I’m genuinely shocked how much Epic poured into the store and it still lacks so much basic features. Sorting games is still extremely barebones, store is filled with NFT/crypto garbage, the store still looks like a college student’s first front-end project, and last time I used the launcher to pick up free games (last year), it was still slow as hell. What were they doing in the past 5 years aside from dropping millions on exclusivity deals?
Epic is going to have to prioritize the store and try some new initiatives while also doubling down on earning pivotal exclusives if it is going to have a chance. I also hope other viable competitors arrive.
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.
They do often have better sales, but you have to launch the store to know and personally I would rather pay the extra $1 to buy on Steam…
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.
They still have to sell for what the publisher/devs want to sell the game for, a bigger share goes to them if it’s the same price as it is on Steam.
Which I as a buyer don’t care about. That’s the whole point of the parent.
They can’t sell the games cheaper than steam as the steam’s conditions doesn’t let devs sell games on steam if the game is available for cheaper somewhere else.
This is only true for steam keys. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
That doesn’t apply to exclusive games which also don’t have lower prices.
I always say the reason they give so many free games is because the real price is in having to use that goddamn launcher
It does what it needs to do, you open it, your installed games list is on the left, click and play.
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.
I don’t even get their free stuff. And if it’s only epic, I won’t even bother checking it out or well…ya know.
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.
It just doesn’t appeal to me? I dunno. Epic just felt bleh compared to steam.
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.
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.
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)
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
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.
Fuck Epic. I will never forgive them for buying Rocket League and ripping it away from my Linux library on steam. I will never do business with them, never play any of their games, never give them a dime, never even sign up to claim their free slop of the week. Fuck Epic with a cactus.
I own the original CD release of Unreal Tournament 2004, made by Epic, it includes a native Linux installer on disc, you get the full game, and it worked fine.
It makes me so sad that they did a complete 180 on this.
My theory has always been they wanted to keep the door open for Microsoft if things just go under. When you think about it, they were struggling quite a bit in the early 2000’s until gears. Microsoft really propped them up with that franchise, then they made fortnite, lost a lot of money until they pivoted to the BR mode and now they make millions every damn day.
Tbh without epic I doubt the game would’ve survived 2020. If you recall, the whole fanbase was unhappy with how things were stale. Epic didn’t improve anything obviously but the free to play did boost it’s active nunber of players. Nevertheless fuck epic.
It’s pretty much the same in terms of maps and gameplay. Had some regressions like removal of trading system and other things i forgot. Has voice channel now. Servers are the same except there are more now. It’s still fun for a quick match or two.
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.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/130172/epic-games-store-unlocks-achievements-for-all-games
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
Are you serious? Obviously people don’t care about achievements on a platform that has almost no community-related functionality.
What has community got to do with achievements? My Steam profile is entirely private, the achievements are for me.
The person I was replying to said there’s no achievements on EGS, I showed them the proof that achievements are supported and they’re now mandatory.
I don’t care at all about community shit on Steam and consider all of it to be bloat, I still love the challenge from achievements.
I am always suprised that people expected anything differently.
Epic was from the start doing things the wrong way, and I will not support any store that has exclusives.
Making a good gaming platform that could rival Steam would take A LOT of time and money and dare I say - no company is willing to lose that for a chance of one day perhaps being only slightly worse competitor that still can’t convince people to migrate.
There are only a few companies that could even hope to take on Valve, at this stage. The likes of EA and others. But by definition, their company culture means they’ll never be able to take on Valve.
Someone else made a comment about what will happen when Gabe steps down and I suddenly realize what a short-term golden age we’re likely living in, even with all the bullshit.
Making a platform that was simply a copy of all of Steam’s features would certainly take a lot of time. That’s why to break into the space a new platform would need to actually innovate a killer feature that brings early adopters to it even without having all the bells and whistles Steam has. Then the user base can and will grow as you fill in the gaps so the ‘sacrifice’ of using your platform is lessened.
All exclusive games do is build resentment in your customers at being forced to use an inferior product.
I’ve said it before, but until Epic adds some way to provide feedback to others, I won’t spend any money on it. Being able to read if a game is buggy, runs on my hardware, etc, is too essential to the experience to not have.
Epic wants to be the pro-developer storefront, but since that seems to involve being anti-consumer, I as the consumer have no interest.
