I just don’t use Epic myself but do use Gog and Steam (with the ultra shitty EA launcher and Ubisoft Connect bundled with some of my games) and Playnite has changed everything unifying it all into that single launcher.
Full screen mode in Playnite works fine on my HTPC and as a launcher it does consolidate all of them into one place easily. Worth trying if you use multiple stores.
As for why I’m not using Epic, the whole paying for exclusivity with third parties really didn’t appeal to me at all.
If the free offerings from Epic do appeal to you, or if they do better deals on localised currencies (especially if you do struggle to pay for things), don’t worry about using their services. I wouldn’t want you to deny yourself some entertainment just because other people have issues with them as a business.
I don’t even think Sony’s MFN is an issue as Alan Wake 2 is $10 cheaper than on consoles, a boon for the consumer and something I could get behind, but no.
Vbucks aren’t even lower cost on pc where 100% of the sale goes to Epic. No 30% cut there but prices are the same.
I’m all for supporting the message that Tim is trying to portray but they’re so inconsistent with the way they manage the business I can’t for the life of my accept that they’re being honest.
They briefly cut the price of vbucks on mobile when they pulled the stunt and could easily do the same on pc permanently. PC Vbucks aren’t transferable to Playstation wallets so they should be able to do something.
Who is they?
The publishers could already set the prices lower on EGS by default with the 18% difference being put in consumers pockets making EGS a more enticing place to buy games for now, instead, they want to sell games the same price on EGS vs all other stores they offer titles on pocketing the difference.
EGS Exclusives even launch at the standard pricing despite the money they used to receive up front from Epic and the lesser cut. None of this grandstanding is a benefit to me as a consumer and I won’t give a fuck in supporting Epic/Tim until it is.
30% fees are insane. Those cost are passed down to us the consumer. We get shittier game because a third of the profit goes to these marketplaces.
Whilst that may be the case, every single day one launch on EGS and other stores (GOG, Microsoft, Steam) launch at exactly the same price on Epic despite the lesser cut. Not one single title I’ve seen launch at a lower price on EGS.
I feel it’s naive to think that is, the consumer would ever benefit from a lesser cut, the fat shits at the top would just keep more.
I was pained to move to iOS when my kids decided they wanted iPhones and I needed one to manage their parental controls, but boy do I love the form factor of the 12 mini I got.
Everything out there seems so huge now.
I’d love to have more options for smaller, manageable phones, especially as my workplace have given out work iPhones now, I could realistically go back to Android again come upgrade time as I can manage their accounts with that.
I’m going to go on a nostalgic trip below.
IMHO, Powerslave/Exhumed was one of the best first person shooters on the 5th generation consoles and the Powerslave engine (Slavedriver) enabled the Saturn to run an amazing port of both Duke Nukem 3d and Quake.
I remember being ecstatic that a game I could only play on a friends PC when I visited back in the day (Duke3d) was not only playable on my Saturn, it was a fantastic port too. DeathTank Zwei was a lovely hidden bonus game included on the D3D port.
Likewise, Quake was an impossible port, bought to a console that traditionally struggled with substandard 3d games vs the psx.
I remember seeing a psx owning buddy play a superb port of Doom on his psx, only for me to be burned by the absolute 💩port that Rage software put out on the Saturn. Even the 32x cartridge version of Doom was batter.
Console shooters have come on in leaps and bounds each generation but Exhumed on the Saturn was a real highlight for me in my younger years.
I’ve got a Libreddit docker instance running on my home server and together with the libredirect browser extension, if I click on a Reddit link through a search or news article with a link to Reddit, my browser automatically goes to my Libreddit instance with the content on full display.
Now, whilst on my Libreddit instance the other day after being redirected from a news article I took a peek at r/all and the whole feed was pure shit, nothing like I’d seen before on Reddit.
For some reason, it was full of doordash posts, rateme style posts taking advantage of thirsty usersand shitty TikTok reposts.
They may well have won, but at the moment there is a glut of absolute shit on the front page of the platform. I’d guess quality content has taken a hit.
The names of their support agents is truly odd. I’ve seen people post complaints about their support that is little more than this:
Hilariously bad.