The Valve comparison is apt. The difference is Valve built Steam as infrastructure first, then quietly stepped back from games. Epic did it backwards — they built the game first, then tried to force the infrastructure (EGS) into existence with money. Much harder to do it that way.
That just makes people install it it doesn't make people buy anything. I have installed epic store but I never ever even thought about buying a game there, I installed it since they give me free games so I'd assume most gamers have installed epic store. But getting people to install isn't enough.
I remember when Steam was just something I had to crack to play HL2 as a broke uni student. In the intervening decades I’ve shelled out for over 500 games on Gabe’s little experiment. Wild.
Valve built more games than Epic in the past 10 years. Epic essentially only released Robo Recall and Fortnite + extra content, plus a spinoff of Rocket League which was an acquisition. Valve released a couple of duds (Artifact, Dota Underlords) but also some good games: Half-Life: Alyx, Counter-Strike 2, and Deadlock. They also did "The Lab" and "Aperture Desk Job" which, while not full games, were quite good as demos for their hardware.
I'm sure any studio would trade their entire decade of portfolio to get where Fortnite is. Sony did in fact basically do that to great failure (despite Hell divers 2 being very well received, it's no Fortnite).
