Good news, everyone! A mere seven years since it launched, the Epic Games Store has gifting now! The Fortnite developer announced the new feature in a post on the store, stating that "players can now purchase and send games directly to friends on their Epic friends list."
Users who purchase gifts through Epic's payment system will earn Epic Rewards—which gives customers between 5% and 20% back on Epic purchases. The post also says that "recipients can use their Epic Rewards balance to redeem gifts"—an odd phrasing that makes it sound like you'll need to use Reward points to redeem a gift you've been given. However, in the longer Gift FAQ, Epic clarifies that "you can use your Epic Rewards balance toward a gift purchase" which makes a lot more sense.
As for what you can gift friends on Epic, the answer is most items on the store, but not everything. The exceptions are free games (for obvious reasons) pre-purchase offers, subscriptions, and in-game currency or other consumable items. Anyone who receives a gift on Epic has 14 days to claim it, somewhat shorter than the 30 days allowed by Steam.
Otherwise, though, the Epic Games Store now lets you send gifts to friends just like Steam allows you to do, and has done since…wait, when did Valve add gifting to Steam? A quick Internet search reveals the feature was added to Steam in 2007, almost 18 years ago. There are people about to enter adulthood who have technically (if not legally) been able to give their Steam friends digital presents for their entire lives.
In Epic's defence, its storefront hasn't been around anywhere near as long as Valve's digital distribution behemoth, only launching in 2018. But that's still a long gap between the initial release and the addition of gifting. Valve, by comparison, took only four years to add gifting after Steam's launch in 2003, and didn't have a hugely successful competitor's worksheet to crib from.
Don’t get me wrong, it's a good thing that Epic allows gifting now. But it also demonstrates why Steam has such a stranglehold on the PC gaming market. Epic is by far Valve's most adept competitor when it comes to PC gaming storefronts, and it is still miles behind in terms of basic functionality. Let alone other competitors like Microsoft, whose storefront is downright horrible to use. Then there's Amazon, which has apparently been trying to beat Steam for 15 years, only nobody noticed because the company was so bad at it. Valve simply does it better than anybody else, and there's nothing to suggest that's likely to change any time soon.
