Never bought anything there and probably never will, but I’m always there every thursday to get the free games. Heavy gog and steam user, and gamepass subscriber.
My launcher shows that I have 379 games from Epic. Not DLC, not demos. Full games.
I have never given Epic a single cent and I never will. (That is to say, until they offer me something that makes me want to use their platform). They have no killer features - AT ALL.
To make it worse, I have all these games, but I still rarely play them. Not that it’s a bad selection, but between steamdeck, gamepass and just a crazy backlog on Steam makes me rarely think of Epic store.
Well that’s at the crux of it, indeed. Steam has these killer features that enable and empower me as a gamer.
Then there’s Epic that still doesn’t have controller support.
Wait, what? No controller support?
That’s disingenuous. The games have controller support, as you’d expect them to. EGS itself doesn’t have an outside-the-games input layer like Steam Input.
But you can always load up an EGS game in Steam as a non-Steam game and have full access to Steam Input on it that way, so why would Epic spend time and effort re-inventing the wheel when they have other priorities?
Ok cool that makes way more sense.
But… If I am gonna buy the game elsewhere and then port it into steam, for no discount… Why not just buy it on steam, and not bother with the extra steps?
And by that I mean, it sounds like a waste of time to buy from epic, since I get more features for the same price elsewhere. So whats such an important priority?
More accurately: the games have support for Xbox styled controllers, because Windows ships with support for that. However, they usually don’t have support for PlayStation controllers unless the game actively adds support for them, or Steam Input deals with converting the controller inputs to Xbox format on the fly. Most of the time, Epic exclusives do neither of the above.
But you can always load up an EGS game in Steam as a non-Steam game and have full access to Steam Input on it that way, so why would Epic spend time and effort re-inventing the wheel when they have other priorities?
Why would Epic implement a feature when I could just run Epic games through Steam? Why don’t I just use Steam then?
Maybe the game was free on EGS but not on Steam?
So still not an argument for giving Epic any of my money.
The “killer feature” is that they pay more to the developers, so if you are getting the exact same game on (e.g.) Steam versus Epic Games, then whomever actually made the game gets more money from the Epic sale. Isn’t that a good thing?
(Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer, but either way, it’s still the case that less money is taken by intermediaries, which is a good thing.)
However because of their 40% ownership, you’re ALSO giving more money to Tencent.
Wait tencent has ownership of epic games?
Yes
Yikes. Good point.
Except they only do that because its the only way to get publishers to use them over steam, and once they have a reliable customer base they will reneg on that generosity to gain profit.
We know this business strategy. It will not stay that way.
Quite likely, but until then…
this is how we get companies like walmart and amazon.
they roll in, throwing bags of money into a bottomless pit as long as it takes to amass a large customer base and ruin existing competitors. Then they start enshittifying, and everyone wonders where all the competition went.
Until then, what? You as the consumer have no incentive to use their worse service, and publishers clearly arent that enticed by it for how few exclusives the store gets?
Or until then, you want to reward a bait and switch that you know is a bait and switch to try and trick you into using a worse product?
Which option are you excited about here?
That’s a reason for developers to use them, not for consumers to use them.
EPICs anti-customer practices (such as trying to make everything exclusive) are reasons for consumers not to use them.
There are tens of thousands of Steam-exclusive games: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Steam
What is the alternative to Steam?
And are those because Steam is trying to pressure them into being exclusive on Steam? Or did they just not bother releasing anywhere else?
If a developer just wants to release on Epic and nowhere else they can do that. My issue comes from Epic approaching games that have already announced a Steam release asking for exclusivity, and having no interest in hosting the game if they don’t accept the exclusivity offer.
There are almost 40,000 entries, I obviously cannot answer for all of them.
Still waiting for you to answer my question.
Well you sound like someone trying to have a good faith discussion and attempting to continue would be a good use of my time.
What is the alternative to Steam?
Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer
You think?
Yes, I do, or else I wouldn’t have mentioned it. I’d prefer the publisher gets money over a middleman store. Isn’t that preferable?
Its a phrase that signals something else, and not a literal content reply.
How about you write what you mean and have quality conversation in the future?
How about you write what you mean
I did. Its a standard phrase used by people in conversation. See defintion #2 below.
Below definition is from here …
you think
- A question one uses at the end of a sentence to express uncertainty. We’re not going to get into trouble—you think?
- A sarcastic rhetorical question used as a retort when someone states the obvious. A: “Wow, I bet that fire is really hot.” B: “You think?”
and have quality conversation in the future?
