I hate when a PC game is ONLY available on Epic Games store
from DuckWrangler9000@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 03 Dec 2024 21:43
https://lemmy.world/post/22736694
from DuckWrangler9000@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 03 Dec 2024 21:43
https://lemmy.world/post/22736694
Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
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I get it being annoying… But why is it such a deal breaker? If the game is good, why not just install it, play the game, leave it when you’re done?
The other storefronts have some cool features (namely gamepass for xbox and all of steamworks and the app stuff for steam), but it doesn’t really matter if the game doesn’t use em.
Speaking for myself, if it’s Epic only, it means I have no assurances as a customer that they’re going to keep letting me play the game on Linux. If I bought Alan Wake II, I’m doing so knowing that they don’t support my operating system and could break compatibility with Wine with any random update. If that happens on Steam, I can reasonably expect a refund if it was previously Verified, and because of the verification system, they also have an incentive not to break compatibility. So if I play Alan Wake II some day, it’ll be because it was a free giveaway on Epic, because I’m not paying for that.
Now this is a good reason.
And random note, but I didn’t get a notification for this reply?
Sorry I forgot to send it, won’t happen again, boss.
What do you mean, are you on some client that has notifications disabled by default?
Genuine fediverse noob here.
The guy you’re replying to was joking, saying they are in charge of your notifications.
Lemmy notifications depend on the client you’re using. I’m using Sync which is far from perfect with push notifs, usually they only pop up when I open the app.
I am just using the browser UI, and just mean the notifications on the site.
Sometimes I get a reply with no notification even within Lemmy, and someone else said this happens to them too.
I think sometimes they’re just slow, so you may have clicked into the thread before it found out you needed a notification. I’m not an expert though. It’s just a guess based on personal experience.
Its happened to me after a full day too.
Yeah, that's true on Steam as well.
There are a whole bunch of games that actively removed compatibility with SteamOS, and Linux by extension. Apex Legends was the most recent and the most vocal about it.
That was on the developers, not the storefront, though. Epic has specifically decided they don’t give a flying fuck about Linux.
Well, you still don't get to play it, and you sure as hell aren't getting a refund, so I'm not entirely sure how that changes the situation at all.
… because now your weird obsession with blaming Steam for all things going wrong with gaming has less ground to stand on?
Because not having a game available is not having a game available. You still, and I can't believe I have to type this twice, don't get to play the stupid game.
For the record, I blamed Steam for nothing here. Some guy said he feels more assured that Steam will keep Linux compatibility, I pointed out that this is not the case. It's not even Steam's fault, compatibility is being dropped either for technical reasons or due to anticheat, and there is no indication that it will be any different with Epic going forward.
What they said, exactly:
Emphasis mine.
They didn’t say it won’t happen. They said they have far more confidence that it’ll be much less likely to happen. And that they have a reasonable expectation of refund if the developer pulls that.
There are no guarantees here, but Valve has put a lot of time and effort into making Linux games work, and Epic has not. No, they can’t stop developers from pulling those stunts, but they’re no more happy about it than we are and, from everything I’ve been seeing, are actively working on getting developers to stop doing that.
Also, the anticheat excuse is mostly a lie, the ones Destiny 2, Rust, and Apex Legends use are compatible with Linux, and just require, as I understand it, checking a box and including a file in a specific spot, so those are just outright anti Linux for the sake of hating Linux and Linux gamers.
Yeah, but that's not a reasonable expectation, is it? Because it's happened multiple times and nobody got anything refunded.
So there is no meaningful incentive and no reasonable expectation, demonstrably.
And, for the record, the Apex Legends guys at least didn't say they couldn't support Linux or the Deck. They used to, in fact. They actively pulled support because they said they saw disproportionately more cheating under those platforms. I have no idea if that's true, but it's certainly what they said. It sure doesn't sound like that'll change anytime soon, unless Windows enacts the same restrictions on Kernel-level access or Linux develops some equivalent.
I'd say that's probably a distant priority over, I don't know, getting decent Nvidia support, but knowing the way Linux progresses that may absolutely not be true.
Well, of the three I mentioned, 2 are free to play, and the other they did issue refunds for Linux players… Which ones were you thinking of?
Free to play games do take your money, though. Especially Destiny 2, which is a free to play game that happens to cost about sixty bucks a year. And Rust did offer a refund to users, but not because Valve made them do it (my understanding is they had to actually negotiate with Valve how that would even work). They issued a refund because they announced a native Linux client and then backed out of that promise.
So yeah, no, I don't see what reasonable expectation for refunds there is, I don't see Valve having ever mentioned that Steam Deck compatibility being rolled back or removed would be grounds for a refund (at least outside their time limited no-cause refund policy) or that the reaction to compatibility changes with Proton or Linux would be any different across Epic, GOG or Valve at this point. Things may change if the Deck platform gets a lot bigger in the future and Valve decide to push for it as a closed environment, but that's not where we are.
To your question, the other big game that comes to mind having done the same thing as Apex would be GTA V, which to my knowledge is still listed as "Unsupported" due to adding anticheat, despite initially working on Deck. And I guess you could count the FIFA franchise if you see it as a single game, because I think there was at least one of them supported on Deck before they rolled out Anticheat and all the newer ones have not been supported.
So it's definitely not a one-off thing, and there has been no action from Valve.
No, you see it’s different because Steam is love and Gabe is perfection, you know?
The level of quasi-religious fervor is... kind of scary. Especially given that it's over this one billionare techbro. I mean, good for them, they have a great product and a better understanding of how to make money with only light enshittification, but still...
If and when they do something shitty, I’ll be right there with you calling them out for it, but I don’t see anything here that fits that description
Well, they refused to offer refunds for a long time after people like EA and GOG had already implemented it, and only relented when forced by regulators. And they screwed up their Green Light process for a long time despite every developer telling them it sucked. There's the ongoing use of loot boxes and monetized UGC, of course. Your tolerance for that one may vary.
I think Valve makes very good software and good hardware, and they have a way better handle on where they can squeeze users versus side with them than pretty much anybody else in the industry.
But, you know, they're a corpo ran by a reclusive techbro, they're still frequently sketchy.
Which is also very much true of GOG and CD Projekt, for the record.
I just save my money and play something else or buy something else. There’s more games than can be played that I’ve never felt like I was losing out by not buying a game from epic.
Right but I dont see how its anything but a minor annoyance.
Like, if the game is really good… What is so bad about installing the epic client?
I don’t have it installed. I claim through the website.
Some perspective from someone vocally against Epic:
They entered the market and tried to get their foot in the door not by providing a better service or experience to the consumers, but by being underhanded and anticompetitive while accusing their competition of being underhanded and anticompetitive. Add on that with the fact that their CEO lacks any sort of humility and integrity, and I simply do not trust them to give a single shit about me as a customer. If they achieved their goals, I’m confident that they would leverage their position to extract value out of me immediately—be it through ads, increased prices, or selling my data to third parties. I don’t want to support that by giving them any of money.
While I don’t think Valve is my friend either, they at least:
Have a history of doing things that provide some benefit to their users, even if its clearly out of self-interest.
Aren’t publicly traded.
Epic Games is not publicly traded.
And TBH their history with Unreal is not that bad. And Valve is already extracting a truckload of money out of us through their percentage cut.
Carmack is absolutely a character though, lol. I have to wonder how controversial EGS would be without him.
Fair point with neither being publicly traded. I should have been more clear on that.
Unreal the engine, or the game series? From the perspective of a consumer, I don’t think either of them seem to be in good shape these days, unfortunately.
Er… Carmarck is in Id. Epic’s founder and CEO is Tim Sweeney.
Ah yeah I meant Sweeny.
Some people prefer not to do business with entities whose business practices they don’t support.
There’s always one more option. In fact, this is the only instance I find myself using that other option now-a-days.
Well they decide to lose customers, up to them.
Yep. I loved Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and was excielted to hear they made a sequel. Then I learned it’s an EGS exclusive. They can go get bent, not buying from them anymore
TIL, they made a soasr sequel. Was it good?
No idea, I refuse to buy it. The first one was good.
…steampowered.com/…/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II/
It’s on steam now
I am aware. They’re still not getting my money
If you refuse to buy on Epic, you send the message that you don’t like to buy from Epic.
If you refuse to buy after it hits steam, then you’re just 1 of several billion who didn’t buy the game.
Why would you continue to not buy?
No, you have it backwards. If people buy the game when it goes on Steam, that tells the developer they can double dip buy going Epic exclusive then releasing at full price on Steam a year later with no repurcussions.
The only way to make the publisher learn to not go Epic exclusive is to not buy those games at all, even after they are brought onto other marketplaces
Epic pays for exclusivity sometimes. It’s funny, I keep picking up the free epic games but I don’t think I have ever once played a single game on there.
I claim but I don’t even have the launcher installed. If it wasn’t for the giveaways I’d completely forget about the place.
I don’t even get the free games…they aren’t worth my time. I’ll pay to get them elsewhere instead even if it’s free there when I’m looking
I’m claiming them for the day when Epic games store shuts down and they give out keys for redeemed games on steam. I’m playing the long game. :D
Bethesda did that after shutting down their launcher.
I just download the games that are drm free (which is actually quite a lot) and put a zip archive on my backup drive(s)
I just use the heroic/legendary alternative launcher for any single player games I actually want to play from egs. It’s open source and gives epic less footprint on my machine.
Unfortunately if you want to do anything multiplayer then you need the real client.
I’ve been picking them up religiously after I found out I missed Frostpunk. The only ones I’ve played were the big names like Control, Death Standing, and the old Fallout games. For everything else, the client doesn’t give you enough information to decide if it’s worth your time or not. I keep having to go back and forth between Epic and Steam to read reviews and the “similar to other games you’ve played” thing. It’s not worth the effort.
Wait a year for the exclusivity clause to expire and it to appear on other stores.
Do you also get this upset when a game only appears on Steam?
Two games I anticipated came out on Steam only, so I asked the developers if they planned to sell on alternative platforms and they did, but considering the game isn’t full done yet (they released it in Early Access) Initially I was annoyed, but after their response (they want to focus their effort on the game before adding the extra burden of managing multiple update channels) I understand why they did, on top of being a small team.
I decided to wait for one (came out on GOG on v1.0) and for the second one I decided to buy it on Steam right away since there’s still a lot of work left.
Do epic and gog even have early access avenues?
Good question 🤔
GoG does, dunno about Epic.
Gog does. The game manor lords is in early access on gog.
www.gog.com/en/game/manor_lords
Neat
I specifically don’t get upset when a game is exclusively on Steam because of how much work Valve puts into Linux gaming, work that Epic directly and actively opposes.
Epic refuses to enable the Linux support for EAC on Fortnite despite being super easy, and specifically removed Linux support for Rocket League.
That’s what I said.
Isn’t this whole post just a part of a long running gag where people give shit to Epic for their exclusivity deals after they gave Apple so much shit for their walled garden in much the same way?
The apple walled garden is still really bad for users
Yes, we should reward decisions we dislike. That’ll show 'em.
Oh no, we don’t complain about Steam exclusivity, monopolies are ok as long as they’re the monopolies that we want, ok? What happens when Valve turns to shit and we made sure there’s no viable alternative? That will never happen! Are you kidding?
When it turns to shit, we have the high seas.
Everything goes to shit eventually, but pre-emptively making yourself suffer is just silly. Enjoy the time you have, and vote with your wallet once they start doing anticompetitive crap like paid exclusivity deals. Until then, we might as well enjoy the fact that Valve isn’t a public company obligated to chase short term profits for shareholders.
“make yourself suffer”
I open Steam, switch to the library open my game and play
I open Epic, open my game from the main screen and play
So much suffering! Heck, I also sent more money to the devs through that suffering!
If you think taking a 30% cut to enrich a billionaire isn’t enshitifaction then I don’t know what to tell you buddy.
“Making yourself suffer” by boycotting Steam.
It goes against every fiber of my being to not utterly despise a multi-billion dollar corporation, but I just don’t have the energy that I used to. I have to pick the battles I want to fight, and they haven’t done enough to make it worth it for me to do that.
Never said I boycott Steam, I said I don’t boycott any of them
Most of the 30% cut goes to developing the store, software, and even hardware. Valve has worked to make gaming on Linux way more feasible and easy, popularized handheld PC’s, made game streaming simple, etc.
Meanwhile EGS took 2 whole years to add a shopping cart to their online store and had multiple data breaches. That is what I call enshitification
No need to defend the guy who owns a yacht collection buddy, I’m sure he does perfectly fine without you
I just wait, not like I don’t have a ton of games to play with. Plus I get to buy it for cheap later on.
It is also available on the pirate bay.
TPB is a honeypot now.
And unless you're an idiot, it's pretty nigh impossible to get caught in that honey trap.
I'm annoyed when a game isn't on GOG. Epic's issue is that I use it the least and so I'm less likely to boot up a game on it unless I'm actively seeking it out.
One of the annoying thing about epic exclusives is that the focus is on steam, but GOG is affected too and loses out on games too until the deal expires.
Well, yeah, but if I was going to get pissed about that, then Epic would be way low in my list of priorities. It's Steam sucking up all the oxygen in that particular room. I own every Yakuza game they made available on GOG and they've stopped doing that. That wasn't Epic.
Sounds like that was Sega.
Oh, it was Sega. That's the thing about having an entrenched dominant position, you don't need to invest money to get exclusives, even when you are paying out a smaller share.
Gaben may be a libertarian, but I'm not. If you set up systemic reasons why I'm getting boned it's still your fault.
So the systemic reason of… providing a quality storefront? Are you demanding that they just make things shittier so that other people have a chance?
This has got to be the most twisted criticism of Steam I’ve ever heard…
I... wait, what?
So are you okay with exclusives but only when the developer is not getting paid for it? Or only when it's on Steam because you just happen to like Steam?
That's such a weird take. It owns the inconsistency so thoroughly I have trouble navigating it.
Since apparently I have to explain this for some reason, I don't particularly like exclusives in general and prefer platform-agnostic games so I can pick where to get them. but if you're only going to support a store, I'm perfectly fine with developers getting paid by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Valve, Epic or whever else. You do you and keep your workers employed any way you see fit.
And when I get a choice I tend to pick GOG because... well, they don't need a little reminder that you're not buying the game you're buying in the payment page, so I get to back up my installers and keep them forever.
Now, THAT is a criticsm of Steam that I'm actually making here.
I generally am less bothered by exclusives that are a result of a company deciding to not release at a certain storefront as opposed to being bribed and contractually prevented from releasing elsewhere after signing. Those at least have a chance of being released somewhere else if they change their mind.
Like Yakuza was a console exclusive for a long time but not because Sony forced them to. So when they decided PC games was worth venturing into they ended up doing so as opposed to being contractually prevented. Same goes for Persona.
That’s the difference from contract based exclusives.
They all have a chance at getting re-released later, unless they are first party (and these days even then).
I mean, Uncharted 4 is on GOG. Not The Last of Us, for some reason. That sucks.
I'd love to see Mario Galaxy on PC officially, but that's not gonna happen, I'm not gonna get mad about it. But Alan Wake II? Yeah, that'll probably make it elsewhere.
Ultimately all it takes for an exclusivity deal to be lifted is for the people involved to agree to lift it. That can be because the exclusivity is timed or because they got to some agreement on it. There is no fundamentally nefarious reason getting paid for exclusivity is worse than Valve being the only platform that is viable for a particular release. The impact is the same.
Maybe I'm just too old and can't cope with the weird whiplash of being there to hear people rage about Final Fantasy showing up on Xbox only to then see this weird vitriol for a storefront compensating devs to get an exclusive on a game inside the same platform.
