The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
They can try all they want, but I’ll just wait until the game comes to steam. No game is worth using that dumpster fire of a launcher.
Elite Dangerous was their free game for the month awhile back. I made extra accounts and snagged free copies for people that wanted to try it, because I adore that game and love having people to fly with.
You know, oddly enough, no one wants it, even for free, expressly because they don’t want to deal with the dog’s anus EGS launcher.
Yep, I used to pick up the free games, then realized I’d never play any of them because I expressly do not want to deal with the EGS launcher.
It sucks, because it really is better for the devs, but steam is just so much better
not in the long term it’s not
it really is better for the devs
This is said a lot but… Is it really? And if so why should I, the customer, care?
I can’t think of any other good or service in my life that I would go out of my way to buy from an alternative store so that the manufacturer makes more money. I don’t choose between Aldi and Whole Foods based on whether the manufacturer of my chicken bullion cubes makes more margin with one or the other. It’s just fuckin weird.
Same with GTA when it was free. Only got one person to use one of the many and they only used it like twice.
Dude I have purchased Elite 4 times now, 1 for me and 3 for my mates
I wish they would do SOMETHING with the game to make it more accessible, all my friends gave up after realising how much grinding they had to do
That game is a ruined orgasm. So much build up and anticipation for fucking nothing.
My biggest complaint about E:D is that star citizen’s flight mechanics and ship design ruined the game for me. Star Citizen has a wider variety of ship designs than E:D. Additionally, the ships I’ve tried in SC are incredibly responsive, to the point where even the nimblest E:D ship feels like a whale. However, that’s about all I can say for star citizen. I mean, it’s getting there, slowly but I swear to god the world is going to end before they finish the fucking game.
Meanwhile, E:D is very much a complete game in a massive galaxy. Sure, it may not have as much detail as CIG is trying to put into star citizen, sure it may not have the complexity of star citizen, but that doesn’t matter if you can’t finish your game. However, E:D’s ships suck.
Can we take star citizen’s good half and E:D’s good half and make one complete game please?
Once you trick out an Anaconda you “beat the game”.
I claim every epic game through the website, but I actually haven’t bothered installing the epic launcher since I did a fresh install of my OS months back. I’ve got other non steam launchers like GOG installed. So yeah, I’ll take the free game, but I don’t feel like spending money on the epic store even if it were more heavily discounted.
You’ve got the GOG launcher… Which can be linked to the Epic launcher… But don’t want to install the Epic launcher to play the free games they give…
Fucking hell you guys are pathetic.
I’m already claiming them. You want me to actually play them too? What more do you want from me Tim.
Which is kind of weird since Elite has its own stand alone launcher, right?
All my stuff on Epic I just install and either run direct on the PC or add to steam as a non-steam game on my deck.
If you still happen to have one handy I’d love a copy! Missed this one and finally getting a card that will let me play it
DM me and we can set up a Discord chat
I will never get this sentiment. It’s a fucking game launcher, it downloads the games quickly and launches them. I just don’t get this hate boner people have for it.
I played Red Dead 2 and Control through it and had absolutely zero problems. You all just want a steam monopoly for whatever gods forsaken reason.
Their checkout still doesn’t have a cart, it takes forever to load, the UI is terribly clunky, the library sorting is terrible (how do you fuck this up), it’s resource heavy, and I’d be willing to overlook all that oof they had an in game overlay with web browser.
Aside from the terrible experience, they have profit seeking investors, one of which is Tencent. We all have seen were it goes when profits are priority over consumers.
Not a hate boner. Just genuine dislike of the platform as it stands right now.
They do in fact have a cart I fucking used it last week to add two free games and check em out at the same time.
When did you last use it to pay for a game? Just curious, I find most people are more tolerant of issues with something they didn’t have to pay for.
I bought Tetris Effect on it back when that game seemed to take every single exclusive offer before finally landing on steam (PS4, then Epic then Gamepass/Xbox THEN Steam) man that’s annoying. Prior I picked up Rebel Galaxy Outlaw on the cheap cheap thanks to a coupon but later got a Steam copy through a bundle.
I don’t remember when they added the cart but it’s there. I can see it right now. It works. At least when adding 2 free games at once.
Nice. I’ll have to take a look next time I’m on there. I didn’t see anything that showed it was available last time.
Good on them.
I personally am not willing to support their exclusivity stuff.
Because it doesn’t work
The launch is a piece of shit that doesn’t do the 2 thing it’s supposedly good at. Downloads are excessively slow and game launching doesn’t work half the time. It’s so slow that it has a noticeable effect on boot times.
Yes, I’d rather a steam monopoly than have to use that shit launcher ever again. Steam is a useable piece of software that doesn’t suck donkey cock.
It’s a skill issue if you couldn’t get it to work.
I couldn’t break the damn thing.
It doesn’t work on Linux at all
It never worked in the first place. It’s so slow that disabling brought seconds back to my boot times.
Oh Linux. My bad carry on.
I can’t figure out how to stop EGS from pushing notifications that don’t go away without clicking on them in Windows.
And occasionally it will just push a quasi-notification through just the app to make it start flashing on the taskbar and forcing itself over other open apps. Nothing even is happening it just desperately wants to be on top.
