I get that Steam is where everything and everyone is at. And that the user experience and functionality is best there BUT having another player to try an compete with Steam is a good thing, right?
The other platforms on PC, for example Steam, itch, gog, all do better things.
Itch really supports game jams, which in turn supports smaller devs and puts out a lot of unique stuff, much of which is free. They also allow devs to choose what percent itch gets with even zero as an option.
Valve is a massive contributor to open source projects and the game dev community. They have contributed a ton to SDL which is used to make many games and engines, and Proton is rocketing wine development forward. Steam also allows adding non-Steam games and even lets you run them with Proton just as easily as Steam native games.
GoG is DRM free, enough said. That in and of itself is one of the most pro consumer stances.
The only plus for Epic is they give out free games, no other redeeming qualities or features.
Don’t forget the beauty of PC is that it’s an open platform, and Epic does nothing to support that.
Not only that, but they made the platform ever so slightly less open when they bought a bunch of games just so that they could remove them from other stores. They garner hatred because they don’t try to gain a competitive edge by being good or unique in some way, they’re just making gamers who aren’t willing to download their launcher suffer.
I don’t like the Epic Game Store because Epic has turned it’s back on Linux. Their client doesn’t run on Linux which is where I do all my gaming. I also recognize the economic fuckery they’re doing to gain popularity. They’re spending their Fortnite war chest money on subsidizing games to give them away for the purpose of monopolizing their game store. It’s not fair for other game stores like GOG who can’t just buy game licenses for everyone to become popular.
I hate console gamers as they’ve perverted the FPS genre.
I hate it because it’s like they’re trying their hardest to make a shitty storefront.
It’s awful.
I get almost none of the information I need when on a game’s store page. Meanwhile, I get all the info I need and then some on the same game’s Steam page.
It’s like they don’t want to sell their product.
I do definitely appreciate the weekly free games. Sometimes, like this week, they have solid offerings. It’s Dead Island 2 this week, btw.
Because in 2025 people get info about games they are buying from the app store instead of twitch or YouTube or the game devs website. Give me a fucking break dude.
When I’m browsing, it’s my first stop. I want to see the minimum specs to estimate how well it’ll run, how the devs market their game at a glance, year of release, rating, etc. Then if it looks interesting it’s time for external reviews.
The only way I know anything about the games I buy is by reading the store page. If I have to go looking for the dev’s website, it’s because something has gone wrong.
Big issue for me is the direction towards incentivised exclusivity. I can tolerate it on consoles (barely nowdays) because you’re paying someone to use your hardware instead of another, and you have to specifically develop for console hardware. That takes time and effort.
Different distribution platforms do not have such issues, and I don’t want exclusivity anywhere near PC gaming, unless you’re self publishing. Frankly if they weren’t banging on about steam using the industry standard % take, while they themselves are trying to undercut and use garbage tactics, I would have absolutely no problem with them, same as Ubisoft and EA’s garbage store.
Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He’s taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.
Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.
At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.
Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game
Edit: this apparently happened twice (Unreal Tournament and Rocket League), but it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it. I think the concern was actually that Steam players would lose functionality due to not being supported anymore after the unlisting
The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people’s impression of the store. But it’s still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.
There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence
Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn’t want to support Linux
Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead
Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.
For unplayable, Rocket League had very good Linux and macos native builds.
Epic required them to delete support for those operating systems as part of the acquisition of Psyonix
It was a while ago, I don’t remember off the top of my head which specific game I’m remembering. Doing a brief search, it appears that this happened to Unreal Tournament and Rocket League, though it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it before the unlisting. I think the concern was losing functionality, especially for server-based or multiplayer games
Yeesh I knew Epic was run by dick heads but I didn’t know they were this slimy, I’m glad I’ve only bought one game on their platform (Subnautica below zero), and that’s only because I got the original Subnautica for free from their weekly giveaway and loved it. I’ll continue to get the free games from them as it’s good to take a chance on games that you otherwise might never learn about.
Having healthy competition is a good thing and I’ve wished for a competitor to Steam for a long time until one day the monkey’s paw curled and we got Epic Game Store. To sum it up:
Epic actively tries to introduce exclusivity deals to PC, something that goes very much against the nature of the platform. It is something we’re supposed to be above on PC and let console players deal with. PC gamers simply don’t want fragmentation in the market. We hate all the different shitty launchers publishers are making for the same reason too.