Like, I get being mad that you'd have to buy a different console to play a thing, but dude, it's a free piece of software, you can just... install it.
Honestly, both things are sheer tribalism and I've never been there for it. Not since the dumb Sega vs Nintendo schoolyard nonsense.
I prefer when there is no exclusivity to be lifted to begin with. Leads to games more likely to not take years and years for it to maybe come out. There’s already a barrier without it on the PC. Even with denuvo companies think pirates will result in lost sales.
.
Uncharted was released in 2022 on steam then 2023 on GOG.
Sony has released on GOG later. It tends to be the trend because companies are in the mindset of PC has a lot of pirates. So selling a game without drm and an installer is not something they rush to do until they feel sales are on a downward trend.
Now that Sony has moved to PSN requirements future drm free plans are in question. Only way for GOG to get day 1 releases consistently would be to give up on DRM free requirements.
So it’s not really any surprise what the reasons may be.
And it sucks, whether it's a surprise or not.
I'm not angrier at something being absent from Steam because Epic paid for an exclusive than I am at any other reason why a game wouldn't make it to my storefront of choice.
Which is, let's be clear, very lightly angry. This is choosing a store to buy videogames, not seeking revenge for my clan in holy war.
I don’t see exclusives the same as a company choosing to not release a product on a certain storefront. One is a choice that can be changed and another is a contract.
Contracts can, in fact, be changed.
Those are pretty similar deals, honestly. In many cases the exclusivity deal gets signed because without the up-front cash the game can't get done. You give up some long-term sales for the up front money and the better revenue split. In both cases it's about resources.
And, again, in both cases that decision can be reviewed later. Either because it's baked into the timed exclusivity or because all contracts can be amended.
But also, there isn't a moral stance here. As a user I care about where and how I can play the game, I don't care about the reasons. I don't need to approve your business agreements before I play your videogame, I'm not your lawyer.
It’s nicer to not need a contract that needs to be changed. Already enough obstacles of even getting a pc port for some games without it.
Oh, it's nicer for them, I assume, but again, I'm not your bizdev guy. Their lawyers can do the paperwork, I just care about the game.
Plus, I think you're misjudging PC ports. The "obstacles" are actually for shipping on consoles, which require expensive dev kits and complex certification and submission requirements. PC ports are easy, you probably have a PC build running for development anyway and PC platforms really don't give a crap about compliance requirements.
If it's not on PC it's a business decision, not about complexities. Having to sign a contract in exchange for money isn't an "added obstacle", it's a motivation to do it in the first place.
I just care about the game which is why I prefer no exclusive deals.
All else being equal, yes, I prefer games being platform agnostic.
If I have to choose, though, I only care about them being available on PC in the first place (and on GOG, DRM-free, if at all possible). And I certainly, certainly, am nowhere near getting mad at them signing a deal to get money from Epic in exchange for exclusivity. Go hussle, game devs. Do what you gotta do to get by. If anything, it sucks how much less commerically viable doing that seems to be than just launching on Steam alone, going by the performance of recent Ubisoft releases.
That’s called the cost of running a DRM free storefront.
Yakuza collection didn’t release until 2023. Companies usually do delayed releases when sales are on a downward trend if they end up releasing on GOG. And that’s a big if because of no DRM requirements.
Unless you are a recent user of GOG, delayed releases shouldn’t be anything new and has more to do with DRM. If you want DRM free you have to be willing to accept delayed releasing or convince GOG to give up on DRM requirements if you just want games on GOG available right away.
Stuff like denuvo exists because companies are very protective of their assets and are really reluctant to offer DRM free. That’s the main obstacles for GOG. DRM.
Yeah. Because Steam has DRM. Steam IS DRM. That's the problem it originally solved, back when Amazon was still a bookstore.
So screw Steam and other overprotective corporations, I want my PC games DRM-free, since physical copies aren't an option (which is my console solution, thank you very much). They can come meet my requirements or I will continue to prioritize GOG where I can and be annoyed at the lack of a GOG release otherwise. I don't want GOG to give up on the DRM requirement, I want them to get so popular that publishers have to comply with it whether they like it or not.
So from that perspective, if Epic and Steam want to have a pissing contest, I'm in full "let them fight" mode. Who cares.
Sorry but companies were trying DRM even before them using stuff like rotating paper wheels before DRM tech improved. Sony even installed root kits for music CDs. Denuvo was created because it was believed DRM options weren’t strong enough and some companies use additional DRM on top of denuvo.
Yeah, and they were all failing at it.
Until Steam.
We actually used to be a bit generally mad about it. Plenty of big declarations about skipping Half-Life 2, when that used mandatory Steam authentication for the first time. A bit of a feeding frenzy to crack it in retaliation, too.
Being old makes it harder to get super mad about this.
There was the whole pc games are dead claims even when steam started becoming bigger.
I just don’t see this utopia you believe it would be without steam. I just see me having a console and not bothering with a pc due to lack of games.
Who wants Steam gone? You can't have competition without competitors.
I want Steam to exist. And Epic. And definitely GOG. Wouldn't mind at all if GOG was the leader of that pack, or at least if Steam implemented similar policies to theirs.
What I don't want is Steam dominating 80% of the market and making it impossible to make PC games without giving them 30% of everything you make. That's bad.
Zero DRM isn’t the only reason games aren’t published on GOG right away, and that may not even be the main reason for the countless games that release day one without Denuvo.
GOG also doesn’t have the best infrastructure for pushing updates. Stories abound of it being a slow process, whether physically uploading the files or authentication taking a while. Invariably, game updates will show up later on GOG than they will on Steam. GOG also has a very consumer-friendly return policy. All that, combined with it being simply a smaller marketplace, doesn’t place it well in cost-benefit analysis.
Steam is their scapegoat, they want a Monopoly without having to say they have a Monopoly.
Wait, who want a monopoly? Epic? The Epic store is like a tenth of Steam's size, and most of that is down to Fortnite alone. Hard to have a monopoly when you're struggling to break double digit share.
… right, which is why I said they want a monopoly, not that they have a monopoly.
Well, yeah, presumably they all do. I'm sure the kebab place next door would love to have a monopoly, it just doesn't look like it's in the cards, you know?
Yes, and if the kebab store pitched a fit every time someone provided a better product than them, calling that competition a monopolist, I’d have the same criticism of that kebab shop.
If they’re just doing their best to provide a quality product… I wouldn’t like that they have a monopoly, but if they’re not in any way abusing it… that sounds like they’ve earned their place. The problem lies in the people not putting forth enough effort (despite have the resources to do so) to match.
No, that's not how that works at all. Monopolies are bad (and indeed unlawful) even if people think you got them by being super cool.
Google didn't get a monopoly on advertising and search by sucking at it. They had the best search engine and design in a crowded market and that's why you don't say you "Altavista'd" something. But that's still a bad thing and they still should get broken up into manageable chunks, as current regulators are trying to do. Ditto for Apple and all these other oligopolistic online companies.
And... you know, Valve. Maybe. At some point. Not quite there yet. But that's bad even if you like Steam or if they have the better feature set. Which they do. Especially if they have the better feature set, in fact, because like all these other oligopolistic companies, the more time they have to establish dominance and get people to sink further into their ecosystem the harder it is to break it up later. That's true of kebabs AND software platforms.
Kebab store if they were epic like in their strategy would not be throwing a fit, but making exclusivity deals with suppliers so that their competitors in the area lose access to them. So trying to increase consumers having to go to their kebab store to get specific meals due to inability of other stores to offer it or not retain the same quality anymore. Also look into regulations to try and prevent potential competitors from opening up next to them or at least delay when they can open.
And don’t forget that they refuse to take credit card (ie not having a shopping cart in this example) for 2 fucking years
They give out free samples though once a week to try to get people to buy their food. People prefer the other kebab store down the block though when it comes to spending on meals.
I adore this back-and-forth, but is the metaphor here doing anything any more?
Does there ever need to be a reason to pivot a discussion into one that includes delicious kebabs?
People who hate on Steam alternatives want a monopoly
No, people who back monopolistic, anti-consumer companies like EGS want a monopoly.
If you actually look, nobody ever complains about GOG or Itch.io. That’s because they don’t pull anticompetitive bullshit like the paid exclusives that EGS relies on
You think Steam isn’t a monopoly?
Read my comment again
You didn’t answer my question
Your “question” was irrelevant whattaboutism. Go read my comment again. I doubt you will though, as a quick look at your other comments have proven you to be intellectually and morally bankrupt.
Morally bankrupt? I’m not the guy defending the billionaire yacht collector who operates a monopoly here.
The company providing an actual alternative to steam’s real monopoly is not the one to be complaining about
Are they providing an actual alternative, or just creating a pseudo alternative then bitching about how someone else gets more attention?
It is, in fact, an alternative to steam. What a stupid thing to say
Anyone believing Steam isn’t a monopoly is seriously uninformed on the topic or letting their enjoy enjoyment of the platform cloud their view of reality.
While it sucks to have games get exclusivity agreements with EGS when EGS sucks compared to Steam, it doesn’t suddenly mean that Steam isn’t a monopoly.
Epic is nowhere near as good as steam. Steam I can open, leave open and ignore. Epic force refreshes pages like the fucking library and then my internet cracks a fit at the sudden large data draw.
Shop wise both are equal, epic now has reviews on the bottom of games so you don’t buy some 1 star trash without warning, but they are both more than just a shop.
I’m not sure what you’re responding to, but it wasn’t anyone I said
It’s not really an alternative to steam because it can’t be used the same way. If epic is left open in the background online games randomly lag out due to epic, making it not a viable alternative.
It sounds like slime you’re blaming your shitty internet on epic instead of providing an actual argument for why epic isn’t actually an alternative (it is). You want to suck up to a monopoly, just be honest about it.
Epic force refreshes pages including the library, that’s not a good thing. Don’t use shit I don’t want you to use. You can stop it auto updating the launcher though, which is a thing steam doesn’t seem to allow. In general, I don’t want any of my launchers doing things without me telling it to.
I have Epic on my computer, tons of games, even a handful I bought. It’s better than it was at launch, by a lot, but it isn’t something you can just leave open and trust to do fuck all for the most part. GoG is good for this, I can forget it’s open for days because it doesn’t do anything until you want it to
I actually wanted Epic to succeed enough that I messaged their support about the library being force refreshed, it’s apparently intended. If all I wanted was to suck up to a monopoly, why would I put any effort in to making it usable for me?
Except they’re trying to strongarm people into using it by using huge amounts of money to buy exclusivity rights.
People don’t want monopolies because companies can abuse their position to hurt consumers. But steam provides a very user friendly experience with lots of benefits and features like mod hosting, remote play together, etc. Epic provides a store that people hate using, and people only put up with because epic abused fortnite’s success to buy exclusivity deals*. Despite being the much smaller storefront, Epic already feels like the abusive monopoly in the PC gaming space.
*Many people also play on Epic because of free games, which is a valid and pro-consumer way to attract users. I’m 100% cool with this strategy, although giving away merchandise at a loss is also a common monopoly strategy.
With regards to
It’s important to remember that it’s not only buyers, but developers that use Steam. Steam is currently involved in a lawsuit with developers.
pcgamer.com/…/the-antitrust-lawsuit-against-steam…
Also relevant, from 2021 but the same lawsuit,
arstechnica.com/…/humble-bundle-creator-brings-an…
I like Steam, I’m not hating on Steam, but rushing to defend it from people saying it’s a monopoly (or calling Epic Games Store a monopoly) is very much denying reality.
That’s the same as app stores/etc, and is still a common cut to take. I’m not convinced the cuts that Epic is taking are actually sustainable for offering downloads/updates/etc for a game indefinitely, but it’s hard to tell since the Epic store is already bleeding money.
I’ll also mention that Audible (which has a monopoly in the audiobook space) reportably takes a 60-75% cut of audiobooks sold on their platform (they take only 60% if you agree to sell exclusively on audible, but they take the full 75% if you want to sell the book somewhere else as well). Monopolies abusing their position is really common, but I haven’t seen anything similar from Steam that makes me think they’re abusing their position. I suspect PC gaming would be in a far worse state if another company controlled the popular storefront.
That 30% is standard for most storefronts. Just look at Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
If you’re that put off by 30% cuts then don’t look into retail stores because their markups make that look like chump change.
Actually, it’s generally publishers, not developers that end up paying the 30% cut. For most games the developer gets paid upfront by the publisher, and the publisher pockets the difference between development costs and sales. I’d also like to point out that prices between EGS and Steam are generally the same, so instead of getting lower priced games as promised, the publishers are just pocketing the larger profits.
Repeat Tim Swiney’s fake talking points all you want, the fact of the matter is that Valve isn’t behaving like a monopoly, even if they command a huge portion of the market. The reason they’re so big in the first place is specifically because they’re very pro-consumer
I’m keeping the model simple by equating publisher with developer. Basically, you’ve got the consumer, the store, and the supplier. That some (most) developer studios go through a publisher for funding is a business practice that’s actually unrelated to Steam. Especially because they allow indie content.
Epic is running a loss leader at this point so it’s not an business model to point to, since it’s subsidized by unreal and fortnite.
Microsoft on Xbox is taking a 30% cut so it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume cut is more a strategy to try to expand market share and are willing to increase down the line if they got market share. And Microsoft is Microsoft so has lot of other profitable divisions to be able to run things at a loss.
One actually better to point to might be GOG which is also taking 30%, but in 2021 had a 1 million dollar loss. pcgamer.com/gog-looks-like-its-in-a-much-healthie…
Which raises the question. What is actually sustainable? Especially the lower cut offered have other much more profitable divisions that are covering potential losses and not being the main source of revenue.
All retail establishments utilize loss leaders. It’s not some underhanded duplicitous tactic, it’s just a common business strategy
Loss leaders that lead to buying other things that lead to overall profitability for that section of the business.
This entire division is operating at a loss. Point isn’t that it is unusual or underhanded. It’s that because of the way the division is currently run it is not a business model to point to as being sustainable.
Well yeah, fighting for market share against an entrenched monopoly isn’t cheap. That’s not a reason to cheer on the monopoly though.
That’s not what the conversation was about. It was about whether the business model is actually viable.
If the business of that section is turning a profit it lends more support as opposed to being seen as a side project that doesn’t need to turn a profit. Which is why I included GOG into the mix, since Microsoft and Epic are huge companies with alternative revenue streams.
No it wasn’t. We were taking about streams monopoly status and epic being one of the few alternatives.
YOU were the one trying to deflect the conversation into business viability. Which your entire side tangent really only reinforces how obscene the monopoly hold off stream is, that trying to break into the market is so expensive.
If the point of cuts is given then business viability is quite important. Especially when it raises questions of whether GOG could sustain a lower cut. Those options you provided like Microsoft and Epic are multibillion dollar corporations capable of burning through money endlessly.
Do you know why 30% was chosen? It was the typical cut retail took. Physical stores selling goods take that much to cover their lease, logistics in moving those good to the store and employees.
Online stores do not share most of those costs. 30% is not needed.
Would you do your job and maybe receive an income but only years later, based on results and how happy you made your boss?
The devs and publishers who sign those deals are the ones you should be angry at, Epic is offering them guaranteed income in exchange for timed exclusivity, Valve is offering them access to a bigger player base in exchange for a gamble.
Being a small game dev has a lot of uncertainty and risk. I wouldn’t blame any small dev for taking a guaranteed paycheck from Epic. Larger studios with safe prospects should be blamed though imo. Gearbox with Borderlands 3 for example.