An absolute garbage fire of a game launcher, barely worth the free games it gives. (and seeing as I don’t play them I guess fully not worth)
They’re winning me over steam. I pick up their free games each month and my library is getting good enough that I’m spending more time on it.
How much does steam charge for allowing the games on its platform?
Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales iirc, but does not enforce exclusivity agreements to their platform
Geez, 30% is a lot.
30% is standard in industry. Apple/Google/Xbox/Sony all take 30% from their marketplaces as well
The first few months of a game release are absolutely critical, no matter the size of the studio. I won’t buy anything on Epic just out of principle, and I’m sure there are countless other people who share the mindset. A 100% share, vs a 70% one, is definitely appealing at first glance, but it’ll butcher your numbers for short-term gain
As a patient gamer, who hates enticements to get stuck in yet-another-walled garden, I refuse to go with Epic. The benevolent kingdom of steam never forces exclusivity deals, and just out of self interest i wont reward behavior that removes options from me.
I guess this means I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam
I’m ok with other ecosystems, if they treat people right, like GoG, I’m cool with GoG.
Waiting 6 months means you will find out if the game was any good anyways
Found lot of the big titles that go to epic have been terribly unoptimized too at launch requiring fixes anyways, and I don’t want to pay more to be a beta tester. I don’t want to pay more for early access for a game that will be a better experience for customers who buy it much later.
I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam.
It raises a fun ethical question: Is piracy moral if you fully intend on buying the game at full price when it hits Steam in six months?
Spare me the “piracy is always moral” arguments; Even as a fellow pirate, the mental gymnastics to justify it get old quickly. Just admit that you won’t/can’t pay for something. So the question is whether or not the morality comes into play when you DO intend on buying the game as soon as it’s available on your preferred platform.
Patient gamer does mean actually be patient. If someone is playing a pirated game I would say that doesn’t count as patience with them not depriving themselves of anything.
I mean it when I say im a patient gamer… ill wait and no play it
So if a game is stuck in Steam’s walled garden it’s ok, but if it’s stuck in Epic’s walled garden then it’s wrong?
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Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think Valve went out of their way to bribe 2k into signing a contract to prevent them from releasing on other platforms. Like Xbox did with Tomb Raider preventing launch release on Sony.
Or do you not understand the distinction? At least play the “well it’s PC so what is the big deal over downloading another launcher” card if you are going to try and argue the exclusive angle.
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I’ve never understand why, as a consumer, I would care why something is exclusive.
Difference between knowing a game isn’t being prevented from coming to the PC like Yakuza and Persona 5 before they got PC ports versus knowing it will never happen, so not even entertaining the possibility like Zelda. Even with Epic exclusives its the difference between knowing that eventually the game will be available outside Epic versus being locked there forever. And it’s why I’ve decided to wait patiently for a Ghost of Tsushima release on the PC versus getting a PS5 or getting it for my PS4. Maybe you are a day 1 purchaser, but I am willing to wait if there is a chance of a game being released on my preferred platform. So its pretty important. Otherwise, I’d get a PS5 if I knew that no amount of waiting would result in PC ports.
Like I said before. You are so much better off saying you don’t care about exclusives if you are going to be an Epic apologist.
Maybe Gabe called up and asked nicely? Maybe someone at 2K used to work with Gabe when he was at Microsoft and thought they’d do him a favor? Maybe Valve paid? Does it matter why? Exclusives suck
You just seem to be falling back to hypotheticals to try to downplay third party exclusives. You say exclusives suck but then don’t bother putting in half the effort of actually calling out a verifiable recent actions of paying to remove the game from other platforms. Like the most infamous example being Metro Exodus that was set to release on Steam getting paid to pull it by Epic, and being the most lasting impression Epic left on consumers. It’s instead hypothetical 2k exclusives that bother you more than actual concrete current events.
Why would I care? The problem with exclusivity is that it’s anti-competitive and limits consumer choice. It doesn’t do that any less whether it’s exclusive because the developer was too lazy to offer the game somewhere else or because they were contractually obligated to be exclusive.
The leaps in logic you take to try and downplay paid third party exclusives as being as egregious as a dev or publisher not bothering to release on multiple platforms is an interesting one… But, I guess you have to do that if you are both claiming you hate exclusives, but then also trying to defend Epic and having to resort to hypotheticals.
Honestly, if you want to downplay criticisms towards Epic you are much better off saying you aren’t bothered by exclusives. I’m not sure why you are going through such a round about approach when you end up coming off as a fanboy with the leaps in logic and reliance on constant hypotheticals while downplaying or ignoring actual events that could hurt Epic.
Trust me. It’s way better to just say I like the Epic launcher being bare bones and I don’t care about exclusives. It’s just a launcher. This is by far the worst attempt to defend Epic I’ve seen. Bravo.
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Some games are already like this. Borderlands stuff has been an Epic exclusive for a year ish in the past. I played on other platforms to avoid it. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if Borderlands 3 was the exception.
It’s that upfront money they give that’s the big thing for some of these devs I can’t blame them for taking that upfront influx of development capital.
Still not buying it from Epic, I hate console exclusivity, including Nintendo, and I’m not going to support it on PC.
A game that sells 10,000 copies on Epic may sell 20,000 or more on Steam since Steam is so popular. If the game sold for $20 they would get $200,000 from Epic or $280,000 from Steam in that scenario.
