Epic wanted exclusives by pulling games from other platforms. I will never spend a single cent on Epic Games. I’m happy to spend it on Steam, especially games that I have pirated before (Commandos series for example) or indie games (Banished anyone?).
For bigger games such as Civilians, I’ll purchase it on Steam and then pirate so I don’t need to run Steam. I am a big fan of patches to remove the intro screen.
Intro screens and the like can usually be dealt with easily in many games. Look up the game on PCGamingWiki — it’s usually much easier (and less malware prone) than pirating.
Fun fact, many intro screen can be disabled via program flags, those are put there due to faster testing, and usually not disabled due to either laziness, the way the SW is tested, and/or because the devs have some empathy for the players not wanting to watch 15 minutes of crap - like it’s “made for Nvidia”
Steam also releases pretty cool stuff, and continues to support them way after release… My steam link got an update about three weeks ago, despite being discontinued back in 2018
Also, the steam link can run custom apps (like Moonlight for those who would want to use it for generic low latency streaming without a Steam account) and has the ability to enable a SSH server and root access. There are some limits though on what things you can modify, particularly relating to the boot sequence and the included kernel, as it has a hardware secure boot implementation. The OS is on GitHub anyway.
I will happily give my money to companies like this that actually provide value to their users, even years after the fact. Doubly so if they are domestic or western - it is so rare nowadays to find a western company that isn’t blatantly and purely leeching their users
aside from what everyone else said, they killed the beloved Unreal Tournament series, which is a huge sour spot for older gamers who fondly remember those. Then there’s the excessive microtransaction demand inside Fortnite, a game with a large playerbase under the age of 18. That alone led to two major lawsuits that they both lost
Aside from TF2–and even that I got a bit bored with–most all of my interest in multiplayer FPS died along with Unreal Tournament. Doesn’t feel like having fun is the goal anymore.
Diablo 4: Season 2 - Still working on farming for Midwinter Blight. But I finally hit level 100 in doing so, so I'm pretty happy about that.
Slender: The Arrival - Apparently I got around to this just in time for the 10th year anniversary update, and I must say I was super impressed with the overhauled graphics. There were a few areas that I wished hadn't been very chase heavy, because I would have loved to explore the surroundings more. I guess they also added a chapter or two. It wasn't a bad play overall, and there was some great tension and scares, even if a few of them were cheap jumpscares. I've read that the devs will be expanding on it over the next year with new DLCs and multiplayer (of all things, after ten years lol), so I'll have to keep my eye out for whenever those drop.
Today for Christmas I finally got an Xbox Series X, so I have a nice little line up of games that I've been nearly dying to play. Right now I'm trying to decide between playing Alan Wake 2 or the Dead Space remake first. Dead Space is one of my favorite franchises, but I also adore the first Alan Wake game. Either way, I think I'll be looking at a good time this week.
@chloyster Still playing Stardew Valley. But I just got a dock to my Deck, and an SD Card. Moved all the remaining games from my PC to my External Drive, plugged that shit into the dock and installed whatever the fuck I'm not finished yet or wanna play. Fuck yea, let the fun begin!
No key reseller/ gray market sites are truly legit. You may get a key that activates, but you have no way of knowing if it was stolen and if it gets deactivated later you have no recourse
I posted about this in another thread, but Epic also bought exclusivity for games that were crowd-funded then had the option to have the game on Steam removed or you’d get the Steam key after the exclusivity period expired. This pissed off a lot of people.
Yeah, this caused A LOT of controversy back then. As far as I know, Epic has stopped doing this and has pivoted a bit more into funding game development (i.e. Alan Wake 2.) That being said, that gave Epic a terrible reputation when they initially launched EGS.
I meant with crowd funded games. I’m aware that they still buy exclusivity. Though from what I know they pay indies less compared to what they used to pay.
I don’t actually know all the games that did this, but the most famous examples are Phoenix Point and Shenmue 3. I already read that Outer Wilds was another one that took the exclusivity deal.
It's a pretty fun rougelike rougelite city builder in a world where it always rains and every few decades a malevolent eldritch storm destroys most of the civilization.
It's a bit pedantic, but I'd call it a rougelite since it has meta-progression. Still they found a way to make a no combat rougelite city builder an amazing game!
This is a great game, especially if you’re the type who thinks the beginning hours of a civ game (before you get bogged down in micromanagement and unit orders) are the best hours. It basically gives you that kind of early-game experience over and over, with plenty of variation. It’s so much better paced than most comparable games as a result. I’m surprised it doesn’t get more buzz.
About the city-builder early game experience - you pretty much nailed my feelings about the game.
I think the weakness of the game is that one needs to experience other strategy games (I played very little of city builders, but a lot of grand strategies and 4X) and have some level of self reflection or meta thinking to be immediately attracted to this concept (without trying out the game first).
Most people who didn't notice that micromanaging already won late game is the bad, tedious part, would be reluctant to accept the inevitable destruction of their cities.
I think that there's an untapped potential in increased complexity of the central City. What I mean is that if there was some metagame city building it would attract a bit more players.
Basically Epic like every other publisher has created their own launcher/store.
They aren't trying to compete on features and instead using profits from their franchise to buy market share (e.g. buying store exclusives).
The tone and strategy often comes off as aggressive and hostile.
For example Valve was concerned Microsoft were going to leverage their store to kill Steam. Valve has invested alot in adding windows operability to Linux and ensuring Linux is a good gaming platform. To them this is the hedge against agressive Microsoft business practices.
The Epic CEO thinks Windows is the only operating system and actively prevents Linux support and revoked Linux support from properties they bought.
As a linux user, Valve will keep getting my money and I literally can't give it to Epic because they don't want it.
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Aktywne