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.

@[email protected]
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21M

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?

@[email protected]
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31M

I would have purchased Borderlands 3 day 1, instead I waited and was warned off by shitty reviews.

@[email protected]
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1M

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.

@[email protected]
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-11M

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.

JoYo 🇺🇸
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221M

EGS buyers can beta test it for me, that’s fine.

@[email protected]
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41M

Give it a year, Epic Games Stores exclusivity always runs out eventually.

slazer2au
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91M

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?

m-p{3}
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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.

@[email protected]
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21M

Do epic and gog even have early access avenues?

m-p{3}
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11M

Good question 🤔

@[email protected]
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51M

GoG does, dunno about Epic.

The Hobbyist
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61M

Gog does. The game manor lords is in early access on gog.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/manor_lords

@[email protected]
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21M

Neat

Ech
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71M

Yes, we should reward decisions we dislike. That’ll show 'em.

Captain Aggravated
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411M

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.

@[email protected]
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101M

Epic refuses to enable the Linux support for EAC on Fortnite despite being super easy, and specifically removed Linux support for Rocket League.

Captain Aggravated
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31M

That’s what I said.

@[email protected]
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-91M

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?

@[email protected]
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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.

@[email protected]
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“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.

@[email protected]
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11M

If you think taking a 30% cut to enrich a billionaire isn’t enshitifaction then I don’t know what to tell you buddy.

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

@[email protected]
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01M

No need to defend the guy who owns a yacht collection buddy, I’m sure he does perfectly fine without you

@[email protected]
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31M

“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.

@[email protected]
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-21M

Never said I boycott Steam, I said I don’t boycott any of them

@[email protected]
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01M

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?

@[email protected]
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21M

The apple walled garden is still really bad for users

@[email protected]
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561M

like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.

Literally anything besides not getting that game?

babybus
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381M

There are too many games to care about the tiny amount of them that aren’t available on steam.

@[email protected]
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91M

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.

FilthyHands
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141M

There’s always one more option. In fact, this is the only instance I find myself using that other option now-a-days.

nawa
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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.

@[email protected]
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71M

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.

nawa
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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.

@[email protected]
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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??

nawa
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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.

@[email protected]
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11M

Do you have brain worms?

nawa
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01M

No. Why do you ask?

@[email protected]
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11M

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.

@[email protected]
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531M

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.

@[email protected]
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41M

This needs to be the top comment. Yes, you can use it on both Windows, Mac and Linux.

@[email protected]
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31M

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)

@[email protected]
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21M

NOW this is interesting. Still won’t give Epic my money but I get plenty of games from Twitch for EGS.

@[email protected]
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11M

Exe files exist in the games folder.

@[email protected]
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1M

I’ll still skip games with multiplayer for obvious reasons but this is great.

@[email protected]
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161M

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.

MacN'Cheezus
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21M

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.

@[email protected]
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11M

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.

@[email protected]
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-31M

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.

MrScottyTay
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21M

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).

MacN'Cheezus
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61M

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.

@[email protected]
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51M

Yeah, it’s a market share/userbase play

MacN'Cheezus
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31M

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.

@[email protected]
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41M

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.

MacN'Cheezus
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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.

m-p{3}
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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.

MrScottyTay
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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.

Victor
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121M

why people are so irked by a steam alternative

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.

@[email protected]
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11M

When was the last time you used it?

Also use Heroic launcher to bypass the bloat.

Victor
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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.

@[email protected]
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Epic games launcher is no where best as bad as anyone says.

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.

MrScottyTay
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11M

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.

@[email protected]
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11M

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.

@[email protected]
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41M

Aren’t we all supposed to be against monopolies, steam needs competition

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.

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.

AwesomeLowlander
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Steam has an estimated revenue of 8.6bn out of PC gaming’s overall 45bn.

Do you have a source on that? I’d love to quote it in future

@[email protected]
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11M

Dude, I embedded the source right in the comment you’ve replied to. 🤦

MrScottyTay
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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

@[email protected]
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11M

Does the image have a source?

Yes, the image has a source and everything is detailed in the lower part of the image.

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

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.

MrScottyTay
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11M

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.

@[email protected]
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11M

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.

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.

AwesomeLowlander
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11M

Ah. I was not expecting numbers for 2023 under a 2003 year heading.

@[email protected]
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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:

  • Yo steam I lost my account here a bunch of pics proving my email was the owner of said game: There you can see my old steam user, email address and purchase
  • Let me check Yep, you’re right. Changed back your email and your password has been reset. Log back in and change it

Was really that simple! A few mails

AwesomeLowlander
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11M

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.

@[email protected]
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1001M

Well they decide to lose customers, up to them.

@[email protected]
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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

@[email protected]
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21M

TIL, they made a soasr sequel. Was it good?

@[email protected]
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21M

No idea, I refuse to buy it. The first one was good.

@[email protected]
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11M

I am aware. They’re still not getting my money

@[email protected]
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01M

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?

@[email protected]
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21M

If you refuse to buy after it hits steam, then you’re just 1 of several billion who didn’t buy the game.

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

Scott
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171M

I refuse to use epic, didn’t even have an account

@[email protected]
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-31M

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.

@[email protected]
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11M

So, Epic is your enemy and Valve is your friend?

@[email protected]
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11M

Generally, no.

Valve just isn’t my enemy.

@[email protected]
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71M

I’m happy that they’re talking about moving the Unreal Engine off the platform.

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