The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
There seems to be a lot of debate in the comments, that are disingenuous arguments.
I think the quality of the software is a factor for some people, but that’s not the main issue here.
Steam has always publicly stated their competition is piracy. They have to be more convenient than piracy to survive. And over steams lifetime I think they’ve demonstrated that’s their goal, yes they have DRM, but only to satisfy publishers, they’ve done everything they can to keep things as convenient as possible.
Epic, the company, has demonstrated their goal is money. And they’ve demonstrated an anti-consumer trend, the exclusivity deals are in great indicator of that. If epic became as popular as steam, they would make the experience awful, they would become the Disney of the game world.
So all of the arguments about
*launcher quality
*availability of DRM free games
*some publishers choosing to release on one platform
Are missing the mark, many people don’t want to financially support a market participant who will make their lives worse in the future.
If you don’t like valve, that’s fine, support a different distributor who makes the ecosystem better, like GoG.
Yeah, I think competition is always good and Steam should not have a monopoly, but Epic is certainly not a beneficial alternative.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart. It was a freaking war of ideology attrition over a motherfucking shopping cart, something the Unreal Engine store had too.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
I love how when it’s epic it’s all about “I don’t like epic because they want a monopoly” but when it was only steam nobody talked about them having a monopoly lmao
Steam isn’t a monopoly.
Steam doesn’t force exclusivity. Developers are free to release a game on their own platform, on steam, on GOG all at the same time. Steam doesn’t even enforce price equality, developers could have their game on steam for 3X the price if they wanted. Use our website get the game for 66% off. Or use steam pay 3x the price. That’s an option
Steam is the benevolent dictator of the gaming world right now. They are benevolent so there’s no real need for a revolution. But they’re not forcing anybody to stay on the steam platform
Steam has roughly 90% of the market. Everything else has scraps.
At what point does a market leader not become a de facto monopoly?
When the Majority of PC Gamers chant “no steam no buy” what exactly is Steam? Is it a monopoly? Is it a cult? It’s certainly not an equal competitor in the market. But just like reddit exposing this gets hit with down votes and “steam is not a monopoly cuz Gabe is based” propaganda.
What will Steam become once he dies btw? Will his successor keep the company private or go public and go through shareholder enshitification? Sold to Amazon?
I say all of this as a happy Steam Deck owner, a majority of my games on Steam and where I buy first over others save for real old Games (GOG). Honestly Steam was goddamn stagnant until EGS went online then Valve started updating the UI, made deals to get EA and Microsoft on board. Honestly EGS existing lit a fire under Valves ass. So I guess maybe not a monopoly as a true one wouldn’t even be bothered. But let’s not downplay Valves “big dick” in the market they can swing around all they want.
I’ve envisioned that possibility where Gabe dies of old age, and the company is sold to someone that will do anything for a buck. The bad news there is that any further purchases on Steam might be subject to whatever horrible practices they institute, but there’s no way they’d get away with locking off people’s existing libraries - and people would just shift over at that time to whatever other game stores make sense. And yes, other game stores do exist, even if they have smaller following.
Steam doesn’t force a monopoly because they’re already in the position of power. Epic “forces a monopoly” because they are the party out of power. I don’t care about either, but to assume any move by the company competing with the default game marketplace is “forcing a monopoly” is disingenuous at best. I’ll agree their client sucks compared to Steam, but honestly I don’t care. You can still launch your application through steam and get the overlay and everything. I care more about the health of the marketplace, and having a competitor can only be good for consumers and developers. This 100% return can make developers sell their games at a lower price and still make the same profit, as one example of how this is good.
I Don’t mean to be disingenuous. I never said either company was forcing a monopoly.
Someday maybe they will try to improve the launcher instead of burning all the money in exclusives that only pisses people off. I uninstalled that shit and don’t even bother to take the free games anymore.
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I had to request and confirm the deletion of my account to stop chinese people trying to hack it or something because I kept getting e-mails from Epig that someone in China is trying to access my account EVERY GODDAMN MONTH.