Doesn’t matter the size of the studio, in the end they have people to pay and Steam is asking them to take a gamble in the hope that they’ll make enough to compensate the money they spent. We’ve seen but studios crash and burn, hell Sony wasted home many millions on that game that was online for a couple of days? I’m sure they would have been happy to have gotten a cheque instead of nothing!
And that’s why I don’t buy games from those devs and publishers
GOG is called Good Old Games for a reason. They aren’t losing out by having to wait. I always buy games there first, then Epic (if it’s an exclusive), then Steam.
Nothing beats GOG for preservation and gamers rights to actually own their games.
medium.com/…/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-f…
What’s the point of your comment? It doesn’t change the fact that, at the end of the exclusivity period, those games will show up on GOG, which doesn’t care if they’re “old” games that don’t sell much.
Nobody is paying more than a couple dollars at most for Fallout 1 & 2, but do you see GOG throwing a fit about that? How do you suppose Epic exclusives are going to change that?
If you use GOG Galaxy it has Epic store intergration to launch games, and then closes the app when you quit too. Never have to see the Epic launcher.
Yeah, there are a bunch of third party launchers with integrations. Launchbox will do most PC storefronts.
I wish Galaxy was a bit lighter, though, because once I plug in everything it supports we start getting into five digit counts and the whole thing slows to a crawl. It's a bit better now, but it was borderline unusable at some points.
Yeah it’s a bit of a slog with too many but I find it’s perfect for Epic and Microsoft games.
The fact that gog.com let me forego launchers all together as well as letting me download the game installers and put them on my NAS means a lot to me. I don’t remember the last time I had GOG Galaxy installed, I just download, install and play the games and then call it a day.
You can go that way. I'd rather have a front-end to manage it, but having the option means you can do it manually, rely on Galaxy or use a third party front-end pretty interchangeably.
Anything but not play those certain games?
Just don’t use “Epic” man.
An exclusive on Epic Games may as well just not even exist, as far as I'm concerned. Didn't play Anno 1800 until it was finally released on Steam. Nice discount too.
So they still got your money eventually. That’s a double win, in their eyes.
They lose day 1 hype, tho. Sure, the game eventually comes to steam, but that’s after it’s already been overplayed on twitch and YouTube’d to death.
In what way does that matter outside of driving sales? Which people like op happily still gave them?
It’s not “new”. There is no FOMO. Early adopters for games are a large chunk of sales.
If that was actually a concern, why would companies do it at all?
Why do companies do exclusive launches? Presumably they think the money they get from Epic is more than the money they’ll lose in sales. Whether or not they’re right is another question.
Congrats on getting the point.
Congrats on being a dick for no reason
Not my intention on your comment. More so commenting everyone else’s reaction to my comments pointing to the same thing.
Maybe next time try actually making your point instead of circling around it for five comments like a fifth rate Socrates.
Congrats on all the downvotes sunshine
You care about downvotes?
Good indication of how out of touch or plain posting in the wrong instance
They indicate how much of an ass you come across as.
There are tons of people in this world who are right, yet everyone dislikes and doesn’t interact with. Something to think about some day, when you calm down.
I mean most people would look at it as an indication that their point isn’t landing. You can just power through and be a jerk though.
The commenter above you said that it’s a gamble as to whether a developer making their game exclusive to a certain platform and the payout from doing so is more lucrative compared to releasing to all platforms. It may be, or it may not be.
I’m not sure if we have the statistics of how well Anno 1800 did in terms of sales when it first launched, but the parent commenter said they obtained the game on Steam when it was discounted. That said commenter didn’t pay full price for it at launch to me speaks to how maybe Anno 1800 lost revenue by not reaching more audiences.
Point is: we don’t know if it was a double win for Anno 1800, or any game by any developer that is restricted to a limited amount of platforms. Don’t claim it was so unless you have evidence one way or another.
Basicaly they do not think their game is any good. So if someone takes the deal. I instantly loose interest. I mean if even the developer think it is no fun…
if it was discounted then they didn’t get as much money.
And? It’s still profit. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be listed.
Profit matters on a quarterly basis.
If a company gets the full profit of their game as they predicted they might in 1 quarter, then that’s basically the best case scenario.
If instead that full profit is spread of multiple years, then quater-to-quarter the game might look like it is underperforming, or severely so.
The timing of profit matters just as much as how much profit there is. Time value of money is a pretty useful concept in the financial world.
and… instead of getting $60 immediately, they are getting $30 or whatever later. clearly one is better than the other, no?
It would be except I forgot it existed while it was in purgatory on Epic
In what way is that a “double win”?
In what way is it not? They get Epic’s money for exclusivity and know they’ll still get sales after it ends from people that “boycott” them for doing that.
Buying the game later doesn’t hurt them, it just reinforces the same behavior later.
That’s not what a boycott is. If I don’t buy a game because it’s exclusively on Epic, it’s not because I’m taking a moral stance. It’s because it’s invisible to me.
A boycott is when I don’t play Epic/EA/Unisoft/Blizzard-Activism games for the company’s historic shitty behavior.
I’m aware of what an actual boycott is.
Getting Epic’s money isn’t a slam dunk for profit. You’re hedging your bets taking guaranteed Epic money for lower potential sales vs non-guaranteed Steam money for higher potential sales. Having a bad exclusivity deal on Epic and then selling your game at a loss (90% discount) on steam isn’t profiting both ways, and sometimes isn’t profiting either way.
I also disagree with the sentiment that you’re reinforcing bad behavior. If anything, you’re signalling to them that you won’t support exclusivity deals, and are happy to wait for a deep discount on Steam. Ultimately, that’s a win for consumers.
That said, fuck exclusivity deals, and I’m much in the same boat where I’m hard pressed to support developers that take them.
Unless they’re actively losing money in their deal, they’re not gonna care if the sale comes immediately or years later. If Epic exclusive + late “hold outs” = $$$, they’re just gonna do that until the equation changes.
It’s less money in their pockets and more money in ours. That’s not going to be a double win in their books.
Nobody ever hurt a company or made them reconsider their decisions by giving them money, no matter how little it was.
Companies definitely do not like waiting for money.
Economists cannot predict the future, as much as some people might wish they could.
Whatever break even point the devs of Anno 1800 considered when making the decision between releasing only on Epic and releasing to all platforms may have seemed reasonable at the time the devs were gearing up to release the game, but performance of said game is never guaranteed. Sure you may have statistics to influence things one way or another, but it’s still a gamble.
We don’t know if Epic exclusive + late discounts > full game purchases on all platforms specifically for Anno 1800, and it appears that you’re claiming which way that equation points with no evidence. Do you work for Epic? For Ubisoft? For Blue Byte? Are there public sources pointing to game sales? What research are you pulling from that considers game futures?
I will respect that you’re right about predicting devs’ decisions based on which way that equation points. Everyone is downvoting you though because you’re making it seem like you know the answer when clearly there’s more to this game, and financial gaming decisions like this.
You’re not an expert. You’re a chatter. Unless you can prove otherwise.
When I see sales of Playstation games on PC the numbers are very underwhelming compared to other big third party titles. In contrast helldivers 2 got insane numbers when it launched simultaneously.
I don’t think launch hype sales can be overlooked and how much may potentially be lost. If people are willing to wait then by the time game is available hype is less and it’s more likely for people to move on or wait for even steeper sales.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to convince me about it. I’m not the one deciding to sell out to Epic.
You need a better definition of „they“. Because I don’t buy from Epic for one particular reason, so they (Epic) don’t get my money. If the game is good and I want to play it I will do so later and at that point the developer still deserves my money.
If I like the game then good for them. Epic didn’t get any of my money and they’re the one I have an issue with.
I just never buy those games. Epic released with exclusives but couldn't process payments in a number of country leaving gamers there SOL. That and some of the higher-ups there just left a really bad taste in my mouth. Anything that also releases as a timed exclusive there doesn't get a purchase from me until years later when it's more than half off (and I think I've only bought one game like that). A Steam monopoly is bad, but Epic are not the solution to that.
Seconded. I’d prefer to see GOG and Itch.io as the big competitors to Steam
Think of it as a “this game is not yet available for purchase” seal. It may also mean “we know our game is not up to standards (it wouldn’t sell well on Steam), so we chose to let idiots at epic decide if they want to pay for it, and hey it worked so that’s something”.
I ignore epic totally
Just circle back in a year and buy at a discount on steam XD.
I know this is unpopular, but I don’t understand why people care so much about which storefront they use to buy a game. I buy it where it is cheapest.
Hell, Epic takes less of a share of the sale. It is better for devs.
For me, the social aspect of the store I buy games from is irrelevant.
One reason is Valve has put a fuckton of effort into linux support. So for linux users, buying a game on Steam means it’s probably going to work right out of the box. Buying from Epic, it’s a crapshoot.
For example, I spent hours trying to get Red Dead Redemption 2 that I had bought from Epic to work. Never did, something with rockstar launcher compatibility. Gave up and bought it again on Steam, worked the first time I hit play.
I agree with the sentiment that people should shut up already about the launcher thing. I know it's aggravating, but, there's options.
However when it comes between Steam vs Epic as storefronts, you'd be hard-pressed to try and find anything to like about what Epic has done with their launcher vs the years of hard work and labor for Valve to get Steam to where it is today. Epic's launcher is like where Steam's was - 17 years ago. It's noticeable, you can't hide it.
88% of 1.000 vs 70 of 1.000.000? Which one is better?
People don’t like what they did with exclusives. I’m kinda okay-ish if you keep the game you founded locked on your store for a year or 2 but not all the games you get by paying devs to release it exclusive to some shitty launcher
You wouldn’t complain if it was only available on Steam so fuck off
Steam doesn’t engage in the same kind of strong-arming and anti-consumer practices, so it’s not exactly comparable, is it?
The fact that they take a 30% cut and it’s used to enrich a billionaire is very much anti consumer.
I’m pretty annoyed when a game isn’t on GoG.
Where are all the memes about Steam exclusives then?
Not my problem.
Oh we’d find something to complain about.
Let me know when the last time it was that Steam tried locking in exclusivity deals with games. I'll wait.
I say this every time Epic comes up but it remains the same.
Steam is the pro-consumer storefront. Epic is the pro-developer storefront. What Epic seems to fail to understand is that by being so staunchly pro-developer, they effectively become anti-consumer. And as a consumer, I’m just not going to spend money on an anti-consumer marketplace.
When Epic considers adding necessary pro-consumer measures like actual user reviews so I can hear how a game actual performs from real end users, then and only then will I consider Epic a real storefront viable for consumers.
I think their historically-bad UE5 documentation and laser focus on adding features optimized for Fortnite but terrible for other uses beg to differ.
They’re the pro-shareholder storefront. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Epic’s main selling point was it’s lower storefront fee (15% vs 30%, if I recall). It didn’t offer any other benefits for consumers and I think Epic realised rather quickly that the people who are actually supposed to be paying money for all of this are the buyers and not the sellers, and thus they’ve resorted to strategies like making games “exclusive” or trying to bribe players with free games.
I understand that they are pro-developers, like, they only tale 15% of the sales etc. But why are they anti-consumers?
I use Heroic Games Launcher on Nobara Linux and my experience is more seamless than buying and installing games from Steam. I don’t have to bother with Epic Games Launcher, I just download a game and run via proton or wine.
I gave what I see as a significant example in my original comment. Not being able to see comments or reviews from those who have purchased games through the storefront is a problem for me. If a game has a bug or problem, especially if it is one that could potentially be tied to or unique to the EGS version, I would like to know about it. That EGS currently doesn’t provide readily available user feedback when it frankly has been the standard as defined by steam, just doesn’t for me.
So you have to ask yourself why they wouldn’t include such a simple a rudimentary feature - the only result I can come up with is to appease developers who want to prevent being negatively impacted by bad reviews. Thus what we have is prioritizing the wants of developers at the expense of features which benefit consumers.
The fact that you can’t use the Epic games launcher on Linux should be telling you what you need to know.
How is their 12 foot interface these days?
How is their position on running things via wine? Tim the bellend has generally been telling Linux users to use wine, but at the same time been generally hostile to it.
And it used to work better on Linux, until the Steam Deck got announced.
Yep. Fucking hypocrite tells people to use something he is hostile towards.
Fuck Epic, they are destroying PC gaming which means they are not developer friendly.
They are actively trying to shrink the market that developers can target.
“Fucking hypocrite” and “Epic Games”. Never have any other set of 4 words fit together so perfectly.
Pro-developer never needs to be anti-consumer. They are staunchly both right now.
I agree they don’t have to be anti-consumer to be pro-developer, but my point is that that is how they are approaching being pro-developer - by limiting pro-consumer features at the behest of developers. Or perhaps I should be saying more actively publishers, to be fair.
IMO if it’s exclusive to one store, sailing the seas is morally just.
If it’s on epic it just isn’t on PC in my eyes. Not a real game
If it’s not a real game, should we call it an unreal game? I will see myself out…
Epic joke.
It’s always available on the high seas.
Yeah, but frankly the high seas usually provide less than Steam does even with money in the equation. And that’s probably the only case when high seas is worse, with all the other services in my experience the high seas provide better service(spotify was close). So the point is if a game doesn’t release on Steam it’s release date just moves to the moment it releases on Steam. Not the best scenario, but Steam really has little competition and Epic surely isn’t trying to be one.
I have no problem with Steam. I was mainly talking about games that only (don’t) come out on Epic Store, but maybe I wasn’t clear enough.
I haven’t kept up, what does it do worse than steam?
Pretty much everything really. It’s basically a store and that’s it, no cool features that Steam has. They may have achievements now but not positive. Think it took two years just for them to add a shopping cart. They dump money on developers to release exclusively on Epic instead of spending it making a good experience for customers. No reviews, no forums, no workshop etc.
I grab the free games they offer every couple weeks and use Heroic to play them, not touching their launcher.
not to mention steam’s:
screenshot manager
community card trading
friends & chat
easy to join small muliplayer (friends can just send you a button that launches the game and joins them instantly)
highly customisable profiles
tools & soundtracks
achievemnts
and so much more that can be simply small little fun
SteamVR is great also, provides a native VR system that Epic doesn’t have
Don’t forget: Ability to see your library on the website
This is huge for me
They do have achievements, yeah. Not much else though.
Copying my reply to someone else:
Epic is anti-customer: medium.com/…/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-f…
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
You can add that their client was actually a malware at some time.
Everything but I will focus on the main point of the apps. Selling and managing games.
Steam store page has tags for what genre the game is and user reviews as well as information about system requirements. Plus links to click on to go to the developers and publishers pages to see what else they’ve made. You get plenty of information while it’s still easy on the eyes and digestible.
Managing your games with steam is a breeze. They’re listed down the side and the search is there and quick. Click on a game and get more information about it and see a large install or play button. Scroll down to see info about the latest update or activity from friends playing. Right click to get more information like where it’s installed locally.
Epic, at least when I last used it. Didn’t have user reviews, the page had large widgets for all the information making everything feel clutter while giving you less info about the game. Didn’t have tags and sure it did label the publisher but not the developers and you couldn’t click to see their other works.
Epic’s library management once again large widgets while giving less information. Feels cluttered. Install button is small. At the time I used epic there was not easy way to open install location. You had to go in file explorer yourself and find it.
While I’m on the topic of stores to why do console store pages suck as well compared to steam?! The console is literally sold at a loss and make money by selling you games but their store pages are shit compared to steam.
Yeah, the point of a PC is to be independent of any company.
Give it a year, Epic Games Stores exclusivity always runs out eventually.
EGS buyers can beta test it for me, that’s fine.
Check gog.com for it
I’ve never had any issues with pirating said games myself
I just wait until the exclusivity expires and then wait for it to go on deep discount because at that point I’ve moved on.
