Epic Games Store hires Battle.net veteran Martin Keely as new VP and GM

Epic Games has brought in Martin Keely as the new VP and General Manager of the Epic Games Store and Epic Online Services. He replaces Steve Allison, who left Epic earlier this month to join Saber Interactive.

Keely spent seven years at Activision Blizzard, most recently as SVP overseeing the Battle.net launcher, where he led what he describes as "growth and record results." In a LinkedIn post announcing the move, Keely said he's "excited to get started with the team delivering new capabilities that elevate player, creator, and developer experiences" and called out his goal of "shaping an open and sustainable gaming ecosystem." Epic CEO Tim Sweeney also welcomed Keely publicly, framing the hire as part of a broader push "as we head into the era of Unreal Engine 6 and Team Open linking up to make everything work across platforms, stores, engines, and ecosystems."

Battle.net isn't a flashy launcher, but it's consistently praised for being clean, fast, and easy to navigate — qualities the Epic Games Store has struggled to project despite years of free game giveaways and a developer-friendly 88/12 revenue split. The Epic Games Store has made real inroads since its 2018 launch, but it still trails Steam significantly in active users and overall feature set. Keely's background is relevant, though Battle.net manages a much smaller catalog than the Epic Games Store, so the scale of the challenge is genuinely different.

It's early days, and a leadership change alone won't fix a storefront's UX overnight. But Epic clearly wants someone who knows how to run a launcher people actually like using — and Keely's track record makes this one of the more credible moves the company has made toward closing the gap with Steam.