Epic has a very hostile attitude towards Linux. Their anti cheat for example by default detects the mere fact of using Linux as a hack. For a long time if their anti cheat was included it was an absolute no go on Linux. Their store also works like crap on Linux, if at all.
EGS lacks necessities for then to call themselves a good store like reviews, good support and refund policies, ease of mod support, wishlists, etc.
Their UI is just plain bad.
But the main point is the first one. If they bothered making a good store they wouldn’t need to make most of PC gamers angry by introducing exclusivity deals, but they can’t be bothered to do that, so they go for hostile competition instead at the detriment of the customers.
Epic makes their money off microtransaction stores and they bought exclusive rights to a bunch of titles a while back, meaning you could ONLY play them on Epic.
exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.
Even if they have fixed that specific issue, why would you believe they have fixed anything else?
first comment on the reddit thread
thlm 5mo ago
Epic Games Launcher Incorrect Default Permissions Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
CVSS SCORE
7.8
This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Epic Games Launcher. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability.
The specific flaw exists within the product installer. The product applies incorrect default permissions to a sensitive folder. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of SYSTEM.
DISCLOSURE TIMELINE
2024-07-16 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
2024-12-04 - Coordinated public release of advisory
2024-12-06 - Advisory Updated
That timeline is disgusting
So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because “yay free games I’m never going to look at again”.
If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.
I don’t hate times exclusives that much because that’s done extra cashflow for the dev to be able to either finish their game or polish it further. I still don’t think we’d have gotten Alan Wake 2 at least the version we got without that epic deal. I also don’t know if square would’ve bothered even entertaining the idea of porting all of the kingdoms hearts games either.
My dislike of epic is that they seem to be buying their way into competing, instead of actually competing on features.
Free games sounds good now, but what happens when the fortnite gravy train runs out, and epic needs to start making a profit? They’ll likely have to enshittify fast.
Steam at least has a solid history of being generally good. But who knows what will happen if Gaben ever ascends.
While I’d like to see more advanced features in other launchers (or, ideally, at the OS level in both Windows and Linux), I don’t think it’s realistic to expect new competitors to get to that level of support with 80% of the market fossilized around Steam.
They have a twenty year head start and a ridiculously dominant position. You’re not going to get a proprietary controller translation layer or a full on video capture software right off the bat. It makes sense to focus investment on getting content first, since Steam gets all content by default by having an iron grip on the marketplace, and for business reasons other launchers prioritize multiplayer features first.
To be clear, I’d agree that the prioritization by a bunch of competitors has been wonky, but Steam ONLY does client. They are a very lean company that actively builds stuff to be hands-off and has stepped away from focusing heavily on game development for a while.
Could Epic invest more heavily in their client as opposed to spending all that money on giving away free games and acquiring content? I bet. I also bet if they looked at GoG building a whole interoperable client and getting nothing in return or some of the work EA wasted on their version (twice!) for also nothing in return, then prioritizing redundant features that Microsoft provides at the OS level seems like a worse investment. Particularly when the store loses money and they could be spending that on Fortnite content or Unreal features or whatever else.
Steam is a weird outlier in that their ultimate goal has been to ditch Windows/MS for a while, so their whole consolized controller-based UI, the controller layer, the background recording, the overengineered chat all make sense in the context of SteamOS having been in development for a decade. For everybody else it’s a leap of faith.
Do I think it would have been a better choice for Epic? If it was up to me I’d have given it a shot, I think. But let me be clear: I’d have done that in the understanding that the minute you match a Steam feature the cult of Gaben shall move on to a different shortcoming as the justification for their adhesion. When Steam was behind on their refund policy nobody raged against them and nobody stopped raging against EA Origin depite offering no-questions-asked refunds. Now you hear about it as a differentiator. When Epic didn’t have a perisistent shopping cart that was the dealbreaker for a while, when they implemented it’s their store design or the library paging or whatever. Nobody complains about games only being available on Steam when they aren’t elsewhere, but Epic exclusives are a travesty. This is not about the feature set or policy.
But starting to match the feature set at least would take a talking point off the table and offer a selling point.
Did I give your trolly post way too much credit and took it too seriously? Yes. Is that an apt metaphor for this entire conversation? Absolutely.
You’re unironically defending EGS and calling me a troll. If you think that’s how a store with 7 years and a billion dollars invested (Sweeney’s words, not mine) should look like, that’s fine, that’s your opinion and you’re free to use it. Personally I’m not a fan.