Just use playnite you plebians
The launcher launches the games and that’s good enough for me 👍
Why should you be happy it has the most bare functionality it could possibly have. It’s 2023. On Steam I can stream from a Linux PC to my living room, play on some Nintendo Joycons with full gyro support, have a YouTube video playing picture-in-picture and bringing up an achievement guide with one button press. Epic is just a launcher, Steam is a full-fledged gaming platform.
I’m not one for company or brand worship but valve is straight GOATed.
I just claim the free games and after installing them, i add them to steam.
So…download with epic and launch via steam as a non-steam game. What’s the problem?
The issue is not the launcher. The issue is the exclusivity. It demonstrates an anti-consumer mindset. The GOG, which people here have demonstrated acceptance of, is yet another launcher, the launchers less elegant to steam, and everyone is just fine with.
It will probably work fine but it’s not an officially supported use case of the software. You can’t exactly submit a ticket to Valve if something doesn’t work right because the game isn’t even on their store.
Fucking hell, don’t hurt your back carrying that goalpost mate!
The person asked what the problem was and I explained what the problem was. Why are you butting in with this nonsense?
That guy has a weird hard-on for the epic games store. There was a post about it last month and that guy was saying the same things.
Funny you should mention Linux…
“Linux is so much nicer than Windows because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
“Epic is so much worse than Steam because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
The hypocrisy is strong with this one.
… What are you even talking about. I never even said the first statement so how could I possibly be a hypocrite lmao. And having features isn’t “bloat”. Your argument is just all kinds of nonsensical.
I could launch my games without a launcher. And I prefer it that way.
Good news!
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Epic_Games_Store
Pretty much all free games they’ve given so far are DRM free and can be launched without the launcher!
Can’t wait to read the next reason why you refuse to install it!
The way people talk about the epic store its like the company personally kicked their dog.
epic game stores killed my father and raped my mother!
“wow really?”
well no…but are we just gonna sit around and wait for them to do it!
Take the free game and shut the fuck up
They would have been complaining about Steam killing distributors when it released and vowing to boycott it forever. I’m old enough to remember these guys back in the day, now they’re basically sucking Gaben’s dick and bowing in front of his virtual monopoly.
There is a core difference.
A better analogy, would be shut up and eat the cheese it’s only a trap if you get caught.
It’s still designed as a trap.
We know epic has demonstrated that their anti-consumer by their public, frequent, numerous exclusivity deals for their store.
Steam had de facto exclusivity for years and I didn’t see anyone complain, weird how that goes, right?
Steam did not force any developer to make an exclusive. The developers had the choice of using every platform available to them. They thought steam was good enough.
And the reason nobody complained about steam being the de facto place to get games? It treated people fairly, it was easy, good enough. More convenient than piracy.
If the only choice is storefront A that’s used by 100% of consumers and storefront B that’s used by 0.1% of consumers then storefront A has a monopoly even if technically there’s a competitor. They means storefront A doesn’t need to sign exclusivity agreements because it knows no one will choose not to sell through them as it would mean not selling at all.
Epic doesn’t force third party developers to sell exclusives with them either, they’re free not to take their offer.
Say what you will about epic, but this is compelling as hell for Devs. Hopefully this puts more pressure on Steam to reduce their cut. Competition is good.
If you’re so against epic, have a little patience and wait until it comes to steam 6 months later. That’s what I’ll be doing. But don’t just mindlessly shit in epic because you (as a consumer) don’t like their business model intended to attract devs. You can dislike something while also recognising the good in it.
My view is that it incentiveses exclusives in the PC space, as opposed to lowering Steam’s charge for their services. My biggest concern for gaming is that we end up just like streaming services. A bunch of exclusives and a marketplace that is such a mess you can barely find what service has what you want.
It’s a fair concern, but I don’t think anything has remained exclusive on epic, they all come to Steam eventually. If that changes and epic starts incentivising permanent exclusivity, then I’ll be upset. But as it is right now, I have no issues with epic.
I know so many people call those situations a “mess”, but I’m still in favor of it: Each potential service option keeps the other in check through competition. I only get to use so many streaming services for so cheap because they’re lowering their prices in a bid to seem more appealing than the others. When it comes to game stores, their unique features (like say, Xbox’s game pass) can make them more compelling.