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, apparently. /shrug
No, because epic has been engaging in anti consumer practices from the start. This is literally the only category epic has a leg up on steam, and if they didn’t need to bully their way into the marketplace, I have no reason to believe they’d treat creators any better than they currently do customers
edit: The revelation that they are running the store at a loss just furthers me not believing they are helping developers from the goodness of their heart, it shows they’re likely running the Walmart strategy of using their vast wealth to choke out their competition until there is none, and then once they have a monopoly, jack everything up, which’d probably include their cut of the pie
I spent about $600 with epic. All of that was on fortnite skins. None of it on games.
Just wow
Hey man, it provided value to my life… its a fun game, i play it quite a bit. Plus half of that was for my kid, he would ask for vbucks every birthday and Christmas for years.
LoL. Yeah I’ve got a ton and I’ve never actually launched a single one
I mean, it’s trying to compete against Steam. A platform which has 99% of the games ever released on PC after its inception at the same price and with a great interface.
You’re not winning against that unless you actually sell the same games at a lower price (and I don’t think they can afford to do that)
It would help if their service itself wasn’t just objectively worse, but they’re not even trying to compete on quality. Their only selling points are free games and platform exclusives. It’s like they haven’t even tried to actually make a better service.
So like xbox and Xbox live but without the Xbox lol
Also you can’t trust epic. They have been caught scraping user data and they negotiate shitty deals which actually harm users on the PC platform overall. Fuck epic.
Good.
Seems to me that the most lucrative thing in gaming is still just making really good games.
Sure, there’s Steam, but that’s a fluke. The exception that proves the rule. Just get back to actual game making.
I mean, Steam is owned by Valve, and they make some pretty good games. Half-Life, Portal are some of the best series out there. I recently played HL Alyx and it was a banger.
Their latest game is garbage tho.
I wouldn’t say garbage, I’d say rushed. The gameplay is debatable, as it’s carbon copy of CS GO with sprinkles.
Call garbage as garbage. Rushed means no quality, means garbage.
So you say every game is either absolute garbage or a masterpiece? Life must be fun.
I have a crazy idea for Epic. Instead of paying a fortune for exclusives, leverage the lower 12% cut and have game publishers sell for less (so that the publisher makes the same amount on Steam and Epic)
And GOG. They used to have several games up there, and then delisted them.
Publishers sets their own prices though.
So why can’t they sell their game for $56 on Epic and $70 on Steam? They’d make about the same money per sale on each?
Most likely reason, contracts.
Example Nike sales shoes directly at the same price as footlocker. Why dont they under cut footlocker? They have a contracts that says they won’t under cut footlocker
There could br an issue like that but well you can make new contracts
Are you seriously asking why a company in a capitalist economy would keep more money for themselves?
Valve prohibit that, according to the lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.
There’s no way that can be legal. I generally support Valve but that is monopolistic as hell.
That only applies to the steam keys valve supplies to developers that have a 0% cut. Also doing regional pricing would be a massive headache if that were true due to different stores having different recommended price conversions.
The claim specifically mentions Epic and quotes a Valve employee who made statements to the effect of it being prohibited, irrespective of whether a Steam key is involved. Read from page 47 and pay attention to the last paragraphs of page 55.
If the developer chooses to do so themselves then it’s likely ok, but forcing the developer to do so likely violates some sort of law.
I imagine that when Epic instituted it’s lower percentage they hoped that developers would sell exclusively on their platform for higher profits. Instead the developers decided to sell on both platforms and just make a larger percentage on the Epic sales. From the developer perspective it would have been wise in the long run to lower prices so that Epic could grow, but that hurts their short term profits and also stymied Epic’s potential.
If Epic’s store grew to truly rival Steam more developers might have jumped ship, but to do so prematurely would be losing a large portion of the potential customers.
Ultimately Epic had to develop a full Steam clone quickly while all Steam had to do was not suck for the end user.
Why would the developer sell at a loss to help Epic out? What’s in it for the developer?
Epic paid $146 to make borderlands exclusive to epic. The game kind of flopped.
Completely untrue. It was a major success and brought record numbers of new customers to the store, which is the main metric pursued by Epic.
I wonder if GOG is profitable?
I have no idea why this is newsworthy. Epic’s own 2019 documents and testimony in the Apple trial showed that the company did not expect the store to be profitable until 2024 or even 2027. The strategy of heavy investment and operating at a loss to turn a profit later worked for Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft, and many others. Even this week, there are headlines like “Elon Musk Says SpaceX’s Starlink Achieves Breakeven Cash Flow”.
On one hand, thanks to the nonstop giveaways, I have way more games on Epic than I do on Steam, so I have a reason to continue using Epic.
