Do they officially support Linux yet? No heroic doesn’t count.
They do not, and never will.
“Bite my shiny metal ass, penguins!”
~ Epic CEO (paraphrased)
GOG also doesn’t support Linux. And I’m not gonna hold that against Epic if I don’t hold it against GOG.
Here’s a different take, as a game dev:
Epic actual employs quite a few people who work with Linux. The Unreal engine (and even, to a certain degree, editor) has native support for Linux.
The reasons they’re not including Linux support in their store front are two fold:
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There aren’t enough pure Linux users to matter, and whatever percentage of their userbase would use Linux isn’t going to be large enough to make a dent[1].
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The only serious Linux user base in gaming relates to the Steam Deck, a product that pushes a rival (and the dominant) store front.
While Valve’s move to push Linux gaming is brilliant for us gamers, it also kind of cements us in their camp.
There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway, and it absolutely supports their bottom line to attack it.
And, no, it isn’t because of any David v. Goliath tale of a little guy standing up to a brute: it’s because a fellow giant has decided to ally itself with Linux, and all of us have - invariably - been shuffled into their camp.
I think the Epic Games Store has a place in this world as a niche storefront with limited visibility but higher access to sales profits as a result of that.
They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay. The largest storefront in the world supports Linux not just on its platform, but by developing tools for everyone that makes Linux gaming viable. That is enough, IMO.
~[1] Edit: I was throwing around a made up 0.1% number earlier to indicate what I thought the number’d be - wasn’t meant to be factual, and was poorly worded, so I removed that.~
Where are you getting 0.1%? According to Steam Hardware Survey Linux is over 2% of Steam Users. This puts Linux way ahead of Mac which supported by Epic
TBH what matter more is revenue. Apple users always pay more
Totally made up, meant it more as a “this is my ballpark estimation of what their Linux player base would be” - though I agree I worded it poorly. I don’t know what % of Epic Games users would play on Linux if given the chance.
I’m editing my original message, sorry about that!
2 is only true because they refuse to support it, and it’s going to be great to see them walk back everything they said once it’s too late. More handhelds are going to launch with official steamOS support, and a new batch of steam machines will come eventually, with a much better support.
In the same way they tell how to side load an apk in android, they can could tell you how to install heroic on the deck.
Hell, through 10-20 K to heroic and they will make it for you simple.
There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway
Except for the fact that their entire technology stack already supports it and making Linux versions of their games is a compilation step away. Their Tencent buddies at One-Notebook would surely make a OneXPlayer with EpicOS. “Comes with Fortnite and get free games each week”.
They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay.
EGS has a massive installed base because of Fortnite.
It’s not about how easy it is to compile, my first point in my original comment was that they actively maintain an engine for Linux.
The install base is too low right now. Hopefully as our numbers grow we’ll have enough market impact to warrant pushing other store fronts.
Fortnite is great for Epic, but their debacle with Apple kind of proved that one popular game isn’t enough to push the public off one store front onto another.
It’s not about how easy it is to compile
But it is. It is what defines the cost of supporting a platform.
The install base is too low right now.
The installed base of Switch2 is 0% right now.
And it was just a big coincidence that Epic removed Linux support exactly when the Steam Deck got announced…
But it’s the year of… Oh no. Rly? :(
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Do they officially support Linux yet?
Unreal Engine has official Linux support since ages. Unreal Engine running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what movie CGI creators often use these days. It’s a highly lucrative market they’re not going to give up.
Epic Online Services supports Linux as well: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-get-started/platform-support (which includes Easy Anti Cheat)
So when Fortnite and Rocket League have no Linux versions, it’s just because of lack of will, not anything technological.
And yet, still, they can go fuck themselves.
Cool, still fuck em though
The desperation looks good on you Epic
They’re so desperate to make their store front a thing 😂
It is hilarious.
Epic tried getting users by giving them free games. But that didn’t translate to increased sales. And now they are trying to woo developers to abandon Steam, hoping that way customers will be forced to buy from Epic.
