Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
If it’s on epic it just isn’t on PC in my eyes. Not a real game
If it’s not a real game, should we call it an unreal game? I will see myself out…
Epic joke.
I haven’t kept up, what does it do worse than steam?
Pretty much everything really. It’s basically a store and that’s it, no cool features that Steam has. They may have achievements now but not positive. Think it took two years just for them to add a shopping cart. They dump money on developers to release exclusively on Epic instead of spending it making a good experience for customers. No reviews, no forums, no workshop etc.
I grab the free games they offer every couple weeks and use Heroic to play them, not touching their launcher.
not to mention steam’s:
screenshot manager
community card trading
friends & chat
easy to join small muliplayer (friends can just send you a button that launches the game and joins them instantly)
highly customisable profiles
tools & soundtracks
achievemnts
and so much more that can be simply small little fun
SteamVR is great also, provides a native VR system that Epic doesn’t have
Don’t forget: Ability to see your library on the website
This is huge for me
They do have achievements, yeah. Not much else though.
Everything but I will focus on the main point of the apps. Selling and managing games.
Steam store page has tags for what genre the game is and user reviews as well as information about system requirements. Plus links to click on to go to the developers and publishers pages to see what else they’ve made. You get plenty of information while it’s still easy on the eyes and digestible.
Managing your games with steam is a breeze. They’re listed down the side and the search is there and quick. Click on a game and get more information about it and see a large install or play button. Scroll down to see info about the latest update or activity from friends playing. Right click to get more information like where it’s installed locally.
Epic, at least when I last used it. Didn’t have user reviews, the page had large widgets for all the information making everything feel clutter while giving you less info about the game. Didn’t have tags and sure it did label the publisher but not the developers and you couldn’t click to see their other works.
Epic’s library management once again large widgets while giving less information. Feels cluttered. Install button is small. At the time I used epic there was not easy way to open install location. You had to go in file explorer yourself and find it.
While I’m on the topic of stores to why do console store pages suck as well compared to steam?! The console is literally sold at a loss and make money by selling you games but their store pages are shit compared to steam.
Copying my reply to someone else:
Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7
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.
You can add that their client was actually a malware at some time.
It’s always available on the high seas.
Yeah, but frankly the high seas usually provide less than Steam does even with money in the equation. And that’s probably the only case when high seas is worse, with all the other services in my experience the high seas provide better service(spotify was close). So the point is if a game doesn’t release on Steam it’s release date just moves to the moment it releases on Steam. Not the best scenario, but Steam really has little competition and Epic surely isn’t trying to be one.
I have no problem with Steam. I was mainly talking about games that only (don’t) come out on Epic Store, but maybe I wasn’t clear enough.
Well they decide to lose customers, up to them.
Yep. I loved Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and was excielted to hear they made a sequel. Then I learned it’s an EGS exclusive. They can go get bent, not buying from them anymore
TIL, they made a soasr sequel. Was it good?
No idea, I refuse to buy it. The first one was good.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575940/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II/
It’s on steam now
I am aware. They’re still not getting my money
If you refuse to buy on Epic, you send the message that you don’t like to buy from Epic.
If you refuse to buy after it hits steam, then you’re just 1 of several billion who didn’t buy the game.
Why would you continue to not buy?
If you refuse to buy after it hits steam, then you’re just 1 of several billion who didn’t buy the game.
No, you have it backwards. If people buy the game when it goes on Steam, that tells the developer they can double dip buy going Epic exclusive then releasing at full price on Steam a year later with no repurcussions.
The only way to make the publisher learn to not go Epic exclusive is to not buy those games at all, even after they are brought onto other marketplaces
Epic pays for exclusivity sometimes. It’s funny, I keep picking up the free epic games but I don’t think I have ever once played a single game on there.
I claim but I don’t even have the launcher installed. If it wasn’t for the giveaways I’d completely forget about the place.