Granted, 90% of that last argument has just been “Steam has Xfeature, and YStore doesn’t…so I prefer Steam”
I’m not so sure, this seems like a less compelling deal than what Epic was offering before, which didn’t seem to be working out so well for devs.
Before, they were outright paying for exclusivity, offering studios and publishers huge sums of money to make up for the revenue they lose by not being on Steam, and then some. And they often paid for 12+ months of exclusivity. You were guaranteed profitability regardless of whether or not your game actually succeeded.
In order to break even in the new program, your game needs to retain 70% of the customers that would have bought it day 1 on Steam instead. That seems an impossibly high target to hit, given how much Epic has struggled to make EGS succeed even when they were thowing a lot more money around.
I never truly understood the hate for epic. They’ve made some of the best games of all time, give away 1-2 games for free every single week, and they ensure that most annoying kids are in fortnite and not games that adults want to play. Oh noooo. You have to open a separate launcher to play your video game! The horror!
In your comment you admit you don’t know, and then end your comment with an out of touch assumption. Good job.
Yeah, if that launcher is not so suck ass at what it does that I have to resort to Heroic Launcher. Not to mention some of the games on Epic just… weird, like Epic Skyrim doesn’t work with SKSE
you guys can pay developers all you want but nobody is gonna stick if your launcher is still shit
Just use playnite or one of the alternatives, it’s so much easier launching every game from the one place.
I only open epic launcher once a week to get the free game I’ll never play and that’s it.
Playnite is a must for any gamer
It can open any game
Yeah being able to add and launch the more nefariously obtained games along side legitimate games is one of my favourite things about it. The filter to quickly see owned vs installed across every account is also up there as a top feature.
Can’t gog galaxy do this?
gog can do the same but I kept having issues with the plugins for each launcher randomly crashing and signing me out and it just got so annoying to use
100% it can handle pirated games yeah, I used to use this a few years ago but swapped to playnite and I honestly can’t remember what made me swap. I don’t remember it having view filters… maybe it does
playnite is phenomenal!! I use it as well but have to occasionally still jumpscare myself opening the epic launcher to update stuff
But why does the launcher matter when all you need it for it to launch a game?
Because it’s actually dogshit. Like in every thinkable way a launcher “could be bad” it is.
Examples:
-Cannot move games or files, IN ANY CAPACITY. If you move a game folder or file the Epic launcher loses sight of it and the launcher has no way at all to tell it where existing files are. I learned this when I tried to move GTA V and had to reinstall the full game in the exact same location so that epic could see it.
-The launcher is the slowest loading launcher and service in the world. I have a 7800x3D and an nvme and EGS is the slowest launcher on my computer by a country mile (fucking Uplay is faster). Also on top of that, it has a major hard on for making you log back in on the same fucking computer (what feels like weekly). Meanwhile I don’t touch steam for 2 weeks and, guess what? It still logs me in! How the hell did they figure out that crazy tech?!
-It has absolutely 0 of the function the steam launcher has. Besides letting you spend money on games and launch them. No communities, workshop, friends features, profiles, voice calling, steam share, remote play together, etc.
I could go on but this all just grinds my gears when they do nothing but tout how they are “for gamers” and “for developers” when they’re clearly just here for fucking money. They use anti consumer practices to lock people into an ecosystem that for some reason they refuse to improve (wild fucking concept, maybe people would use their launcher if it wasn’t one of the least functional ones available!), and instead try to bait people in and keep them around with a free game a week. I’ll never, ever willingly give a cent to epic games. They’ve proven they don’t give a fuck about gaming or the consumer experience
edit: changed you to they when referring to Epic Games at the end
For some reason when I play that Saints Row 3 Remaster via EGS, all the controller inputs are all wrong. I have to launch the game through Steam so that I can use Steam’s controller API with it instead.
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I’m not fully sure the steam comparison works only because that was a different time.
With that said I still think epic has staying power if for no other reason than anyone mildly interested has a massive epic library sitting there. I don’t spend a ton of time thinking about epic, but I do want to keep my account because of all those games.
Steam literally forced me to install it when I bought Portal on CD back in the day.
