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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →No. Epic’s shopping cart fixed an embarrassing checkout problem, but it did not make the Epic Games Store equivalent to Steam. Announced in December 2021, nearly three years after Epic’s late-2018 launch, the cart improved the transaction layer; Steam’s advantage is an entire ecosystem of libraries, community tools, mods, reviews, social features and entrenched user habits.
The feature that should never have been news
Epic Games Store existed for roughly three years before users could put multiple products into one ordinary checkout. The delay became shorthand for the store’s early priorities: Epic pursued exclusives, free-game giveaways and developer incentives while basic storefront conveniences arrived piecemeal.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
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Visa Virtual eGift Card | $54.95 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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Visa Virtual eGift Card | $28.95 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
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Visa Virtual eGift Card | $105.95 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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$500 Apple Gift Card—Email Delivery | $500.00 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
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Visa Virtual eGift Card | $206.95 | Buy on Amazon |
The historical context matters. The story covered here is from December 2021, not a newly added feature. Tech Times reported the launch on December 9, 2021, and Epic published its own announcement during the 2021 holiday-sales period: Introducing the Epic Games Store Shopping Cart.
A cart was useful and overdue. It was also only one missing piece of a much larger platform.
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- Visa Virtual eGift Cards are designed for online use only. Gift Cards are subject to Terms and Conditions: a.co/5bw3qXJ
- When you access your Visa Virtual eGift Card for the first time, you’ll need to register your name, address, phone number, and email address via activationspot.com. These details should also be used as your billing address for online purchases, as many merchants require address verification for purchase authorization.
- This Visa Virtual eGift Card is non-reloadable. No cash or ATM access. Visa Virtual eGift Cards are emailed active.
- Funds do not expire but your Visa Virtual eGift Card has a ‘valid thru’ date (9 years from date of purchase). If funds remain after this date has passed, please call the Toll Free number found on your Visa Virtual eGift Card for a replacement card. A one-time purchase fee applies at the time of checkout.
- This item is not eligible for refund, resale, or return. Available for sale within the United States only. Not available to residents of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia and the US Virgin Islands.
What Epic’s cart actually added
Epic’s implementation was more than a cart icon. It let customers:
- Add multiple paid games to one purchase.
- Add multiple free games to one claim transaction.
- Review the complete order before checkout.
- See prices in the applicable local currency.
- Choose an available regional payment method.
- Apply a Support-A-Creator code to eligible purchases.
- Move an item from the cart to the wishlist.
- Use “Buy Now” when they wanted to purchase one item immediately.
Epic described a 5% Epic-funded base rate for eligible Support-A-Creator purchases, with the possibility of higher rates under applicable programs. Product eligibility, regional rules, bundles, editions, ownership status and publisher restrictions can affect how a particular item behaves.
Why players noticed the change immediately
Sale shoppers
During a major sale, buying several discounted games one at a time created needless repetition. A single checkout made it easier to verify the total and complete a larger order without restarting the payment flow for every title.
Holiday free-game claimers
Epic’s holiday promotions often ask users to claim titles during short windows. A cart reduced the tedium of handling several free items, although it did not change the economics of the giveaway program or prove that claimers would later become paying customers.
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Rank #2
- Visa Virtual eGift Cards are designed for online use only. Gift Cards are subject to Terms and Conditions: a.co/5bw3qXJ
- When you access your Visa Virtual eGift Card for the first time, you’ll need to register your name, address, phone number, and email address via activationspot.com. These details should also be used as your billing address for online purchases, as many merchants require address verification for purchase authorization.
- This Visa Virtual eGift Card is non-reloadable. No cash or ATM access. Visa Virtual eGift Cards are emailed active.
- Funds do not expire but your Visa Virtual eGift Card has a ‘valid thru’ date (9 years from date of purchase). If funds remain after this date has passed, please call the Toll Free number found on your Visa Virtual eGift Card for a replacement card. A one-time purchase fee applies at the time of checkout.
- This item is not eligible for refund, resale, or return. Available for sale within the United States only. Not available to residents of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia and the US Virgin Islands.
