Maybe less investment in trying to monopolise the market and more investment in developing their shopping platform so it’s not a smouldering turd.
Yeah, if I’m reading that right they’re complaining that they’re stuck at phase one of enshitification - lose money on aquiring users. The reason behind that is they’re not able to monopolize the market for their games. “These damn mobile stores won’t let us turn the corner and put the clamps on our users. Fix it please.”
We made the shittiest thing and nobody likes it. We’re all out of ideas.
Well not to discourage them but I like Epic games because every Thursday they give me a free game sometimes two. Hell all the 100 games I own on their platform I gotten for free. So maybe that’s why it’s not profitable?
Beyond that I see no monopoly every game on their I can find on Steam and so far have had no issues with it.
They literally pay for exclusivity. It’s weird that people seem to selectively ignore that every time someone brings up their desire to get free games from them.
This is the main reason why I never made an account, despite the free games.
Epic still has to pay the developers even if they give away the game for free. I’m happy to help bleed Epic dry by taking their free games. But I will never ever spend a single cent on their platform.
You’re lying to yourself. They pay a fixed amount for the giveaway and it doesn’t matter if the games are claimed. If anything, you owning a game on Epic means you’re more likely to mention it to your friends and possibly get them to use the platform and spend on it.
This. Active usernumbers are more worth to them than the small fee they pay the Devs. Everyone who “just redeems the free games” is helping them actively.
They pay a fixed amount based on expected/average number of units given away. If that number is higher, devs can get more money.
Can you provide any evidence for this? The documents from the Apple trial showed fixed and round figures for every single giveaway.
Same If I buy a game it will be either directly from the maker or Steam. Epic strictly for the free games.
I mean, I get why people hate this, but some games would literally not exist if not for that exclusivity funding. For example, the newly released Alan Wake 2 is completely funded by Epic. I’d say at that point, the exclusivity is fair game.
After Control’s success, I’d imagine AW2 still would’ve been made even without Epic’s exclusivity/publishing deal. If anything, Control’s timed EGS exclusivity hurt their numbers until they eventually hit Steam.
So your theory is that Control wasn’t a major success on Epic, so Remedy decided to do the same thing with their next game? Sounds legit.
Epic funding games just makes them a publisher, nothing groundbreaking.
I have not bought a single game from their store. I have over 300.
I also haven’t played any of the games I got for free. Maybe one day I will, but today is not that day.
I started playing a few and they play well and so far are fun. Have had no issues with the platform.
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every game on their [sic] I can find on Steam
Oh yeah? Find these:
3 out of 10
A Knight’s Quest
Alan Wake Remastered
Alan Wake 2
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Battle Breakers
Binary Smoke
Castle Storm 2
Core
Corruption 2029
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Dangerous Driving
Dauntless
Dead Island 2
Diabotical
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed
Goat Simulator 3
Grit
Infinitesimals
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition
Kingdom Hearts series
The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
Ooblets
PC Building Simulator 2
ReadySet Heroes
Rocket League
RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures
Salt and Sacrifice
Saturnalia
The Settlers: New Allies
Shoulders of Giants
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Space Punks
Star Trek: Resurgence
Tchia
The Crew Motorfest
The Expanse: A Telltale Series
Tortuga - A Pirate’s Tale
Touch Type Tale
Witchfire
The Wolf Among Us 2
They bought fall guys and removed the possibility of buying it on steam. And timed exclusives like borderlands 3.
If you count all of Steam’s features (Steam Input, Big Picture Mode, Proton etc), then Epic has decades of catching up to do. The problem is that usually executives will choose the “easy way out” of problems, so let’s just give free games instead of making a good platform.
Oh what a suprise. Maybe… Just maybe…spend some bucks on developing the store to be viable(!) competition to steam. And not just a ghastly shit-shop, where people only exist because of the freebies and partially because of the exclusives (i pirate the exclusives. Fuck exclusives).
Even GOG galaxy is a better client/store and they don’t have the same budget.
Epic sucks sweaty, hairy monkeyballs. And i would welcome competition for the apex.
I started playing Epic Games after support was added on Heroic Games Launcher. But I ain’t spending money on them because there’s no guarantee it will still be working tomorrow.
I do through playnite. Using their own launcher for anything else than playing a game is horrible
EGS losing money has been great for gamers, as they continue to give away free games in an attempt to claw any marketshare. Gamers continue to win as long as this situation lasts. But reading these comments, nobody seems to recognize this.
Gamers lose when the store shuts down and you lose access to all of the games you got for free, or worse actually paid for.
Many of the games are DRM-free, as evidenced on PCGamingWiki.
Yeah but Unreal Tournament goes back on the shelf
ESG losing money is great for me just on principle, Tim Sweeney can go fuck himself.
Tencent is a despicable company
Using dishonest tactics to claw away market share won’t work with gamers. Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.
Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.
Well, eventually.
When Steam was first released, the running joke was “steaming pile of shit”. It was slow, unreliable and only a couple of shades of green away from the worst color in the world. People complained about the birth of “always online” games and about paying full price but not even getting a box with it.