The only thing that was on that CD was a Steam installer and a code.
This is kind of like complaining that you have to own a Switch to play Nintendo 1st party games.
Portal is a Valve game. Steam is the PC launcher for Valve games.
FWIW, Portal was available on other platforms without Steam. I had my copy of the Orange Box for the Xbox 360 and that didn’t require Steam or a Steam account to play.
Civ 5 for me. I stuck with physical because “all my games in one place” was my CD binder.
Steam suuuuuuuuucked back then I avoided it just as much as the “Fuck Epic” people do to that. Hated everything it stood for. The idea of a launcher for a game was madness.
I got over it.
Making it seem like Steam’s problems for the first ten years were some software bugs inherent to all software.
It required you login every 48 hrs to two weeks to play most games for DRM purposes, they had no return policy, app’s buttons barely worked, overlay made games run considerably worse, it frequently took up a shitton of resources. The 48 hr thing meant that if you were offline for a bit and Steam was down or slowed (any time a bit sale happened or a big game was launched) most games were unplayable.
Steam came out in 2003 and tons of people complained about Steam DRM hearkening the end of actually owning videogames until at least 2012. GoG came out in 2008, didn’t require a launcher at all, sidestepped everything wrong with Steam.
There’s been non-buggy, not anti-consumer software as long as there’s been computers, Steam prior to like 2016 was not that. There’s been an alternative, buying physical games (until they all started using Steam DRM or worse) and GoG.
Yeah Epic Launcher is barebones. Both Steam and Epic are anti-consumer because of DRM, and making users beholden to any buggy software update to play software they purchase. At least Epic pays devs.
Yeah I mean I hope my comment doesn’t seem like it’s blindly defending Steam or anything. I think steam today is a good platform. Not talking about their 30% cut, I just mean from the perspective of gamers.
But its launch was anything but smooth. I HATED steam when it launched as a requirement for HL2. I had dialup and the experience was utter shit. I recall being so upset at what a pain it was.
Nothing about epic has ever been as frustrating as the early life of steam.
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When a new product like a TV from a new manufacturer shows up people judge it by standards from 10 years ago as opposed to current ones? Same from software?
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Half Life 2 launched in 2004. Which will be 20 years next year. I’m not sure why state of a product from over a decade ago matters for judging products now. I’m not exactly time traveling and being forced to use 2004 steam.
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It’s an incredibly poor look having to even resort to comparing epic to the era of 2004. That’s like someone referring back to the days of flip phones for why a new current day phone release should get a pass. Even having to do that is a poor reflection.
Having to rely on hypotheticals over the actual offering of epic isn’t a good look. It’s not our job or your job to convince us why epic is worth spending money in. That’s epic’s job.
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Why couldn’t that happen a second time?
Maybe because steam is already extremely popular and has improved more in the last few years than Epic has.
I don’t know how popular stardock was but it couldn’t have been anywhere close to how popular steam is now.
Epic hasn’t really done anything to improve.
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What was the alternative for the first ten years? Nothing better for sure.
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The alternative back then was to buy physical games or to pirate them.
As bad as the Steam experience was at the time, it was still convenient. Nowhere else could you reliably download games at those speeds, and you could legally purchase games without leaving the house, not to mention the prices.
So is it just me or does every game that becomes a epic exclusive never do as well as they should. i think most game developers realize this, which is why epic is desperate to get developers on their failing launcher. maybe they should try offering all the things steam does. regardless i cant switch because i own too many games on steam, im locked in.
It’s because PC gamers overwhelmingly will just ignore the game until it comes to steam, but by the time it comes to steam it’s been 6 months - 1 year and all the hype around the game has died.
People have been voting with their wallets and not rewarding anti-competitive behavior for once
thats what i was hinting at. and im not totally happy about epic ruining launches over trying to be a replacement for a, in my opinion, much better system which offers much more ever if they developers don’t use all the features. i do wish steam would add a lower tier which takes less of the profit from indie developers that hardly use any of these features.
Only buying on Steam is anti-competitive
Not really. Steam is not forcing exclusives on their platform. Them providing a better service doesn’t mean the users are anti-competitive.