Support-A-Creator users
Putting several eligible products into one order made creator-code use more practical. The cart therefore helped both customers who wanted to support a creator and creators whose codes depended on eligible Epic purchases.
DLC, bundles and editions
These are not always interchangeable with standalone games. Existing ownership, a required base game, regional availability and publisher rules can change whether a DLC item or bundle can be added together. A cart does not guarantee that every combination of products is valid.
Why the cart mattered to Epic
Checkout friction sits directly between browsing and payment. Removing it could plausibly increase completed baskets, make sales feel more credible and give Epic a less unfinished appearance. Those are logical business effects, not publicly measured conversion results supplied with the 2021 announcement.
The feature also signaled a shift from acquiring attention to operating a conventional store. Free games and exclusives could bring people to Epic; a reliable multi-item checkout gave them one fewer reason to leave before paying.
Rank #3
- Visa Virtual eGift Cards are designed for online use only. Gift Cards are subject to Terms and Conditions: a.co/5bw3qXJ
- When you access your Visa Virtual eGift Card for the first time, you’ll need to register your name, address, phone number, and email address via activationspot.com. These details should also be used as your billing address for online purchases, as many merchants require address verification for purchase authorization.
- This Visa Virtual eGift Card is non-reloadable. No cash or ATM access. Visa Virtual eGift Cards are emailed active.
- Funds do not expire but your Visa Virtual eGift Card has a ‘valid thru’ date (9 years from date of purchase). If funds remain after this date has passed, please call the Toll Free number found on your Visa Virtual eGift Card for a replacement card. A one-time purchase fee applies at the time of checkout.
- This item is not eligible for refund, resale, or return. Available for sale within the United States only. Not available to residents of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia and the US Virgin Islands.
What the cart did not solve
The cart changed purchasing mechanics, not the reasons users choose a platform. It did not provide:
- A Steam-scale community of reviews, forums, guides, discussions and profiles.
- A general Steam Workshop equivalent for distributing mods and user-created content.
- A reason to move an existing library, achievements, playtime history or social graph.
- Broader catalog coverage or a guarantee that every publisher would release on Epic.
- Lower prices in every region or on every edition.
- Better discovery and trust signals for evaluating a game.
- A different answer to the controversy around timed exclusives.
- Cross-store library consolidation.
- Assurance that a launcher, publisher account or required DRM would no longer be necessary.
Buying a game on Epic generally does not add it to Steam or transfer Steam achievements, Workshop subscriptions, reviews or playtime. A cart also does not establish identical refund eligibility for every item.
Steam’s advantage is an ecosystem, not a checkout button
Steam’s competitive strength comes from accumulated network effects. Players already have libraries, friends, reviews, guides, forums, cloud saves, controller tools and years of account history there. Developers benefit from reaching that established audience, while users benefit from the content and services created around it.
That creates switching costs. If the same game is available on both stores at a similar price, a Steam user must receive a meaningful benefit—better pricing, a preferred launcher feature, an exclusive release or a strong cross-progression reason—to accept another library and client.
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The comparison should therefore be made across more than checkout:
| Criterion | Question for Epic | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog breadth | Are important new releases and older games available without restrictive exclusivity? | Availability determines whether the store can become a default destination. |
| Price | Do regional prices, coupons, rewards and taxes produce a lower final cost? | A lower checkout total is a direct consumer reason to switch. |
| Trust | Can shoppers assess reviews, performance, refunds, DLC compatibility and requirements? | Good checkout cannot compensate for uncertainty before purchase. |
| Client quality | Is the launcher fast, stable and feature-complete? | Users interact with the client after buying. |
| Community utility | Are friends, guides, discussions, profiles and mod tools available? | Community services make a library more valuable over time. |
| Library permanence | Do users trust that purchases, saves, achievements and social connections will remain useful? | Long-term confidence encourages repeat spending. |
Epic’s actual competitive strengths
Developer economics
Epic advertises a standard 88%/12% revenue split and says developers receive 100% of the first $1 million in annual net revenue per product, followed by the 88%/12% split. These are Epic’s stated commercial terms and can change; they do not automatically produce lower consumer prices. Details are listed on Epic’s developer distribution page.
