Guy never bought a game on the Epic Store... Owns 200+
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from minyaen@lemmy.ml to games@lemmy.world on 28 Dec 22:41
https://lemmy.ml/post/24146074
from minyaen@lemmy.ml to games@lemmy.world on 28 Dec 22:41
https://lemmy.ml/post/24146074
Way to stick it to em!
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And thats exactly why Epic is untrustworthy. Its like a shady guy on the corner saying “Hey i will give you 500 bucks if you just do this easy little thing for me. Will be done right away no worries”.
That makes GOG untrustworthy as well, I guess, since I have 300 games on there, but never bought one.
With GOG you can download all game files to your local storage and play them even if GOG goes to shit. Thats the difference. But yes Steam is the same as Epic in that regard.
You commented on a post about a dude who never bought from Epic but still has 200 games there, that Epic is shady for doing this.
I said by that logic, GOG is shady as well, because they also give away tons of games.
Just saying that labeling them as untrustworthy, just because they give away games, doesn’t make sense. Steam was never mentioned, or the business practices of different storefronts.
Epic doesnt give games away. They give temporary licenses to games away which they can always take from you. Epic uses this to get people onto and dependent on their platform so they can then extract money from them. GOG has no way to extract money from people like that and has no leverage against their customers.
What are you even talking about? Why is Epic “extracting money” but GOG is not? Do you mean if you lose your games on Epic you will buy them again on Epic? Nobody does that, and it doesn’t happen in the first place.
Epic needs to pump their MAU stats to look like a legitimate platform. They know what’s going on and are happy to pay.
What I don’t know is what they actually pay the publishers.
It’s their marketing budget they’re spending on that
That’s literally the only reason I have Epic on my PC.
Free games every week.
i went a couple years, pretty steady. now it’s whenever i remember–and it’s not been that often. only one during the winter deals.
I have a reminder to check it on my Proton calendar every week, haha.
You can just claim them on the webpage, no need to install the launcher.
Sure, but if he wants to play them, he’ll need the client. And it sounds like actually does want to play them.
Heroic is also on Windows and Mac. It works with GOG too so that’s one less launcher necessary.
I have 0. Also interesting choice of words with “owns”.
I mean if you’re going to be like that, you don’t own any software.
exactly
Not to mention “stick it to 'em” when he’s doing exactly what Epic hoped for — engaging with their platform. It doesn’t even matter if you’re using Hero Launcher or not even playing it, it’s a +1 in their system and that’s what they care about.
I’m pretty sure there are tons of people like that. It’s the same for me.
Yeah, that’s pretty common. 200+ games and they don’t even have payment info for me.
If something is free, you’re the product. They still have all your sweet data :)
Do you think Steam or GOG isn’t collecting data on you?
Epic = China :)
True, but they are collecting all my data either way since I have an account. I may as well collect the free games.
I’m honestly astonished they don’t require payment info on file to collect them by this point - initially it’s a way to bribe people into making an account, and now they could bribe a bunch of people into giving payment info and lowering one more barrier to actually buying from them.
That’s some dedication! Sometimes I wish I would do this more often. I start doing it, then it just fades away… Might be because some of the games don’t apply to my taste, then I forget to keep up with it.
I just subbed to !freegames@lemmy.ml.
Nice plug, thank you
FYI that one was a bit quiet so I started !freegames@feddit.uk
I stopped claiming epic freebies when I realized I ended up buying the game on steam anyway.
Just use Heroic launcher to play the free Epic games.
I like Heroic but it doesn’t always help. I spent hours yesterday trying to get the Hot Wheels game working and never did get it working in game mode, only desktop.
Guess their free giveaways kinda work as a promotion then.
I’m cheap, once I get the game free somewhere I take it off my Steam wishlist.
I bought Alan Wake 2, and glad I did. Accidentally decided to buy Red Dead redemption 2 on there because of a discount code making it much cheaper than steam a couple of years ago.
Huge mistake. I added it as a non-steam game so now to launch Red Dead redemption 2. I need to launch steam which then launches epic which then launches Rockstar Games launcher which then launches the game.
You can skip one step and have just have many steps as if you had bought it on Steam, just launch it from the Epic launcher directly, ta-fucking-da
Regretting a decision doesn’t make it an accident.
And never plays any of them.
The whole UX is just so bad
Don’t need a complex UI to list some games for 5 seconds before I start playing them.
Use Heroic. It’s GPL.
Or Playnite (MIT license) which aggregates all your libraries, not just Epic.
That looks nice but it looks like it’s for Windows- only. Heroic is cross-platform.