EGS explicitly pays developers to not release on other platforms. That’s anti-competitive
Exclusive is the medium not the store
A pc game on epic is still a pc game. I haven’t heard of epic preventing devs from releasing on Xbox
EGS is a platform, Steam is a platform. They are both stores and their own ecosystems.
They are paying for forced exclusives to their platform. I’m not going to use a different platform even on my same device because it’s anti-competitive for pc gaming.
You aren’t going to promote competition because it’s anti competitive
If a game was offered on both platforms do you think people are more likely to get it on Epic than Steam? If not then they have to be exclusive to their store
That’s not my problem. That’s still being anti-competitive. If one platform is significantly better (eg steam) then the competition needs to offer a reason to buy from them. The problem is that EGS has decided that the only way to give users a reason to use their store has been to make sure the game isn’t available anywhere else.
The users are able to make the choice to not support poor business tactics and they have. People do not buy from EGS, due to a plethora of reasons, one of which is likely that they are extremely anti-competitive and buy out games.
You aren’t going to promote competition because it’s anti competitive
A store doesn’t have the right to my business just because it exists. If I started a PC game store and charged twice as much as Steam or Epic would you purchase from me just to support competition?
A business needs to give me a reason to purchase from them. If the best reason to purchase from Epic is to give them a participation award then no thank you.
it’s not. choosing to buy on steam because it’s a better experience to you than egs is exactly the result we want from competition. they competed for your favor, steam won, and egs lost. personally, sometimes i buy on gog because i like its features better, especially the offline installer and lack of drm, but even if steam won all rounds that would still be competition, they’re just good at it.
anti-competitive measures are the ones that try to abuse an existing market position to take that choice away from you and force you to go one way or another. if you really wanted a grasp on valve, you could argue for example that the steamdeck is anti-competitive on the market of game stores, because it makes using competing game stores inconvenient (even though you absolutely can do it, i have played uplay games on my steamdeck, and could probably easily install egs as well, i just don’t have any reason to try). exclusivity is also a very clear-cut anti-competitive measure, because it just cleanly takes choice away from the end user and forces them to go with a specific launcher, or worse, specific hardware in some cases. but just being better than everyone, or as a consumer choosing to go with the best option is not anti-competitive, it’s just winning the competition
So only buying coffee from the store I like is anti competitive?
not what that means
What was wild to me is when Kingdom Hearts dropped on Epic and no one cared. Should have been the hot topic for at least a few days but… nothing.
That’s probably also partially due to how crazy overpriced it is though
Kingdom Hearts was a double whammy of poor decision making on Squeenix’s part. Not only did they launch on EGS, where most PC players aren’t going to care about it, they launched it at an absurd price. They were selling the HD collection for $50 when you could walk over to GameStop or Target and get the PS4 version for $20.
When you finally make a game like KH available to a new audience, and no one gives a shit… You’ve done something horribly wrong.
I 100000% believe your comment on the pre-existing library is why they give free games away weekly. They want you to build a library that you then won’t want to move from which is exactly why I too don’t like being forced to buy things on another game store. I don’t like exclusives no matter where they are, it’s anticompetitive bullshit.
Hades
I didn’t see anyone talking about Hades until it released on Steam
It spent it’s early access there but it was definitely talked about at least in the places I lurked. It’s Supergiant games tho, they do nothing but bangers.
Why choose one over the other when you can use something like Playnite or similar to track all your collections across multiple services?
i work too much to spend time looking into systems like this. also i don’t use windows.
