a single client view across libraries. Galaxy can integrate Steam and other platforms into one interface without requiring you to actually own the games through GOG, though it does not merge licenses.
For cross-play titles that support saves synced through the publisher’s own account system rather than the storefront’s, log into that publisher account on the new platform’s version of the game before importing local save files.
Reinstall the game on the new platform and manually restore local save files into the correct directory if cloud sync did not carry them over automatically.
Keep the original platform account active even after moving your day-to-day play elsewhere. Wishlists, achievement history, and community data stay tied to the original account and cannot be exported.
Re-verify controller bindings and accessibility settings after migration, since Steam Input profiles in particular do not carry over to Epic or GOG versions of the same game.

The practical takeaway is that migration between storefronts is really about managing parallel libraries rather than moving a single library wholesale. Most serious PC gamers in 2026 end up running all three clients simultaneously: Steam for the bulk of their library and social features, Epic for free games and occasional exclusive picks, and GOG for anything they want a permanent, DRM-free backup of.

Pros and Cons of Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG

Steam

Pro: Largest catalog and largest active user base of any PC storefront
Pro: Deepest Steam Deck and handheld compatibility program, with 30,006 rated titles as of August 2026
Pro: Family Sharing across up to 5 accounts and 10 devices
Con: 30% base commission is the highest of the three platforms, dropping only at $10M and $50M sales thresholds
Con: Games generally require the Steam client running to launch

Epic Games Store

Pro: Flat 12% commission, the lowest of the three platforms by a wide margin
Pro: Continuing free weekly/event-based game giveaways
Con: No official Steam Deck-equivalent compatibility rating system
Con: No dedicated family sharing feature
Con: Smaller community and achievement ecosystem than Steam

GOG

Pro: DRM-free by policy on every title, no client required to play
Pro: Most generous refund window at 30 days, even on played titles
Pro: Strong focus on classic and preservation-minded game releases
Con: Smallest catalog and smallest user base of the three, under 2% of PC distribution by most estimates
Con: No official handheld compatibility program and minimal VR catalog

The Verdict: Which Game Platform Wins in 2026

There is no single winner across every category, and the data backs that up rather than pointing to one obvious answer. Steam wins on scale: a 42-million-concurrent-user peak, a 70-75% share of PC distribution, and a 30,006-title Steam Deck compatibility database that neither rival comes close to matching. If you own a gaming handheld, play in VR, or want to split a library across a household, Steam is not really a choice, it is close to a requirement.

Epic Games Store wins on developer economics, full stop. An 88% revenue share versus Steam’s 70% base tier is a real, quantifiable advantage for any studio deciding where to launch first, worth roughly $180,000 more on a $1 million-selling title. For players, Epic’s value is more circumstantial: free games and occasional price advantages during sales, without the depth of features Steam has built up over two decades.

GOG wins on ownership. A 30-day refund window and a strict DRM-free policy make it the only one of the three platforms built around the idea that a game you buy should keep working no matter what happens to the storefront itself. It will never be the biggest platform, and it is not trying to be. For collectors and anyone who has lost access to a game after a server shutdown, that tradeoff is worth the smaller catalog.

The realistic answer for most PC gamers in September 2026 is not to pick one. Steam as the primary library and social hub, Epic checked weekly for free games, and GOG for anything worth owning permanently, covers nearly every scenario this comparison has walked through.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Epic Games Store cheaper than Steam for buying games?

List prices are almost always identical across Steam, Epic, and GOG because publishers set retail pricing, not the platform. Epic’s lower 12% commission benefits developers, not the sticker price shoppers pay, though Epic’s free weekly games effectively lower the average amount players spend over a year.

Can I transfer a game I bought on Steam to GOG or Epic?

No. Game licenses are tied permanently to the storefront where you purchased them. There is no official transfer process between Steam, Epic, and GOG, so a game bought on one platform has to be repurchased separately to own it on another.

Does GOG really sell games with no DRM at all?

Yes, that is GOG’s core policy. Every game on GOG ships as a DRM-free installer that works without an internet connection, without a login check, and without any client running in the background, though the optional GOG Galaxy client adds features like cloud saves and achievements for players who want them.

Why does Epic Games Store still not have an equivalent to Steam Deck Verified?

Building a per-title compatibility rating program requires ongoing hardware testing infrastructure that Valve has invested in for years alongside its own Steam Deck hardware. Epic and GOG have not built a comparable in-house testing pipeline, so handheld players generally rely on community resources like ProtonDB to check compatibility for non-Steam purchases.

Is Steam’s 30% commission actually higher than Epic’s 12% for every developer?

Steam’s rate drops to 25% after a title crosses $10 million in sales and to 20% beyond $50 million, so very high-selling titles narrow the gap with Epic’s flat 12%. For the vast majority of titles that never reach those thresholds, though, Epic’s 88% developer share remains meaningfully higher than Steam’s base 70% tier.

Which platform has the best refund policy for players?

GOG’s 30-day refund window is the most generous of the three, and it applies even to games that have already been played, subject to GOG’s discretion around clear abuse. Steam and Epic both cap refunds at 14 days and under two hours of playtime.

Do I need to run a client to play games bought on Steam and Epic?

In almost all cases, yes. Steam and Epic both generally require their respective launcher to be running to start a game, even for titles without heavy DRM, largely to support achievements, cloud saves, and matchmaking. GOG is the outlier among the three, since its installers run standalone without any client requirement.

Has Epic Games Store stopped signing exclusivity deals?

Epic has not stopped entirely, but the scale has narrowed significantly compared to 2019-2021. Tim Sweeney has described the company’s current approach as more selective, prioritizing strategic partnerships over the broad checkbook exclusivity spending that defined Epic’s early years against Steam.

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Elias Virtanen

Cybersecurity Analyst

Elias Virtanen is the Cybersecurity Analyst at Tech Insider, bringing hands-on expertise from his background in penetration testing and security consulting. He previously worked as a security researcher at F-Secure in Helsinki, where he focused on threat intelligence and vulnerability disclosure. Elias covers ransomware trends, zero-trust architecture, and the evolving regulatory landscape including NIS2 and the EU Cyber Resilience Act. He holds a CISSP certification and an MSc in Information Security from Aalto University.

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