Free games
Giveaways lower the barrier to creating an account and can build goodwill. They also blur the difference between registered users, free-game claimers, monthly active users and paying customers. A large account audience is not proof of regular third-party purchases.
Regional pricing
Epic says it supports regional pricing in more than 190 countries and 30-plus territories, subject to the relevant product and market. Availability and final prices still depend on the game, edition, taxes, currency and local rules. See Epic’s regional-pricing support page.
Best Value
- Visa Virtual eGift Cards are designed for online use only. Gift Cards are subject to Terms and Conditions: a.co/5bw3qXJ
- When you access your Visa Virtual eGift Card for the first time, you’ll need to register your name, address, phone number, and email address via activationspot.com. These details should also be used as your billing address for online purchases, as many merchants require address verification for purchase authorization.
- This Visa Virtual eGift Card is non-reloadable. No cash or ATM access. Visa Virtual eGift Cards are emailed active.
- Funds do not expire but your Visa Virtual eGift Card has a ‘valid thru’ date (9 years from date of purchase). If funds remain after this date has passed, please call the Toll Free number found on your Visa Virtual eGift Card for a replacement card. A one-time purchase fee applies at the time of checkout.
- This item is not eligible for refund, resale, or return. Available for sale within the United States only. Not available to residents of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia and the US Virgin Islands.
Exclusives and launch incentives
Timed exclusives and incentives can attract games that might otherwise launch on Steam. They improve Epic’s catalog, but they can also alienate players who would rather keep one purchasing destination.
Fortnite and the wider Epic audience
Fortnite gives Epic an enormous potential funnel. It does not follow that Fortnite players will regularly buy unrelated PC games. Conversion into repeat third-party spending is the important question.
What later numbers say—and what they do not
Epic currently advertises a global audience of 295 million-plus users, regional pricing across more than 190 countries and 30-plus territories, and its developer revenue terms on its distribution page and Epic Games Store FAQ. “Users” is Epic’s commercial audience figure, not an independently verified count of active players, purchasers or concurrent users.
PC Gamer reported Epic’s 2025 year-in-review figures as more than $1.16 billion in total Epic Games Store spending, over 6,000 games and 6.65 billion gameplay hours. Total store spending is a more useful health signal than registrations, but it still needs context about first-party activity, Fortnite-related activity and third-party-game spending. It is a later indicator of progress, not evidence that the 2021 cart itself caused the growth. The report is covered at PC Gamer.
Epic Games Store chief Steve Allison has reportedly described the objective as gaining enough PC market share that developers and players cannot ignore Epic, rather than literally “toppling” Steam. GamesRadar’s interview is at GamesRadar. That is a reported executive comment, not a formal promise of parity.
How to judge Epic when deciding where to buy
- Compare the identical product. Check edition, DLC, region, currency, taxes and sale end date.
- Calculate the final price. Include coupons, rewards and any platform-specific promotion rather than comparing sticker prices.
- Check the ecosystem you need. Verify Workshop or mod support, community guides, controller features, cross-play and cross-progression.
- Check account and DRM requirements. A purchase may still require Epic’s launcher, a publisher account or third-party login.
- Confirm ownership expectations. Storefront purchases, achievements, reviews, playtime and subscriptions generally remain separate.
- Read the item’s refund terms. A cart does not make every product subject to identical eligibility.
Verdict: a prerequisite, not a competitive weapon
Epic’s December 2021 shopping cart made the store less frustrating and more credible. It helped sale shoppers, holiday claimers and Support-A-Creator users, and removed a basic obstacle to completing multi-item purchases.
But checkout was only one weakness. Steam’s catalog depth, community infrastructure, mod ecosystem, social graph and established libraries create advantages a cart cannot erase. Epic can become a durable second storefront through price, exclusives, developer economics, regional availability and a better client. The cart was necessary for that effort; by itself, it was nowhere near enough to make Epic a Steam replacement.
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