Heroic is Epic, GOG, and Amazon Prime.
Maybe don’t give Bezos more money, but if you have Prime alreafy anyways, then you get 4-5 games for every one that Epic gives away. Some are on their Prime service, but most of their codes are redeemed through GOG or Epic.
If this added itch.io it’d be a fantastic filler for managing all the non-DRM off-Steam stuff.
Install, launch from the shortcut on the left side of the main screen. How much easier do you want them to make it?
I see the Valve bootlickers are out in force. How dare Epic fund indie games, what a bunch of bastards
Eh paid exclusives are (one of) the reasons I’ll never get a game from them. Fuck lil Tim
You realize paid exclusives gives a guaranteed income to devs so they don’t have to rely on the Steam gamble?
Would you work for your employer if you had no guarantee you would get paid and you had to wait years for your potential first paycheque?
You’re saying studios like EA don’t pay their programmers unless people buy the game?
I’m talking about smaller studios but even for big studios, guaranteed income instead of gambling can be more interesting for certain projects.
The logic is still the same.
It’s like selling your product at Costco instead of Walmart. Costco will rent you the space to sell it for a certain amount of time and you are gambling on the fact that you’ll make more revenue than the rental cost you, Walmart buys your product and sells it for more. Hell, Walmart even pays for exclusive products as well so the example truly fits. It doesn’t prevent companies from selling other products at Costco, but it gives them a guaranteed income from one source.
Oh, so only indie games should be exclusives, then. Not games like Control 2.
The analogy I used makes more sense with indie games because I’m talking about having a job (small scale), but the same logic applies to companies.
A company like Lockheed Martin will do R&D to come up with new engines and hope to recoup their cost by selling the technology later on, they’ll also sign governmental contracts with guaranteed payments as the project moves forward. You need a mix of both.
If a company makes bad games, they should go out of business and their developers should work for better companies.
Remedy doesn’t need to worry about that, because they make good games.
That’s the thing though, you can make an excellent game and never recoup your cost just because you didn’t get the luck of the draw.
Do you know how many games released on Steam this year? 18k. How many did you hear about? How many were successful? How many were good but didn’t get the coverage they needed? Hell, sometimes you have indie games that will suddenly become successful years down the road. It’s. Just. Gambling.
Even for a well established company, sometimes one in the hand is worth two in the bush.
We see big studios that made successful games going bankrupt every year, don’t you think a studio like that would have loved to have an income guarantee so they could finish their next project instead of closing their doors?
If they want to be guaranteed to be able to operate, they should join the communist movement. Monopolistic capitalist business practices aren’t the way to go. If we’re having a capitalist market, it had better be a free market, which is to say one with sufficient consumer protections so that customers can make free choices about who to give their money to for a certain product.
Oh so a free market where companies can decide to sign exclusivity contracts isn’t ok but a free market where everything is released on the platform that you like is ok.
Sufficient consumer protection would see Valve being broken apart as a preventive measures because they’re in a position where they can sway the market any way they want and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Funny how you guys never talk about their monopolistic position in the market, right?
If Aldi only sells apples and Walmart only sells pears, that’s not a free market. That’s two monopolies. Drag doesn’t get a choice who to buy apples OR pears from.
If Aldi starts selling pears too, that’s not a monopoly. That’s customer choice. Drag can choose to shop at Aldi because of their lower prices and better customer service. Drag can vote with drag’s wallet. If Walmart has a deal with the pear farmer not to sell pears to Aldi, that IS a monopoly.
Drag doesn’t want to give any money to Epic. Put the game on GOG, put it on Itch, hell, put it on Origin! That would be great for consumers! A monopoly isn’t.
Yet I’m sure it doesn’t keep you from buying from Steam when games are only on there, right?
Don’t talk about wanting a free market if that’s not what you want.
Paid exclusives ruin PC gaming, only devs who don’t believe in their game sing an exclusive contract. They’ll learn the hard way for sure :)
Bullshit. The only way it ruins PC gaming is by forcing you to use a launcher that isn’t Steam, you will never complain about all the games that only release on Steam.
18k games released on Steam this year, how many did you hear about and how many were actually successful?
There’s tons of good games that just won’t sell enough for the devs to recoup their cost just because no streamer decided to play them. Go read on indie devs communities what the experience is like when releasing a game you put your heart and soul into only to get no coverage and no sales.
You said it yourself, it ruins PC by forcing they crappy launcher
Games on epic are either released there and forgotten by many or given away for free one day
Tell me what Epic does better than anything else, I’m waiting.
