Epic Games Store boss Steve Allison leaves after 8 years to join Saber Interactive

Steve Allison, the vice president and general manager who ran the Epic Games Store since its 2018 launch, has left Epic to become chief business officer at Saber Interactive. His former boss, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, marked the departure on X with a tribute crediting Allison for building the store to 78 million monthly active users.

Allison said he's "extremely impressed" with what Saber's founders have built, and pointed to the studio's upcoming slate as a major draw: Space Marine 3, Jurassic Park, Turok, Hellraiser, the John Wick game, and several unannounced projects. He also highlighted Saber's cost efficiency — the studio claims it delivers high-quality games at 30–50% of typical industry budgets. Saber CEO Matthew Karch returned the compliments, calling Allison someone who "has done more to shape and modernize the game industry than anyone else I know" — and, in a lighter moment, noted he'd need to "avoid joint photo ops" given Allison's apparently intimidating good looks. Allison's LinkedIn still listed him as Epic Games Store chief as recently as July, so the exact departure date isn't confirmed.

Allison's tenure at Epic was genuinely consequential — he oversaw a store that grew by giving away hundreds of millions of free games and carved out a real foothold in PC gaming — but it wasn't without friction. In February he publicly admitted "the launcher sucks" and announced a major technical overhaul to fix it. That candor was refreshing, but it also underlined how much ground the Epic Games Store still has to cover: Steam, while not sharing official numbers, is estimated by analyst Simon Carless at roughly 200 million monthly active users, more than double Epic's figure. Before Epic, Allison held senior roles at Telltale Games, Midway, Atari, and Accolade, giving him a career that spans several eras of the industry.

Saber Interactive is an interesting landing spot. Founded in 2001, the studio spent years building a reputation for solid licensed and co-development work before being acquired by Embracer Group in 2020. When Embracer collapsed, Saber was sold in 2024 to a Karch-owned company for $247 million, taking a cluster of studios with it and effectively becoming a smaller, leaner version of the conglomerate it left behind. With Allison now steering business development, the studio's already-ambitious upcoming lineup could get a significant commercial push.