On the other hand, Epic’s launcher runs like shit, constantly refreshes my library page, slow as hell, glitchy as hell, and makes me feel dirty when I use it.
Steam is just so cozy and is on the whole a much more enjoyable PC gaming experience. I imagine 95% of Epic users are people like me: sign in on Thursdays for the free game and then bounce.
they have no excuse for it to be slow as shit
I talked to their support about the library force refresh and it’s apparently intended. That library refresh is literally the only reason the EGS isn’t open all the time like Steam is. Random data usage is bad, and can fuck off. I do not need random lag spikes.
Have you tried Heroic Games Launcher?
I know about its existence, but I’m not sure how safe is it as a way to prevent Epic (and potentially Tencent) from tracking my personal information.
If you haven’t tried a linux distro since the release of the SteamDeck, I highly recommend you give gaming on linux a shot.
Gotta love the diehard linux users promoting their preferred OS on a topic even slightly related.
What does this have to do with the Epic store?
No thanks
Which destro would you recommend? I’m kind of sick of Windows.
What brand of graphics card do you have? If it’s Nvidia Pop!_OS will likely work best. If you have an AMD card I’ve heard good things about EndeavorOS.
Also, feel free to shop around for a desktop environment (DE) you like, which controls the look and how things are organized. While distros have a default, it’s pretty easy to swap them. I personally use KDE Plasma (the same DE the Steam Deck uses) with Pop!_OS
Fedora with “Dash to Panel” and the “Applications Menu” make the GUI identical to Windows. That would be a good start :)
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/
Or just use KDE instead of Gnome. It’s such a terrible DE anyway.
If you want a Couch Gaming Station I recommend you to look at ChimeraOS. Linux first that boots directly to Stream Big Picture (since it’s based on SteamOS) and it supports emulators and Epic Game Store.
On my old i5-8700T with qUHD630 it pretty much was a install, reboot, login to Steam and start playing. My Wireless Xbox Controller USB dongle was plug’n’play.
Nobara has, for me, been the most plug and play no headache distro I’ve touched, ever.
How’s the performance on Nvidia cards? Most benchmarks that I saw are people using AMD cards.
NVIDIA is a one-line command to install and setup the drivers.
For me? Most of my games run better on Linux. Such as CSGO, which is why I initially switched.
I generally prefer AMD, how are they for Linux?
Great! You don’t even need to install any drivers. It just works.
Also some distros like Pop!_OS just have it included and automatically update them
Not worth the hassle but you do you. Keep fighting the good fight.
Keep fighting the good fight.
And it really is the good fight in this case. I’ve been running Linux on my gaming PC for around four years with very little trouble. Games from Epic and GOG run very well(for me at least) through Heroic Games Launcher. I’ve been using Windows for work on/off the last couple of years, but especially since they “upgraded” to Windows 11, it’s such a relief to come home to Linux.
Sorry, I’ll wait some more. I tried two times getting back to Linux as I see the potential. It didn’t work. I’m gonna stick to windows until some problems will be fixed, or Microsoft further enshittifies itself.
Man, I enjoy Linux too, but I cannot see how its related to the post.
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Yes, both from Valve working hard on compatibility and game devs testing against it
Having been on Linux for over a year now, I don’t. It’s still plagued by instability, weird bugs, and big limitations whenever non-Steam games are involved.
You mean games that arent available in steam at all, vor those which you haven’t bought there? I found the easiest workaround for me was to simply add the games to my steam library and to launch it from there. Then I don’t have to worry about what proton version I should use or whatnot.
Thanks for the tip but no
I might actually buy a game of the app didn’t constantly sign me out.
I know, right! The “Remember Me” option does absolutely nothing ffs
Would you though
I’ve already purchased a few, tbh
Maybe just uh…
Put your games on steam?
And it’ll never be.
I had epic game store before they started blasting free games for unreal tournament. That was a fun alpha and was excited to see what it was going to evolve into. Guess not now lol
Fortnite killed that and I’m still bitter about it
EGS losing money has been great for gamers, as they continue to give away free games in an attempt to claw any marketshare. Gamers continue to win as long as this situation lasts. But reading these comments, nobody seems to recognize this.
Gamers lose when the store shuts down and you lose access to all of the games you got for free, or worse actually paid for.
Yeah but Unreal Tournament goes back on the shelf
Many of the games are DRM-free, as evidenced on PCGamingWiki.
I actually didn’t know this. Fuckin eh!
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ESG losing money is great for me just on principle, Tim Sweeney can go fuck himself.
Consumers also won when a Walmart would open up in their neighborhood and run the local stores out of business by selling everything at a loss.
Of course, once the competition was eliminated, Walmart stopped selling things at a loss.