It’s not exactly unassailable now either. It’s my platform of choice as a user but for indie developers, the 30% cut is brutal and last I used it, the Steamworks SDK was pretty rough. The app itself also has a lot of legacy bloat like a built in MP3 player.
It’s ahead of the rest but I think “good will, good prices and good features” might be an overly romantic take on “it’s where all my games already are”.
the 30% cut is brutal
Reportedly Epic’s 12% barely covers costs and would not if they included transaction fees. 20% seems to be the bare minimum if you want a store to actually have good service, and then I’m giving Valve additional credit for sinking boatloads of money into general infrastructure, in the long term Proton alone is worth those 10%. Much unlike the rest of the stores (exception GOG) which take the same 30% and are run by humongous multinationals.
…and then there’s itch.io. If you’re a small and scrappy indie very much an option: They’re also small and scrappy. And they’ll probably shout at you if you try to upload a 20G game I very much doubt their servers would survive an AAA launch. OTOH, reportedly their average revenue split is 8% (customers can choose).
The difference is that Steam sells a ton of copies every single day. The vast majority of Valve’s fortune has come from that fee. People jump to defend Steam but it’s already been established by lawsuits against other major corporations that a 30% cut is mostly driven by greed.
The 30% cut was industry standard for digital distribution for years. Google, Apple, and numerous other players all took 30% as standard.
That being said, Steam hasn’t taken a flat 30% for years now - their standard agreement starts at 30%, decreases to 25% after the first $10m in sales, then decreases further to 20% after $50m.
Furthermore, Valve has done more in terms of providing services, APIs/libraries, and end-user features (all with no additional fee to the developers or consumers) than any other game storefront has. I’d say they more than justify their cut.
Industry standard by massive corporations synonymous with corporate greed. Boy am I glad the fee decreases after $10m in sales. That will go a long way with helping out indie devs.
It’s okay to like Steam because they’ve provided us with a good way of purchasing and playing games. I like Steam but we don’t have defend things that are obviously greedy.
I still remember being annoyed I suddenly needed to get a separate app just to continue playing counter strike.
Ah yeah, I was a bit of a hold out going to 1.6, but eventually all the servers started disappearing. That was like ~8 years ago… right?
Na homie that was almost 10 years ago.
“it’s where all my games already are.”
My pet theory is this was realized by epic and so the only reason they give games away is to “help” users build a library they won’t want to “leave behind” for another store platform. Once they reach the market share they were aiming for I fully expect the practice to stop.
That is their exact strategy…
Yes, there’s bloat from old features, but there’s also quality tools built into Steam, such as Steam Input and Proton.
Valve is constantly looking for ways to help the customer, just in their own weird ass way. Having linux as a competitive option to windows and being able to refund/return digital games, as well as a built in mod searcher and loader being some of the things they brought to the platform because Valve employees themselves are gamers and want their platform to be useful towards gamers needs
the 30% cut is brutal
This part always confuses me. When Steam started allowing non-Valve games on their storefront, 30% was considered a bargain compared to selling your games at retail.
Well, eventually.
When Steam was first released, the running joke was
Has anything ever worked perfectly when first released?
If that was true, EA would have been dead in the water 12 years ago.
Didn’t EA shut down Origin or at least make it optional?
Remember Valve is the company and Steam is the storefront/launcher.
Epic is the company, EGS is the storefront/launcher.
EA is the company, Origin is (was?) the storefront/launcher.
Didn’t EA shut down Origin or at least make it optional?
Technically no. EA now just calls it “The EA App”
If Mass Effect Legendary Edition actually included ME3’s multiplayer I might’ve considered installing Origin again.
Yeah, making it a requirement for playing your physical copy of Half-Life definitely looks like good will to me.
And in turn diminished the industry’s piracy problm for many years, making PC Games market a stable ecosystem instead of letting all of PC gaming die.
No? Cracks were created for that too
Yes? How can you possibly deny that? Steam was able to claw a market in russia, a country famous for piracy. Gaben was right, convenience with good prices trumps everything.
Sure, cracks still exist, but I’ve stopped downloading them in favour of buying off Steam because the user experience was a lot better. I’m sure I can’t be the only one to do this.
If you haven’t tried a linux distro since the release of the SteamDeck, I highly recommend you give gaming on linux a shot.
Gotta love the diehard linux users promoting their preferred OS on a topic even slightly related.
Man, I enjoy Linux too, but I cannot see how its related to the post.
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Yes, both from Valve working hard on compatibility and game devs testing against it
Having been on Linux for over a year now, I don’t. It’s still plagued by instability, weird bugs, and big limitations whenever non-Steam games are involved.
You mean games that arent available in steam at all, vor those which you haven’t bought there? I found the easiest workaround for me was to simply add the games to my steam library and to launch it from there. Then I don’t have to worry about what proton version I should use or whatnot.
How’s the performance on Nvidia cards? Most benchmarks that I saw are people using AMD cards.
NVIDIA is a one-line command to install and setup the drivers.
For me? Most of my games run better on Linux. Such as CSGO, which is why I initially switched.
I generally prefer AMD, how are they for Linux?
Great! You don’t even need to install any drivers. It just works.