I’m not “defending” anybody. I’m not taking sides at all. The only reason I even jump into these is that the absolutely cult-like zeal grown-ass men deploy in defending large corporations over each other is both some Sega-vs-Nintendo console war crap I wish we could get over and not particularly good if you want a PC market not dominated by a single player.
I don’t know what percentage of the Epic Store’s funding goes to feature work versus other areas. I can guess Epic is investing very heavily on content, and I can guess that’s because it’d be really hard to meet Steam on content when every developer of any size is effectively forced to be on Steam first and everything else if and when. I don’t know how much funding that leaves for client development.
Like I said, I’d probably have refocused on client features a bit further, but I’ll also acknowledge they probably wouldn’t see that much tangible return from that investment, given that Steam fanboys already don’t give them enough credit for the very noticeable improvements they’ve actually made and they have no effective means to run PR against Steam.
Hell, if you look at it objectively they’d probably be better off focusing on their legal fights with Apple and Google and on having a decent mobile client, which Steam very much doesn’t. Maybe there’s a path forward there. I don’t have enough of an inside view to know.
How come gog doesn’t get the same hate if it’s all steam fanboys and it’s all so unwarranted? How come it’s all focused at EGS? Are you sure it’s not because you’re mistaken? Maybe you’ve got a rage boner for Steam and you can’t see past it.
Well, for one thing the “GoG doesn’t support Linux” narrative runs strong (I believe it made at least one appearance in this thread), so there is that.
For another, GoG doesn’t get the same hate for the same reason in Sega vs Nintendo the Turbografx or the Neo Geo didn’t get the same hate. They are simply not in the same race.
Ubisoft’s platform does get the hate, though. And EA’s. And Acti/Blizzard’s. And Microsoft’s. Gamers love a good narrative, though, so EGS took over when Origin stopped being the bad guy du jour. Ubi had a brief period in the spotlight, though.
So after some soul searching I’m going to say I absolutely don’t have a rage boner for Steam (considering my Steam library is in the thousands and I own both iterations of the Steam Deck and a Vive that’d be a very confused boner anyway).
Your not wrong, but I just dont get the feeling that epic is going to transition towards actually being a competitive store. This is entirely my own myopic gut feel, not based on any facts.
Honestly, I agree, unless steam aggressively enshittifies themselves, I dont see any rivals catching up either. They are so far ahead, and so far, haven’t started screwing their customers.
And gog selling out to climb doesn’t really solve anything.
It’s very simple, valve is a gamer company. Epic is a money company. Every single thing each respective company does shows that. I’m not a bitch, I’m never going to let those Epic cunts have a penny of my money. Fucking with the games industry, fucking with gamers, locking exclusives, it’s all bullshit & they can suck my cock
Oh so they have no responsibility at all then. Might as well stop checking IDs when people enter casinos or buy alcohol because they’re not supposed to if they’re underaged.
They make a deliberately addictive mechanic that they know ruin peoples’ life, and they also know they have a big young audience, but you think that’s fine? Shame of you, really.
It’s also in TF2 btw
And whatever you say, it’s still exploiting adults. In many countries, like France, casinos are legally obliged to detect addicted people, prevent minors from playing, and let people opt out legally, and never allow them to gamble afterwards. Valve blatantly doesn’t respect this and takes efforts to bypass the law. They got banned in Belgium and France, and used a legal loophole to avoid being banned in France.
You’re acting like a Valve fanboy. Be objective. Apart from that, Valve is an overall good company for the video games industry, but they act like a piece of shit in other places.
I mean… Do you support the recent proposal to ban online porn? How about alcohol?
Valve provides a game, an appropriate age rating, a description of the monetization scheme, and a way for users to freely trade items.
If minors transform that into a gambling addiction, it’s certainly a big problem, but I don’t see how that translates into “Steam bad, Epic Games good”
Do you support the recent proposal to ban online porn?
No, but that’s another subject. Not easy to regulate and is not as life threatening as many other things. We all consumed some when minors and it never was a huge deal for most moelle. Gambling is much worse imo, as it impacts your finance. Gambling is already banned/regulated and Valve is avoiding the current laws.
How about alcohol?
It’s already pretty well restricted for minors. The world would be better without it, but as nicotine, can’t go back now that people are used to it.
but I don’t see how that translates into “Steam bad, Epic Games good”
Never said that.