That’s why Epic has to offer this. They NEED this to remain competitive.
Or they could make a launcher that offers features that Steam lacks.
Or even just has the same features. The EGS launcher is hilariously bad. It’s barebones and intentionally difficult. It’s basically just a shell for their website API, when then raises the question of why they even have a launcher when it’s just a glorified browser.
And the lack of a shopping cart on their store is just plain aggravating. Maybe I don’t want to do a purchase for each individual game/DLC. But I’m sure they did a focus study somewhere, which found that having a shopping cart encourages people to second-guess their purchasing decisions. Like if you allow people to cart things, they may rethink some/all of those purchases once they get to the final checkout screen and see the grand total. So instead, they’ve opted to make the user experience worse, by forcing you to immediately check out for every single individual item.
Not that I want to defend EGS here, but I would like to point out that they actually have had a shopping cart for a bit now. Hilarious how long it took them to implement, but they do in fact have one now.
What’s even more hilarious is they have had one in the Unreal Engine store for much longer.
If you want to criticize the product you should at least stay up to date on what they offer because now we know you don’t know what you’re talking about :)
On the other side of the same coin, it proves that I don’t use the EGS because the launcher has historically been (and still continues to be, as far as I can tell) hilariously bad.
By that logic fuck steam because it sucked when half life 2 launched
It’s got all functionalities required by a launcher, get over it.
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That’s an awfully generous ratio. I don’t recall all the specifics, but a year or so ago an indie game dev posted the sales stats of his game and left out the Epic Store numbers. When asked, he said that EGS accounted for less than 1% of his sales. Now, I’m not saying that’s going to be the case for all games, but considering EGS’s status as the “black hole of videogame marketing” I would say a 10-1 Steam/EGS ratio wouldn’t be surprising.
Tbh EGS discovery of games is shit. I feel that’s their largest issue.
It’s their largest issue and they literally just won’t fix it.. Ostensibly because they don’t “track user behavior”. Yeah sure Epic, go with that.
When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it’s more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.
There’s no winning with you guys is there?
“We don’t track you…”
“I don’t believe you, I’ll use that paycheck that I know for a fact is tracking me, fuck you!”
“Eh…”
Why the fuck do you care if I don’t like your favorite multibillion dollar corporation? Fuck I wish I could find someone who loves me as much as you love Epic Games Store of all things
It’s Tim. Why else would he be personally offended on behalf of epic when people say they don’t use it. He got offended I didn’t install the launcher and play the games despite having an account and at least claiming them on the browser.
I just like pissing you guys off because you’re acting like child
As a gamer living in eastern Asia, Epic’s exclusives that could only be bought in certain countries due to payment processors pissed me off enough to boycott. I generally don’t touch any games that started as exclusives there, either. The couple of exceptions I have, I waited until they were a couple of years old and > 50% off on Steam or GoG
Yeah same, but I also won’t touch anything that goes Epic Games exclusive even when it comes to Steam.
There seems to be a lot of debate in the comments, that are disingenuous arguments.
I think the quality of the software is a factor for some people, but that’s not the main issue here.
Steam has always publicly stated their competition is piracy. They have to be more convenient than piracy to survive. And over steams lifetime I think they’ve demonstrated that’s their goal, yes they have DRM, but only to satisfy publishers, they’ve done everything they can to keep things as convenient as possible.
Epic, the company, has demonstrated their goal is money. And they’ve demonstrated an anti-consumer trend, the exclusivity deals are in great indicator of that. If epic became as popular as steam, they would make the experience awful, they would become the Disney of the game world.
So all of the arguments about
*launcher quality
*availability of DRM free games
*some publishers choosing to release on one platform
Are missing the mark, many people don’t want to financially support a market participant who will make their lives worse in the future.
If you don’t like valve, that’s fine, support a different distributor who makes the ecosystem better, like GoG.
Yeah, I think competition is always good and Steam should not have a monopoly, but Epic is certainly not a beneficial alternative.
I love how when it’s epic it’s all about “I don’t like epic because they want a monopoly” but when it was only steam nobody talked about them having a monopoly lmao
Steam isn’t a monopoly.
Steam doesn’t force exclusivity. Developers are free to release a game on their own platform, on steam, on GOG all at the same time. Steam doesn’t even enforce price equality, developers could have their game on steam for 3X the price if they wanted. Use our website get the game for 66% off. Or use steam pay 3x the price. That’s an option
Steam is the benevolent dictator of the gaming world right now. They are benevolent so there’s no real need for a revolution. But they’re not forcing anybody to stay on the steam platform
Steam has roughly 90% of the market. Everything else has scraps.
At what point does a market leader not become a de facto monopoly?
When the Majority of PC Gamers chant “no steam no buy” what exactly is Steam? Is it a monopoly? Is it a cult? It’s certainly not an equal competitor in the market. But just like reddit exposing this gets hit with down votes and “steam is not a monopoly cuz Gabe is based” propaganda.
What will Steam become once he dies btw? Will his successor keep the company private or go public and go through shareholder enshitification? Sold to Amazon?