Then Heroic
Steam has a really loyal base that for some reason think buying from a different store is akin to buying a whole new platform
I’ll avoid games on Steam as much as I can to foster competition but breaking into that user base is difficult
the reason for that is because steam isn’t just a launcher. if you don’t use steam you might think so, because giving you a play button, managing downloads, and maybe tracking achievements is all other platforms do. steam, on the other hand, is an entire toolkit built to simplify everything in gaming – whether what you seek is community spaces, a workshop to easily install mods and other community content, one-click linux compatibility, in-home streaming, easy game invites and in-game chat with your friends, or a plethora of other features, buying on steam vs non-steam is usually a massive difference.
i bought gta v on disk back when it released, as opposed to my friends who only joined a few years later and had the bandwidth to just buy the steam version and download it, and whenever we played together they just had so much of an easier experience.
the reason steam’s user base is so loyal is because steam provides things that actually matter to them, and valve spent decades ensuring that they provide the best damn experience possible. epic games, on the other hand, had one surprise success with fortnite, and decided they want the game store market to turn it into a long-term revenue stream, but what they forgot to consider is to give people the same experience steam provides. egs has a fundamentally selfish design, it literally only caters to epic and only does the bare minimum for anyone else.
so if your proposition is that people should ditch that platform that goes out of its way to provide for them and instead be content with the bare minimum because the company behind that platform is evil because *checks notes* it’s too popular and makes it hard for other corporations to act as middlemen and collect the game store tax themselves instead, i don’t think you’ll be able to convince too many people.
Yeah, I dislike that about it too
It’s a store, it shouldn’t be anything else
But AFAIK GoG is the only one like that, even then some of their games aren’t
so do you think the other features in steam shouldn’t exist, or that they should be split off from the store into a different service?
I would prefer split up
I’ll avoid games on Steam as much as I can to foster competition
Cool. I’m going to open my own store that costs twice as much as Steam and has none of the features. I’ll let you know when it’s ready so you can purchase from me in order to “foster competition”.
I’ll hold you to it
Its is buying a new platform, rather than have my games in 1 platform, they would be in 2. also steam offers much more (at a greater cost to developers) then epic. i also only use linux, which is a not hard at all with steam.
I buy from valve mostly for the Linux bit… they’ve played a major role in lifting the Linux desktop graphics drivers to the point where they’re actually not just usable but good.
I also only use Linux; I don’t need to change my device at all to switch between Steam, Lutris, or Heoric
i hope you realize the only reason you can actually game on linux is because valve decided microsoft has to not have a monopoly, because they got spooked by the windows store. i tried gaming on linux in the pre-proton days, it was a hot mess, the advent of proton and dxvk was a massive jump in terms of compatibility. and nowadays valve is ensuring that people do in fact give a shit about proton with the steamdeck, its 1.5-2 million users give a pretty strong reason for devs to keep their games compatible, and anything that runs on a steamdeck runs on linux in general as well.
it doesn’t matter whether you run non-steam games through lutris or heroic, you’re still running on the translation layers built by valve to keep linux gaming viable
I am aware, I can still use other stores
I wouldn’t want Valve to have a monopoly on Linux anymore than on Windows
Due to advancements pushed by Valve, these days I’m actually surprised when a game doesn’t run under Linux.
Even when he worked for Microsoft, Gabe Newell was literally the person that made PC gaming viable.
i dont know what lutris or heoric are. i wish i had more time to figure that stuff out. maybe one day.
I had a few games on Impulse but my account vanished when it got sold to Gamestop so I can understand people being worried about buying games on other platforms. One reason I like GoG due to offline installers
The problem is that none of these other launchers offer features like Steam Input, Proton, in-home streaming, a good overlay, and the Workshop. Steam competes by making their platform the most attractive to customers.
Alternatives to Steam need to find their own niche. GOG is doing well in their niche of fixing up older games and selling them DRM-free. The only “killer feature” EGS has is that they take a smaller cut from publishers. But end users don’t care about that, because it doesn’t translate to lower prices. I can chose between spending $60 for the same game on Steam or EGS, but the EGS version comes without all the extra features I listed above.
Steam has proton, Epic games does nkt even have a linux launcher, its obvious who I’m sticking with
Heroic Game Launcher works well enough for that. Although I do need to install MSVC shit thru Winetricks sometimes. Wish HGL did that automatically.
I mean, I’ve been able to get epic games working on my deck through the heroic launcher. I’ve still not given them one thing dime but I’ve got a fair sized collection of giveaway games that are nice to have around
Effectively no percent of the market uses Linux
That percent of the market really changes for some indie titles who have noted a substantial amount of their purchases were from Steam Decks.
100% of me uses Linux so epic can get fucked as far as I’m concerned
Linux users are the vegans of lemmy.
