Yeah, they expressed that they wanted to join the online game store scene and the big feature they were offering to draw in users was… anticompetitive exclusivity deals!
Plus the company killed off the unreal tournament franchise because they didn’t want it to compete with fortnite.
I have no interest in supporting a company that thinks removing options is the best way to get users to use their products.
It’s the same shit that has turned streaming services from great back when it was new to now having content spread across many competing services. I’d rather they competed based on their own platform’s features and advantages than the whole “if you want to watch x, you must use service y”. It’s just a series of mini monopolies.
Imagine if they succeed with the exclusivity tactics, how other companies will respond to that? Doing the exactly same thing.
Let some years of exclusivity wars and the PC gaming will look like the streaming, a bunch of storefronts offering the same poor service and the clients doesn’t know where to buy what they want because at any moment another exclusivity deal could be made and the entire library moved to another storefront, just like streaming.
Exactly. Oh and I also just remembered another angle: their anti-linux stance. They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.
Same reason why a lot of the non-steam handhelds are non-starters for me. And yeah, I can live without games that depend on Windows kernel-level anti-cheat.
My backlog is so full I could keep entertained even if I ignore every single game I don’t currently have in my steam library. Hell, I even ignore some that are there when I realized they have denuvo or something like that after buying and the refund window has already passed when I do notice.
They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.
Probably none, the CEO with the small dick energy just hate Steam so if Steam is pro Linux he will do the opposite of it.
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.
Basically watch games being promoted on steam pre-release and when games get popular, reach out to them and offer them money to be exclusive on EGS for a period of time despite all the publicity the game got being on Steam.
Downloading the games does not cost Epic anything. They paid a flat rate to make it free to download, regardless of how many people actually download it.
You signing into the store and claiming the free games provides user metrics that Epic can use to entice investors.
For what reason? Why is Epic so bad? I’m not fishing for a reaction. I genuinely don’t know why most people here hate Epic
Edit: ok, so what I gather from the comments is that Epic has a slightly worse service and that you guys are way too invested in a stupid dispute between two companies that only care about your money. Cool 👍
I got exactly one free epic game (subnautica) that I uninstalled and bought immediately the day I couldn’t play the game because I lost Internet and there was no goddamned offline mode.
Epic store is shovelware, and I can’t believe the amount of people who defend a 4th rate store comparing itself to the gold standard that can’t even offer basic functionality expected of a modern platform.
Lol I stayed away because the anticompetitiveness was immediately obvious (they should have opened with the free games but showed their hand early by starting with exclusivity deals), but I’m not surprised it gets even worse.
The Epic Games Store is a user data collection platform first, and a pretty bad game store/client second. It’s slow, buggy, difficult to navigate (though that’s somewhat subjective), and sometimes doesn’t work without an Internet connection, even for games you already have downloaded locally and installed.
Disclaimer: I understand that any games store, including Steam, collects user data. But at least those other stores provide working, user friendly features in exchange for the data collection they do.
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.
If you go to the official website for the game Infinity Nikki, where the pic is taken, and look to the left of what the OP cropped, there is a standalone Windows download. You can just download the game.
The game is F2P so while it’s not some big accomplishment to pirate like you’re implying, it is almost certainly loaded with predatory monetization.
I get it being annoying… But why is it such a deal breaker? If the game is good, why not just install it, play the game, leave it when you’re done?
The other storefronts have some cool features (namely gamepass for xbox and all of steamworks and the app stuff for steam), but it doesn’t really matter if the game doesn’t use em.
Speaking for myself, if it’s Epic only, it means I have no assurances as a customer that they’re going to keep letting me play the game on Linux. If I bought Alan Wake II, I’m doing so knowing that they don’t support my operating system and could break compatibility with Wine with any random update. If that happens on Steam, I can reasonably expect a refund if it was previously Verified, and because of the verification system, they also have an incentive not to break compatibility. So if I play Alan Wake II some day, it’ll be because it was a free giveaway on Epic, because I’m not paying for that.