I say all of this as a happy Steam Deck owner, a majority of my games on Steam and where I buy first over others save for real old Games (GOG). Honestly Steam was goddamn stagnant until EGS went online then Valve started updating the UI, made deals to get EA and Microsoft on board. Honestly EGS existing lit a fire under Valves ass. So I guess maybe not a monopoly as a true one wouldn’t even be bothered. But let’s not downplay Valves “big dick” in the market they can swing around all they want.
I’ve envisioned that possibility where Gabe dies of old age, and the company is sold to someone that will do anything for a buck. The bad news there is that any further purchases on Steam might be subject to whatever horrible practices they institute, but there’s no way they’d get away with locking off people’s existing libraries - and people would just shift over at that time to whatever other game stores make sense. And yes, other game stores do exist, even if they have smaller following.
Steam doesn’t force a monopoly because they’re already in the position of power. Epic “forces a monopoly” because they are the party out of power. I don’t care about either, but to assume any move by the company competing with the default game marketplace is “forcing a monopoly” is disingenuous at best. I’ll agree their client sucks compared to Steam, but honestly I don’t care. You can still launch your application through steam and get the overlay and everything. I care more about the health of the marketplace, and having a competitor can only be good for consumers and developers. This 100% return can make developers sell their games at a lower price and still make the same profit, as one example of how this is good.
I Don’t mean to be disingenuous. I never said either company was forcing a monopoly.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart. It was a freaking war of ideology attrition over a motherfucking shopping cart, something the Unreal Engine store had too.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
Someday maybe they will try to improve the launcher instead of burning all the money in exclusives that only pisses people off. I uninstalled that shit and don’t even bother to take the free games anymore.
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The launcher launches the games and that’s good enough for me 👍
Why should you be happy it has the most bare functionality it could possibly have. It’s 2023. On Steam I can stream from a Linux PC to my living room, play on some Nintendo Joycons with full gyro support, have a YouTube video playing picture-in-picture and bringing up an achievement guide with one button press. Epic is just a launcher, Steam is a full-fledged gaming platform.
I’m not one for company or brand worship but valve is straight GOATed.
I just claim the free games and after installing them, i add them to steam.
So…download with epic and launch via steam as a non-steam game. What’s the problem?
The issue is not the launcher. The issue is the exclusivity. It demonstrates an anti-consumer mindset. The GOG, which people here have demonstrated acceptance of, is yet another launcher, the launchers less elegant to steam, and everyone is just fine with.
It will probably work fine but it’s not an officially supported use case of the software. You can’t exactly submit a ticket to Valve if something doesn’t work right because the game isn’t even on their store.
Fucking hell, don’t hurt your back carrying that goalpost mate!
The person asked what the problem was and I explained what the problem was. Why are you butting in with this nonsense?
That guy has a weird hard-on for the epic games store. There was a post about it last month and that guy was saying the same things.
Funny you should mention Linux…
“Linux is so much nicer than Windows because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
“Epic is so much worse than Steam because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
The hypocrisy is strong with this one.
… What are you even talking about. I never even said the first statement so how could I possibly be a hypocrite lmao. And having features isn’t “bloat”. Your argument is just all kinds of nonsensical.
The way people talk about the epic store its like the company personally kicked their dog.
epic game stores killed my father and raped my mother!
“wow really?”
well no…but are we just gonna sit around and wait for them to do it!
Take the free game and shut the fuck up
They would have been complaining about Steam killing distributors when it released and vowing to boycott it forever. I’m old enough to remember these guys back in the day, now they’re basically sucking Gaben’s dick and bowing in front of his virtual monopoly.
There is a core difference.
A better analogy, would be shut up and eat the cheese it’s only a trap if you get caught.
It’s still designed as a trap.
We know epic has demonstrated that their anti-consumer by their public, frequent, numerous exclusivity deals for their store.
Steam had de facto exclusivity for years and I didn’t see anyone complain, weird how that goes, right?
Steam did not force any developer to make an exclusive. The developers had the choice of using every platform available to them. They thought steam was good enough.
And the reason nobody complained about steam being the de facto place to get games? It treated people fairly, it was easy, good enough. More convenient than piracy.
If the only choice is storefront A that’s used by 100% of consumers and storefront B that’s used by 0.1% of consumers then storefront A has a monopoly even if technically there’s a competitor. They means storefront A doesn’t need to sign exclusivity agreements because it knows no one will choose not to sell through them as it would mean not selling at all.
Epic doesn’t force third party developers to sell exclusives with them either, they’re free not to take their offer.
I could launch my games without a launcher. And I prefer it that way.
Good news!
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Epic_Games_Store
Pretty much all free games they’ve given so far are DRM free and can be launched without the launcher!
Can’t wait to read the next reason why you refuse to install it!
I had to request and confirm the deletion of my account to stop chinese people trying to hack it or something because I kept getting e-mails from Epig that someone in China is trying to access my account EVERY GODDAMN MONTH.
Just use playnite you plebians
Say what you will about epic, but this is compelling as hell for Devs. Hopefully this puts more pressure on Steam to reduce their cut. Competition is good.
If you’re so against epic, have a little patience and wait until it comes to steam 6 months later. That’s what I’ll be doing. But don’t just mindlessly shit in epic because you (as a consumer) don’t like their business model intended to attract devs. You can dislike something while also recognising the good in it.