I’m sure all couple hundred of you are really excited about it but you are also no percent of the market
Shit I only have epic installed to get free games I forget to play because I never use the launcher. It’s just nothing to do with who is using Linux.
I don’t really give a crap what you think of linux users. But it’s not true that “no percent” uses it. Seems a little ironic that you say “nobody uses it” on one hand and also complain about the number of people who talk about it…
The large number of people talking bout it exists pretty much just on this social media.
Not sure why you are so personally invested, hence the vegan comment.
The point is no one really develops with Linux in mind because the consumer base is tiny
God I hate Epic. I hate them with every fiber of my being. The fact that I have to have their crappy, insecure game store bloatware just to try to learn Unreal for personal projects is dumb. Hence why I am learning Unity and Godot.
As a long time Unity user, Unity sucks ass. All of the good things about unity are the things they bought like cinemachine and textmesh pro.
Unity technologies can’t for the life of them make a damn decision and stick with it. As a result, Unity has a decade plus of technical bloat and debt that can never be fully paid because of the need for backwards compatibility.
Oh, I know. I headed a major project which involved usurping the root level of geometry in the Unity engine and injecting massive amounts of data into it and we actually found some major flaws in their underlying logic which only would come up when you hit the levels of throughput that we were dealing with. Getting them to admit to the fault was pulling teeth, but they did fix it once they were confronted live with the issue. So that’s good on them at least. But that aside, the project went well and the tool at the other end is nothing short of incredible. I’d still rather work in Unity than Unreal for most of the types of projects I tend to do.
Same. They killed unreal tournament as well. Mutual funds and corporate entities need not exist.
It’s such a bummer fortnite happened when it did… they pulled everyone with multiple PvP shooter experience off the UT4 team and killed the project.
I don’t know that I’d take a moral stand against epic and for unity https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/why-is-unity-s-merger-with-ironsource-angering-developers
Don’t forget https://www.crytek.com/ is still around too and still making CryEngine (there were some bad years where they were struggling to pay people, but they seem to be in a good place again). Lots of work going on behind the scenes to improve this engine for Crysis 4 and Hunt Showdown from what I understand.
There’s also the (heavily modified at this point) cryengine derived https://o3de.org/.
I played a game for like 2 hours and 30ish minutes, 30 minutes longer than their allowed refund window because I forgot to close it when I went to the bathroom after deciding I didn’t want to keep playing, and my buddy who played with me had like 2 hours and 14 minutes.
They accepted his refund request no problem and denied mine even after I got a supervisor involved.
I will never ever use their service again, they can keep my $70 but they’ll never get another dime. Fuck em and their bribery of game developers.
So, you don’t like Epic because they didn’t offer a refund beyond the refund window? Idk man, I don’t like them for many reasons but this seems a bit off
I don’t like that they inconsistently enforce the 2 hour window. The reasons I don’t like Epic include a lot more than just this one situation, but it sure enforced my opinion of them. I see how you can boil down my anecdote to your version, though.
I mean, he was <15 minutes off the cutoff, you were 30 minutes. It’s not unusual for there to be a little bit of leeway with these things. If you both played exactly like 2:15 and one of you got a refund and the other didn’t then I’d say yeah you’re justified in being outraged, but as it stands… you’re mad because they were did your friend a solid and made an exception and not you; which just seems like a selfish take … be happy either of you got cut a break.
They did more than they said they would, not as much as you wanted them to do.
Damn yall really out here simping for Epic, of all companies?
If you think that’s what this is about, you’re missing the point. You can have a bad take and the company can still be a bad company.
Hey maybe you should make a launcher that isn’t shit?
I mean, good on you for paying the developers well but Steam became very popular because they kept improving it.
They’ll get 100% of my zero dollars that way.
Never forget that GOG is also an option!
Huh? GOG still seems to be online. Did anything get announced?
Oh no, sorry if I scared anyone. I just wanted to remind people to buy games from GOG
I don’t think GOG is going anywhere, perhaps the poster above you just used weird phrasing (English might not be their first language)
I should’ve just added “Never forget [buying games from] GOG!” already 😅
“Let us offer you 100% of the money from a marketplace 0.0001% as large! Did we mention you get all the money that neither of us are making? We will throw in all the good will with gamers we’ve earned too.”