I talked about this because the original comment said Valve wasn’t here for money. Why do they push gambling then?
no Linux support - Heroic works, why doesn’t Epic do what GOG do and revenue share w/ Heroic?
exclusivity deals, which reduces options outside of EGS
Epic’s anticheat works on Linux, but their own games that use it don’t, that’s a pretty big slap in the face
I certainly want more competition to Steam, but that competition needs to do something other than exist for me to use it. GOG is that, and if they properly supported Linux, they’d get most of my gaming money. But they don’t, so they only get some of it.
Yeah, this probably reads like a Linux fanboy post or something, but I’ve been using Linux longer than Steam supported it with its client, and I’ll still be here if Steam leaves. It’s my platform of choice, and a vendor needs to meet me here if they want my business. Valve did, so they get my money. I honestly don’t need much, I just need games to work properly on my system.
Exclusivity is not competition, it’s lock in for me. So epic should get it’s head out of its ass and offer games on both platforms equally. THAT is competition.
I am not a fan of steam. Not a fan of having a library that could change at anytime at anyone’s whim but mine. So I prefer gog (yes I know some titles are drm free on steam and it’s not perfect on gog either / this is just for context).
Anyhow steam is well established and forcing me to use your store and launcher will just lead to me ignoring you (doing that for origin, uplay, epic) because it’s a luxury problem.
Same with all that streaming shit. Also there are other ways if you piss off people a lot, yarr!
The companies forget who made them big. And for epic I count myself in on that massively, still owning game boxes of e.g. Xargon (look it up, and my EU? box is not to be found on ebay) and equally for EA.
And I will not stand for anti consumer behaviors. Got enough money to spend at my age but theyre not getting it like this.
As a customer, why would I ever shop at Epic if the game is also available on Steam and typically has more features? Epic doesn’t solve any problems for me and actively introduces others, like a lack of Linux support. Do I want to play Alan Wake II? Of course I do. Am I going to buy it when they could push an update tomorrow that breaks compatibility with my operating system and offers me no recourse as a customer since it was unsupported in the first place? No, I’m not.
There are things worth solving that Steam does poorly (if they also support Linux customers). Finding out if my multiplayer game will be playable without external servers is a nightmare; DRM sucks, and I want none of it; Steam’s multiplayer/friends network has more downtime than is acceptable; Steam Input should be a platform agnostic library; etc. Instead of solving those problems, they made the store enticing for suppliers (publishers) but not customers. If I’m shopping someplace other than Steam, it’s GOG and not Epic.
It’s a lot of cutting out for about a minute, but that’s just enough to interrupt a fighting game match. If it was once per week at a predictable time, that might be okay, but it’s been happening more and more lately when it used to only be on Tuesdays.
Typically, when Steam handles the matchmaking, it’s peer to peer. But in general, they also sort of broker the connection between you and the other player or server. Street Fighter 6 runs its own servers and matchmaking, but if Steam cuts out, I lose my connection to them.
Unless it’s infrastructure or something with a natural monopoly.
The main competition with steam is buying physical copies of things. If we want to support retailers selling physical copies of games and bricks and mortar shops, that’s a good thing.
Alas, I think the games industry is chosing to abandon them. And Steam has the ability to add games purchased outside of Steam to it for convenience. Unlike Epic it puts the user close to the top of priorities.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
The other platforms on PC, for example Steam, itch, gog, all do better things.
Itch really supports game jams, which in turn supports smaller devs and puts out a lot of unique stuff, much of which is free. They also allow devs to choose what percent itch gets with even zero as an option.
Valve is a massive contributor to open source projects and the game dev community. They have contributed a ton to SDL which is used to make many games and engines, and Proton is rocketing wine development forward. Steam also allows adding non-Steam games and even lets you run them with Proton just as easily as Steam native games.
GoG is DRM free, enough said. That in and of itself is one of the most pro consumer stances.
The only plus for Epic is they give out free games, no other redeeming qualities or features.
Don’t forget the beauty of PC is that it’s an open platform, and Epic does nothing to support that.
Not only that, but they made the platform ever so slightly less open when they bought a bunch of games just so that they could remove them from other stores. They garner hatred because they don’t try to gain a competitive edge by being good or unique in some way, they’re just making gamers who aren’t willing to download their launcher suffer.
