Epic Games has put a new executive in charge of its long-running effort to challenge Steam's dominance of PC gaming. On July 27, 2026, the company named Martin Keely, who spent the previous seven years as senior vice president running Blizzard's Battle.net launcher, as the new vice president and general manager of Epic Games Store and Epic Online Services. He replaces Steve Allison, who left Epic earlier that month to join Saber Interactive, the studio behind World War Z and the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine series, after roughly eight years steering the storefront.
The appointment, first reported by GamesRadar and confirmed by outlets including Tech Times and PocketGamer.biz, arrives at an awkward moment for Epic Games Store. The platform closed out 2025 with $1.16 billion in store revenue and a record $400 million in third-party player spending, according to figures cited by PC Gamer. Yet despite years of aggressive spending, exclusivity deals and a giveaway program that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, Epic Games Store still controls only about 3% of global PC digital game distribution, compared with roughly 74% for Steam, PC Gamer reported. Epic's own 2023 court disclosures put post-launch losses at more than $700 million.
That gap has persisted for seven years despite genuine growth on paper. Store revenue climbed from $950 million in 2023 to $1.09 billion in 2024 and then to $1.16 billion in 2025, a 6% year-over-year increase. Third-party developer game spending, meaning money spent on titles Epic itself does not publish, jumped 57% year over year, from $250 million in 2024 to $400 million in 2025, the highest total the storefront has recorded. The numbers show a business that is expanding in absolute terms while barely moving the needle on market share, a pattern analysts have pointed to as evidence that switching costs, not product quality, are Epic's real obstacle. PC gamers tend to accumulate libraries, friends lists, achievements and cloud saves on Steam, giving them little incentive to migrate even when a game is cheaper or temporarily exclusive elsewhere.
Keely's background is being read as a deliberate response to that problem. During his seven years atop Battle.net, Blizzard's launcher hosted Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and, for extended periods, Call of Duty's PC storefront presence. Coverage of the appointment, including reporting from Niche Gamer, credited Keely with overseeing growth and what Epic described as record results during that tenure, though specific subscriber or revenue figures from his Battle.net years were not disclosed publicly. The comparison outlets have drawn is less about scale than reputation: Battle.net is frequently cited by PC gamers as a launcher they tolerate without complaint, while Epic Games Store has spent years absorbing criticism over missing community features that competitors treat as standard.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the move, first surfaced in reporting from PC Gamer, Keely said he was excited to get started with the team delivering new capabilities that elevate player, creator and developer experiences. The reference to creators is notable because Epic Games Store has largely built its pitch to the industry around its 12% commission rate, a lower cut than Steam's standard terms, rather than around consumer-facing polish. Keely's language suggests that balance could shift more toward improving the everyday experience for players rather than continuing to lean primarily on financial terms aimed at developers.
Allison's Exit and an Open Question Over Xbox
Allison had run Epic Games Store since shortly after its December 2018 launch, making him the executive most closely tied to nearly the entire public history of the storefront, including its free-games program, its exclusivity agreements with publishers, and its antitrust battles with Apple and Google. Under his leadership, the store's catalog grew to more than 6,000 games.
Allison was also the executive who, in January 2026, said Epic intended to bring its storefront to Microsoft's next Xbox console on day one. According to comments reported by Video Games Chronicle and echoed in follow-up coverage from Game Rant, Allison said: "We definitely plan to be on the new hardware for Xbox, because, unless their policy or stance on it changes, they are telling us they're going to welcome that. And we're going be there, like, on day one." Whether that commitment survives the leadership change intact remains unresolved, and it is one of the more consequential questions facing Keely as he settles into the role.
For now, Epic Games Store's core challenge looks the same as it has for years: convincing PC gamers who already own their libraries on Steam that there is a reason to open a second launcher. The store's growing revenue and record third-party spending suggest the giveaway strategy and lower commission rate have built some loyalty among a subset of players and developers. But with market share stuck near 3% against Steam's roughly 74%, according to the figures reported by PC Gamer, the structural problem Epic has spent more than $700 million trying to solve has not gone away. Keely inherits both the balance sheet and the unfinished fight, along with a storefront that, by multiple accounts, still lacks some of the community tools that helped make Battle.net a launcher gamers accept rather than resent.