Man epic games store is actual industry aids. We don’t buy games on steam because we have no other choice. We buy them because it’s by far and large the best platform. I don’t want 10 different apps for different games. I want my collection in one spot. Epic games sucks. I’ve never given them a single cent and never will. I’ve claimed many a free game on there but the irony is I just buy them on sale through steam and never actually play them on epic. I want playtimes, achievements and the games themselves in one fucking spot. If steam becomes wildly anti consumer I would absolutely change my stance. But valve and it’s customers have a pretty good relationship imo.
I wish more companies were like Valve. They are following that old style of making a great product and/or providing a great service to make consumers happy to spend their money there. The only mixed feelings I have about spending money on steam is “do I really need more games when there’s a ton in my library that I still haven’t even installed let alone played?”
I hope they stay private and that Gabe has or finds an heir that follows his mindset rather than decides to go for a quick payout.
Even when those other companies embrace shitty business practices to make more money and it works for them, they are just setting the stage for a better company to come along and replace them.
Dude, we are so fucking boned if Gaben ever retires/dies/does not become GLaDOS. Valve is one of the only companies I can think of that hasn’t squandered goodwill completely and generally maintains a tight ship (aside from maybe Costco).
Can guarantee some random, unkempt, 38 year old asshole from the pharmaceutical industry will make Steam subscription only, throw it on the stock market, and have it tank due to some hedge fund mindset within 5 years if they hire a new CEO.
Not to mention valve making a device that proliferates Linux game support more than anything else… ever.
you guys can pay developers all you want but nobody is gonna stick if your launcher is still shit
Just use playnite or one of the alternatives, it’s so much easier launching every game from the one place.
I only open epic launcher once a week to get the free game I’ll never play and that’s it.
Playnite is a must for any gamer
It can open any game
Yeah being able to add and launch the more nefariously obtained games along side legitimate games is one of my favourite things about it. The filter to quickly see owned vs installed across every account is also up there as a top feature.
Can’t gog galaxy do this?
gog can do the same but I kept having issues with the plugins for each launcher randomly crashing and signing me out and it just got so annoying to use
100% it can handle pirated games yeah, I used to use this a few years ago but swapped to playnite and I honestly can’t remember what made me swap. I don’t remember it having view filters… maybe it does
playnite is phenomenal!! I use it as well but have to occasionally still jumpscare myself opening the epic launcher to update stuff
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I’m not fully sure the steam comparison works only because that was a different time.
With that said I still think epic has staying power if for no other reason than anyone mildly interested has a massive epic library sitting there. I don’t spend a ton of time thinking about epic, but I do want to keep my account because of all those games.
Making it seem like Steam’s problems for the first ten years were some software bugs inherent to all software.
It required you login every 48 hrs to two weeks to play most games for DRM purposes, they had no return policy, app’s buttons barely worked, overlay made games run considerably worse, it frequently took up a shitton of resources. The 48 hr thing meant that if you were offline for a bit and Steam was down or slowed (any time a bit sale happened or a big game was launched) most games were unplayable.
Steam came out in 2003 and tons of people complained about Steam DRM hearkening the end of actually owning videogames until at least 2012. GoG came out in 2008, didn’t require a launcher at all, sidestepped everything wrong with Steam.
There’s been non-buggy, not anti-consumer software as long as there’s been computers, Steam prior to like 2016 was not that. There’s been an alternative, buying physical games (until they all started using Steam DRM or worse) and GoG.
Yeah Epic Launcher is barebones. Both Steam and Epic are anti-consumer because of DRM, and making users beholden to any buggy software update to play software they purchase. At least Epic pays devs.
Yeah I mean I hope my comment doesn’t seem like it’s blindly defending Steam or anything. I think steam today is a good platform. Not talking about their 30% cut, I just mean from the perspective of gamers.
But its launch was anything but smooth. I HATED steam when it launched as a requirement for HL2. I had dialup and the experience was utter shit. I recall being so upset at what a pain it was.
Nothing about epic has ever been as frustrating as the early life of steam.
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Steam literally forced me to install it when I bought Portal on CD back in the day.
The only thing that was on that CD was a Steam installer and a code.
This is kind of like complaining that you have to own a Switch to play Nintendo 1st party games.
Portal is a Valve game. Steam is the PC launcher for Valve games.
FWIW, Portal was available on other platforms without Steam. I had my copy of the Orange Box for the Xbox 360 and that didn’t require Steam or a Steam account to play.
Civ 5 for me. I stuck with physical because “all my games in one place” was my CD binder.
Steam suuuuuuuuucked back then I avoided it just as much as the “Fuck Epic” people do to that. Hated everything it stood for. The idea of a launcher for a game was madness.
I got over it.
What was the alternative for the first ten years? Nothing better for sure.
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The alternative back then was to buy physical games or to pirate them.
As bad as the Steam experience was at the time, it was still convenient. Nowhere else could you reliably download games at those speeds, and you could legally purchase games without leaving the house, not to mention the prices.
When a new product like a TV from a new manufacturer shows up people judge it by standards from 10 years ago as opposed to current ones? Same from software?
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Half Life 2 launched in 2004. Which will be 20 years next year. I’m not sure why state of a product from over a decade ago matters for judging products now. I’m not exactly time traveling and being forced to use 2004 steam.
