I see some larger publishers bemoan the fact that Epic hasn’t caught on, but it should be pretty obvious why. Markets that favor the buyer more than they favor sellers will typically attract the largest user base, and the sellers don’t have a choice to not sell where the buyers are.
Epic giving away free games is a nice buyer friendly action, but literally everything else they’ve done, from paid exclusives to poor client experience isn’t favorable to buyers. They’ve created a market that no buyers want to use unless the product is free or literally not available anywhere else.
Giving publishers/devs better cuts is great, but it does nothing for you if all the buyers are on Steam instead.
Advertising better cuts to publishers doesn’t mean much when the price is the same across platforms. If epic was consistently 10% cheaper than steam it would get better traction.
Steam also has a lot of other stores selling their games though. Unless epic is giving it away for free, I’m probably going to get a better deal through a fanatical bundle or someone else than I would on epic.
This is true, here in Brazil we have an official key seller called Nuuvem that has prices so good TikTok banned their ads thinking it was a scam, since they often have small discounts even on new games.
Just have to be careful because sometimes the key is for Uplay instead of steam.
I hope it’s okay to ask, because I am being genuine, but why is using the Epic Games Launcher such a deal breaker for you? I have Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Xbox, Battle.net and I’m sure more that I’m forgetting and I honestly don’t mind at all. It’s never been an issue for me but I think that I’m in the minority on that so I was curious to hear your thoughts.
Thank you! Ever since the start of the Epic Store, I’ve always thought this whole “exclusive” scandal was blown out of proportion. There is a MASSIVE difference between a game being exclusive to a $400+ console vs to a free launcher that you can install in 5 minutes and add your already multi-launcher platform.
Funny thing is, I mostly agree with you, but in Epic’s case, it’s a launcher written by a company that’s 40% owned by a Chinese corporation. I can sometimes stomach running their executables while playing something, but not having it constantly running.
Personally, while I do use Heroic to access games from the epic games launcher, I will probably never buy anything from them because of Epic buying exclusivity and removing Steam as an option from games that were crowd-funded.
That makes sense. Sounds like more of an Epic Games thing than specifically an anti-games launcher sentiment, or maybe a little of both? I hadn’t heard about the crowd funded game exclusivity thing though, I’ll have to read up on that. Deeply lame thing for them to do, for sure.
I’ve also run into a few issues with the epic games launcher (i.e. game wouldn’t patch, so I had to reinstall the launcher. Having to reinstall a game because the launcher doesn’t see it anymore, launcher is slow, etc.) which is why I use the Heroic launcher.
It really doesn’t, I tried finishing Industria while I had no internet and that electron piece of shit refused to open even though I set it up to work offline in the settings, thankfully the game had no DRM so I was able to finish it just by opening the exe.
LOL the Steam launcher is basically just a web browser. Literally the same concept as Electron. It’d be Electron if it were built today, but it was built before Electron existed.
You realize there’s more DRM free games on Epic than on Steam even though there’s less games overall? If your standard for a good launcher is being able to start the game from a .exe then I’ve got bad news about Steam…
Presumably Kecessa is alluding to the fact that, unlike GOG, Steam games open however the developers / publishers want them to. Which is sometimes just a plain exe, sometimes it’s an exe that starts Steam so that it can use its API / DRM, sometimes it opens the publisher’s launcher, and so on. Bit irritating on Linux when you want to pass some options in to the command, and a bit irritating generally when you never want to see the launcher again, but it’s no disaster.
I also think that developers/publishers don’t care about the % cut that much, they would rather just sell a lot of games. Which comes back to your point, the value proposition of EGS isn’t appealing to the buyer.
It’s like I make a competition to Uber with better cuts and working conditions to drivers. That is nice, but if the consumer has to wait 25 mins for my taxi while the Uber is there immediately, than they will not pick me for the same price.
I want to point out that Valve won’t allow games to be sold on Steam and be cheaper anywhere else. With the lower cut Epic takes games could be cheaper there, but Valve uses their dominant market position to force developers to set the same price on other marketplaces if they want to also be on Steam, which is essentially required.
I get some of the hate, but the “fuck Epic” crowd always annoy me. It’s such an ignorant position. That said, I don’t use the Epic store because it sucks to use. Fuck monopolies though. Steam has too much control. We need competition or we’re going to suffer in the future.
With the lower cut Epic takes games could be cheaper there, but Valve uses their dominant market position to force developers to set the same price on other marketplaces if they want to also be on Steam, which is essentially required.
I’ve heard that brought up, but I’ve never seen actual proof of it. It clearly doesn’t apply to sale prices though, because other stores basically always have lower sale prices than steam itself.
Guild Wars 2 expansions are cheaper on the company’s storefront than on steam, without sales. Not sure if they get an MMO pass, but it’s not a hard and fast rule.
As has been pointed out by many other people in this thread, this is untrue.
If you are providing a Steam key, it has to be the same price as Steam. Otherwise, you can set whatever price you want (e.g. if you were selling on both Steam and Epic - like Borderlands 3, which frequently had sales on Epic where the price dropped below the Steam price)
It’s even fine to sell your Steam keys at a lower price in another place - as long as you’re planning to have a similar sale on Steam at some similar time.
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
TL;DR: Games sold on Epic could be any price they want. They’re no different to Steam, in general, because that’s what publishers choose.
I like how many games they give away for free, but tbh I’ve never played any of them there. Some of those games I decided to buy later on Steam anyway just to do achievements (epic launcher doesn’t have achievements, cards, any meaningful statistics, etc).