They don’t understand that developers are on Steam because customers are there. And what does a customer get when they use Epic over Steam?
I just deny the existence of any game that is an Epic Games exclusive title.
Games that need a third party app to run on Linux
They understand that devs are in steam because it’s where users are. Do you think they are stupid? There is no much they can do to bring users if there are no games, they are 15-20 years behind Steam in years of existence.
So true. All they have to do is WAY FUCKING MORE THAN THEY ARE WILLING TO.
Fuck Epic
Because they have to, because their store is based in bribing developers for artificial exclusivity in an attempt to hurt Valve for proving that Pig Swiney was a moron a decade ago when he said PC gaming was dead.
This is all a vain attempt by a man child to get back at Gabe, and it’s abso fucking lutely a hilarious delight what an abject failure it all is.
Garbage store with no customer services struggles and burns money, because that’s what’s lazy customer fucking cash grabs should do - burn. Fuck epic, fuck Swiney, and fuck you if you defend them.
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Completely unrelated, but is your username a reference to the movie Can’t Hardly Wait?
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Yeah yeah, what about making the EGS program not suck for customers? An overglorified browser running on top of unreal engine, no user reviews for games…
The no user reviews is a terrible choice. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have them. Maybe they’re afraid of spam on Fortnite. But I can’t imagine reviews on Fortnite would matter all that much.
Unreal Engine could’ve got us, like, Unreal Tournament. It almost did, in fact, it a little.
Die in eternal fire Epic
100% of $0 is still $0.
I’ll spend my money on platforms that have proven to respect their customers.
What’s epics problem? I only log in to get free games but I think competition should work out better for the consumer
They could literally just copy steam, add their “we take less of a cut” thing, and be in a good place.
Instead, using their storefront sucks, their customer service sucks, they lack features you’d expect of a major platform, and they’re pretentious dicks about it. Instead of fixing these obvious problems, they’re bribing devs for exclusivity, pumping their marketing with bullshit, and litigating apple over their app store (actually that last one is kinda great). The epic store today would be competition to steam if steam was still as it was 20 years ago when everyone hated steam.
Competition is usually always a good thing, but sadly no launcher has ever brought anything new to the table that Steam hasn’t already been doing (they usually just bring headaches).
Epic doesn’t want to compete fairly (by providing a great user experience, etc). They want to compete by paying for exclusives & bribing users with free games. Obviously this hasn’t worked because they are loweri g fees, likely to try to get the growth they just aren’t seeing.
They don’t got a problem. Someone on reddit a while ago pushed for epic=bad so now years later people just parrot the same shit over and over like monkeys.
These people in their minds are “friends” with steam. They gotta stick up for their buddies on the internet.
I don’t think “epic bad”. But right now, I don’t see why I should use their platform when all my stuff is on steam. They should bring either: better experience or better value. Right now they don’t really do either. Sure they give you free games but I have 10x the amount on my platform of choice. I’m not married to steam I just want epic to give me a reason to use them.
For the consumer multiple platforms sucks. There’s already competition for selling steam keys as well. Epic doesn’t want to pay other platforms for anything fortnite, anything else they do is to justify why they shouldn’t have to pay like every one else.
Cool
Epic Games store and Tim Sweeney are both still peices of shit.
How many layoffs does that take? /s
TBH I haven’t seen evidence that layoffs generate capital. It just fudges cost to revenue ratios to emulate quarterly gains in hopes of appeasing shareholders.
Good for them, but until EGS starts being more pro- consumer, I’m not spending a cent there
I can’t wait to get more games on my Epic deck, oh wait it was Valve who pioneered an incredible platform that can play AAA games on a handheld running Linux and made compatibility a reality for thousands of games.
They didn’t pioneer it, companies like GPD did. Not shitting in the Steam Deck, love that thing. Just wanting to get the facts straight.
I think it still counts, due to all the work they did on the software side.
Is this an apology for the bad performance issues of UE5?
This is great and it’s not like they have shit revenue splits anyway as last I checked it was 88/12 which is by far the best around.