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It’s an incredibly poor look having to even resort to comparing epic to the era of 2004. That’s like someone referring back to the days of flip phones for why a new current day phone release should get a pass. Even having to do that is a poor reflection.
Having to rely on hypotheticals over the actual offering of epic isn’t a good look. It’s not our job or your job to convince us why epic is worth spending money in. That’s epic’s job.
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Why couldn’t that happen a second time?
Maybe because steam is already extremely popular and has improved more in the last few years than Epic has.
I don’t know how popular stardock was but it couldn’t have been anywhere close to how popular steam is now.
Epic hasn’t really done anything to improve.
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But why does the launcher matter when all you need it for it to launch a game?
Because it’s actually dogshit. Like in every thinkable way a launcher “could be bad” it is.
Examples:
-Cannot move games or files, IN ANY CAPACITY. If you move a game folder or file the Epic launcher loses sight of it and the launcher has no way at all to tell it where existing files are. I learned this when I tried to move GTA V and had to reinstall the full game in the exact same location so that epic could see it.
-The launcher is the slowest loading launcher and service in the world. I have a 7800x3D and an nvme and EGS is the slowest launcher on my computer by a country mile (fucking Uplay is faster). Also on top of that, it has a major hard on for making you log back in on the same fucking computer (what feels like weekly). Meanwhile I don’t touch steam for 2 weeks and, guess what? It still logs me in! How the hell did they figure out that crazy tech?!
-It has absolutely 0 of the function the steam launcher has. Besides letting you spend money on games and launch them. No communities, workshop, friends features, profiles, voice calling, steam share, remote play together, etc.
I could go on but this all just grinds my gears when they do nothing but tout how they are “for gamers” and “for developers” when they’re clearly just here for fucking money. They use anti consumer practices to lock people into an ecosystem that for some reason they refuse to improve (wild fucking concept, maybe people would use their launcher if it wasn’t one of the least functional ones available!), and instead try to bait people in and keep them around with a free game a week. I’ll never, ever willingly give a cent to epic games. They’ve proven they don’t give a fuck about gaming or the consumer experience
edit: changed you to they when referring to Epic Games at the end
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God I hate Epic. I hate them with every fiber of my being. The fact that I have to have their crappy, insecure game store bloatware just to try to learn Unreal for personal projects is dumb. Hence why I am learning Unity and Godot.
Steam has proton, Epic games does nkt even have a linux launcher, its obvious who I’m sticking with
Effectively no percent of the market uses Linux
That percent of the market really changes for some indie titles who have noted a substantial amount of their purchases were from Steam Decks.
100% of me uses Linux so epic can get fucked as far as I’m concerned
Linux users are the vegans of lemmy.
I’m sure all couple hundred of you are really excited about it but you are also no percent of the market
Shit I only have epic installed to get free games I forget to play because I never use the launcher. It’s just nothing to do with who is using Linux.
I don’t really give a crap what you think of linux users. But it’s not true that “no percent” uses it. Seems a little ironic that you say “nobody uses it” on one hand and also complain about the number of people who talk about it…
The large number of people talking bout it exists pretty much just on this social media.
Not sure why you are so personally invested, hence the vegan comment.
The point is no one really develops with Linux in mind because the consumer base is tiny
Heroic Game Launcher works well enough for that. Although I do need to install MSVC shit thru Winetricks sometimes. Wish HGL did that automatically.
I mean, I’ve been able to get epic games working on my deck through the heroic launcher. I’ve still not given them one thing dime but I’ve got a fair sized collection of giveaway games that are nice to have around
So is it just me or does every game that becomes a epic exclusive never do as well as they should. i think most game developers realize this, which is why epic is desperate to get developers on their failing launcher. maybe they should try offering all the things steam does. regardless i cant switch because i own too many games on steam, im locked in.
It’s because PC gamers overwhelmingly will just ignore the game until it comes to steam, but by the time it comes to steam it’s been 6 months - 1 year and all the hype around the game has died.
People have been voting with their wallets and not rewarding anti-competitive behavior for once
Only buying on Steam is anti-competitive
Not really. Steam is not forcing exclusives on their platform. Them providing a better service doesn’t mean the users are anti-competitive.
EGS explicitly pays developers to not release on other platforms. That’s anti-competitive
Exclusive is the medium not the store
A pc game on epic is still a pc game. I haven’t heard of epic preventing devs from releasing on Xbox
EGS is a platform, Steam is a platform. They are both stores and their own ecosystems.
They are paying for forced exclusives to their platform. I’m not going to use a different platform even on my same device because it’s anti-competitive for pc gaming.
You aren’t going to promote competition because it’s anti competitive
If a game was offered on both platforms do you think people are more likely to get it on Epic than Steam? If not then they have to be exclusive to their store
That’s not my problem. That’s still being anti-competitive. If one platform is significantly better (eg steam) then the competition needs to offer a reason to buy from them. The problem is that EGS has decided that the only way to give users a reason to use their store has been to make sure the game isn’t available anywhere else.
The users are able to make the choice to not support poor business tactics and they have. People do not buy from EGS, due to a plethora of reasons, one of which is likely that they are extremely anti-competitive and buy out games.