I don’t like the Epic Game Store because Epic has turned it’s back on Linux. Their client doesn’t run on Linux which is where I do all my gaming. I also recognize the economic fuckery they’re doing to gain popularity. They’re spending their Fortnite war chest money on subsidizing games to give them away for the purpose of monopolizing their game store. It’s not fair for other game stores like GOG who can’t just buy game licenses for everyone to become popular.
I hate console gamers as they’ve perverted the FPS genre.
I hate it because it’s like they’re trying their hardest to make a shitty storefront.
It’s awful.
I get almost none of the information I need when on a game’s store page. Meanwhile, I get all the info I need and then some on the same game’s Steam page.
It’s like they don’t want to sell their product.
I do definitely appreciate the weekly free games. Sometimes, like this week, they have solid offerings. It’s Dead Island 2 this week, btw.
Because in 2025 people get info about games they are buying from the app store instead of twitch or YouTube or the game devs website. Give me a fucking break dude.
When I’m browsing, it’s my first stop. I want to see the minimum specs to estimate how well it’ll run, how the devs market their game at a glance, year of release, rating, etc. Then if it looks interesting it’s time for external reviews.
The only way I know anything about the games I buy is by reading the store page. If I have to go looking for the dev’s website, it’s because something has gone wrong.
I would recommend doing more research before buying, but I’m a kinda a cheap bitch
I feel like I get a pretty good idea of what a game is like from reviews and discussions.
Oh, I must have misinterpreted you. That’s about what I do.
Haha, no problem.
Big issue for me is the direction towards incentivised exclusivity. I can tolerate it on consoles (barely nowdays) because you’re paying someone to use your hardware instead of another, and you have to specifically develop for console hardware. That takes time and effort.
Different distribution platforms do not have such issues, and I don’t want exclusivity anywhere near PC gaming, unless you’re self publishing. Frankly if they weren’t banging on about steam using the industry standard % take, while they themselves are trying to undercut and use garbage tactics, I would have absolutely no problem with them, same as Ubisoft and EA’s garbage store.
Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He’s taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.
Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.
At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.
Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game
Edit: this apparently happened twice (Unreal Tournament and Rocket League), but it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it. I think the concern was actually that Steam players would lose functionality due to not being supported anymore after the unlisting
The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people’s impression of the store. But it’s still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.
There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence
Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn’t want to support Linux
Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead
Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.
And the entire launcher and store’s ui has been, and still is, hot, moldy, shit-smeared garbage ass.
Don’t forget about that one time Epic gave away an indie game for free… On the week it launched… Without consulting the devs.
I hadn’t heard about a game being made unplayable after they bought it, that’s seriously shitty. What game was it?
For unplayable, Rocket League had very good Linux and macos native builds. Epic required them to delete support for those operating systems as part of the acquisition of Psyonix
Oh yeah, I didn’t think about that. That’s super gross.
It was a while ago, I don’t remember off the top of my head which specific game I’m remembering. Doing a brief search, it appears that this happened to Unreal Tournament and Rocket League, though it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it before the unlisting. I think the concern was losing functionality, especially for server-based or multiplayer games
Yeesh I knew Epic was run by dick heads but I didn’t know they were this slimy, I’m glad I’ve only bought one game on their platform (Subnautica below zero), and that’s only because I got the original Subnautica for free from their weekly giveaway and loved it. I’ll continue to get the free games from them as it’s good to take a chance on games that you otherwise might never learn about.
Don’t forget that Sweeney himself said that the Epic store is slow.
Having healthy competition is a good thing and I’ve wished for a competitor to Steam for a long time until one day the monkey’s paw curled and we got Epic Game Store. To sum it up:
But the main point is the first one. If they bothered making a good store they wouldn’t need to make most of PC gamers angry by introducing exclusivity deals, but they can’t be bothered to do that, so they go for hostile competition instead at the detriment of the customers.
When they buy publishers, they had them actively remove Linux support, such as Rocket League
Also chinese conglomerate tencent is the 2nd largest shareholder of epic (35%), after Tim Sweeney at 41%.
Not to diss you, or take away from your argument, it’s quite a good one.
But I do think EGS has reviews now. They suck but I they have some sort of review system now.
Epic makes their money off microtransaction stores and they bought exclusive rights to a bunch of titles a while back, meaning you could ONLY play them on Epic.
There are worse companies, though.
Here are some reasons:
exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.