The guy you’re replying to was joking, saying they are in charge of your notifications.
Lemmy notifications depend on the client you’re using. I’m using Sync which is far from perfect with push notifs, usually they only pop up when I open the app.
I think sometimes they’re just slow, so you may have clicked into the thread before it found out you needed a notification. I’m not an expert though. It’s just a guess based on personal experience.
There are a whole bunch of games that actively removed compatibility with SteamOS, and Linux by extension. Apex Legends was the most recent and the most vocal about it.
Because not having a game available is not having a game available. You still, and I can't believe I have to type this twice, don't get to play the stupid game.
For the record, I blamed Steam for nothing here. Some guy said he feels more assured that Steam will keep Linux compatibility, I pointed out that this is not the case. It's not even Steam's fault, compatibility is being dropped either for technical reasons or due to anticheat, and there is no indication that it will be any different with Epic going forward.
If that happens on Steam, I can reasonably expect a refund if it was previously Verified, and because of the verification system, they also have an incentive not to break compatibility.
Emphasis mine.
They didn’t say it won’t happen. They said they have far more confidence that it’ll be much less likely to happen. And that they have a reasonable expectation of refund if the developer pulls that.
There are no guarantees here, but Valve has put a lot of time and effort into making Linux games work, and Epic has not. No, they can’t stop developers from pulling those stunts, but they’re no more happy about it than we are and, from everything I’ve been seeing, are actively working on getting developers to stop doing that.
Also, the anticheat excuse is mostly a lie, the ones Destiny 2, Rust, and Apex Legends use are compatible with Linux, and just require, as I understand it, checking a box and including a file in a specific spot, so those are just outright anti Linux for the sake of hating Linux and Linux gamers.
Yeah, but that's not a reasonable expectation, is it? Because it's happened multiple times and nobody got anything refunded.
So there is no meaningful incentive and no reasonable expectation, demonstrably.
And, for the record, the Apex Legends guys at least didn't say they couldn't support Linux or the Deck. They used to, in fact. They actively pulled support because they said they saw disproportionately more cheating under those platforms. I have no idea if that's true, but it's certainly what they said. It sure doesn't sound like that'll change anytime soon, unless Windows enacts the same restrictions on Kernel-level access or Linux develops some equivalent.
I'd say that's probably a distant priority over, I don't know, getting decent Nvidia support, but knowing the way Linux progresses that may absolutely not be true.
Free to play games do take your money, though. Especially Destiny 2, which is a free to play game that happens to cost about sixty bucks a year. And Rust did offer a refund to users, but not because Valve made them do it (my understanding is they had to actually negotiate with Valve how that would even work). They issued a refund because they announced a native Linux client and then backed out of that promise.
So yeah, no, I don't see what reasonable expectation for refunds there is, I don't see Valve having ever mentioned that Steam Deck compatibility being rolled back or removed would be grounds for a refund (at least outside their time limited no-cause refund policy) or that the reaction to compatibility changes with Proton or Linux would be any different across Epic, GOG or Valve at this point. Things may change if the Deck platform gets a lot bigger in the future and Valve decide to push for it as a closed environment, but that's not where we are.
To your question, the other big game that comes to mind having done the same thing as Apex would be GTA V, which to my knowledge is still listed as "Unsupported" due to adding anticheat, despite initially working on Deck. And I guess you could count the FIFA franchise if you see it as a single game, because I think there was at least one of them supported on Deck before they rolled out Anticheat and all the newer ones have not been supported.
So it's definitely not a one-off thing, and there has been no action from Valve.
The level of quasi-religious fervor is... kind of scary. Especially given that it's over this one billionare techbro. I mean, good for them, they have a great product and a better understanding of how to make money with only light enshittification, but still...