If the game is in demand, people will go there if it’s the only option. It’s not a great option for some obscure indie game, but it is for mid-budget projects that have already gotten interest.
That’s fair. I personally just skip those. But maybe few enough people skip to make the lower fees worth it.
For the majority of game studios this seems like a terrible deal though.
I feel like zero fees vs 30% fees is a pretty big difference. But you have to be able to sell at least enough to make up for the difference either way. It also very well could just attract devs who think they’re going to sell more than they will.
Well 0% fee for a store that has zero added features vs 30% for a launcher with cloud saves, overlay, online couch play, tradeable in-game items, gifting, community, profiles, wishlist, notifications, etc.
Someone has to pay for the server time and storage.
Oh and Steam has way bigger userbase.
Call me old fashioned, but I don’t play a game for the trading cards. I also don’t hang out there, I have used Discord for years. Overlay is less important now that I have 2 monitors. I just want a game on my computer that updates itself so it’s ready when I want to play it, and then gets out of the way.
Gifting and a better cart experience I definitely agree with, those are so much better. But not 30 percent better.
As far as the user base, it may be changing. There are 132 million active steam users vs 230 million epic pc users. Though I imagine the number that actually buys software is strongly in Steams favor, as they are going to be older and more used to spending where I suspect you see a lot of F2P players in epic. Does that demographic start changing as they age out of fortnight? Hard to say. Don’t have any stats on that though, just guessing.
Steam Workshop, communities, screenshot and video sharing, pretty solid game searching, game awards, reviews, streaming, guides, achievements - just what I remembered.
Yes, there are people who so not use any of those features. Yes, there are people like you who don’t care about trading / cards / anything but the game and updates.
So when you start comparing just that a launcher can launch a game and keep it up to dáte - these two launchers are identical. When you add the store to it, then it’s in Epics favor. But as soon as you start comparing them as a whole, it’s clear Steam has a lead.
Why did people ditch IRC in favor of Skype? They both had chat. TeamSpeak in favor of Discord? They both had voice calling.
It’s about the UX as a whole. Some people might not use Steam Workshop ever, but then one day it comes on handy.
Also, fuck Epic exclusivity deals. They are as anti consumer as it can be, without really giving anything in return. They literally P2W’d the game market. Or at least tried to. Last straw, Epic is partially owned by Tencent, a Chinese money hungry game company that’s not ashamed to put P2W features in games.
I already block ads and advertisements, so the game will just be completely off my radar for another six months until I see friends start playing it. Eh. It’s far too much effort to try a new platform after the dumpsterfires of Origin and Uplay to play 1-3 games.
The only game I’d actually install a new launcher for would be a new Half Life Game.
I had a friend who really got into satisfactory. And since we were all a factorio group, it seems like our kind of crazy. We are excited for it. When it came out as an epic exclusive, that one friend went for it. And tried to get us all to join him. We’re like okay we’ll join you soon as it comes out on steam. Some converted some didn’t.
But over time I’ve had my personal friends tell me, yeah I see why you didn’t make that choice, earlier I thought you were just being stubborn but now I totally understand it.
Totally understand what exactly?
They now understand the logic behind not supporting exclusive titles to walled gardens.
That the game wasn’t worth playing. Lol?
That the game was still in early access, had bugs, and didn’t have many features or ways to progress.
After a year of development, tho, it’s a different kind of story.
I only installed steam to get the orange box.
Lol, Epic losing steam? No pun intended.
Also, fuck Epic.
A 100% of $0 is still $0.
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Sorry to reply to a random comment, but I’ve been trying to get the attention of one of the tvplus mods. Could you check your DMs?
Apologies, it seems DMs are somewhat broken. I’ve found your DM and sent you a reply.
How about you improve your goddamn service instead of holding my games hostage on your shitty launcher?
It’s almost like Valve invests their 30% cut into more than just CDN bandwidth and exclusivity contracts. They use it to build a compelling platform that people actually want to use.