The launcher is spyware
https://www.resetera.com/threads/developing-epic-games-launcher-appears-to-collect-your-steam-friends-play-history-up2-valve-responds-see-threadmarks.105385/
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/epic-launcher-and-privacy/123592
and epic is owned by tencent 40%
They not really trying to improve their launcher but instead focus on hurting steam and by extension the users.
Its like some shady guy trying to lure kids to a van by offering free candy.
The launcher is security risk for your system https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/1hm9mh9/epic_games_launcher_had_a_serious_security_flaw/
Even if they have fixed that specific issue, why would you believe they have fixed anything else?
first comment on the reddit thread
So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because “yay free games I’m never going to look at again”.
If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.
I don’t hate times exclusives that much because that’s done extra cashflow for the dev to be able to either finish their game or polish it further. I still don’t think we’d have gotten Alan Wake 2 at least the version we got without that epic deal. I also don’t know if square would’ve bothered even entertaining the idea of porting all of the kingdoms hearts games either.
My dislike of epic is that they seem to be buying their way into competing, instead of actually competing on features.
Free games sounds good now, but what happens when the fortnite gravy train runs out, and epic needs to start making a profit? They’ll likely have to enshittify fast.
Steam at least has a solid history of being generally good. But who knows what will happen if Gaben ever ascends.
Yeah, if they stopped spending money on exclusivity, they could invest in store features.
While I’d like to see more advanced features in other launchers (or, ideally, at the OS level in both Windows and Linux), I don’t think it’s realistic to expect new competitors to get to that level of support with 80% of the market fossilized around Steam.
They have a twenty year head start and a ridiculously dominant position. You’re not going to get a proprietary controller translation layer or a full on video capture software right off the bat. It makes sense to focus investment on getting content first, since Steam gets all content by default by having an iron grip on the marketplace, and for business reasons other launchers prioritize multiplayer features first.
Yeah, poor multi billion dollar company has only had 7 years until now to make a decent games store. That’s definitely not enough time and money.
Not really how that works, though.
To be clear, I’d agree that the prioritization by a bunch of competitors has been wonky, but Steam ONLY does client. They are a very lean company that actively builds stuff to be hands-off and has stepped away from focusing heavily on game development for a while.
Could Epic invest more heavily in their client as opposed to spending all that money on giving away free games and acquiring content? I bet. I also bet if they looked at GoG building a whole interoperable client and getting nothing in return or some of the work EA wasted on their version (twice!) for also nothing in return, then prioritizing redundant features that Microsoft provides at the OS level seems like a worse investment. Particularly when the store loses money and they could be spending that on Fortnite content or Unreal features or whatever else.
Steam is a weird outlier in that their ultimate goal has been to ditch Windows/MS for a while, so their whole consolized controller-based UI, the controller layer, the background recording, the overengineered chat all make sense in the context of SteamOS having been in development for a decade. For everybody else it’s a leap of faith.
Do I think it would have been a better choice for Epic? If it was up to me I’d have given it a shot, I think. But let me be clear: I’d have done that in the understanding that the minute you match a Steam feature the cult of Gaben shall move on to a different shortcoming as the justification for their adhesion. When Steam was behind on their refund policy nobody raged against them and nobody stopped raging against EA Origin depite offering no-questions-asked refunds. Now you hear about it as a differentiator. When Epic didn’t have a perisistent shopping cart that was the dealbreaker for a while, when they implemented it’s their store design or the library paging or whatever. Nobody complains about games only being available on Steam when they aren’t elsewhere, but Epic exclusives are a travesty. This is not about the feature set or policy.
But starting to match the feature set at least would take a talking point off the table and offer a selling point.
Did I give your trolly post way too much credit and took it too seriously? Yes. Is that an apt metaphor for this entire conversation? Absolutely.
You’re unironically defending EGS and calling me a troll. If you think that’s how a store with 7 years and a billion dollars invested (Sweeney’s words, not mine) should look like, that’s fine, that’s your opinion and you’re free to use it. Personally I’m not a fan.
I’m not “defending” anybody. I’m not taking sides at all. The only reason I even jump into these is that the absolutely cult-like zeal grown-ass men deploy in defending large corporations over each other is both some Sega-vs-Nintendo console war crap I wish we could get over and not particularly good if you want a PC market not dominated by a single player.