I don’t even get the free games…they aren’t worth my time. I’ll pay to get them elsewhere instead even if it’s free there when I’m looking
I’m claiming them for the day when Epic games store shuts down and they give out keys for redeemed games on steam. I’m playing the long game. :D
I just download the games that are drm free (which is actually quite a lot) and put a zip archive on my backup drive(s)
Bethesda did that after shutting down their launcher.
I just use the heroic/legendary alternative launcher for any single player games I actually want to play from egs. It’s open source and gives epic less footprint on my machine.
Unfortunately if you want to do anything multiplayer then you need the real client.
I’ve been picking them up religiously after I found out I missed Frostpunk. The only ones I’ve played were the big names like Control, Death Standing, and the old Fallout games. For everything else, the client doesn’t give you enough information to decide if it’s worth your time or not. I keep having to go back and forth between Epic and Steam to read reviews and the “similar to other games you’ve played” thing. It’s not worth the effort.
I say this every time Epic comes up but it remains the same.
Steam is the pro-consumer storefront. Epic is the pro-developer storefront. What Epic seems to fail to understand is that by being so staunchly pro-developer, they effectively become anti-consumer. And as a consumer, I’m just not going to spend money on an anti-consumer marketplace.
When Epic considers adding necessary pro-consumer measures like actual user reviews so I can hear how a game actual performs from real end users, then and only then will I consider Epic a real storefront viable for consumers.
Epic is the pro-developer storefront.
I think their historically-bad UE5 documentation and laser focus on adding features optimized for Fortnite but terrible for other uses beg to differ.
They’re the pro-shareholder storefront. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Epic’s main selling point was it’s lower storefront fee (15% vs 30%, if I recall). It didn’t offer any other benefits for consumers and I think Epic realised rather quickly that the people who are actually supposed to be paying money for all of this are the buyers and not the sellers, and thus they’ve resorted to strategies like making games “exclusive” or trying to bribe players with free games.
I understand that they are pro-developers, like, they only tale 15% of the sales etc. But why are they anti-consumers?
I use Heroic Games Launcher on Nobara Linux and my experience is more seamless than buying and installing games from Steam. I don’t have to bother with Epic Games Launcher, I just download a game and run via proton or wine.
The fact that you can’t use the Epic games launcher on Linux should be telling you what you need to know.
How is their 12 foot interface these days?
How is their position on running things via wine? Tim the bellend has generally been telling Linux users to use wine, but at the same time been generally hostile to it.
And it used to work better on Linux, until the Steam Deck got announced.
Yep. Fucking hypocrite tells people to use something he is hostile towards.
Fuck Epic, they are destroying PC gaming which means they are not developer friendly.
They are actively trying to shrink the market that developers can target.
“Fucking hypocrite” and “Epic Games”. Never have any other set of 4 words fit together so perfectly.
I gave what I see as a significant example in my original comment. Not being able to see comments or reviews from those who have purchased games through the storefront is a problem for me. If a game has a bug or problem, especially if it is one that could potentially be tied to or unique to the EGS version, I would like to know about it. That EGS currently doesn’t provide readily available user feedback when it frankly has been the standard as defined by steam, just doesn’t for me.
So you have to ask yourself why they wouldn’t include such a simple a rudimentary feature - the only result I can come up with is to appease developers who want to prevent being negatively impacted by bad reviews. Thus what we have is prioritizing the wants of developers at the expense of features which benefit consumers.
Pro-developer never needs to be anti-consumer. They are staunchly both right now.
I agree they don’t have to be anti-consumer to be pro-developer, but my point is that that is how they are approaching being pro-developer - by limiting pro-consumer features at the behest of developers. Or perhaps I should be saying more actively publishers, to be fair.
like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Literally anything besides not getting that game?
If a game is only released on Epic, it hasn’t been released yet. Its just in some weird alpha state until it has broader release.
I recently discovered that I can buy, download, and launch games from my Epic Games library without having the Epic Games Bloatware even installed.
Heroic Games Launcher serves as a storefront, installer, and launcher for Epic Games, GOG, and Amazon.