The only games I have on EGS are the ones I collect via Amazon Prime. It’s basically a game key graveyard.
But GOG? That’s where all the good games come from.
Why not the free weekly epic giveaways as well? There have been some good games for free in the past
I think I got the latest tomb raider trilogy and death stranding, uh, last year or the year before? All free. My perception of time is getting fucky again tho so take that into account.
I got Bear and Breakfast a few weeks ago and that’s one I had on my Steam wishlist. Along with quite a few others.
I do feel the slightest bit of guilt whenever I get a have that I definitely would have bought otherwise, especially because I tend to like indie games, but from what I’ve heard they’re paid reasonably well to do it.
Yeah, I was about to buy my wife the tomb raider series (it’s one of her faves) for Christmas and then I had to think of a new present. No complaints with that.
gog doesn’t have regional pricing and their launcher at this point is worse than epic’s. as an old fuck I like having old games back but it’s not convenient at all.
Heroic Games Launcher is on Windows also. If you buy a game on GOG through the Launcher it even compensates the devs a little bit. Very neat.
Wait, really? I guess I just noticed the affiliate link, I should order through the launcher in the future. It’s pretty great.
Galaxy definitely sucks, but to say it’s worse than EGS seems pretty far out there. EGS has been caught snooping around files and taking system logs without notice on top of just being overly resource intensive, totally bare bones and easily broken.
I’m talking user experience. egs used to be the slowest app I’ve ever used but right now egs starts and works faster for me than gog. also its video player works faster than steam’s, by like a mile. I don’t know if it’s just me because I never hear anyone complain about steam’s video player but for me it’s so goddamn terrible in so many ways I want to punch a wall every time I’m curious about a game while browsing steam because the video just takes fucking ages to get going and the controls are horrendous. I end up just searching on YouTube.
I wish Valve would get off their ass and make games again so they’d have a proper engine to rival UE5.
Half of Epic’s gamestore wouldn’t exist if this was the 2000s when people were flocking to the source engine because it was free and heavily modded
They have a rival it’s called source 2. That’s what CS, Dota and hl:Alyx used.
Sure, but pretty much nobody but Valve is using Source 2 for anything, though.
Yeah because it’s still in development and not yet available. S&box is one of the “games” already using it in the background. When it releases to the public, it’ll be just as popular as Source was - especially with the pricing strategy of “the only thing you need to pay for it is the steam fee” which is what, $100 per game?
A $100 deposit you get back if you actually sell your game and make money off of it. Technically not even a fee.
Is it? I last read about their pricing when greenlight was a thing and they said it’s for the shop / adverts / all the cool things you get for support of the game. Didn’t know they gave back the $100
I mean, they have Source 2, but to call it a rival before it’s even made it to third-party developers (Facepunch is effectively second party) is a bit of a stretch.
Which game?
I think competition is generally good, but i also am not a fan. Just wait it out
For there to be competition, there have to be some features. Epic just uses exclusivity deals as an alternative to features.
I am not sure what that is, but there is no competition.
I believe that’s called “Pay to Win” in gamer culture.
Snort! I hate that you are right ;)
I have a backlog of great games to play so long that I’m seeing remasters of some games on the list come out before I’ve played them a first time. I have no problem waiting for games to come to a different platform and go on sale.
I know playstation has been pushing more to PC but like isn’t a game only for epic pretty much the same as a Playstation exclusive? Sure it’s annoying but brands have always had exclusives
I refuse to use epic, didn’t even have an account
We have a ton of the free games. They give away a bunch to get you to use them.
Never paid for one from them, though.
If your enemy is going to help you beat them, let them.
So, Epic is your enemy and Valve is your friend?
Generally, no.
Valve just isn’t my enemy.
Every time someone takes the epic deal it just makes it easier to choose which game to ignore forever
I don’t mind it, Steam is nice but I don’t want them to have a monopoly on PC games
Exclusivity deals are not exactly a better alternative
Otherwise why would anyone use software they aren’t used to? Steam is really good, they’ve been putting massive resources into making it better for many years, and it has all the network effects.
Epic has a lot of money, they should find a way to offer a better service in some ways like Gog does.
Exclusivity deals are anti-consumer.
So we’re using a bad mechanism (exclusivity deals) to make people use an inferior product (Epic vs Steam), but “It’s totally going to be better for you in the future bro, trust me!”.
I’m sorry, but can we make it sound any more like a scam? It’s not quite there yet. Can you add something with crypto or AI or an MLM?
Damn, imagine how good Epic could be if instead of buying exclusives it spent that money on improving itself?
Federated marketplace protocol really should happen at some point.
Like, it seems like a very clear solution to an online monopoly risk. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
Main problem I see is payments
It also sounds like a cheater’s paradise.
What do you mean by ‘cheater’? Like ‘scammer’?
Like people who would otherwise get banned from a platform for cheating in games. Tracking that down is so much more complicated/impossible with federation. In other words it makes ban evasion super easy. See also: email spam.
Each server would likely have to utilize a payment service. In that fashion it’d be no different than how stores host their own websites you can order from. In my mind, the federated protocol would simply be a means for a person to browse stores similar to how one can navigate a mall or market.
For games, the further benefit after would be that via a client of the protocol, you could then download your games from the various stores in a singular library page.
Yeah but that would mean each server has to take custody of funds, have their own individual contractual agreements with game companies, handle refunds, bear all the legal and tax burdens of this, and get people to trust they won’t scam them. It’s just too much of a burden, these are all things that benefit heavily from centralization and economies of scale, due to the legalistic nature of payments. You would end up with one dominant instance and unused federation, if there was even anyone willing to deal with all that stuff to begin with.
I feel like you could solve this stuff pretty well with crypto, having payment go directly to the game devs, and a no refund policy or something to simplify things, but crypto is too hated so that wouldn’t work right now.
Surely we’ve learned by now that decentralization and markets don’t mix well
I’m not following.
Markets were originally decentralized, and while that has its problems, a decentralized market is miles better than a monopolized market.
Like, are you thinking of Etsy or Amazon or something? Because those are all run by a single point-of-sales and logistics collectives.
What we’re talking about is basically building a means for getting all the websites around the web of small shops and such (or in this case all the various game store fronts like steam, itch.io, GOG, and EPIC GAMES) and giving you client which allows you to browse and order from them simultaneously. All that store’d have to do is add the protocol to their server and add themselves to a list.
Oh I thought you meant decentralized currency. What you’re describing is just standardized storefront apis though, the vendors don’t need to talk to each other (federate) for it. unless i’m missing something
Are you also glad when one grocery store has apples but no pears and the other one has pears but no apples?
funny you never hear about games being ONLY on steam. it has nice features but riding so hard for a gigantic monopoly is going to bite our asses real bad when gaben retires. nothing lasts forever, and we don’t know who or what will replace the current structure at valve.
not to mention valve has had its share of anti consumer and predatory practices. most of the concessions have been in response to legal threats.
Blizzard was a good company when they released StarCraft, so I purchased StarCraft. Blizzard is a shit company now so I do not purchase or play their games now.
If Steam becomes a shit company in the future I’ll stop using it. I don’t understand the argument of "you should purchase for a shitty company now instead of a good one, because if you purchase from the good one it might one day become a shitty one.
except you didn’t buy all your games from blizzard. we’re talking about having your entire library depend on one company.
If Steam blocks my access to my legally purchased games or I refuse to run the Steam launcher there is no moral or ethical issue with me pirating my library.
GoG has been a competitor for as long as I can remember. It’s not exactly a fair comparison because they mostly carry older games. But you can buy a ton of games off GoG. Itch.io exists, however it’s a bit niche. Origin, humble bundle, Microsoft store. You can use all of these and get the majority of the games steam offers. Why don’t people? Because steam is just better. Steam has competition. It has a ton. People don’t feel that way cause EVERYONE who games on PC buys from steam. But it’s not because steam has a monopoly, it’s because steam offers more than their competitors, and does it better.
I don’t like monopolies. I agree with you. However, a monopoly existing because they are snuffing out the competition and forcing it to be the only option for consumers is different than a monopoly that exists because consumers choose it over and over again because of their pro consumer policies.
Now because this makes it seem like I’m saying “steam is the best”, there’s a good bit of stuff steam has done that I don’t like. But they understand what the gaming scene is and not just see the consumers as cash cows.
Gog does now have a launcher, but you can still download the offline installer files for games.
I edited that part out because as soon as I posted i did a quick fact check. Im just leaving this comment so people don’t think you’re crazy. You were just really fast to comment.
I am skeptical that this is the main reason (even though it’s true and is a reason). I think people don’t like the idea of having their games library split across multiple services, and don’t like using/learning software they aren’t familiar with, or that other people aren’t using.
That’s a possibility. You could also make a point that it’s cultural at this point to use steam if you PC game. The exact reason steam is used is split across many different points. However, I stand by my statement. If games like league, valorant, osrs, or anything from blizzard can exist strongly in the pc scene, I think it heavily refutes your points. For those people at least. These are all games that don’t use (or for some are mainly used by) the steam client.
hm that is a good point
They don’t. Buy on gog.
I do, and then they get nationalized, as all natural monopolies should.
Good luck with whatever crack pipe you’re smoking
Look at all those downvotes from people who took offense to this comment, and WANT Steam to have a monopoly.
Yes, corporations bad. But don’t forget: Steam is a corporation, too.
yeah but the thing is, Steam isn’t even trying to be a monopoly, all of Steam’s competitors just seem to have a hobby of shooting their own foot, repeatedly. Steam is trying to make the gaming experience easier and more fun, and excelling at it!
unlike some other platforms, Steam doesn’t do exclusive deals, literally the only Steam exclusives are Valve’s own games, everything else is up to be decided by devs
Steam itself seemingly isn’t trying to have a monopoly.
But damned if there isn’t a massive, very-loud Internet contingent that desperately wants them to have that monopoly.
If your immediate trigger reaction is seething anger when someone says, “I got a good deal on a game from Epic”… maybe that’s not healthy. The “Lord Gaben” meme isn’t meant to be taken 100% literally.
i don’t get angry at things that don’t affect me lol
i do worry for steam’s future, it’s only this good because “Lord Gaben” has made many great decisions, it may not be a democracy but a good “dictator” is often more effective than a democracy. But what happens if/when Steam goes to shit for whatever reason? the internet will implode
They’re in a class action lawsuit now over price fixing. They’re kicking games off Steam if their publishers offer games at lower prices on cheaper stores. They’re trying to be a monopoly.
… That’s not price fixing.
Do companies that don’t use steam offer comensuratelty lower prices?
That would seem to be price fixing by its very definition. (EDIT: Note that I’m not making any judgment on this class action. The reality of pricing on IsThereAnyDeal would suggest that there is no such rule that prices can’t be lower outside of Steam.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
And the question is irrelevant. Other companies can still benefit from external price fixing.
Price fixing is, as your highlighted bit says, a conspiracy to not compete on prices. Valve isn’t conspiring with their competition to fix prices, nor does valve even set the price.
The lawsuit alleges that it’s anticompetitive, not price fixing.
I personally don’t think it’s anticompetitive , given the number of popular games that don’t use steam. I just think that epic has a worse product, which isn’t valves fault.
From the actual lawsuit documents (emphasis is mine):
EDIT: Uh… Exactly what part are we downvoting here? All I did was quote the lawsuit.
They don’t offer lower prices on Epic because Valve bullies publishers into matching the price with Steam. Valve threatens to delist the game from Steam if a lower price is available elsewhere, using their market dominance to prevent smaller stores from competing the only way they realistically can – on price.
I literally said “companies that don’t use steam”. If a publisher opted to not use steam, it should have lower prices, right?
Except we see games not released on steam still selling for the same $60 for a full feature game that we do everywhere.
The lawsuit already has several public examples of communications between Valve and publishers where Valve is all “whoah whoah you can’t be selling that cheap on another store!”. Publishers want to offer lower prices. The economics make sense, passing on some of the savings to consumers will result in an increase in revenue, this is also what the expert economists in the lawsuit are going to be testifying.
If you’re big enough to not be using Steam, you’re what, Ubisoft or EA? (and even these are using Steam these days.)
Or blizzard, riot or epic. All of which are perfectly successful without using steam.
Communication between valve and publishers about TOS violations is only an issue if it’s an anticompetitive clause.
If publishers want to offer lower prices, they can use a different storefront like the others. If they can’t make sufficient revenue without valves advertisement and distribution network, then maybe the service is worth the price valve charges for it.
Valve has done nothing to stop consumers from using other stores, so I’m not particularly sympathetic when the stores are upset about consumer choice.
This entire lemmy post is about someone being upset that Epic is successful enough to have an exclusive. If a few large players can still succeed without Steam, it’s not proof that Steam’s practices aren’t making the market worse for consumers.
Listing your product on Steam isn’t advertising. They’re not promoting your game unless you pay them.
Let’s make an analogy. Is it reasonable for Nordstrom to go after a company selling the same product at Wal-Mart cheaper?
If we lived in a world where Epic was allowed to compete with Steam on the only way it can, with lower prices, we might have cheaper prices on Steam, and a more robust competitive market. This is why Valve is doing this price fixing. They know that consumers are price sensitive, and a $55 price tag on a new game going for $60 on Steam would be a disaster for them. They know their price fixing department would have to become a “watch for prices on other platforms and adjust our prices / cut to be competitive” department.
They literally present your product to people as recommendations and make it discoverable by the people likely to buy it. No, it’s not banner ads, but you use them because they get your game in front of consumers likely to buy it. That’s the entire reason the platform has appeal to developers.
Yes. Because it’s a worse store. People being upset that a thing they want has a hurdle they’re not willing to jump over doesn’t mean the preferable system is a problem.
If they signed a distribution agreement, then yes. It would almost be like a game signing an agreement to sell exclusively on the epic game store and then deciding to sell on steam anyway.
It’s a flawed analogy though, because Nordstrom’s and Walmart buy the product and then resell it, rather than facilitating a sale. Valve doesn’t buy 50k licenses from you for $20 each and then try to sell them while keeping all the revenue for themselves.
🙄 That would make sense if valve set the prices or adjusted their cut in real time.
Epic is allowed to compete with steam on price. Games don’t have to be on steam to be successful. Valve has no way if stopping you from choosing to use a different store, and as you pointed out in the beginning: This entire lemmy post is about someone being upset that Epic is successful enough to have an exclusive. You can’t be mad epic isn’t “allowed” to compete when they’re actively competing.
🙄 I’m well aware that they don’t do this, I’m asserting that the reason is at least partially because they don’t have to, because of their anti-competitive practices.
Finding a few examples of successful games not on Steam doesn’t prove that Steam’s market dominance and price fixing aren’t hurting consumers.
They’re competing so hard they’re not turning a profit after 5 years (Source IGN). They’re competing so hard that social media explodes in a circle jerk about Fortnite or lootboxes or some bullshit every time there’s an Epic exclusive. Epic is despised and not doing so well as a platform. A market without a massive anti competitive juggernaut dictating everyone else’s terms would make Epic’s store better, and it would make Steam better too.
And of course it’s not possible that they’re despised and not doing well because people don’t like their platform.
You still haven’t convinced me that they are price fixing, to say nothing of it hurting consumers. Full feature games on steam are still around the same price console games are, and that games have been for many years. If they’re price fixing to artificially inflate prices, they’re doing it in a way that hasn’t really kept up with inflation and has been in line with retailers on platforms they don’t even sell on.
I linked you a 200 page legal document with dozens of examples of them engaging in anti competitive bullying amounting to price fixing. Valve attempted to get the suit dismissed, and this failed, proving the court deems the suit to have merit. But lemmy user ricecake isn’t convinced. You sound a lot like Google bootlickers 10-15 years ago. This isn’t going to end well for you when Valve becomes as openly evil as Google.