You aren’t going to promote competition because it’s anti competitive
A store doesn’t have the right to my business just because it exists. If I started a PC game store and charged twice as much as Steam or Epic would you purchase from me just to support competition?
A business needs to give me a reason to purchase from them. If the best reason to purchase from Epic is to give them a participation award then no thank you.
it’s not. choosing to buy on steam because it’s a better experience to you than egs is exactly the result we want from competition. they competed for your favor, steam won, and egs lost. personally, sometimes i buy on gog because i like its features better, especially the offline installer and lack of drm, but even if steam won all rounds that would still be competition, they’re just good at it.
anti-competitive measures are the ones that try to abuse an existing market position to take that choice away from you and force you to go one way or another. if you really wanted a grasp on valve, you could argue for example that the steamdeck is anti-competitive on the market of game stores, because it makes using competing game stores inconvenient (even though you absolutely can do it, i have played uplay games on my steamdeck, and could probably easily install egs as well, i just don’t have any reason to try). exclusivity is also a very clear-cut anti-competitive measure, because it just cleanly takes choice away from the end user and forces them to go with a specific launcher, or worse, specific hardware in some cases. but just being better than everyone, or as a consumer choosing to go with the best option is not anti-competitive, it’s just winning the competition
So only buying coffee from the store I like is anti competitive?
not what that means
thats what i was hinting at. and im not totally happy about epic ruining launches over trying to be a replacement for a, in my opinion, much better system which offers much more ever if they developers don’t use all the features. i do wish steam would add a lower tier which takes less of the profit from indie developers that hardly use any of these features.
What was wild to me is when Kingdom Hearts dropped on Epic and no one cared. Should have been the hot topic for at least a few days but… nothing.
That’s probably also partially due to how crazy overpriced it is though
Kingdom Hearts was a double whammy of poor decision making on Squeenix’s part. Not only did they launch on EGS, where most PC players aren’t going to care about it, they launched it at an absurd price. They were selling the HD collection for $50 when you could walk over to GameStop or Target and get the PS4 version for $20.
When you finally make a game like KH available to a new audience, and no one gives a shit… You’ve done something horribly wrong.
Steam has a really loyal base that for some reason think buying from a different store is akin to buying a whole new platform
I’ll avoid games on Steam as much as I can to foster competition but breaking into that user base is difficult
the reason for that is because steam isn’t just a launcher. if you don’t use steam you might think so, because giving you a play button, managing downloads, and maybe tracking achievements is all other platforms do. steam, on the other hand, is an entire toolkit built to simplify everything in gaming – whether what you seek is community spaces, a workshop to easily install mods and other community content, one-click linux compatibility, in-home streaming, easy game invites and in-game chat with your friends, or a plethora of other features, buying on steam vs non-steam is usually a massive difference.
i bought gta v on disk back when it released, as opposed to my friends who only joined a few years later and had the bandwidth to just buy the steam version and download it, and whenever we played together they just had so much of an easier experience.
the reason steam’s user base is so loyal is because steam provides things that actually matter to them, and valve spent decades ensuring that they provide the best damn experience possible. epic games, on the other hand, had one surprise success with fortnite, and decided they want the game store market to turn it into a long-term revenue stream, but what they forgot to consider is to give people the same experience steam provides. egs has a fundamentally selfish design, it literally only caters to epic and only does the bare minimum for anyone else.
so if your proposition is that people should ditch that platform that goes out of its way to provide for them and instead be content with the bare minimum because the company behind that platform is evil because *checks notes* it’s too popular and makes it hard for other corporations to act as middlemen and collect the game store tax themselves instead, i don’t think you’ll be able to convince too many people.
Yeah, I dislike that about it too
It’s a store, it shouldn’t be anything else
But AFAIK GoG is the only one like that, even then some of their games aren’t
so do you think the other features in steam shouldn’t exist, or that they should be split off from the store into a different service?
I would prefer split up
I’ll avoid games on Steam as much as I can to foster competition
Cool. I’m going to open my own store that costs twice as much as Steam and has none of the features. I’ll let you know when it’s ready so you can purchase from me in order to “foster competition”.
I’ll hold you to it
Its is buying a new platform, rather than have my games in 1 platform, they would be in 2. also steam offers much more (at a greater cost to developers) then epic. i also only use linux, which is a not hard at all with steam.
I also only use Linux; I don’t need to change my device at all to switch between Steam, Lutris, or Heoric
i hope you realize the only reason you can actually game on linux is because valve decided microsoft has to not have a monopoly, because they got spooked by the windows store. i tried gaming on linux in the pre-proton days, it was a hot mess, the advent of proton and dxvk was a massive jump in terms of compatibility. and nowadays valve is ensuring that people do in fact give a shit about proton with the steamdeck, its 1.5-2 million users give a pretty strong reason for devs to keep their games compatible, and anything that runs on a steamdeck runs on linux in general as well.
it doesn’t matter whether you run non-steam games through lutris or heroic, you’re still running on the translation layers built by valve to keep linux gaming viable
I am aware, I can still use other stores
I wouldn’t want Valve to have a monopoly on Linux anymore than on Windows
Due to advancements pushed by Valve, these days I’m actually surprised when a game doesn’t run under Linux.
Even when he worked for Microsoft, Gabe Newell was literally the person that made PC gaming viable.
i dont know what lutris or heoric are. i wish i had more time to figure that stuff out. maybe one day.