This needs to be the top comment. Yes, you can use it on both Windows, Mac and Linux.
Steam Deck included!
I installed it when I got my deck earlier this week, even though I don’t have any games on Epic (yet)
NOW this is interesting. Still won’t give Epic my money but I get plenty of games from Twitch for EGS.
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Know what happens when I find out a game is Epic exclusive? I don’t buy it for a year… Sometimes ever. Enjoy the Epic money kings, hope it’s worth it.
Epic did save me from wasting money on Borderlands 3, so I’ll give them that.
Considering how many games are released unbaked, its a great decision.
The one upside is if the game flops it gives lots of users a chance to not buy it. But any game with multiplayer it effectively kills the MP mode.
IMO if it’s exclusive to one store, sailing the seas is morally just.
Valve kills physical ownership of games: I sleep
Games exclusive to Origin: I sleep
Games exclusive to whatever the fuck Blizzard made: I sleep
Games exclusive to Microsoft Store: I sleep
Games exclusive to Epic: REAL SHIT
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.
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No. You can with physical. Well, before that just meant a steam key with a disc.
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That come much later. Try to keep up.
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.
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they pay devs millions
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)
You don’t even need to do that. Use Heroic and you can combine Epic, GOG, and Amazon into one launcher.
Yeah and get in return like 10 players? Only who has no faith in their game sells it to the demon
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.
You know it also counts ghost accounts made while linking your steam to epic or when you use a game with EOS and it creates a dummy account yee?
like 10 players
Buying the game. I thought it was obvious but I guess not
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.
So much this
Valve kills physical ownership of games: I sleep
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.
There are too many games to care about the tiny amount of them that aren’t available on steam.
There are so many games that I don’t even care about all the games available on Steam (that I’d be willing to play). We have so many games coming out that I’d have to play game for a living to play all the games I want to play, and even then I’m not 100% sure I’d be able to play everything I’d be open to play. I have multiple games that I’ve purchased and installed thinking “I’ll get to them soon enough” and they’re just taking drive space. I also have multiple games on my wishlist that are “waiting for a discount” but I’m probably never going to pick them up because actually they’re waiting for my backlog to clear and it will never clear.
Does it suck that Alan Wake is Epic exclusive. Sure. Does it really matter to me? Not really because I’m oversaturated with games I want to play. Missing one great game doesn’t matter when I already have a backlog of great games I won’t purchase because I have a backlog of great games I’ve purchased that I won’t play because I have a backlog of great games I really want to play.
🧲 time
The way Coffee Stain explained it for satisfactory is that the exclusivity windfall gave them enough runway to finish the game.
If the system of temporary exclusivity in exchange for upfront development cash continues I think it’s an overall win for the gaming community as games get to come out at less rushed pace and with potentially less cash generation grabs in the game itself.
That’s great that devs can benefit from it, I will not purchase the game until it’s available on other platforms due to Epic’s general shitty behavior.
So venture capitalism. Because that worked out so well for consumers with the rest of the tech industry. Wcgw?
Nothing has gone wrong, and it’s been going on for years at this point. But yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe aliens will invade us because people use Epic. Maybe the sun will go supernova because the Epic store doesn’t have reviews.
Who knows, anything could happen.
The only games I have on EGS are the ones I collect via Amazon Prime. It’s basically a game key graveyard.
But GOG? That’s where all the good games come from.
Why not the free weekly epic giveaways as well? There have been some good games for free in the past
I think I got the latest tomb raider trilogy and death stranding, uh, last year or the year before? All free. My perception of time is getting fucky again tho so take that into account.
I got Bear and Breakfast a few weeks ago and that’s one I had on my Steam wishlist. Along with quite a few others.
I do feel the slightest bit of guilt whenever I get a have that I definitely would have bought otherwise, especially because I tend to like indie games, but from what I’ve heard they’re paid reasonably well to do it.
Yeah, I was about to buy my wife the tomb raider series (it’s one of her faves) for Christmas and then I had to think of a new present. No complaints with that.