Your attempted proof of your claim that publishers don’t want to offer lower prices using games like Alan Wake 2 was actually proof of my argument, which you still have failed to acknowledge, because they definitively offered their game at launch at a lower price on the lower cut storefront.
This alone is highly sus. Console manufacturers initially subsidize their consoles by selling hardware at a loss. Sony probably lost money to get your PS5 into your hands. Valve didn’t lose money to get your PC into your hands, and (theoretically) doesn’t run a monopoly store. Why should their prices be comparable to console monopoly stores?
So, a court document is an argument, not a smoking gun. The court didn’t dismiss the case because it has enough merit to be argued, which just means it isn’t plainly false at first glance. The court did dismiss earlier versions of their claim. Earlier versions being rejected and this one being allowed to move forward have little to do with anything.
Repeatedly asserting that it’s “anticompetitive bullying” doesn’t actually make it anticompetitive bullying.
Lol, what do you think is going to happen to me? I think maybe you’re taking this conversation too seriously.
Yes, Alan wake 2 was lower priced on epic than on consoles by about $10, after epic financed the game. it also has yet to turn a profit, with most revenue coming from titles that aren’t exclusive to epic. You also ignored the list of other games I mentioned, each of which launched for $60 to $70 and wasn’t on steam.
Half life 1 cost $60 on launch. Same for 2. Same for the original star craft. Same for basically every full featured game for years.
It’s not “sus” that most games sell for the typical price for a game. It’s a sign that valve isn’t driving up prices, since prices are roughly the same regardless of platform, vendor or time, including when steam didn’t exist yet.
I know you think you’re arguing against a mindless steam fanboy, hence you’re starting to break out some insulting language and condescension. I can assure you you’re not, just like I assume I’m not dealing with a dense contrarian more interested in punishing valve for success than actual critical thinking.
I don’t think that suing someone necessarily makes you right, and that a financially motivated lawsuit is an inherently slanted description of events, when the trial hasn’t happened and none of the claims have even been responded to.
Evidence please. In order for me to be correct that some publishers want to offer lower prices, I don’t need it to be the case that every game off Steam goes on sale for less than “full price” at the time. I just need it to be the case sometimes. If sometimes, a publisher wants to offer the game cheaper, but can’t because they’d lose all of their Steam sales, then Valve is harming consumers by leveraging their market dominance to dictate prices on other platforms.
You mentioned a handful of games without doing any research on them, and one of them accidentally proved my point. I guess I should say at least one of them, because it was the very first one I actually bothered to check.
I’m not sure what your point is here. They set the $50 price tag to maximize revenue. Raising prices doesn’t always raise revenue, if it did, why not sell for $99 or $999?
Whether they were right or wrong that $50 was a better price, and whether they made a profit or a loss, is irrelevant from a consumer’s point of view. We got a AAA GoTY nominated game for $50. I guess we can be thankful that Sony and Microsoft’s 30% cut console stores apparently don’t have anti-competitive policies like Steam does.
Of course it’s not necessarily in consumer’s interest if they go out of business in the long run, but it looks like they at least broke even as of November, so it seems it’s a sustainable model: gameranx.com/…/alan-wake-2-is-not-profitable-yet-…
You asked for a list of games that fit my “steam hasn’t impacted pricing” statement, so I gave you games that had prices inline with what steam prices games at and industry standard. Like I explained in my previous comment. I know how much those games cost: between $50 and $70 dollars, which is what games have retailed at for decades.
Games on steam and off steam have had roughly the same price, and games not on steam have had perfectly reasonable times making sales. Except the one on epic.
My point was that even with lowering the price to the low end of standard, they have had some difficulty getting enough revenue to cover the cost of the game.
If other retailers are able to compete just fine, and one isn’t despite lowering prices and paying for exclusives, and it’s the one that, as you mentioned, people complain about when they buy an exclusive, then maybe the issue is with that retailer.
statista.com/…/average-price-of-video-games-by-pl…
If you want more discussion, you can Google “video game prices over time”.
Given that you’re starting to ignore large bits of replies and have been repeating yourself pretty consistently without expanding on the point, I’m not sure that there’s much value in continuing. You think it’s anticompetitive, I don’t think it’s so obvious. We’ll see what the courts say.
Have a nice day, and I hope you find the same passion for your next endeavor. :)
But steam isn’t trying to be monopoly. They don’t pay developers to only sell on their platform. Games that are only on steam are only on steam because steam is the only place that developer wants to sell the game.
Steam isn’t trying to be a monopoly because they already are one. They’re now trying to keep that monopoly.
I use both Epic and Steam. That’s it. I understand your sentiment though.
I have a friend that uses epic games. I met him on steam. I’ve never played an epic game even though he keeps telling me about free games or whatever on epic games.
I mean they’re getting our data directly or buying it. I might as well be one of the folk who gets compensated for my data.
Yeah it’s not like valve or any of the other companies that sell games on steam too. They’ll all have your data and some what people think are so dastardly, (when in reality it’s just grown-ups playing with numbers).
Nah, pretty sure this isn’t about the data. They just want to encourage people to go through the effort of setting up an account and downloading their launcher in the hopes that they can then later entice you to buy something else while you’re there. Every time you run one of those free games they get to show you another offer, and since you’re already signed up, the hurdle to buying something is far lower than it otherwise would have been.
Yeah, it’s a market share/userbase play
Correct, as an added bonus, they get to report X million monthly active users on top of that to their investors (that’s why they make you come back every week for a new game). Likely at relatively little cost to them since they don’t have to pay full price for those games.
It’s probably still expensive as hell but when you have a competitor as big as Steam in the market, you gotta be able to afford some ammunition, and the Unreal Engine likely still brings in tons of cashflow.
Actually it is (or at least was) surprisingly cheap for them. A while ago internal data leaked and they paid surprisingly little for the giveaways. Either the Devs are desperate or there was some kind of backdoor deal like no or very little fees (for engine and distribution) for the next game they develop or something like that. Look it up, the data is still out there; incredibly cheap.
Right. They probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this off for as long as they have been if it was just hemorrhaging money.
Most of the free games are crap but they have on occasion given away absolute bangers (double- or even triple-A titles, although of course usually older titles or ones that didn’t sell well). I recently got The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice for free (a game I wouldn’t otherwise have bought or even known about), and I ended up having a very solid ~55 hours of fun with it. I still do all my buying either on Steam or GOG because I don’t trust Epic and I hate their godforsaken launcher so I refuse to pay for anything that’ll be tethered to it, but getting a free game of that caliber certainly made up for the pain of installing it.
I got exactly one free epic game (subnautica) that I uninstalled and bought immediately the day I couldn’t play the game because I lost Internet and there was no goddamned offline mode.
Epic store is shovelware, and I can’t believe the amount of people who defend a 4th rate store comparing itself to the gold standard that can’t even offer basic functionality expected of a modern platform. But people always have liked trash, so meh.
I mean I guess that means you don’t like the game that much if your priorities are to skip it because of the store.
Steam has made great strides in helping to make the gaming scene more consumer friendly. They constantly have sales, make refunds extremely easy (and in some cases have forced refunds), and are even now setting guidelines to battle passes and how you can’t just advertise it as a battle pass and instead have to list whats in it. Epic hates consumers and their main business strategy is to force business by paying publishers to only release on their store.
It doesn’t matter how good the game is, I’m not purchasing from a store that doesn’t have the customer in mind.
Unless it’s food. Cause then I would starve.
Nothing of this that you’ve described is related to the one specific game. I don’t really like Epic Store because it has a shitty UI, but I like Alan Wake 2 enough to want to buy it on release. I don’t want a personal crusade to stand in a way of me enjoying a great game. I don’t give a shit, honestly, I will get my favorite games wherever they are available as long as it’s on PC.
That’s because I wasn’t talking about my opinion of the game. I was talking about my opinions on the store. Crazy how I wouldn’t bring up the game when the conversation is about the store. And that’s okay. That’s your choice. I really don’t care. I was just offering some perspective that I thought was help and would benefit you and others. You know, how commenting typically works in platforms such as this.
Let me rephrase it for you. If the game i have the most hours in and I love the most suddenly became an epic exclusive I would never play it again.
And just to make you happy, I don’t like Alan Wake, not my cup of tea.
Also the “one specific game” isnt even mentioned in the post?? That wasn’t the point of the post??
Thank you for bringing me up to date on all the Epic Store hate opinions, not like I’ve read that a million times before. I’m glad you decided that the conversation was about the store when my original comment was about a game. Why are you changing the topic of discussion?
The “one specific game” wasn’t mentioned, yes. Just to me it’s pretty weird to make decisions on whether I like the game or not, based on the store and not the quality of the game itself. So I stated my opinion on that part specifically. You know, how commenting typically works in platforms such as this.
Do you have brain worms?
No. Why do you ask?
Well you brought up your opinion. Which is fine. It’s valid. I don’t agree with it, but that’s for you to keep, not me. But then I gave you my opinion. And now you seem upset and irate. You posted an epic store neutral opinion in a thread where nearly everyone is dogging on them. And you seemed clueless. So I gave my perspective on the epic game store. Maybe you just didn’t know, you did seem a little clueless. But then you just got angry. And now I’m wondering if you have brain worms. Because who in their sane mind, would walk into a tiki bar, and then start stomping on the toes of everyone wearing a Hawaiian shirt. And you can at least cure brain worms.
I didn’t get upset, irate or angry though. None of my questions were hostile. I was keeping a softer tone than you did in any of your responses. In fact, from my side, you seem pretty angry right about now. Maybe you are, maybe you are not. I don’t really care.
Regarding your “tiki bar” comment — last I checked, this is a Games community, not a Steam community. I stated my opinion, like you said. I know the opinion of the capital G Gamer on Epic Store perfectly well. The thing is that I enjoy poking people into their hypocrisies every now and then, in hopes that they will spot the contradictions in their argument and that will make them think for themselves a little bit. But I guess the capital G Gamers are not the best audience for these exercises.
I’m happy that they’re talking about moving the Unreal Engine off the platform.
There are too many games to care about the tiny amount of them that aren’t available on steam.
There are so many games that I don’t even care about all the games available on Steam (that I’d be willing to play). We have so many games coming out that I’d have to play game for a living to play all the games I want to play, and even then I’m not 100% sure I’d be able to play everything I’d be open to play. I have multiple games that I’ve purchased and installed thinking “I’ll get to them soon enough” and they’re just taking drive space. I also have multiple games on my wishlist that are “waiting for a discount” but I’m probably never going to pick them up because actually they’re waiting for my backlog to clear and it will never clear.
Does it suck that Alan Wake is Epic exclusive. Sure. Does it really matter to me? Not really because I’m oversaturated with games I want to play. Missing one great game doesn’t matter when I already have a backlog of great games I won’t purchase because I have a backlog of great games I’ve purchased that I won’t play because I have a backlog of great games I really want to play.
Literally anything besides not getting that game?
I recently discovered that I can buy, download, and launch games from my Epic Games library without having the Epic Games Bloatware even installed.
Heroic Games Launcher serves as a storefront, installer, and launcher for Epic Games, GOG, and Amazon.
This needs to be the top comment. Yes, you can use it on both Windows, Mac and Linux.
Steam Deck included!
I installed it when I got my deck earlier this week, even though I don’t have any games on Epic (yet)
NOW this is interesting. Still won’t give Epic my money but I get plenty of games from Twitch for EGS.
Exe files exist in the games folder.
I’ll still skip games with multiplayer for obvious reasons but this is great.
Epic games launcher is no where best as bad as anyone says. The storefront is also one of most responsive ones, especially compared to the likes of GOG.
For me, I just buy a game wherever it’s cheapest. Like I got satisfactory on epic because I could get it like £15 cheaper than steam.
Like I don’t understand why people are so irked by a steam alternative. It’s not like it requires new hardware to play it’s exclusives like with consoles. Aren’t we all supposed to be against monopolies, steam needs competition, look at how shit its sales have been for like 10 years now compared to what they were like prior.
I’m not irked by a Steam alternative. I’m irked by Epic Launcher. It’s so incredibly slow to start up.
Also not available on much more than Windows.
When was the last time you used it?
Also use Heroic launcher to bypass the bloat.
It’s been some months. I usually just game on Steam installed with flatpak on Arch Linux.
I’ll look into Heroic. There are quite a few such solutions. Lutris or whatever, and similar. It’s a jungle to me.
Wait until you read all the problems people have with EGS!
I’ve read people complaining they lost their account and support couldn’t do shit because “of security reasons” while steam needs a few stuff and you get it back. I’ve helped someone getting his steam account back after someone stole his account changing mail + password in like ~12 hours (?)/1 day
Was very simple:
Was really that simple! A few mails
I’ve experienced losing my old email address, and all traces of my old digital identity. They went above and beyond to work with me till I could prove to their satisfaction that I was the original owner of the account, then restored it to me. Steam support is generally amazing.
Is it better now? Last I used it, earlier this year, it still took me half a year for any UI change to happen when I did anything.
To be clear, I hated Steam for ages too. Only maybe 6 years ago I started actually buying games there. Before then I’d just pirate everything. The Steam application often had issues and I had no money before then anyway. But nowadays I find Steam more convenient than piracy. I do not find EGS more convenient than piracy. I do wish Steam had more meaningful competition.
It’s fine, it lists the games I have, installs and updates them and I can press play to play them without anything like pop-ups getting in the way.
I’m gonna have to agree. It used to be about the most slow and bloated thing in existence, but they actually fixed a lot of performance issues last time I checked. It’s still slow, but in the same time period Steam on Windows decided to add a pointless splash screen increasing the load time by 4x, letting Epic take the W by a wide margin in load times, while responsiveness is a draw.
Yes, I know that Steam is more feature complete and consumer friendly which is why I still prefer to buy from Steam when possible.
Steam is not a monopoly. The vast majority of PC gaming revenue is made outside Steam. Fortnite: EGS only, not on Steam. Minecraft: own web storefront and Microsoft Store, not on Steam. Roblox: I think it has its own storefront, it’s not on Steam.
Steam has an estimated revenue of 8.6bn out of PC gaming’s overall 45bn. It’s very far from even approaching 50%, let alone surpass it.
<img alt="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/50-Years-of-Video-Game-Revenue-Dec-30.jpg" src="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/50-Years-of-Video-Game-Revenue-Dec-30.jpg">
I don’t mind other storefronts. What I mind is people spreading the false narrative as if one of the most widely installed storefronts (EGS because of Fortnite) is somehow the little underdog.
Do you have a source on that? I’d love to quote it in future
Dude, I embedded the source right in the comment you’ve replied to. 🤦
Does the image have a source? Also I don’t think just revenue some us the only Barometer for a monopoly. If something has very few users but had really high prices that they’re willing to pay for them by your metric they’d be closer to a monopoly than steam
Yes, the image has a source and everything is detailed in the lower part of the image.
But that’s exactly why the EU classified Apple as digital gatekeeper: iPhones have a lower installed base than Android in the EU but higher spending.
Given the massive popularity of Fortnite, I wouldn’t bet if Steam has a higher installed base than EGS. People just prefer to buy on Steam.
The apple thing wasn’t about apple vs android for a monopoly. It was about how there’s no alternative option on ios for purchasing apps. Android is completely irrelevant to that decision.
Nobody in the EU would have cared if the commercial app market wasn’t dominated by Apple. Plenty of devices out there don’t let you install random stuff off the internet but if the market dominance isn’t there, the EU won’t care.
I can’t think of any other devices that have apps in the same sense where other developers can also release their apps as long as there is a cut for the platform holder where there is no other legal alternative to get apps elsewhere.
