Epic vs Steam: How HoYoverse Is Quietly Redefining the PC Store War

Scrolling through Twitter in early 2026, I stumbled upon another classic Tim Sweeney outburst. The Epic Games CEO was once again taking aim at Valve, this time declaring that Steam’s high fees are why some of the biggest games skip the platform entirely. He namechecked Riot, his own company Epic, and notably HoYoverse – the studio behind Genshin Impact. I couldn’t help but laugh, because as any dedicated PC gamer knows, the reality is a lot more nuanced than Sweeney’s soundbites suggest.

Sweeney’s exact words were: “Steam charges such high fees that developers with strong brands and big enough audiences, like Epic, Riot, and MiHoYo find it more profitable to go it alone. Ironically, lower fees and more openness might increase Steam profit.” His argument seems logical on the surface – if Valve took a smaller cut, maybe those heavy hitters would return and bring their massive player bases. But the community note slapped onto his tweet told a different story. It pointed out that MiHoYo, now universally known as HoYoverse, already has games on Steam. In fact, Honkai Impact 3rd reappeared there back in 2021, and just a few months ago, Zenless Zone Zero launched on Steam alongside its 3.0 update to overwhelmingly positive reviews.

I remember downloading Zenless Zone Zero on Steam the day it dropped. The account linking feature was a masterstroke – I could bring my existing progress and purchases straight over. That immediately made me wonder why Genshin Impact, the company’s golden goose, still wasn’t there. Data miners have been finding tantalizing hints in the HoYoverse launcher for over a year now, suggesting a Steam version of Genshin Impact may finally be on the way. With update 7.0 and the new Snezhnaya region on the horizon, the timing feels perfect. HoYoverse loves to make big splashes, and releasing on Steam right as the current main storyline reaches its climax would draw in millions of new players.

What makes this whole saga so ironic is how well HoYoverse already performs on Epic’s own store. Sweeney conveniently omitted that Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail have been available on the Epic Games Store since 2021, under terms that likely offered a much sweeter revenue split than Steam’s standard 30%. The latest Epic Games Store annual report shows HoYoverse titles dominating: Wuthering Waves, Honkai: Star Rail, and Genshin Impact sit among the top five “Mythic” PC games, while Zenless Zone Zero lands in the “Legendary” tier alongside Grand Theft Auto 5 and Infinity Nikki. Clearly, the studio isn’t afraid to spread its games across multiple storefronts – it just makes careful calculations about where the audience actually is.

And that’s the thing Sweeney’s rhetoric glosses over. The Epic Games Store, for all its free games and lower fees, still captures a tiny slice of the PC market. Internal data from previous years showed that only 16 to 18% of users who redeemed free games ever bought anything on the store afterward. When HoYoverse partnered with Epic, I’m certain they ran the numbers: what do we gain by placing games there versus what we lose by staying off Steam? With Zenless Zone Zero, HoYoverse seems to have finally tested the Steam waters. It’s the smallest of their modern big-three titles, so it was a lower-risk experiment. The instant success proved that Steam’s user base is willing to embrace live-service gacha games, and that account linking can preserve existing monetization channels.

So why did Sweeney frame this as developers “going it alone”? Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, or a way to paint Valve as the industry’s greedy gatekeeper. But HoYoverse’s actions tell a more interesting story: a developer can play both sides. They can reap the benefits of Epic’s lower cut while slowly inching toward Steam when it’s strategically valuable. For gamers like me, this war of words doesn’t matter much as long as the games end up where we are. Still, watching these corporate chess matches unfold while I boot up Zenless Zone Zero from my Steam library gives me a front-row seat to the evolving PC gaming landscape. Right now, Sweeney may be right about one thing – more openness might indeed increase profit for everyone, including Steam. HoYoverse is already proving that hypothesis, one game at a time.