Sorry if this comes across pedantic, but in case anybody isn’t aware there are some games that offer Achievements (Alan Wake 2 is one I know).
I do agree though, Epic just doesn’t have the features Steam does. I don’t think their barrage of free games idea is a bad one, but it feels like an afterthought when it’s just not as fun to play them there. (Better Linux support would be nice too, at least there’s Heroic.)
They have achievements on all games, it’s been the case for two years
Edit: to be more specific, on all games on-boarded after March 9th 2023 (need to have the same achievements as on other platforms) and available at the dev’s discretion since May 2022
I just checked this again, first for game I had there for free but bought later on Steam - City of Brass - and couldn’t find achievements anywhere. I then looked into Fortnite and League of Legends - also no achievements. I then found there is “my achievements” link somewhere in my profile, from where I could click “browse games with achievements” and turns out, from few dozens games I own there not a single one has achievements.
I admit that I should have been more specific, the change wasn’t retroactive, so I should have said that achievements have been available since early 2022 and since early 2023 games can’t release without the same achievements as other platforms
They’ve had achievements for over two years… I swear all the anti epic crowd knows nothing about what their launcher is like at this point and just keep repeating what they read back when it launched… Just like the Steam boycotters back in the early 2000s
I see. Still, I can see that for many people achievements with no value are no better than their absence. Platform provides value, and for now only steam provides a lot of it with almost each purchase.
I’m willing to bet all I own that most Steam users don’t care about their profile or people seeing the achievements they got but they still care about achievements as a form of optional challenges they wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.
If you mean just the percentage of users I might agree. But those people don’t really correlate with the users who provide most of the profit of the platform.
Pretty sure you underestimate what the average gamers spend, you’re in a bubble if you use the social features and it makes it seem like most people do, Steam has 132m monthly active users.
Well did it help Epic when they added achievements? Guess not much. Either they never marketed this feature enough or most spending users never cared about achievements on Epic.
Epic store not being profitable and despite the backing of Fortnite and Unreal Engine surplas being at the state that it is shows that it is probably much more expensive than expected to make a feature rich launcher. What epic has is more a glorified storefront like humble bundle or Fanatical but worse because it isn’t even selling keys for the platform of your choice, and they have to handle server costs of storing all the games too.
They “invested” in paying out the ass for exclusivity and loss leaders thinking that buying users would result in users ignoring how terrible their store was and buying more games there.
In a way it like trying to enter the smartphone market and paying for app exclusives then ignoring the part about polishing the OS experience as much as possible and putting out something that is from the flip phone era.
I own a handful of games on Epic that I actually play. But whenever I see one of those games under $5 on steam sale I buy it. I think I’m down to two games left. Playing Fallout London on GOG gives me the same heebie jeebies
It’s decent, extremely boss heavy, very linear. But the story is well done and it looks and feels good to play. If you’ve recently played Elden Ring tho, the terrain is going to feel like prison bars to you, very little exploration despite looking like you should be able to explore.
If you aren’t into souls like type games, wait for a sale. Reviews critical about the gameplay are mostly right.
It’s a good action with some souls mechanics (not a soulslike though), crazy good graphics, bosses and enemy variety. Should also be decently optimized for pc
Plot wise is basically a fan sequel of Journey to the west. If you aren’t familiar with that don’t expect to understand shit about what’s going on.
The only real tangible issue is mediocre map design (very simplistic and linear) and (some say) some balancing issues.
In short, if you enjoy 3d actions and/or souls you’ll probably have you money’s worth.
I liked Journey to the West, it was really funny for a thousand-plus-year-old book, but didn’t they all die at the end? Or rather, ascend to Buddhahood?
Yeah. The game’s incipit is (spoilers ??? Literally the first five minutes of the game) >!Wukong just wants to chill on his mountains, but the other gods fear him and kick his ass. Decades, centuries or maybe millennia has passed, and now you, a monke from his village (arguably his reincarnation), are tasked with finding a way to reawaken him!<
The Epic v Google lawsuit is bringing to light a lot of interesting tidbits of info, so I think it's just that. It's an interesting tidbit, but not really relevant to much outside the trial. That said, I do like seeing this kind of info shared, as it gives us a peek behind the curtain of these megacorps' operations.
One school of thoughts is companies go through eras of profiting from inflation and eras of profiting from M&As. Guess an uptick in M&A would suggest they're no longer increasing profits from inflation?
Abso-fucking-lutely not. That’ll be the death of epic and unreal engine as we know it if it ever happened. And why team up with Google if you know they’ll abandon it in 2-3 years?
Pretty much the majority of (large) single player games in development or recently released have been unreal properties. It’s by far the best game engine for its use cases
Unreal or Unity, and one of those recently became not really an option.
I think it’s in everyone’s interest to have more variety in engine choice, but that just leads to everyone only being familiar with their proprietary engine implementation.
Godot is trying to break in, and seems to be picking up some steam though
Yes, comical that Valve secured exlusivity of an already-on-sale third-party game to try to drive support of their nascent digital store more than a decade before Epic did it and you fanboys are all just okay with it because you weren’t there.
You all try to pretend that Epic invented this sort of exclusivity on PC, but it’s been a thing for years and years before they even opened their store. But go on and bury your head in the sand even further about it, I’m sure GabeN will be your bff if you do it hard enough!
If you think losing Unreal is good for developers and the gaming industry you’re absolutely retarded. Your rant about the storefront stuff is just weird. I don’t like the epic games store either, but I guess that’s not enough for a dedicated Steam fanboy like you. What a sad neck beard you are.
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