The conversation about the Epic Games Store often boils down to one issue: Is it facilitating competition with Steam, or is it an "anti-consumer" practice that by offering exclusive game releases, prevents them from being released on Steam, the platform of choice (or at least habitual use) of the majority of PC gamers? Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, thinks it's the former, and it turns out that Valve boss Gabe Newell thinks so, too.

In an interview with Edge magazine (via GamesRadar), Newell said that competition "benefits everyone" in the long run, but that getting there will be difficult.

"Gameshop competition is great for everyone. It keeps us honest and keeps everyone else honest. 'But in the short term it's ugly. But in the short term it's ugly. But in the long run, it helps people come in and challenge themselves and develop discipline and thoughtfulness about the business.

Interestingly, Newell said that it is not competition that bothers Valve, but attempts to eliminate it; Newell referred to the Apple store, but this statement could be seen as a quiet blow to Epic, which is very careful about what it allows in its store Valve has taken the exact opposite approach with Steam by allowing developers almost unlimited access.

"We are more scared, not by competition, but by those who seek to eliminate competition. If you ask us which scares us more, having a faceless bureaucracy controlling everything like Apple and people going crazy over a model that prevents your product from entering the market if they don't want it, or having the software's added value to the experience and things like that minimized It's about designing your store in a way that minimizes that."

Newell did not say that Epic directly drove Steam to be better, but 2019 was a very active year for Valve. After years of work, they released new Steam libraries, Steam Remote Play and Remote Play Together, updated their discovery tools, created Steam Labs to try out more experimental stuff, and did more behind the scenes for developers.

Competition aside, Steam continues to roll as the big dog on the digital storefront: earlier this week, it set a new record by surpassing 20 million concurrent users while the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak kept people indoors.