The only examples I can think of are games consoles, but they are seemingly next on the chopping block. I think the only thing that has stopped that from happening as soon as the apple one is the fact that for the majority of games, you can still get them physically elsewhere at prices that aren’t completely dictated by the platform holder.
Ah. I was not expecting numbers for 2023 under a 2003 year heading.
Steam le good, Epic le bad. Amirite? Updoots pls.
I don’t like it when something is only available on Epic either. I also don’t like it when someone is only available on Steam - which happens far more often.
Problem is:
But why should this matter to a consumer? If you don’t like Steam or Valve’s business practices, it’s much more difficult to avoid Steam because of its exclusives.
There’s a class action lawsuit against Valve now, over Steam’s practices similar to price fixing. Part of the reason Epic has to pay for exclusives is that Steam prohibits publishers from offering lower prices on lower cut stores like Epic. If publishers could pass on part of the savings to consumers from the smaller cut, Epic could be more successful without exclusive contracts. Anyway, hopefully what comes out of the suit will be better for consumers in the end.
Exclusives? Never heard of them paying devs to release only on steam, epic did that and still does that (?? I think). Steam offers a better store and features to devs so they release the games there.
You know steam offers you to generate infinite (?) Steam keys to sell them on your website or anywhere else and valve gets 0% from it? It’s plenty of bad practices and devs accepting money just before the steam release (Metro exodus, I’m talking about you)
If it’s only on Steam and no other PC platform, it’s exclusive. I don’t see the relevance from a consumer’s point of view whether money changed hands for that exclusivity. You could even argue that no money changes hands, Epic just doesn’t take its cut from the game’s sales is how I believe that works.
If Steam has the better store, then it should have no need to require publishers to match their prices. Of course if you’re buying a game on a fully featured, 30% cut store, it should cost more than on a less fully featured 12% cut store. Steam is using their large market share to bully publishers into not passing on savings to consumers from lower cut stores.
Steam keys can be generated, but the product can’t be discounted, ie again the 0% cut savings cannot be passed on to consumers. So all this does is create an extra inconvenience for the consumer to sign up to some publisher’s storefront to get the same product at the same price.
Whatever dude. The difference is Epic paid for the exclusive, Steam just offers a better store and people release it there because they want it
Edit: Look at Ubishit, went epic exclusive then went back to steam crawling because no sales on epic LOL
Cya
The difference is the developer deciding they don’t want to bother going through the effort of making their game available on every platform on the Internet, vs. a dev saying “we are going to release a game on this platform”, even doing presales, and then saying “oh, some guy just gave us a bunch of money to not sell you the thing we promised.”
Ya, that’s great for the devs being given a bunch of money, but that’s shitty for me so I’m not going to give money to the rich asshole doing this so that he can keep doing it
If you don’t like giving money to rich assholes, I have some bad news for you about Valve.
That rich asshole doesn’t try to actively interfere with things in my life.
And if your only response is “Gabe is also rich” I guess that means the rest of my post stands.
If the allegations in the current lawsuit are true, and they are still being tested, then Valve is leveraging its market dominance to keep prices fixed at a higher level. If you have bought more than 0 video games in recent years, this is most certainly interfering with things in your life.
Yeah, but it’s different when Gabe does it. You know, just cause it is!
That lawsuit is ridiculous and misses a ton of huge boons to developers. The fact is , valve only takes that sales cut for games sold on their platform but they never require you to make that sale on their platform. In fact, they are totally cool with you making the sale elsewhere and giving a steam code out which means steam makes nothing on that sale and they still host the software distribution for said sale. You can use their multiplayer infrastructure, their distribution infrastructure, and their communication infrastructure without paying them a dime if you sell your game on your own website. And it’s by design that you can do this.
As for consumer benefits, steam has a system that allows you to give your friends and family members access to your library. They are constantly selling games at steep discount (after getting permission from developers to do so). They allow a huge range of content with very light handed censorship policies. They have a robust multiplayer system and communications platform that integrates seemlessly with the games they sell and distribute. I won’t get into the Linux stuff but all I will say is Proton wouldn’t be where it is without valve and steam.
Steam is single handedly the most pro-consumer and pro-developer platform on the market. When developers put their games on steam, everyone wins. And it’s never a requirement that those games only exist on steam. When steam is the only place a developer sells their game, it’s because steam is legitimately the only place that developer wants to sell it anyway.
And they can afford to do this because they still require price matching, so all it does is create an inconvenience for the user to sign up for another site (something Steam fans don’t have a problem noticing in other contexts). They still get the game at the same price. I personally have hundreds of games on Steam and I don’t think I have ever purchased a Steam code this way, and I expect it’s the same for the majority of Steam users.
The lawsuit wants to create a world where a new game can come out for $60 on Steam and $55 on Epic. Valve doesn’t want this. Valve wants you to be required to pay the same price on Epic and Steam. This doesn’t seem very pro consumer.
It’s great that Steam is investing in their platform and Proton and Steam Deck. But they shouldn’t be requiring publishers to pretend that that stuff is free, to make consumers pay other storefronts like Epic as though Epic is also investing in these things.
I got a ton of my games through humble bundle, Which distributes steam codes. I’ve also gotten steam keys through Itch.io.
As for your price argument, price matching is only for the lowest price steam has ever sold the software for. So you can sell your games at steam sale prices 100% of the time and have a higher price on steam. So you’re literally just wrong.
Cool, but myself and I bet most others don’t bother making accounts on other sites for the same price as Steam.
Source or example of someone doing this (regular price on reseller is lower than regular price on Steam)? The legal documents contain plenty of examples of Valve even complaining when there’s a sale on another platform but no comparably priced sale on Steam recently. I can’t imagine they’d tolerate basically a permanent sale.
partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
What about that is unreasonable considering you’re using their platform to deliver your software and their multiplayer framework. Steam makes no money on the sale of your keys.
Also, if your issue is that steam is a monopoly, then go make accounts in other places and stop supporting that monopoly you’re mad about…
Right, so you’re just conceding you lied about being able to set a price lower than Steam on a reseller.
The main issue is not Steam keys. I personally think the Steam key situation is fine, even with their limitations. The reason they’re included in the lawsuit, is to reveal Valve’s hypocrisy. Valve forces publishers to offer the same price as Steam on Epic, GoG, etc, stores which have nothing to do with Steam’s “software and their multiplayer framework”. Despite those stores being lighter weight and taking smaller cuts.
I have accounts on several other storefronts, as should all gamers, but the issue is that Valve’s anti-competitive behavior is making every store (including Steam) worse for consumers. I can’t get a lower price on Epic, despite that store taking a 12% cut compared to Steam’s 30% cut. If Steam’s platform is so expensive and awesome and well developed, it’s natural for a game to cost more on Steam. But Valve doesn’t like its competition to be able to compete the best way they can – on price.
That’s not why epic has to pay for exclusives. They have to pay to cover the income gap developers would face from eschewing the better store.
Publishers are free to skip using steam and pass along their savings, but they invariably don’t. They just pocket the difference.
That epic game store exists, takes a lower cut and gives away free stuff, and still struggles to be viable is an indicator that valve isn’t be anticompetitive.
It’s not illegal to have a better product, only to use your market position to keep other products from trying to compete.
It’s one thing to be generally against big companies, and another to be against one in favor of another, when the stakes are “which company keeps money”.
That’s exactly what the lawsuit alleges though. The only way smaller featured storefronts have to compete with Steam is on price. Valve uses its market dominance to prohibit offering a better price on smaller stores. If you offer a better price on Epic, Valve will kick you off Steam.
Valve not letting you use their advertisement and distribution network at the same time you undercut them on sales elsewhere doesn’t feel anticompetitive to me.
Some games choose to skip steam and use epic. Epic pays them to do so, and the publisher doesn’t lower prices.
If you’re a publisher, why would you want to offer a lower price elsewhere? The appeal to a lower cut to you is higher revenue, not equivalent revenue.
Evidence? Even if we went down the list of launch Epic exclusives and somehow determined that the price is equivalent to what it would launch at on Steam, the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different.
Maybe ask the publishers who got together to sue Valve for the ability to do this, and check their many examples of comms with Valve where Valve was upset that publishers were offering lower prices on other platforms.
There is a phenomenon called price elasticity. Example, a 5% price cut might result in 10% more units sold, giving you higher revenue.
How much does Diablo cost? How much did StarCraft 2 cost? Alan wake 2 ? Every Nintendo game? PlayStation or Xbox console exclusives?
It’s trivially easy to find full featured games that didn’t launch on steam and have the same price point as a full featured game on steam.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different”.
Isn’t your whole point that the smaller platform can compete by taking a smaller cut and allowing developers to offer lower prices for the same revenue?
How does developers not doing that become irrelevant?
And it’s two small publishers who had their remaining claims joined by the court after variously having them dismissed and reframing them. Class action doesn’t mean that a large number of publishers have actually made the complaint.
I don’t know. Do you want me to do your research for you? Interesting that you list Nintendo and consoles who take 30% cuts from their monopoly stores.
But checking your example of Alan Wake 2, looks like it launched at $60 on consoles (30% cut) and $50 on Epic (12% cut). Huh, funny how that works.
Here’s an example of a communication from a court document:
There are dozens of examples like this. This is not behavior of a company that’s not price fixing. courtlistener.com/…/wolfire-games-llc-v-valve-cor…
Devs trade Epic reputation for cash.
Reputation? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
As I said in another comment:
88% of 1.000 vs 70% of 1.000.000 which one is better? Just curious
>Steam has 132 million monthly active users.
>Monthly Active Users reached 75M users
You going to the platform that nerds get excited shovel money into, or are you going to cash out up front and have Epic hand your your game to Fortnight kids for free while pissing off excited potential customers.
What? I will always pick the platform that offers me a better service and Piracy is better than Epic but steam is my favorite. Don’t care about epic and they giving away the games
I’m also confused. I was implying that taking a deal with Epic makes you shitty sellout on a untrustworthy platform they have to bribe users, and the custom will remember that.
Ooh I’m dumb. Sorry! Yeah you’re right
We may both be dumb.
I am for sure!
Great, the devs of good games deserve that money. The way you’re putting it, makes it seem morally just to buy Epic exclusives whenever possible. Thank you!
As well as 2 max players and their game to fail
The way Coffee Stain explained it for satisfactory is that the exclusivity windfall gave them enough runway to finish the game.
If the system of temporary exclusivity in exchange for upfront development cash continues I think it’s an overall win for the gaming community as games get to come out at less rushed pace and with potentially less cash generation grabs in the game itself.
So venture capitalism. Because that worked out so well for consumers with the rest of the tech industry. Wcgw?
Nothing has gone wrong, and it’s been going on for years at this point. But yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe aliens will invade us because people use Epic. Maybe the sun will go supernova because the Epic store doesn’t have reviews.
Who knows, anything could happen.
That’s great that devs can benefit from it, I will not purchase the game until it’s available on other platforms due to Epic’s general shitty behavior.
🧲 time
Both are horrible mess, I don’t really understand this deepthroating of steam their ui is horrible, they do behave like a monopoly, games by them have drm by default. Same can be said about epic.
No, Steam games do not have DRM by default. By default Steam is a mere download manager. For Steam DRM to be applied, the publisher has to run the drm_wrap command: partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm
Feel free to use SteamCMD: developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD
Where do you get those lies from? I’d kinda get it if Steam’s documentation for publishers was behind a NDA wall but it’s public.
Ok, sorry I was wrong. So I can filter out drmed games on steam, right?
Steamcmd looks unrelated, why would I need to use it? Also the wiki page only confirms my earlier thought about steam ui being horrible, whole article is avout how to install it and what kinds of problems exist, not telling how to do some basic things with it.
No, they don’t. Unless otherwise implemented, Steam games are DRM free and can be launched directly from their executables.
As evidenced by this post, they are not a monopoly. So what does this statement actually mean?
This post gives evidence of the contrary, game that dared not to be published on platform that has 70-80% of pc market share ( geekwire.com/…/gaming-giant-valve-hit-with-anothe… ) shouldn’t even exist and even stating otherwise is a blasphemy, lol. As for more anecdotical examples, games that are published on steam only, are majority most don’t even list other platforms on their web sites, in cases when they can be bought elsewhere. Even more, updates and patches often do not reach other marketplaces. So yeah steam is a shitty marketplace with horrible ui and captured fanatical clients.
Lawsuits are cheap and meaningless. Unless actually ruled on, they don’t mean crap (and even then, sometimes it’s just clear evidence of jury / judge bias, like the infamous patent trolls of East Texas).
This source puts their market share at ~20% of the PC gaming market. Your source is for ‘85% market share in multi-publisher PC game stores’, which is not the same thing, and it’s based on a random tweet by their competitor CEO attacking them, which should carry approximately 0 credibility.
You keep using the word monopoly. It does not mean what you seem to think it means.
Your “source” is an image that doesn’t even differentiate between various stores and lists everything as blue, with text that says “steam revenue is probabaly x billion”. I couldn’t find anything except other similar images when looking up Pelham Smithers reports. In reports from previous years steam is not mentioned. I will rephrase it then if you dislike the word I am using: Steam has a dominant position in the pc gaming market and uses it to their benefit which doesn’t (in my opinion) coincide with consumer benefit, also their app is shit.
P.S.: I’ve used the word monopoly once
visualcapitalist.com/video-game-industry-revenues…
Also, Steam’s estimated revenue and the PC gaming market are numbers available from various sources. I’ve pointed out why your source is nonsense, and provided more accurate figures.
That’s changed from your original ‘behave like a monopoly’ comment, and which I’m still waiting for clarification on. How exactly do they behave like a monopoly supposedly does?
You post the same data now with article that doesn’t even have word “steam” in it. Your various sources weren’t linked. I think that clears why your source is “nonsense”.
Yes my words are changed because, you somehow read me saying multiple times of steam being monopoly in single use of phrase, steam behaves like a monopoly. I repeat, not liking one store doesn’t make me a fan of another, they both are horrible.
As for examples of anti-competitive behaviour, price matching that is being discussed in comments here is a big one, don’t you think?
How dare you speak out against Steam?! Can’t you see they’re the good guys?!
That’s Honkai Star Rail right?
.
.
Valve kills physical ownership of games: I sleep
Games exclusive to Origin: I sleep
Games exclusive to whatever the fuck Blizzard made: I sleep
Games exclusive to Microsoft Store: I sleep
Games exclusive to Epic: REAL SHIT
Its because the other exclusives are the devs/publishers launcher. While epic was actively seeking those 1year exclusivity deals to get more users on the platform.
So it would be better if it was a permanent exclusivity deal, like traditional publishers have?
They’ve been paying out in advance in some cases (Epic Mega Grants, I think) so the devs can finish the game. That’s basically the definition of what publishers do, but when Epic do it it’s somehow “not publishing”?
Well it really depends how you look at it. For the devs it’s better in terms of how much they get per purchase given that epic takes a lower cut than steam, IIRC 15% as opposed to 30%.
But many users hate epic as a platform seeing how it’s not as mature in features, and probably just pure love of steam.
What I’m actually wondering about is if it’s worth signing the exclusivity deal seeing how some people will not bother buying a game on a platform they hate or do enough people purchase for it to even out and even gain a larger profit.
steam and valve has also been generally more respectful with users than mostly any other online business, not even just in the space of online software stores. of course it’s not all rainbows and glitter but the point stands.
I don’t give any attention to the arguments that Steam is “more mature” in regards to features, when the vast majority of users don’t use those features to begin with. Steam has all the community features (and more) of Discord, but I would wager most of the fanboys in this thread don’t even know about that, or where to find those community features, let alone actually use them.
medium.com/…/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-f…
They waited until a game previously announced for Steam was finished development and had a launch date, then tried to bribe them with an exclusivity deal to not provide the game on the platform they promised to backers.