I don’t know what percentage of the Epic Store’s funding goes to feature work versus other areas. I can guess Epic is investing very heavily on content, and I can guess that’s because it’d be really hard to meet Steam on content when every developer of any size is effectively forced to be on Steam first and everything else if and when. I don’t know how much funding that leaves for client development.
Like I said, I’d probably have refocused on client features a bit further, but I’ll also acknowledge they probably wouldn’t see that much tangible return from that investment, given that Steam fanboys already don’t give them enough credit for the very noticeable improvements they’ve actually made and they have no effective means to run PR against Steam.
Hell, if you look at it objectively they’d probably be better off focusing on their legal fights with Apple and Google and on having a decent mobile client, which Steam very much doesn’t. Maybe there’s a path forward there. I don’t have enough of an inside view to know.
How come gog doesn’t get the same hate if it’s all steam fanboys and it’s all so unwarranted? How come it’s all focused at EGS? Are you sure it’s not because you’re mistaken? Maybe you’ve got a rage boner for Steam and you can’t see past it.
Well, for one thing the “GoG doesn’t support Linux” narrative runs strong (I believe it made at least one appearance in this thread), so there is that.
For another, GoG doesn’t get the same hate for the same reason in Sega vs Nintendo the Turbografx or the Neo Geo didn’t get the same hate. They are simply not in the same race.
Ubisoft’s platform does get the hate, though. And EA’s. And Acti/Blizzard’s. And Microsoft’s. Gamers love a good narrative, though, so EGS took over when Origin stopped being the bad guy du jour. Ubi had a brief period in the spotlight, though.
So after some soul searching I’m going to say I absolutely don’t have a rage boner for Steam (considering my Steam library is in the thousands and I own both iterations of the Steam Deck and a Vive that’d be a very confused boner anyway).
Your not wrong, but I just dont get the feeling that epic is going to transition towards actually being a competitive store. This is entirely my own myopic gut feel, not based on any facts.
I don’t know that anybody is, and that’s concerning, no matter how satisfied with Steam’s service people are.
I’d prefer GOG to climb the ranks, but since I also wouldn’t want them to abandon the DRM-free mandate, I don’t see that happening, either.
Honestly, I agree, unless steam aggressively enshittifies themselves, I dont see any rivals catching up either. They are so far ahead, and so far, haven’t started screwing their customers.
And gog selling out to climb doesn’t really solve anything.
It’s a bad experience overall
The UI was super buggy for me
I want all my games on Steam and to not have to install multiple apps
Epic doesn’t support my operating system.
Which operating system is that?
TempleOS
It’s very simple, valve is a gamer company. Epic is a money company. Every single thing each respective company does shows that. I’m not a bitch, I’m never going to let those Epic cunts have a penny of my money. Fucking with the games industry, fucking with gamers, locking exclusives, it’s all bullshit & they can suck my cock
Meanwhile Valve pushing
unrelatedunregulated gambling to everyone, including children, through their case unboxing systemCounter Strike is a M rated game
Oh so they have no responsibility at all then. Might as well stop checking IDs when people enter casinos or buy alcohol because they’re not supposed to if they’re underaged.
They make a deliberately addictive mechanic that they know ruin peoples’ life, and they also know they have a big young audience, but you think that’s fine? Shame of you, really.
It’s also in TF2 btw
And whatever you say, it’s still exploiting adults. In many countries, like France, casinos are legally obliged to detect addicted people, prevent minors from playing, and let people opt out legally, and never allow them to gamble afterwards. Valve blatantly doesn’t respect this and takes efforts to bypass the law. They got banned in Belgium and France, and used a legal loophole to avoid being banned in France.
You’re acting like a Valve fanboy. Be objective. Apart from that, Valve is an overall good company for the video games industry, but they act like a piece of shit in other places.
I mean… Do you support the recent proposal to ban online porn? How about alcohol?
Valve provides a game, an appropriate age rating, a description of the monetization scheme, and a way for users to freely trade items.
If minors transform that into a gambling addiction, it’s certainly a big problem, but I don’t see how that translates into “Steam bad, Epic Games good”
No, but that’s another subject. Not easy to regulate and is not as life threatening as many other things. We all consumed some when minors and it never was a huge deal for most moelle. Gambling is much worse imo, as it impacts your finance. Gambling is already banned/regulated and Valve is avoiding the current laws.
It’s already pretty well restricted for minors. The world would be better without it, but as nicotine, can’t go back now that people are used to it.
