Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.
They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you’re playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.
Chat is… better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It’s actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.
One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I’m not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I’ve heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren’t afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.
exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.
Even if they have fixed that specific issue, why would you believe they have fixed anything else?
first comment on the reddit thread>thlm 5mo ago Epic Games Launcher Incorrect Default Permissions Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability CVSS SCORE 7.8 This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Epic Games Launcher. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the product installer. The product applies incorrect default permissions to a sensitive folder. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of SYSTEM. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 2024-07-16 - Vulnerability reported to vendor 2024-12-04 - Coordinated public release of advisory 2024-12-06 - Advisory Updated That timeline is disgusting
So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because “yay free games I’m never going to look at again”.
If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.
I don’t hate times exclusives that much because that’s done extra cashflow for the dev to be able to either finish their game or polish it further. I still don’t think we’d have gotten Alan Wake 2 at least the version we got without that epic deal. I also don’t know if square would’ve bothered even entertaining the idea of porting all of the kingdoms hearts games either.
We don’t own our games anymore, so I need to know my library’s going to stick around if I’m going to invest in it. Last I heard, EGS hasn’t made a profit, so that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me that it’ll still be around in five years.
I think competition is the answer to a lot of problems consumers face, but unfortunately the “are you going to be there tomorrow?” problem is going to be a major disadvantage for any storefront that competes with Steam. It’s why my most preferred shop is GOG, because I still have all my games with them if they close up.
Check back in (here or Mastodon!) and let me know what you think! Give it a little time, to me it has a bit if a cold opening, but it really opens up after 20 or so mins.
Well and truly, I love what the indie space makes in gaming these days, often more than the fanciest AAA offerings!
I’m loving Doom Dark ages, I’m on about level 8 out of 22. I like that there’s enough room in levels to move around. Movement is awesome, you can just run everywhere. The weapons are extremely effective and your toolkit is reduced so you have shield-block shield-slam shield-throw melee and then guns. It’s pretty easy to remember everything you have and then select an appropriate attack for the situation.
I really love it. Hopefully there aren’t any more Mech-pilot missions because that one sucked. The dragon wasn’t my favorite either but you can make it through without much difficulty and it didn’t take forever.
Except that’s also a lie. Steam does keep a higher percentage of the sales price for itself than Epic does, but it also allows people to activate game keys without taking any money. Steam only makes money from games sold on Steam itself. So developers can sell games through other stores and even through their own website, and keep up to 100% of the sales price. Effectively, this means that Steam takes roughly the same amount of money that Epic does, or in some cases even less probably.
This isn’t public data unfortunately, devs with a game on both platforms are the only ones who can tell us where they earn more. However, I did once read an article that claimed the effective cut from Steam is about half what it says on the tin IF the devs (or their publisher) put in enough effort themselves. Because that’s who decides this, Steam doesn’t have and doesn’t want any control over this.
Not to mention— the value for that 30% on platform + 0% off platform cut for steam is insane. The payment processing, storage, hosting, worldwide routing and caching, multiplayer sdks and integrations, and dozens of other publisher / developer available tools are worth every single penny to have valve handling for you.
People should like Epic for giving more money to developers than Steam.
They give more money to publishers* That may or may not translate into more money for the developers, but seeing how the industry is going, I’m more inclined to believe devs don’t see a cent from the extra cut in most cases.
Tim Sweeney is an obnoxious hypocritical dickhead who has only gotten worse and stupider and more hostile over the years, he is constantly spouting anti-consumer and anti-common-sense nonsense while acting like he’s saving gamers and nurturing his egotistical martyr complex. He has gotten so bad that he has contradicted his own past self so many times that for awhile there was a literal subreddit “TimCriticizesTim” devoted to it. Also EGS itself is garbage resource-guzzling software that almost nobody actually wants on their computer, most of the people who do use it do it either because they’re forced to so they can play games exclusively available on it, or because Epic bribes them to by giving them free games constantly. It is nasty software that collects way more data than it needs to, spying on your files and possibly other stuff too, and they also lied about it (and as far as I know still do).
It was great when it had its niche, and I still buy games there occasionally, but it has poorer integration with pretty much anything, Galaxy is bloated as hell, and it has explicitly no linux/deck support.
Eta: apparently GOG actively funds Heroic launcher, didn’t know that, thanks for pointing it out to me.
So I learned recently that GOG actively funds Heroic. Which really takes some weight off of Heroic's support for GOG game autopatching and cloud saves, meaning it may be a bit hacky and officially in "beta", but it's very unlikely for GOG to object to its presence.
They may not "officially" support Linux, but they don't "explicitly" lack support.
Also, tip of the hat to Heroic, it works extremely well and very reliably. I was frustrated with Lutris and I am bummed out by how Galaxy didn't quite get there as the one universal support launcher to handle all your libraries, but Heroic is good enough as a replacement I don't mind nearly as much anymore. Even on Windows I'd consider it over Galaxy.
Yep. As I understand it it's via affiliate links, so if you buy GOG games through the storefront in the Heroic UI they get a small cut, but the Heroic devs say they have spoken to GOG reps and they are broadly supportive, so unless that changes I don't think their ability to support GOG features would be compromised any time soon.
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