I buy from valve mostly for the Linux bit… they’ve played a major role in lifting the Linux desktop graphics drivers to the point where they’re actually not just usable but good.
I had a few games on Impulse but my account vanished when it got sold to Gamestop so I can understand people being worried about buying games on other platforms. One reason I like GoG due to offline installers
The problem is that none of these other launchers offer features like Steam Input, Proton, in-home streaming, a good overlay, and the Workshop. Steam competes by making their platform the most attractive to customers.
Alternatives to Steam need to find their own niche. GOG is doing well in their niche of fixing up older games and selling them DRM-free. The only “killer feature” EGS has is that they take a smaller cut from publishers. But end users don’t care about that, because it doesn’t translate to lower prices. I can chose between spending $60 for the same game on Steam or EGS, but the EGS version comes without all the extra features I listed above.
I 100000% believe your comment on the pre-existing library is why they give free games away weekly. They want you to build a library that you then won’t want to move from which is exactly why I too don’t like being forced to buy things on another game store. I don’t like exclusives no matter where they are, it’s anticompetitive bullshit.
Hades
I didn’t see anyone talking about Hades until it released on Steam
It spent it’s early access there but it was definitely talked about at least in the places I lurked. It’s Supergiant games tho, they do nothing but bangers.
Why choose one over the other when you can use something like Playnite or similar to track all your collections across multiple services?
i work too much to spend time looking into systems like this. also i don’t use windows.
Then Heroic
Hey maybe you should make a launcher that isn’t shit?
I mean, good on you for paying the developers well but Steam became very popular because they kept improving it.
“Let us offer you 100% of the money from a marketplace 0.0001% as large! Did we mention you get all the money that neither of us are making? We will throw in all the good will with gamers we’ve earned too.”
If the game is in demand, people will go there if it’s the only option. It’s not a great option for some obscure indie game, but it is for mid-budget projects that have already gotten interest.
That’s fair. I personally just skip those. But maybe few enough people skip to make the lower fees worth it.
For the majority of game studios this seems like a terrible deal though.
I feel like zero fees vs 30% fees is a pretty big difference. But you have to be able to sell at least enough to make up for the difference either way. It also very well could just attract devs who think they’re going to sell more than they will.
Well 0% fee for a store that has zero added features vs 30% for a launcher with cloud saves, overlay, online couch play, tradeable in-game items, gifting, community, profiles, wishlist, notifications, etc.
Someone has to pay for the server time and storage.
Oh and Steam has way bigger userbase.
Call me old fashioned, but I don’t play a game for the trading cards. I also don’t hang out there, I have used Discord for years. Overlay is less important now that I have 2 monitors. I just want a game on my computer that updates itself so it’s ready when I want to play it, and then gets out of the way.
Gifting and a better cart experience I definitely agree with, those are so much better. But not 30 percent better.
As far as the user base, it may be changing. There are 132 million active steam users vs 230 million epic pc users. Though I imagine the number that actually buys software is strongly in Steams favor, as they are going to be older and more used to spending where I suspect you see a lot of F2P players in epic. Does that demographic start changing as they age out of fortnight? Hard to say. Don’t have any stats on that though, just guessing.
Steam Workshop, communities, screenshot and video sharing, pretty solid game searching, game awards, reviews, streaming, guides, achievements - just what I remembered.
Yes, there are people who so not use any of those features. Yes, there are people like you who don’t care about trading / cards / anything but the game and updates.
So when you start comparing just that a launcher can launch a game and keep it up to dáte - these two launchers are identical. When you add the store to it, then it’s in Epics favor. But as soon as you start comparing them as a whole, it’s clear Steam has a lead.
Why did people ditch IRC in favor of Skype? They both had chat. TeamSpeak in favor of Discord? They both had voice calling.
It’s about the UX as a whole. Some people might not use Steam Workshop ever, but then one day it comes on handy.
Also, fuck Epic exclusivity deals. They are as anti consumer as it can be, without really giving anything in return. They literally P2W’d the game market. Or at least tried to. Last straw, Epic is partially owned by Tencent, a Chinese money hungry game company that’s not ashamed to put P2W features in games.
They’ll get 100% of my zero dollars that way.
Never forget that GOG is also an option!
I already block ads and advertisements, so the game will just be completely off my radar for another six months until I see friends start playing it. Eh. It’s far too much effort to try a new platform after the dumpsterfires of Origin and Uplay to play 1-3 games.
The only game I’d actually install a new launcher for would be a new Half Life Game.
I had a friend who really got into satisfactory. And since we were all a factorio group, it seems like our kind of crazy. We are excited for it. When it came out as an epic exclusive, that one friend went for it. And tried to get us all to join him. We’re like okay we’ll join you soon as it comes out on steam. Some converted some didn’t.
But over time I’ve had my personal friends tell me, yeah I see why you didn’t make that choice, earlier I thought you were just being stubborn but now I totally understand it.
Totally understand what exactly?
They now understand the logic behind not supporting exclusive titles to walled gardens.
That the game wasn’t worth playing. Lol?
That the game was still in early access, had bugs, and didn’t have many features or ways to progress.
After a year of development, tho, it’s a different kind of story.
I only installed steam to get the orange box.