They weren’t paying a damn thing for development, just to eliminate consumer choice. Instead of, you know, providing a better service in some way so people want to purchase from you instead.
don’t hide the full story, they pay devs millions to keep their games exclusive to epic for a year. that is an extremely scummy business practice that you are rewarding and encouraging if you buy from this shitfest of a platform
When Half Life 2 launched, you had to register your game with Steam before you could play it. You had to give up your physical ownership of the product, and lock it to yourself. You couldn’t sell it to anyone else, or even let them play it.
That’s what you were encouraging by buying from that shitfest of a platform.
I really don’t see how bunging devs money for publishing rights is worse. The devs clearly don’t see it that way.
Epic lets you sell your games to someone else?
As to your 2nd point I play my friend’s games all the time. I haven’t purchased Satisfactory but have almost 100% it on Steam playing my friend’s copy.
No. You can with physical. Well, before that just meant a steam key with a disc.
That come much later. Try to keep up.
So we’re talking about everything except this moment in time?
If Steam is bad because no physical media then so is Epic.
Pick an era in time you would like to complain about, and if it’s the early 2000s then go bitch to people in the early 2000s. I’m sure many of them are complaining about the loss of physical media. People still used Steam anyway and now it’s the norm. Now people are complaining about exclusivity deals, if people still use Epic anyway then that will become the norm.
I mean I see this as a good thing. I have to keep a separate launcher around but… at least that dev is getting a great deal and will probably be able to support that game for a while (or start their next one)
Yeah and get in return like 10 players? Only who has no faith in their game sells it to the demon
There are apparently 270 million Epic Store accounts made.
Now most of them don’t buy anything and are probably installed on a whim for one free game ad now they’ve forgot their password, while a good chunk of them are probably 12 year olds playing Fortnite who don’t even look at it and hurl all their pocket money into V-bucks so the rest of us get free games, but it’s not an insignificant amount.
You know it also counts ghost accounts made while linking your steam to epic or when you use a game with EOS and it creates a dummy account yee?
Buying the game. I thought it was obvious but I guess not
You don’t even need to do that. Use Heroic and you can combine Epic, GOG, and Amazon into one launcher.
They’re paying indie devs millions to remain exclusive for a year. What’s scummy is the Steam fanboys who see that and think it’s better for gamers if those games just aren’t financially successful.
-Valve didn’t kill ownership it was already dead. DLC has been pulled, and games delisted, as well as games made unplayable by server shutdowns. They just happened to be the platform who told you to your face what you were getting into while everyone else lied and said the game was yours until it wasn’t. They also say they’ll provide downloads for a time if they ever shut down, but if you want that long term guarantee you’re probably better off looking at GOG and some kind of data storage for the installers.
-Origin is shit and I hate EA/Origin exclusives too, but it’s basically a launcher for their own games which I understand, but still prefer steam to be included too, so much of the time I avoid EA games (i avoid them for a lot of reasons tbh)
-Battle.net started as a unified launcher for blizzard games, which sort of made sense as they never worked with or were involved with steam, and many of their games were disc based or had its own installer. Subscriptions specifically I don’t think existed with steam for a while so that was sort of a complicating factor. Still wish their games were on steam, but it sort of made sense at its inception.
-I don’t even use the microsoft store unless forced to, I find it annoying and bleh. They’re forcing more games to it and it’s shitty too.
-Epic is annoying, but it’s a special kind of annoying because for many games early on, they would announce steam as a supported platform, some even sold the game on steam, until they changed to Epic exclusives. I think Fall Guys was one example. The bait and switch really lost them trust with a lot of gamers and you’ll find the attitude towards them can be pretty bad because of that history.
Add in that many of the games aren’t published by them, they just threw money at the publisher or devs to make their games epic exclusive. This can be good for developers, like an upfront investment, but sucks for gamers who like to keep things somewhat unified in terms of a game library. Especially when you already have to deal with 5 other launchers, another arbitrary one is pretty annoying.
If you’re wondering why people want their games on steam, look at the features. Free cloud save backups, a decent amount of free screenshot backups, in game recording is new and pretty neat, achievements, community marketplaces, frequent sales, family sharing, steam workshop for easy integrated modding, discussions and guides for all your games, early access games, built in friends, text chat, voice chat, remote play together, game streaming, etc.
TLDR: It isn’t an “oh epic stinky just because” situation. The Epic game store simply doesn’t have feature parity, bait and switched gamers multiple times with exclusives after games were advertised as being on steam, and basically survived on throwing money at devs to put their games exclusively on EGS, at the expense of the people who want to play those games on their chosen platform. Doesn’t shock me that they don’t have a lot of positive PR in the community.
kills? most of them work with a steam emu, even offline. that’s not even cracking. most of those that don’t have a different limitation.
with a steam emu you can do whatever you want with the game files, often you can put it on your pendrive and play it as a portable game (the right goldberg emu settings allow game data to be stored near the game files instead of appdata)
So much this
I’m OK if you own the game you are making exclusive to your platform. Bribing devs is shitty practice. They also sit and wait for a game’s early access to gain momentum on Steam first before offering them money to leave.
🏴☠️
what is the problem with epic? I like the weekly free games
they pay devs (mostly indie) millions to make their games exclusive to epic for up to over a year. i’d rather not support a company that pays to limit your choice as a consumer
I guess I don’t feel limited because I already have an epic account, which was free to create
free lol. did you look at the privacy policy, or just accepted it hastily?
care to state your point directly?
tosdr.org/en/service/624
I get a game and indie devs get millions. When you put it that way, it seems morally better to use Epic over Steam.
Oh no, they gave indie developers guaranteed money and helped finance the completion of their games!
I like them too but I’ve noticed that some games are not updated to the same version as their Steam counterparts.
Because no one gives a shit about epic? Even devs contact care to update their games there as much as steam
I prefer steam, I’d like to be able to choose what platform I buy a game on. Outside of just not wanting a 5th launcher because I hate having a billion launchers, Steam has many features the EGS doesn’t have. Free cloud save backups and screenshot backups, steam workshop for mods, remote play together, game streaming, etc. I also really like steam having player reviews too.
fair
Hey! Epic has a review system too! But it’s nowhere near the standard system someone would except
Well mine is pretty petty. Every time I start up my system I’m spammed by epic advertisements in the lower right. It’s just so obnoxious, particularly since I’m on my couch and using my controller, so I have to pick up keyboard to dismiss those.
I’m so lazy I haven’t bothered to investigate options to be fair, but broadly speaking I don’t like how much it screams “look at me, look at me!” when I had no intention of interacting with their store/launcher at all that time.
Copying my reply to someone else:
Epic is anti-customer: medium.com/…/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-f…
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
Exclusives of any kind are bullshit marketing ploys, at best.
Man, i kinda hate the epic games launcher, it is really crap; but for me games being on epic is not problem, i just use heroic instead, it’s MUCH faster than epic’s slop; what i don’t like is games that for some reason just refuse to work on heroic despite EOS being installed
I’m sure World of Goo 2 will come to Steam someday. I can wait.
Fewer companies are falling for the Epic swindle, which is why Epic is now full on publishing games now.
Yar, me as well.
Hey sailor… ;)
Hoist the sales!
For what reason? Why is Epic so bad? I’m not fishing for a reaction. I genuinely don’t know why most people here hate Epic
Edit: ok, so what I gather from the comments is that Epic has a slightly worse service and that you guys are way too invested in a stupid dispute between two companies that only care about your money. Cool 👍
Copied from a comment I posted in this thread:
I got exactly one free epic game (subnautica) that I uninstalled and bought immediately the day I couldn’t play the game because I lost Internet and there was no goddamned offline mode.
Epic store is shovelware, and I can’t believe the amount of people who defend a 4th rate store comparing itself to the gold standard that can’t even offer basic functionality expected of a modern platform.
Remember when they spent 3 years “developing” a shopping cart?
Pepperidge farm remembers
Lol I stayed away because the anticompetitiveness was immediately obvious (they should have opened with the free games but showed their hand early by starting with exclusivity deals), but I’m not surprised it gets even worse.
The Epic Games Store is a user data collection platform first, and a pretty bad game store/client second. It’s slow, buggy, difficult to navigate (though that’s somewhat subjective), and sometimes doesn’t work without an Internet connection, even for games you already have downloaded locally and installed.
Disclaimer: I understand that any games store, including Steam, collects user data. But at least those other stores provide working, user friendly features in exchange for the data collection they do.
Epic is anti-customer: medium.com/…/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-f…
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
But why? It’s just a downloader. It downloads.
Yo ho ho, There is no sailing on the high seas when we are talking about multiplayer games! Alive service game, it be!
I only play single player games, so your attack has no effect on me!
online-fix ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
Literally anything? Great news!
If you go to the official website for the game Infinity Nikki, where the pic is taken, and look to the left of what the OP cropped, there is a standalone Windows download. You can just download the game.
The game is F2P so while it’s not some big accomplishment to pirate like you’re implying, it is almost certainly loaded with predatory monetization.
Yeah, and it’s a nightmare to use with Steam link. The last epic exclusive I bought was The Expanse, but adding it as a non-Steam game to play with the link app completely screwed up the license check and locked you out of everything but the first episode.
Never again.
Yaaarr 🏴☠️🏴☠️
It doesn’t upset me. It helps me decide which games to avoid wasting my time and money on.
I’m so salty I STILL won’t buy Satisfactory.
The other day I wanted to download it (wink wink) but from the site I checked (popular and recommended, not a shitty one) it required you to login to epic and some other shit. Gave up 3 seconds later, not worth the trouble
Yeah, the repack of that store requires some calls home and fake accounts.
I’ve honestly seen all I really need two of the game by watching a couple of people play it on YouTube. It’s pretty, it’s neat. If it would have came out on steam back in the day I would have bought it without a question.
I know. No thanks
Yeah same. Fuck the devs though
.
I can’t think of any examples of the top of my head, but aren’t there some games that should have thrived but we’re heals back by launching as Epic exclusives?
Metro Exodus was like 5 bucks just a few months after launch. Since it’s the sequel to a very successful series, I have to imagine it did terrible.Edit: Nope. It was one of the best selling games of all time.
I would have purchased Borderlands 3 day 1, instead I waited and was warned off by shitty reviews.
Well, if you don’t have any examples, why even frame it as a fact that just misinforms people? Just state it as an opinion and be honest.
Pretty sure this is a screenshot of the upcoming game Infinity Nikki and OP must have checked before they added the windows launcher for preload. <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/3b4c3ee4-f9d3-4d81-bf6a-95cf37e7cbbf.webp">
ding ding ding
I’m wondering if it will run on the Steamdeck I bought my daughter for Christmas.
Ragebait :(
I just recognized the username; it’s the same dude who keeps trying to complain about monetization and wow and all that regularly lol. Seems like he deleted his last post on it? But it’s still in his comment history.
Lol this is the same OP that was mystified that games on steams Autumn sale were… on sale.
I hate when companies inconvenience me while trying to disrupt a near-monopoly by my benign benefactors.
Are they trying to disrupt a “near-monopoly” or is Epic trying to create its own monopoly through exclusivity deals?
I wonder how much Epic games makes at the end of the day. most companies that do stuff like this operate at a huge loss, functioning only through investment capital until they starve out their competition and become the head of a monopoly at which point their investors become even more pointlessly wealthy. However I believe this works so often because those competitors are also operating off of investor capital and eventually their investors decide to sell out and switch teams to get some of their investment back. How does this work with Valve? Unlike companies previously discussed Valve is a privately held company and has control over their own company, as evidenced by the fact that they seem to make discissions in favor of long term goals instead of short term profits, a concept that has grown foreign to the US market. On top of the fact they are currently the leader in online game sales, I’m unsure how epic can justify, what i would assume, is a huge sum of money constantly paying for exclusives. Maybe im wrong and the pie is so large Epic is currently operating financially soundly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regardless we should all be happy that this market is not a clear cut monopoly, competition is a consumer win.
I haven’t created an epic account even for the free games I don’t care how many awesome games they give out for free. Fuck Epic
But One Must Fall 2097 was pretty sweet
Excuse my ignorance. What did Epic do?
Exclusivity deals with companies.
Yeah, they expressed that they wanted to join the online game store scene and the big feature they were offering to draw in users was… anticompetitive exclusivity deals!
Plus the company killed off the unreal tournament franchise because they didn’t want it to compete with fortnite.
I have no interest in supporting a company that thinks removing options is the best way to get users to use their products.
It’s the same shit that has turned streaming services from great back when it was new to now having content spread across many competing services. I’d rather they competed based on their own platform’s features and advantages than the whole “if you want to watch x, you must use service y”. It’s just a series of mini monopolies.
Imagine if they succeed with the exclusivity tactics, how other companies will respond to that? Doing the exactly same thing.
Let some years of exclusivity wars and the PC gaming will look like the streaming, a bunch of storefronts offering the same poor service and the clients doesn’t know where to buy what they want because at any moment another exclusivity deal could be made and the entire library moved to another storefront, just like streaming.
Exactly. Oh and I also just remembered another angle: their anti-linux stance. They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.
Same reason why a lot of the non-steam handhelds are non-starters for me. And yeah, I can live without games that depend on Windows kernel-level anti-cheat.
My backlog is so full I could keep entertained even if I ignore every single game I don’t currently have in my steam library. Hell, I even ignore some that are there when I realized they have denuvo or something like that after buying and the refund window has already passed when I do notice.
Probably none, the CEO with the small dick energy just hate Steam so if Steam is pro Linux he will do the opposite of it.
Copying my reply to someone else:
Epic is anti-customer: medium.com/…/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-f…
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
Basically watch games being promoted on steam pre-release and when games get popular, reach out to them and offer them money to be exclusive on EGS for a period of time despite all the publicity the game got being on Steam.
I created an epic account solely for the free games, which I claim and never play. Fuck Epic. I still haven’t forgiven them for ruining Rocket League.
Downloading the games does not cost Epic anything. They paid a flat rate to make it free to download, regardless of how many people actually download it.
You signing into the store and claiming the free games provides user metrics that Epic can use to entice investors.
They’re basically announcing “We’re a business, but we’re not all that interested in making money.”
As much as I like using Steam, I’m on Epic’s side here. They sue over anti-competitive practices of other marketplaces that take almost triple the cut that Epic does on game sales.
If I were a developer and one platform took 12% while the other took 30%, I’d push my customers to the 12% option no matter how much better the in-game overlay or whatever was on the other platform. Game studios are closing left and right, and that extra 18% is a big deal when games are struggling to actually profit from the development.
I don’t understand why people are so in love with a Steam monopoly. Steam has a lot of neat features, but the main feature I’m looking for in a game is the game itself, and I’d prefer more of the money to go to the companies making the games.
And maybe if Valve didn’t take home a larger profit from game sales than the developers themselves, they’d go back to being a full-time game studio to make their money.
I might have been on epic’s side if they had delivered a storefront/launcher at least as good as Steam, then found they still weren’t able to compete and only then decided to try the exclusivity crap.
They did not. They have a launcher/store that is far worse than Steam or even GOG (which is an accomplishment; GOG’s isn’t all that good and yet they manage to be worse by a large margin), and they didn’t even attempt to provide a better product/service. Instead they just started throwing money in order to secure exclusivity.
It shows all they want is to muscle into the market, not provide anything better for people.
Is a better launcher really worth 18% of the gross value of a game?
