A few searches turned up that it’s pretty legit. Pay with a credit card so that you’re protected though. You have no idea what happens to that info after you enter it.
I don’t game much anymore, but I have been fascinates by city sims recently. Last year I got sucked into Tropico (again). This year it’s City Skylines (1) and all the DLC
Pretty much every single decision you can see from their history since the inception of EGS is either stupid or blatantly destructive to gaming industry. Just some examples: better revenue shares for developers? Sure but this translates into worse platform. Money bonuses for exclusivity is great for developers? Sure but the game is then stuck at the platform that gives no means for users to interact and let developers know how they could improve their product. Cross platform multiplayer platform that works? Sure but then we have to deal with stupid requirements like having an account on additional platforms we may not want to use, even to play single player modes sometimes.
You can also check Tim’s Twitter and see how ignorant and hypocritical he is. I wouldn’t mind it but his decisions seem to actually affect the whole platform and therefore the industry so… too bad.
Don't forget how he abandoned PC gaming when Unreal Tournament 3 bombed after they released shitty mid tools and the modding community they built up over UT 2k3 and 2k4 dissolved.
better revenue shares for developers?
Money bonuses for exclusivity is great for developers?
It actually goes to publishers, so the only way devs see that extra cut is by self-publishing. So I guess for smaller indie devs it can be a good deal.
Epic doesn’t see gamers as their customer - they see developers as their customer and shape the customer experience around that. For example, Epic said that if/when they add reviews, developers could choose to opt their games out of reviews. That’s very pro-developer, but very anti-consumer, whatever you might think of the value of reviews. Informed customers can rattle off a long list of reasons they don’t like Epic and why they’re bad, but they are a small minority of PC gamers. The “silent majority” doesn’t keep up with this kind of stuff or really care about it, so they are literally judging stores on their merits and Epic is a bare bones platform that doesn’t offer customers a good reason to spend money in their store because they don’t think they need to.
Epic Games is useful for the free games they giveaway every week, some weeks better than others. And I know the topic of ownership of these “free games” is another conversation, but I’ll take advantage of it while it’s there and also while giving them little to no money.
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”
Whatever it is, the launcher is just bad in general. May I reccommend Heroic Games Launcher instead? You log in, get authenticated, and then it can download the games directly from the source, without ever having to run this god awful launcher.
I’m making a wild and probably spectacularly wrong guess here: C&C 1 has German text on it and there’s Sternenschweif, and the white plastic thinggy might be a Schuko / Type L adapter (it’s kinda hard to tell with that camera angle), which would suggest a place somewhere in Southern Tyrolia.
Looking forward to OP’s answer though. If it’s close to me, I’m gonna book that room and spend a day ripping all of those to SSD.
Why are paid exclusives worse, though? I’ve never understood that. I understand why we hate exclusives, but I’ve never heard anyone explain why paid exclusives are worse. Steam has tons of exclusives, some of which are exclusive because they targeted Steam APIs that are proprietary and the developers don’t have the resources or incentive to port the game to another platform. Why isn’t it bad to encourage developers to use proprietary APIs that make it difficult to port games to other platforms?
As a consumer, exclusives are shitty because they restrict where I can buy and play a game. This is true whether they’re paid exclusives, technical lock-in exclusives, lazy developer exclusives, etc. All types of exclusives suck. Is it worse that Borderlands 3 was exclusive for 6 months compared to Borderlands 2 being exclusive for ~7 years, just because one was paid? I can’t understand why the 6 month exclusivity period is worse for a consumer than the 7 year one.
Most of the salt I have for this behaviour from games that were pulled from Steam because Epic threw cash at the developers, or they’re exclusive despite there being no reason to be.
I have no issue with Epic releasing their own games in their store, just like valve do, or EA/Actvision did.
This is the same kinda shit that Valve / publishers pulled when Steam launched, though.
Half-Life and Counterstrike originally didn’t require Steam, and then one day Valve told everybody they’d need to start using Steam if they wanted to keep playing the games they’d already bought. That’s a Valve game, but it’s akin to Epic moving Rocket League to EGS (which also pissed people off).
For more general / non-Valve games, there was a time period where you’d pre-order a physical copy of game and honestly not know if it would require a launcher. Tons of games that launched in early days of Steam didn’t bother to tell consumers upfront that Steam was required, and consumers wouldn’t find out until the game hit the shelves and there was a little note on the back of the box, “Internet access and Steam account required.” In that case, non-Steam pre-orders weren’t even given an exception – every copy required Steam. That seems even worse than the Epic mess IMO. There, the publishers at least made an exception for people who thought they were ordering a Steam game. If you thought you were gonna get a real physical copy of game that didn’t require a launcher, and it ended up requiring Steam, the publisher just told you to either use Steam or pound sand.
