I wonder how much Epic games makes at the end of the day. most companies that do stuff like this operate at a huge loss, functioning only through investment capital until they starve out their competition and become the head of a monopoly at which point their investors become even more pointlessly wealthy. However I believe this works so often because those competitors are also operating off of investor capital and eventually their investors decide to sell out and switch teams to get some of their investment back. How does this work with Valve? Unlike companies previously discussed Valve is a privately held company and has control over their own company, as evidenced by the fact that they seem to make discissions in favor of long term goals instead of short term profits, a concept that has grown foreign to the US market. On top of the fact they are currently the leader in online game sales, I’m unsure how epic can justify, what i would assume, is a huge sum of money constantly paying for exclusives. Maybe im wrong and the pie is so large Epic is currently operating financially soundly. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Regardless we should all be happy that this market is not a clear cut monopoly, competition is a consumer win.
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.
I can’t think of any examples of the top of my head, but aren’t there some games that should have thrived but we’re heals back by launching as Epic exclusives?
The other day I wanted to download it (wink wink) but from the site I checked (popular and recommended, not a shitty one) it required you to login to epic and some other shit. Gave up 3 seconds later, not worth the trouble
Yeah, the repack of that store requires some calls home and fake accounts.
I’ve honestly seen all I really need two of the game by watching a couple of people play it on YouTube. It’s pretty, it’s neat. If it would have came out on steam back in the day I would have bought it without a question.
Ok, weird hill to die on, but I think everyone should be given the right to choose to end their life early, if they wish to, so I support your decision.
Yeah, and it’s a nightmare to use with Steam link. The last epic exclusive I bought was The Expanse, but adding it as a non-Steam game to play with the link app completely screwed up the license check and locked you out of everything but the first episode.
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.
Man, i kinda hate the epic games launcher, it is really crap; but for me games being on epic is not problem, i just use heroic instead, it’s MUCH faster than epic’s slop; what i don’t like is games that for some reason just refuse to work on heroic despite EOS being installed
they pay devs (mostly indie) millions to make their games exclusive to epic for up to over a year. i’d rather not support a company that pays to limit your choice as a consumer
I prefer steam, I’d like to be able to choose what platform I buy a game on. Outside of just not wanting a 5th launcher because I hate having a billion launchers, Steam has many features the EGS doesn’t have. Free cloud save backups and screenshot backups, steam workshop for mods, remote play together, game streaming, etc. I also really like steam having player reviews too.
Well mine is pretty petty. Every time I start up my system I’m spammed by epic advertisements in the lower right. It’s just so obnoxious, particularly since I’m on my couch and using my controller, so I have to pick up keyboard to dismiss those.
I’m so lazy I haven’t bothered to investigate options to be fair, but broadly speaking I don’t like how much it screams “look at me, look at me!” when I had no intention of interacting with their store/launcher at all that time.
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.
Its because the other exclusives are the devs/publishers launcher. While epic was actively seeking those 1year exclusivity deals to get more users on the platform.
So it would be better if it was a permanent exclusivity deal, like traditional publishers have?
They’ve been paying out in advance in some cases (Epic Mega Grants, I think) so the devs can finish the game. That’s basically the definition of what publishers do, but when Epic do it it’s somehow “not publishing”?
Well it really depends how you look at it. For the devs it’s better in terms of how much they get per purchase given that epic takes a lower cut than steam, IIRC 15% as opposed to 30%.
But many users hate epic as a platform seeing how it’s not as mature in features, and probably just pure love of steam.
What I’m actually wondering about is if it’s worth signing the exclusivity deal seeing how some people will not bother buying a game on a platform they hate or do enough people purchase for it to even out and even gain a larger profit.
steam and valve has also been generally more respectful with users than mostly any other online business, not even just in the space of online software stores. of course it’s not all rainbows and glitter but the point stands.
I don’t give any attention to the arguments that Steam is “more mature” in regards to features, when the vast majority of users don’t use those features to begin with. Steam has all the community features (and more) of Discord, but I would wager most of the fanboys in this thread don’t even know about that, or where to find those community features, let alone actually use them.