Never said that.
I talked about this because the original comment said Valve wasn’t here for money. Why do they push gambling then?
Parents should do their damn job and prevent their kids from playing what they arent supposed to, or teach them right from wrong.
Teens aren’t kids. Gambling is addictive to everyone.
Teens are kids, they’ve just got half a brain and adult hormones mixed in. They still need guidance and supervision.
Whataboutism makes you look like an idiot
Not OP but your very first sentence was
It’s not “whataboutism” to directly respond to your point and try to argue they aren’t a gamer company.
I do agree with you overall though that Epic can suck it.
You’re saying Valve acts for gamers, not for profits. I’m proving you wrong. You’re just entitled and love Valve.
Wrote unrelated instead of unregulated, which changed the meaning of my sentence. Fixed it.
Here are my reasons:
I certainly want more competition to Steam, but that competition needs to do something other than exist for me to use it. GOG is that, and if they properly supported Linux, they’d get most of my gaming money. But they don’t, so they only get some of it.
Yeah, this probably reads like a Linux fanboy post or something, but I’ve been using Linux longer than Steam supported it with its client, and I’ll still be here if Steam leaves. It’s my platform of choice, and a vendor needs to meet me here if they want my business. Valve did, so they get my money. I honestly don’t need much, I just need games to work properly on my system.
Competition is good, yes and no.
Exclusivity is not competition, it’s lock in for me. So epic should get it’s head out of its ass and offer games on both platforms equally. THAT is competition.
I am not a fan of steam. Not a fan of having a library that could change at anytime at anyone’s whim but mine. So I prefer gog (yes I know some titles are drm free on steam and it’s not perfect on gog either / this is just for context).
Anyhow steam is well established and forcing me to use your store and launcher will just lead to me ignoring you (doing that for origin, uplay, epic) because it’s a luxury problem.
Same with all that streaming shit. Also there are other ways if you piss off people a lot, yarr!
The companies forget who made them big. And for epic I count myself in on that massively, still owning game boxes of e.g. Xargon (look it up, and my EU? box is not to be found on ebay) and equally for EA.
And I will not stand for anti consumer behaviors. Got enough money to spend at my age but theyre not getting it like this.
Epic wants temporary monopolies and that’s already antitrust.
As a customer, why would I ever shop at Epic if the game is also available on Steam and typically has more features? Epic doesn’t solve any problems for me and actively introduces others, like a lack of Linux support. Do I want to play Alan Wake II? Of course I do. Am I going to buy it when they could push an update tomorrow that breaks compatibility with my operating system and offers me no recourse as a customer since it was unsupported in the first place? No, I’m not.
There are things worth solving that Steam does poorly (if they also support Linux customers). Finding out if my multiplayer game will be playable without external servers is a nightmare; DRM sucks, and I want none of it; Steam’s multiplayer/friends network has more downtime than is acceptable; Steam Input should be a platform agnostic library; etc. Instead of solving those problems, they made the store enticing for suppliers (publishers) but not customers. If I’m shopping someplace other than Steam, it’s GOG and not Epic.
Does steam really have frequent multiplayer downtime issues? I’ve never notice any issues, but I don’t play a lot of multiplayer anymore.
It’s a lot of cutting out for about a minute, but that’s just enough to interrupt a fighting game match. If it was once per week at a predictable time, that might be okay, but it’s been happening more and more lately when it used to only be on Tuesdays.
Isn’t steam responsible for match making only, and the actual game company is responsible for the servers? Are you sure its not the game servers?
Either way, that would be very frustrating if its happening mid round.
Typically, when Steam handles the matchmaking, it’s peer to peer. But in general, they also sort of broker the connection between you and the other player or server. Street Fighter 6 runs its own servers and matchmaking, but if Steam cuts out, I lose my connection to them.
Generally is extra competition not a good thing for customers?
Absolutely, competition is allways good for the consumer, even in this case.
Since EGS offers a worse experience, I will use Steam instead.
Unless it’s infrastructure or something with a natural monopoly.
The main competition with steam is buying physical copies of things. If we want to support retailers selling physical copies of games and bricks and mortar shops, that’s a good thing.
Alas, I think the games industry is chosing to abandon them. And Steam has the ability to add games purchased outside of Steam to it for convenience. Unlike Epic it puts the user close to the top of priorities.
Blackmailing customers onto your service isn’t competition.