BuT tHeIr CrApPy LaUnChEr!
Try to come up with something a bit more original. You don’t give a crap about exclusives as long as they’re on the platform you like, it’s pure hypocrisy.
Piracy vs gifts aren’t the same thing.
The list goes on… There you go your “try to come up with something more original”
You’ll defend every shit out of this because you like to suck lil’ Tim cock :)
I’ll defend any alternative to Steam, you guys just like to focus on Epic.
Steam inventing lootboxes and facilitating underage gambling? Bah
Remember that time Valve was accessing people’s DNS cache to check what websites they had visited? Yeah, we don’t talk about that…
How about that 30% cut letting Gabe own a yacht… Collection! Just another friendly billionaire, nothing to worry about.
Who’s cock sucking here exactly? 🤔
And epic incentivates NFTs :)
How often do you hear about NFTs in games?
How often do you hear about lootboxes?
Not only that. Epic takes a smaller cut, and when a game goes on sale or is free that comes from Epic’s cut, the Devs get full pay.
Something that the bootlickers always seem to forget.
It ain’t like that, kiddo. I support other stores like GoG, too. I just refuse to ever use EGS unless they completely change.
You can use this FOSS tool to automatically claim those games.
github.com/vogler/free-games-claimer
Some even work pretty well on Linux using the Heroic Launcher.
That’s actually pretty awesome, thanks!
What the hell, I had no idea such a tool existed… I do not intend to use it… But it is so cool regardless.
Does that still work? Last updated over a year ago and the free games are usually protected by some rather creative captchas.
Never had to fill a captcha to get one of the free games
I didn’t until I started using a VPN.
I’ve never seen captchas like that before, I wonder what kinda weird shit the next generation of captchas will be once we’ve trained the machines to solve these?
Works for Prime and GOG. Epic sometimes works outside the docker container, but sometimes you still get a CAPTCHA still. There’s an active discussion for fixing Epic inside a docker container.
I used it on deck a few months ago
lol, it was last updated 3 days ago
…are you Jesus?
Thank you, shared with my friends who claim free games!
Meh… Piracy is still better 🏴☠️
I treat launchers like I treat social media. No new ones after around five years ago. So a pass from me. I have enough games.
For the record, the Epic Game Store launched on December 6, 2018, and is over 6 years old now.
Never understood this shit, create a account and download a launcher to get a free thing that you don’t own in a shitty platform, that’s piracy with extra steps.
There are always extra steps with piracy.
But it’s worth it.
This is legal.
.
Karma doesn’t have any use on Lemmy. You can’t even see the numbers any more.
I have 367 games in my Epic library. A few of them are f2p (e.g. Fortnite) but the majority are giveaways. The only game I’ve purchased on EGS is Alan Wake 2 due to exclusivity
Initially I, too, claimed those, but ultimately I never ended up playing them and often I’d just end up buying them from steam instead. It’s funny how I’m willing to pay for something I can have for free, if it’s convenient and easy. So I didn’t claim them for very long, stopped a long time ago, and still just ignore it if a game I thirst for is available for free.
But that’s also a pretty dark prospect: Because I have my entire extensive library on steam, I’m kind of stuck with them. And while they are not abusing that presently, I’m fairly confident they will someday. And I, along with most everyone playing on pc, will be shit out of luck then.
It’s hard to diversify at this point, when I’m too far gone, and knowing changing or adding services will increase the complexity of using it all and keeping mental track of all the games and where they are.
Ugh.
Interesting thought: “Because I have my entire extensive library on steam, I’m kind of stuck with them. And while they are not abusing that presently, I’m fairly confident they will someday.”
Steam subscription $9.99 to access your library 😐 - man that feels wrong. But also can probably happen with the TOS noone reads
It could happen, but if it does, it’ll be decades down the line. Gaben has surrounded himself with true believers on purpose, in part to prevent that scenario.
Lulz
They certainly cant do that in places with actual consumer regulations, ToS and EULA mean nothing if they go against the law.
There’s programs that keep track of all your libraries… GOG Galaxy is one of them.
I too have over 200 games on Epic and have purchased non of them. This is none news. I buy my games on Steam and get my free games on Epic.
And the once or twice a year Epic offers a free game I actually want to play, I enjoy it just as much as if I’d bought it elsewhere.
Yeah. I am confident that long term access to classic games is a torch only sufficiently carried by software pirates.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore things like the Atari 50th Anniversary collection, and what Evercade is doing with esoteric arcade titles. (And I delight in throwing money at them.)
But only a small fraction of the greatest games get that kind of loving licensed treatment.