They waited until a game previously announced for Steam was finished development and had a launch date, then tried to bribe them with an exclusivity deal to not provide the game on the platform they promised to backers.
They weren’t paying a damn thing for development, just to eliminate consumer choice. Instead of, you know, providing a better service in some way so people want to purchase from you instead.
don’t hide the full story, they pay devs millions to keep their games exclusive to epic for a year. that is an extremely scummy business practice that you are rewarding and encouraging if you buy from this shitfest of a platform
When Half Life 2 launched, you had to register your game with Steam before you could play it. You had to give up your physical ownership of the product, and lock it to yourself. You couldn’t sell it to anyone else, or even let them play it.
That’s what you were encouraging by buying from that shitfest of a platform.
I really don’t see how bunging devs money for publishing rights is worse. The devs clearly don’t see it that way.
You couldn’t sell it to anyone else, or even let them play it.
Epic lets you sell your games to someone else?
As to your 2nd point I play my friend’s games all the time. I haven’t purchased Satisfactory but have almost 100% it on Steam playing my friend’s copy.
So we’re talking about everything except this moment in time?
Epic doesn’t have disks either so it’s irrelevant to the discussion of Epic games. If you want to complain about eliminating physical media try talking about it in regards to someplace that actually sells physical media.
If Steam is bad because no physical media then so is Epic.
But I guess Epic is okay because of how things are right now right? but I shouldn’t bring up how things are on Steam right now? In direct comparison?
Pick an era in time you would like to complain about, and if it’s the early 2000s then go bitch to people in the early 2000s. I’m sure many of them are complaining about the loss of physical media. People still used Steam anyway and now it’s the norm. Now people are complaining about exclusivity deals, if people still use Epic anyway then that will become the norm.
I mean I see this as a good thing. I have to keep a separate launcher around but… at least that dev is getting a great deal and will probably be able to support that game for a while (or start their next one)
There are apparently 270 million Epic Store accounts made.
Now most of them don’t buy anything and are probably installed on a whim for one free game ad now they’ve forgot their password, while a good chunk of them are probably 12 year olds playing Fortnite who don’t even look at it and hurl all their pocket money into V-bucks so the rest of us get free games, but it’s not an insignificant amount.
They’re paying indie devs millions to remain exclusive for a year. What’s scummy is the Steam fanboys who see that and think it’s better for gamers if those games just aren’t financially successful.
-Valve didn’t kill ownership it was already dead. DLC has been pulled, and games delisted, as well as games made unplayable by server shutdowns. They just happened to be the platform who told you to your face what you were getting into while everyone else lied and said the game was yours until it wasn’t. They also say they’ll provide downloads for a time if they ever shut down, but if you want that long term guarantee you’re probably better off looking at GOG and some kind of data storage for the installers.
-Origin is shit and I hate EA/Origin exclusives too, but it’s basically a launcher for their own games which I understand, but still prefer steam to be included too, so much of the time I avoid EA games (i avoid them for a lot of reasons tbh)
-Battle.net started as a unified launcher for blizzard games, which sort of made sense as they never worked with or were involved with steam, and many of their games were disc based or had its own installer. Subscriptions specifically I don’t think existed with steam for a while so that was sort of a complicating factor. Still wish their games were on steam, but it sort of made sense at its inception.
-I don’t even use the microsoft store unless forced to, I find it annoying and bleh. They’re forcing more games to it and it’s shitty too.
-Epic is annoying, but it’s a special kind of annoying because for many games early on, they would announce steam as a supported platform, some even sold the game on steam, until they changed to Epic exclusives. I think Fall Guys was one example. The bait and switch really lost them trust with a lot of gamers and you’ll find the attitude towards them can be pretty bad because of that history.
Add in that many of the games aren’t published by them, they just threw money at the publisher or devs to make their games epic exclusive. This can be good for developers, like an upfront investment, but sucks for gamers who like to keep things somewhat unified in terms of a game library. Especially when you already have to deal with 5 other launchers, another arbitrary one is pretty annoying.