If a developer decided to cut 20% of their content, and their excuse was “we want to use that budget towards a better third-party game launcher instead of using it to develop the game” would you be okay with that?
Because that’s what you’re suggesting they do by choosing Steam over EGS.
Consumers are going to use the platform better for consumers. I’m not going to purchase a shitty car because the company pays its workers more.
The thing is gaming is a weird industry where the consumer price is essentially fixed tegardless of platform/marketplace outside of sales.
Ideally, games would cost more on Steam to make up for the increased fees. That would create a market where Steam would probably have to lower its fees to be competitive. And if Steam did that, EGS would need to improve the quality of its service to remain competitive.
Or maybe Steam could be a boutique marketplace where the games cost more but the UU is better, while EGS is an unholy mess of a UX, but the games cost less.
But what we have right now is neither. With the customers being shielded from the price differences, the negative effects of Steam are invisible to most people and the market doesn’t properly function.
I guess, Epic Games sales cuts seems attractive for multiplatform games with microtransaction made with Unreal Engine…
I tried GTA5 when I made an account there. The game was given free. Didn’t play for long though, and I dislike the idea of having more than Steam. (I have GOG for Sims but I don’t use that either)
I tried Rocket League at work. It is fun and I’d like to continue at home…but opening up that Epic Store kinda is a turn-off for the deal.
Know what happens when I find out a game is Epic exclusive? I don’t buy it for a year… Sometimes ever. Enjoy the Epic money kings, hope it’s worth it.
Epic did save me from wasting money on Borderlands 3, so I’ll give them that.
Considering how many games are released unbaked, its a great decision.
The one upside is if the game flops it gives lots of users a chance to not buy it. But any game with multiplayer it effectively kills the MP mode.
I feel the same, when the game is not available on GOG.
This makes actual sense tho since it’s DRM free. Never understood the epic is evil but steam somehow is good. Both are DRM shills
Well I can only speak for myself, but I prefer games stores in that order:
There are business decisions with all of them that I dislike.
For the top dog PC game store, Valve could behave much much worse. Epic is still in the customer and game developer acquisition phase (and still behave like a d*ck with their exclusive deals), if the ever manage to push Valve aside, I believe they will be much worse.
But also much much better. They are really hands off with scummy dev practices, such as paid review farms. Sentinels of the Store covered them here. After it blew up, Steam removed some of the most obvious cases, but afaik others remain.
Steam has also been hosting numerous outright neo-Nazi groups for many years (PDF) and never really stepped up effectively against them. User reports and media attention has limited effect.
Sure.
Valve can do a lot more, but what is more concerning to me is if they are actively consumer unfriendly. There is a difference between passively allowing bad stuff to happen, and actively doing bad stuff.
I don’t see that much difference. They are half-arsed about store and community moderation to such a degree that it feels like deliberate neglect. They chose the responsibility of running a platform, so need to do the job properly. If they need to hire more staff to do it, perhaps they could afford it from their billions of USD revenue.
As a general rule, steam discussion boards for a game are moderated by whoever the developer assigns that power to, and steam user groups are moderated by the group owner or whoever they delegate that power to and Steam doesn’t particularly care so long as you aren’t doxing, openly coordinating harassment, or doing something explicitly illegal in the US.
That’s also the general tilt they’ve taken with what’s allowed on the store since they opened the floodgates - if it’s not illegal and it’s not going to get them sued, it’s probably allowed if properly tagged. Which is why you can find Sex With Hitler side by side with Super Lesbian Animal RPG.
Worst they do is block it from specific regions if the local government requests it - see that game where you essentially play as Hamas fighting against the IDF that they recently blocked from the UK, the one where the largest part of the game description is arguing that the game isn’t antisemitic hate speech just because the enemy are Jewish. The call to block it came after a new patch that apparently added a scenario based on the Oct 7 attack.
Sums up how I feel about them. I have lots of games on my Epic account. I have paid for none of them, and refuse to change that. If it’s an Epic exclusive, it will eventually either release on other platforms, become an epic store free game of the week, or be an epic store freebie on amazon prime. I have enough games in my library I can wait.
I mostly take issue with the paid exclusivity deals from Epic. That kind of thing can stay on consoles. I also don’t trust Tim Sweeney or Tencent, and I feel that they’re kind of openly hostile to consumers.
I don’t care for intrusive DRM, but it’s clearly marked which games have it on Steam and which don’t. I won’t buy anything that requires a second account or has Denuvo. I don’t do online matchmaking games anymore, but if I did, I’d also avoid anything with kernel-level anti-cheat. I don’t really mind Steamworks DRM, though. It’s not intrusive and Steam is useful enough that I normally have it running in the background anyway.
I also like buying on Steam because they’re contributing so much to Linux gaming and FOSS, even if Steam itself isn’t FOSS. It’s because of them that I can have a Windows-free household without any significant compromises.
I understand console exclusives. The hardware is different, it takes extra time and money to be compatible with multiple systems.
Epic exclusives is just “fuck you you have to buy from me because I threw some money around to say so.”
Long story short, there were two main issues that people had with Epic:
The first issue speaks for itself. The second needs a bit more context.
Tim Sweeney has an history of being arbitrary. One year he says one thing, the next another. Relevant to this case, Tim was openly against PC gaming back in the day, while Valve was pushing for PC gaming. We’re talking around 2010, where console gaming was predominant, most publisher favored consoles against PC. Valve at the time was one of the few companies betting on the PC platform.
Now, he’s suddenly pro PC gaming. People see this as him doing a 180, and trying to take the spoils from Valve’s work.
Then there were also some comments that he made that aged like milk, but generally speaking this is why people take an issue with Epic but not Steam
I haven’t tried GOG but their business model seems awesome. Do their games work on Linux / Mac?
Depends on the game developers, if they offer/upload a Linux/Mac version. On Linux, you have to either install/update your games manually, or use a third-party client. Idk about Mac. Third party clients can also integrate Wine for Windows games.
You don’t need to update them manually if you installed them using Heroic. You only need to update them manually if they were manually installed using a offline installer.
Which is what I said: “On Linux, you have to either install/update your games manually, or use a third-party client.” With third-party client I meant a client like Heroic.
Lutris is a game launcher for Linux that can install games from your GOG, Epic, and Steam accounts. I believe it even supports Proton which is a compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux (which is a Valve project that is based on Wine).
Nice! I’ll give it a spin
If a game works on Windows, there’s a 95% chance it works as good or better on Linux. The same can be said for MacOS apps, and Android apps, as there are packages to run those on Linux as well.
Epic supports third party launchers
I think Steam is the only platform I avoid that works on Linux
Why would you avoid steam 😂
It is popular for a reason and Linux on desktop would be even more dead if it wasn’t for them (and proton)
Proton’s help is anticheat
I was using linux before, I can use it after
And though I already said why I avoid it. It doesn’t adhere to Unix philosophy. Does it want to he a store? launcher? download manager? Mod repo? Community site? Chat program?
It should pick one and let someone else do another
I take it you’re not a fan of Systemd
Not particularly
I’ve been using Linux for approximately 20-25 years.
If we’re talking about what one thing steam does well? Gaming!
It handles dependencies, and it makes windows games transparent to Linux users (you don’t even know it’s being emulated). In fact, from my understanding, some games run better than in windows in some cases
If you’re using controllers, steam input also makes games a lot more playable.
If we’re talking about the Unix philosophy though, what one thing does the Linux kernel do?
The Unix philosophy better targets daemons then user facing apps. In fact, if you look at xorg/xfree, one could argue it is one thing. But if you break it down into a different perspective, it could mean many things
Wine is not an Emulator
haven’t had issues using ps4 controllers without Steam. I even use it in Runelite
Be the kernel, it’s the only constant between separate deployments
Can’t you add it to Heroic Launcher?
No, but you can add their games to steam
If a game is only released on Epic, it hasn’t been released yet. Its just in some weird alpha state until it has broader release.
We waited years for MW5 to come off Epic and finally got it. Same with Satisfactory.
This is the way
For me, its like it didn’t have a release at all. There are allot more game I want to play of years ago. No fomo.
Yeah I don’t really buy pc games before they fall below a certain price point, anyway. So I don’t really care about these limited exclusive periods.
I wonder how much these deals are paying off for epic. Outside of exclusives and the weekly free games I’ve basically never even thought of buying a game on EGS. Definitely the worst launcher experience. Easily ignorable.
I don’t buy hardware until it drops below a certain price point, so when I finally have a PC capable enough, the game price is coincidentally also lower.
Not even just ignorable. I literally don’t even hear about them until they release on steam and people talk smack in steam reviews. It might as well not exist unless it’s on Steam or GOG.
Apparently Alan Wake 2 came out on PC awhile ago, and I literally had no idea until someone bitched about it on Lemmy, lol.
Steam, Epic, GOG, it’s all the same to me. I’m not gonna fanboy over one platform and miss out on a game. That’s just ridiculous.
I think don’t it’s as much fanboyism over steam and more unfanboyism over epic games
Still stupid as fuck, considering you don’t even need to use the Epic launcher for Epic games.
That’s literally the point of their Launcher… DRM.
You mean exactly like Steam?
No, that’s good DRM. You shouldn’t criticize the benevolent GabeN, may his corporate monopoly last forever.
Praise be!
/s
And mods, friends, groups, community groups, server management and link to external games…
Steam offers more than just DRM…
What’s your point? Why would that matter if I’m not using their launcher when I play games from the Epic store? Just don’t use the Epic launcher. It’s not rocket science.
I have a ton of games from Epic, haven’t used their launcher ever.
I’m sorry but Epic is owned by Tencent. This means at any point in time, China’s Government can enforce trojans to be installed into your PC. Maybe not as relevant for you if you are not in a position of interest.
npr.org/…/china-intercepts-wechat-texts-from-u-s-…
It is known PC Launcher exclusives actually hurts the company and the game’s popularity.
pcgamer.com/epic-games-store-exclusives-apple-law…
While Steam is certainly not the good guy, they are not owned by a known Government organisation.
.
Tbh any stake is too much and I’ll try to reduce it if possible (e.g. pihole for tracking urls).
Rather I would prefer to own stake in tencent :p At least I get paid dividends.
I posted a link in my original comment about using WeChat to spy…
Tencent owns 40% of Epic. That is very likely a controlling share which means being able to decide who is on the board and influence their decision making.
www.thestockdork.com/who-owns-epic-games/
Tencent could own 100% of Epic, that doesn’t mean Epic is going to install malware on your PC for the Chinese government. That’s some top tier tinfoil bullshit. Nobody who lives in the US, which is where all the Epic employees and corporate overlords live, is going to risk going to prison for decades for espionage because their boss in China wants to steal data from gamers in the West.
You’re out of your fucking mind.
Say that to WeChat.
Is WeChat used in the US? Why the fuck are you using a Chinese app as your example, you could have done better than that, you twatwaffle.
China can’t force Trojans to be installed on your PC. The fact that you believe that nonsense tells me you’re a fucking idiot.
Mate, if you are dim enough to think an update can’t contain malicious code I have a heap of bridges to sell you.
Given you probably don’t understand software security but it’s fairly common attack vector.
hackerone.com/…/supply-chain-attacks-impact-examp…
I know an update can contain malicious code, I’m saying you’re an idiot for thinking Todd Sweeney is going to go to prison so that China can steal data from a bunch of fat sweaty dudes.
Your comment is even more fucking idiotic when you consider Microsoft works with the NSA, and Recall will archive everything you do on your Windows PC for them to peruse at will without a warrant.
Steam does provide good general dev services
GOG preserves games and let’s you own game files without pesky DRM
What does Epic do besides developing UE5 and harrassing the PC platform with exclusivity deals?
Other dev-specific platforms like EA amd Uplay get a pass because they publish only their own games.
This is it right here. Do not fanboy platform. Competition is very very important in this kind of market. But epic games is just the worst of all worlds.
Release on GOG, I’ll buy it. If not, release on steam. Otherwise 🏴☠️
Tbh at least UE is doing incredible work
Absolutely true.
It’s not harassing me. I’ve bought Epic exclusives, and I’ll continue to do so if it’s a game I want to play. I always buy GOG first, Epic second (for exclusives), and Steam last, for anything else. This isn’t a problem for me.
Well this may be a just-you-and-someothers problem the general audience (on lemmy at least) disagrees.
I am fine if devs sell on epic but not if it’s arbitrary exclusivity.
I have bought on EA and uPlay but I would never consider them again if they pay (for example) Take2 if they would exclusive sell GTA6 on the EA store.
Other than Fortnite, what game is only available on Epic?
Edit: Thanks for the responses!!
During their early access days Hades and I believe Satisfactory were only on Epic.
Metro, borderlands, basically any game that Epic pays to have exclusivity on for the first 6 months after release.
MW5 and Satisfactory amongst others were limited to Epic for years.
Which is why I bought satisfactory twice.
Though for coffee stain I’d do it again.
Alan wake 2
Available on both Apple and Google stores? That’s a near instant pass to me, too.
They say: “Sonic Dream Team is an Apple Arcade Exclusive, maybe we’ll do a port one day if our contract allows”
I hear: “Sonic Dream Team is in devleopment hell and may never be released”
I don’t mind. Fewer choices. It’s only on Epic? It doesn’t exist.
So I own some games on epic store cause they were free and I said fuck it I’ll sign up for free games.
Haven’t installed the epic games store yet, and it’s been years. The benefits don’t outweigh the drawbacks, clearly.
I use Heroic and got all their free games. I also have Prime so I get more free games on Epic. But Hell will freeze over before I buy a game on Epic.
Same.
And I hope they can see I’m not even interested in their free games.
Steam: If a game is not in our records
GOG: Or ours
Both: Then it doesn’t exist
Me with my physical CDs of games you can’t get digitally…
Just doing some napkin math, if you took Baulders Gate 3 and burned the entire game to CDs, it would require a stack of CDs around one meter tall. That’s no mods, just the game.
I also did some napkin math on it and got a very different number. I don’t have the game so I saw people reporting the game is 150GB on PC. CDs can store up to 700MB of data, so (150 x 1024) / 700 ≈ 219.4 but we can round that up to 220. The standard CD is 1.2mm in thickness, so 220 x 1.2mm = 264mm which is a quarter of a meter.
I’m curious how my result differed from yours.
I screwed up my units a bit and did gigabytes and megabits. You’re right. It would be a little shorter than an average ruler.
Just wait till it’s on GOG or Steam, no game is worth the hassle of Epic Games store.
If there’s an epic games game you want but don’t want to use the epic launcher or you’re on Linux, Heroic Games launcher id a good choice
What about Windows Store 😏
It seems you don’t know, but we don’t talk about that
Exclusivity is stupid for everything but sex partners.
Gee maybe you should sue epic and make them carry other stores apps and not lock in their payment system and allow downloading steam from their store for giga karma.
If the list on PCGamingWiki is up to date, there aren’t many Epic exclusives anymore (only 26 currently): pcgamingwiki.com/…/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Epi…
And, earlier this year, Tim Sweeney said that many of exclusivity deals weren’t a good investment while the free games have been “magical.”
So, it seems like a problem that is solving itself over time. Epic will probably still have exclusives going forward, but I would expect them to target a few high-value exclusives like they got with Alan Wake 2. Or, maybe they will just do more acquisitions of games to self-publish, like they did with Rocket League and Fall Guys.
Honestly we should probably have more places to buy games not just steam. Because remember when gabe newell dies there’s no guarantee that steam will still be “good” they are still a corporation. So if epic needs exclusives to keep going we should support that. Competition between corporations is a good thing.
No, epic is already significantly worse than steam and hasn’t gotten better in years. We could use good competition, that is for sure, but Epic with all of its exclusives should not be celebrated.