For the rest of gaming history, software pirates are essential.
If Steam ever fucks over consumers I will pirate 100% of my games from that day on unless an indie company allows me to buy directly from them or through GoG.
I don’t like pirating indie games. Pirating from big developers though? I have no issues doing that.
While I don’t disagree with anything you said, I think this comment descended into nihilism with alarming rapidity and I hope you’re okay.
Just enshittification fatigue. Every service being provided is hostile to us, so it makes us uneasy if one isn’t.
In the past couple years, I’ve gone from buying exclusively from steam to prioritizing buying/rebuying single player games from GOG.
Multiplayer games are still mostly through steam for convenience - same with VR games/games with VR mods.
I just wish GOG Galaxy was better. Development seems kinda stagnant.
I constantly have issues with the plugins to access other storefront libraries among other things.
So he didn’t claim even half of them?
My friend too have over 100 games. He never even play them but thankfully to him I don’t have to make Epic Account.
Of course i know him that’s me.
I too have basically all of them. A few have caught my interest on PC. More than a few were a big pain to get working on Steam Deck even with Heroic Launcher.
I got the tomb raider games and the screaming baby package delivery hideo Kojima game I can’t remember the name of right now, and some stuff I’ve never played, and that’s it. Worth it.
Death Stranding. Good game, I bought it on steam on discount and it’s great.
It gave me a new way to look at things, like good art does.
I have 10 free games from GOG too and without DRM!
Only 200? Try harder, noob.
(I’m at 410, and my Epic library is now three times the size of my Steam one, lol.)
There’s no way I’d catch up to my Steam library, there’s like 1,200+ games in there at this point. 2nd biggest is GOG with ~300 but I’ve been using Steam since HL2
Hmm. Let’s see here…
Steam: 147
GOG: 174
Epic: 286
I’ve paid for about 2/3 of the Steam games, probably a quarter of the GOG ones, and maybe two or three of the Epic ones.
Yeah, but then you’d need the epic store/launcher, so…
There is legendary which is command line and Heroic which is legendary with gui without telemetry from epic. Heroic also does gog but gog doesnt require a launcher anyways.
Funfact, I have restricted work computer (windows). Certain websites are blocked and installing anything requires remote access by IT to enter admin password (they dont give admin rights temporarily). But it has pip installed.
You can also create a shortcut and set the target as ‘legendary run app-name’. I also have over 300 games I collected from epic. I don’t condone gaming on work time, but it feels nice I can run something other than browser games during compiling and other downtime.
This is the point though. They have beefed up my Epic Games library to the point where if I got banned from Steam, I would have a viable fallback.
That cannot be understated. It has a network effect and makes adopting it as a new platform versus a legacy one with two decades behind it, far easier to adjust to.
I love that at least someone is really trying other than MS with their poorly supported windows games store attempts.
It will always be weird to me that microsoft sells some games both on the microsoft store app and the xbox app, but other games exclusively through the xbox app.
I’m thinking even farther back to their wretched Windows Live and then Games for Windows Live platform (now dead). MS is one of the biggest companies on earth and couldn’t find a cohesive way to migrate that game ownership forward.
It’s pretty easy to avoid being banned.
No shit.
You have to be a dick to even be remotely worried about this kind of thing.
I just like to own the things I own. And I’m more worried about someone hijacking my account because they want some bullshit inventory item or something than getting banned for something toxic. Account theft is sadly still pretty common.
You don’t own anything on Epic either. Epic is actually significantly worse for people losing their accounts and having no way of recovering them.
If for some reason I lost access to my Stream account I would just pirate copies of the games I’ve already purchased.
The same applies for Epic as well regarding piracy. Again it’s just a matter of diversifying.
If I had to rebuy 100% of my games, Id never adopt Epic at all. Atleast this way the library has something of value as an alternative without costing me a fortune.
Absolutely. But if someone got you in one of those steam inventory scams or stole your access token, it sucks if you lose your entire game library and have all your eggs in one basket.
So having a bunch “backed up” so to speak with Epic gives some peace of mind. VAC bans aren’t common for most users, but they do make mistakes sometimes.
Epic and GoG I’ve not bought a single thing from either of them, that’s all free shit. For Steam, most of that is stuff that’s been accumulated from Humble Bundles and just from having an account for ~20 years now. If I were to just quit my job and game full-time for the rest of my life, there’s probably more games to play in my collection than I have years left to live.
Yup, I’m at 372 free games on epic, plus 3 bought ones, and 2 key activations. It’s amazing.
I like Epic as much as anyone but why would you want your library filled with bloat?