If you’re wondering why people want their games on steam, look at the features. Free cloud save backups, a decent amount of free screenshot backups, in game recording is new and pretty neat, achievements, community marketplaces, frequent sales, family sharing, steam workshop for easy integrated modding, discussions and guides for all your games, early access games, built in friends, text chat, voice chat, remote play together, game streaming, etc.
TLDR: It isn’t an “oh epic stinky just because” situation. The Epic game store simply doesn’t have feature parity, bait and switched gamers multiple times with exclusives after games were advertised as being on steam, and basically survived on throwing money at devs to put their games exclusively on EGS, at the expense of the people who want to play those games on their chosen platform. Doesn’t shock me that they don’t have a lot of positive PR in the community.
kills? most of them work with a steam emu, even offline. that’s not even cracking. most of those that don’t have a different limitation.
with a steam emu you can do whatever you want with the game files, often you can put it on your pendrive and play it as a portable game (the right goldberg emu settings allow game data to be stored near the game files instead of appdata)
I’m OK if you own the game you are making exclusive to your platform. Bribing devs is shitty practice. They also sit and wait for a game’s early access to gain momentum on Steam first before offering them money to leave.
Both are horrible mess, I don’t really understand this deepthroating of steam their ui is horrible, they do behave like a monopoly, games by them have drm by default. Same can be said about epic.
As evidenced by this post, they are not a monopoly. So what does this statement actually mean?
This post gives evidence of the contrary, game that dared not to be published on platform that has 70-80% of pc market share ( geekwire.com/…/gaming-giant-valve-hit-with-anothe… ) shouldn’t even exist and even stating otherwise is a blasphemy, lol. As for more anecdotical examples, games that are published on steam only, are majority most don’t even list other platforms on their web sites, in cases when they can be bought elsewhere. Even more, updates and patches often do not reach other marketplaces. So yeah steam is a shitty marketplace with horrible ui and captured fanatical clients.
Lawsuits are cheap and meaningless. Unless actually ruled on, they don’t mean crap (and even then, sometimes it’s just clear evidence of jury / judge bias, like the infamous patent trolls of East Texas).
70-80% of pc market share
This source puts their market share at ~20% of the PC gaming market. Your source is for ‘85% market share in multi-publisher PC game stores’, which is not the same thing, and it’s based on a random tweet by their competitor CEO attacking them, which should carry approximately 0 credibility.
You keep using the word monopoly. It does not mean what you seem to think it means.
Your “source” is an image that doesn’t even differentiate between various stores and lists everything as blue, with text that says “steam revenue is probabaly x billion”. I couldn’t find anything except other similar images when looking up Pelham Smithers reports. In reports from previous years steam is not mentioned. I will rephrase it then if you dislike the word I am using: Steam has a dominant position in the pc gaming market and uses it to their benefit which doesn’t (in my opinion) coincide with consumer benefit, also their app is shit.
Also, Steam’s estimated revenue and the PC gaming market are numbers available from various sources. I’ve pointed out why your source is nonsense, and provided more accurate figures.
uses it to their benefit which doesn’t (in my opinion) coincide with consumer benefit
That’s changed from your original ‘behave like a monopoly’ comment, and which I’m still waiting for clarification on. How exactly do they behave like a monopoly supposedly does?
You post the same data now with article that doesn’t even have word “steam” in it. Your various sources weren’t linked. I think that clears why your source is “nonsense”.
Yes my words are changed because, you somehow read me saying multiple times of steam being monopoly in single use of phrase, steam behaves like a monopoly. I repeat, not liking one store doesn’t make me a fan of another, they both are horrible.
As for examples of anti-competitive behaviour, price matching that is being discussed in comments here is a big one, don’t you think?
No, Steam games do not have DRM by default. By default Steam is a mere download manager. For Steam DRM to be applied, the publisher has to run the drm_wrap command: partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm
Ok, sorry I was wrong. So I can filter out drmed games on steam, right?
Steamcmd looks unrelated, why would I need to use it? Also the wiki page only confirms my earlier thought about steam ui being horrible, whole article is avout how to install it and what kinds of problems exist, not telling how to do some basic things with it.
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