I don’t like the behavior either, but pulling already announced / released games and forcing them onto a different launcher is standard practice when a new launcher comes out. It’s happened to paid and non-paid exclusives. It’s happened to EGS and Steam (and probably Origin or Uplay or others too). I don’t see any reason to be any more upset at publishers over the EGS debacle than the Steam one.
My take is that launcher exclusivity shouldn’t exist, because every single launcher has just pissed off / screwed over consumers when there is exclusivity / any requirement to use the launcher.
Yes, in the long run it always is. That’s my point. EGS will probably be successful, and 15 years from now someone will bring up a story about how EGS really infuriated people “back in the day”, and everyone will say it’s irrelevant.
Nobody cares how the service got started. They only care where it goes. It doesn’t make a bit of difference how pissed off everyone is at Epic. It didn’t matter how pissed off everyone was at Steam in the early years. There’s a reason these companies start off by pissing everyone off: it works. There’s no long term downside, and, in the short term, it gets you users. Users don’t show up voluntarily on the early days, and they defend the service once it’s established.
As long as Epic lasts long enough for everyone to later forgive them for their anti-consumer beginning, they’ll be golden. It’s the market standard. The early days will always be viewed as irrelevant. “It was a different time,” people always say. “You can’t compare it to now.”
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
Instead of offering anything to be a better platform they are burning money on the platform in hopes they can pay their way to dominance by paid exclusivivity and giving away games. One of those isn’t bad for users. Now consider what Epic offers beyond being able to buy and download a game. Nothing. Epic is only a storefront and they’ve had years to work on this at this point. Steam has gained dominance and maintains it in no small part due to all the additional features available to everyone. Do you use the steam workshop for any of your games? Have you used the steam community forums to troubleshoot a problem? Do you use big picture mode for a more console like experience? Do you customize your controller settings with the pretty expansive controller support built into steam? The overlay? How about the custom profiles and badges and trading cards? Epic is only a storefront. That’s it. That’s all that’s on offer. So they supplement it with bribing devs to be exclusive to their store and giving away games to try and attract users.
I love the steam chat, as someone who doesn’t use discord very often at all. Having the chat is an easy to too flick a message off to someone while i play
These are true criticisms, but I’m not sure if they’re fair. To the best of my recollection, Steam had none of those things in 2008, either, about the time they were the age of the EGS, now.
You could say they should (be able to) compete on the merits alone, without free games or paid exclusivity, but that argument wouldn’t reflect reality: you need a hefty carrot to lure people away from their comfort zone.
Yes, true. But it’s not 2008 anymore. It makes no sense for companies to compete based on features and functionality equivalent to their age.
If someone starts a company today offering only old 1960 color TVs, I’m not going to say “Well they’re new, and that’s what TV manufacturers would have had at the time”. That makes zero sense.
If Epic wants to compete with steam they need to actually compete. They offer nothing of value presently. They have the money and the technical talent to make a good launcher. They just appear to choose not to.
They have the money and the technical talent to make a good launcher. They just appear to choose not to.
This is completely the case. You can’t tell me the makers of Unreal Engine couldn’t figure out how to replicate at least some of the more commonly used features of Steam. Of course they can do it. Someone somewhere in the corporate ladder decided they don’t need the extra features to compete with steam. Maybe burning money on the exclusivity contracts and game giveaways will work out in the long run, but I doubt that when they flat out said they’re spending more money than they earn in their 800+ person layoff just a few months ago.
System scanning: EGS is known to automatically scan your system and send your data back to them. While this seems to be the same type of analytics Steam does occasionally, in Steam’s case, it’s opt-in, and done with full, informed consent.
Paid exclusives: Epic has been known to pay publishers to make their games artificially exclusive to their own store. They regularly claim this money is to support the development of the games in question, but this is easily disproven, as they’ve been seen buying games known to be complete more than once. Additionally, this has resulted in bait-and-switch-like situations, where users would prepurchase Steam copies of games, only to be informed that they wouldn’t be getting them.
Publisher-centric behavior: Another user here claimed that EGS is pro-developer and anti-consumer, but this is only half true. This only rings true in the case of self-published games. There have been cases of developers getting unwarranted backlash after aforementioned bait-and-switches, when they were just as surprised to learn about all the “development support” they received as anyone.
Tim Sweeney: Tim Weeney, the CEO of Epic, is an asshole. A giant, narcissistic, hateful shitbag. Just look at his Twitter, the dudes a giant POS.
Additionally, this has resulted in bait-and-switch-like situations, where users would prepurchase Steam copies of games, only to be informed that they wouldn’t be getting them.
I didn’t know about this.
It happened to Metro Exodus (great game btw) but iirc all pre orders were honoured and the game was just delisted.
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