Well, they refused to offer refunds for a long time after people like EA and GOG had already implemented it, and only relented when forced by regulators. And they screwed up their Green Light process for a long time despite every developer telling them it sucked. There's the ongoing use of loot boxes and monetized UGC, of course. Your tolerance for that one may vary.
I think Valve makes very good software and good hardware, and they have a way better handle on where they can squeeze users versus side with them than pretty much anybody else in the industry.
But, you know, they're a corpo ran by a reclusive techbro, they're still frequently sketchy.
Which is also very much true of GOG and CD Projekt, for the record.
I just save my money and play something else or buy something else. There’s more games than can be played that I’ve never felt like I was losing out by not buying a game from epic.
Some perspective from someone vocally against Epic:
They entered the market and tried to get their foot in the door not by providing a better service or experience to the consumers, but by being underhanded and anticompetitive while accusing their competition of being underhanded and anticompetitive. Add on that with the fact that their CEO lacks any sort of humility and integrity, and I simply do not trust them to give a single shit about me as a customer. If they achieved their goals, I’m confident that they would leverage their position to extract value out of me immediately—be it through ads, increased prices, or selling my data to third parties. I don’t want to support that by giving them any of money.
While I don’t think Valve is my friend either, they at least:
Have a history of doing things that provide some benefit to their users, even if its clearly out of self-interest.
Fair point with neither being publicly traded. I should have been more clear on that.
Unreal the engine, or the game series? From the perspective of a consumer, I don’t think either of them seem to be in good shape these days, unfortunately.
Er… Carmarck is in Id. Epic’s founder and CEO is Tim Sweeney.
I think I got the latest tomb raider trilogy and death stranding, uh, last year or the year before? All free. My perception of time is getting fucky again tho so take that into account.
I got Bear and Breakfast a few weeks ago and that’s one I had on my Steam wishlist. Along with quite a few others.
I do feel the slightest bit of guilt whenever I get a have that I definitely would have bought otherwise, especially because I tend to like indie games, but from what I’ve heard they’re paid reasonably well to do it.
Yeah, I was about to buy my wife the tomb raider series (it’s one of her faves) for Christmas and then I had to think of a new present. No complaints with that.
gog doesn’t have regional pricing and their launcher at this point is worse than epic’s. as an old fuck I like having old games back but it’s not convenient at all.
Galaxy definitely sucks, but to say it’s worse than EGS seems pretty far out there. EGS has been caught snooping around files and taking system logs without notice on top of just being overly resource intensive, totally bare bones and easily broken.
I’m talking user experience. egs used to be the slowest app I’ve ever used but right now egs starts and works faster for me than gog. also its video player works faster than steam’s, by like a mile. I don’t know if it’s just me because I never hear anyone complain about steam’s video player but for me it’s so goddamn terrible in so many ways I want to punch a wall every time I’m curious about a game while browsing steam because the video just takes fucking ages to get going and the controls are horrendous. I end up just searching on YouTube.
I just recognized the username; it’s the same dude who keeps trying to complain about monetization and wow and all that regularly lol. Seems like he deleted his last post on it? But it’s still in his comment history.
Yeah I don’t really buy pc games before they fall below a certain price point, anyway. So I don’t really care about these limited exclusive periods.
I wonder how much these deals are paying off for epic. Outside of exclusives and the weekly free games I’ve basically never even thought of buying a game on EGS. Definitely the worst launcher experience. Easily ignorable.
I don’t buy hardware until it drops below a certain price point, so when I finally have a PC capable enough, the game price is coincidentally also lower.
Not even just ignorable. I literally don’t even hear about them until they release on steam and people talk smack in steam reviews. It might as well not exist unless it’s on Steam or GOG.
Apparently Alan Wake 2 came out on PC awhile ago, and I literally had no idea until someone bitched about it on Lemmy, lol.
They say: “Sonic Dream Team is an Apple Arcade Exclvusive, maybe we’ll do a port one day if our contract allows” I hear: “Sonic Dream Team is in devleopment hell and may never be released”
lemmy.world
Aktywne