Also some distros like Pop!_OS just have it included and automatically update them
Which destro would you recommend? I’m kind of sick of Windows.
Fedora with “Dash to Panel” and the “Applications Menu” make the GUI identical to Windows. That would be a good start :)
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/
Or just use KDE instead of Gnome. It’s such a terrible DE anyway.
If you want a Couch Gaming Station I recommend you to look at ChimeraOS. Linux first that boots directly to Stream Big Picture (since it’s based on SteamOS) and it supports emulators and Epic Game Store.
On my old i5-8700T with qUHD630 it pretty much was a install, reboot, login to Steam and start playing. My Wireless Xbox Controller USB dongle was plug’n’play.
Nobara has, for me, been the most plug and play no headache distro I’ve touched, ever.
What brand of graphics card do you have? If it’s Nvidia Pop!_OS will likely work best. If you have an AMD card I’ve heard good things about EndeavorOS.
Also, feel free to shop around for a desktop environment (DE) you like, which controls the look and how things are organized. While distros have a default, it’s pretty easy to swap them. I personally use KDE Plasma (the same DE the Steam Deck uses) with Pop!_OS
Not worth the hassle but you do you. Keep fighting the good fight.
Keep fighting the good fight.
And it really is the good fight in this case. I’ve been running Linux on my gaming PC for around four years with very little trouble. Games from Epic and GOG run very well(for me at least) through Heroic Games Launcher. I’ve been using Windows for work on/off the last couple of years, but especially since they “upgraded” to Windows 11, it’s such a relief to come home to Linux.
Thanks for the tip but no
What does this have to do with the Epic store?
Sorry, I’ll wait some more. I tried two times getting back to Linux as I see the potential. It didn’t work. I’m gonna stick to windows until some problems will be fixed, or Microsoft further enshittifies itself.
I might actually buy a game of the app didn’t constantly sign me out.
I know, right! The “Remember Me” option does absolutely nothing ffs
Would you though
I was up for a Steam competitor. I signed up for the Epic store a few years back. Tried to get the first free game. It wasn’t available in my region despite being plastered all over the store in my region. The exact same thing happened the next month. Both of those games were available on Steam in my region at some pretty low prices by then.
Then, Epic started paying for exclusivity, making games not available in my region at all. I had at least deleted their stupid app by then anyway. Fuck Epic entirely.
I was up for a Steam competitor.
GOG Galaxy has been good even before Epic Store existed.
My only complaint about GOG is that developers treat it as an afterthought. Plenty of games that stop receiving updates, or are pulled out of the store entirely, while the Steam version remains maintained. Also, the required lack of DRM makes multiplayer online games relatively scarce.
GOG is great. I have an account and have bought a few games there when I think of it. I just wish they had Souls games.
Used to have similar problem with Steam back in the day.
Edit: I like how some people disagree that i experienced something by downvote. It’s not like i can change it or something 😅 👌
Maybe just uh…
Put your games on steam?
My launcher shows that I have 379 games from Epic. Not DLC, not demos. Full games.
I have never given Epic a single cent and I never will. (That is to say, until they offer me something that makes me want to use their platform). They have no killer features - AT ALL.
To make it worse, I have all these games, but I still rarely play them. Not that it’s a bad selection, but between steamdeck, gamepass and just a crazy backlog on Steam makes me rarely think of Epic store.
Well that’s at the crux of it, indeed. Steam has these killer features that enable and empower me as a gamer.
Then there’s Epic that still doesn’t have controller support.
Wait, what? No controller support?
LoL. Yeah I’ve got a ton and I’ve never actually launched a single one
I spent about $600 with epic. All of that was on fortnite skins. None of it on games.
The “killer feature” is that they pay more to the developers, so if you are getting the exact same game on (e.g.) Steam versus Epic Games, then whomever actually made the game gets more money from the Epic sale. Isn’t that a good thing?
(Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer, but either way, it’s still the case that less money is taken by intermediaries, which is a good thing.)
However because of their 40% ownership, you’re ALSO giving more money to Tencent.
Wait tencent has ownership of epic games?
Yes
Yikes. Good point.
That’s a reason for developers to use them, not for consumers to use them.
EPICs anti-customer practices (such as trying to make everything exclusive) are reasons for consumers not to use them.
There are tens of thousands of Steam-exclusive games: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Steam
What is the alternative to Steam?
And are those because Steam is trying to pressure them into being exclusive on Steam? Or did they just not bother releasing anywhere else?
If a developer just wants to release on Epic and nowhere else they can do that. My issue comes from Epic approaching games that have already announced a Steam release asking for exclusivity, and having no interest in hosting the game if they don’t accept the exclusivity offer.
There are almost 40,000 entries, I obviously cannot answer for all of them.
Still waiting for you to answer my question.
Well you sound like someone trying to have a good faith discussion and attempting to continue would be a good use of my time.
What is the alternative to Steam?
No, because epic has been engaging in anti consumer practices from the start. This is literally the only category epic has a leg up on steam, and if they didn’t need to bully their way into the marketplace, I have no reason to believe they’d treat creators any better than they currently do customers
edit: The revelation that they are running the store at a loss just furthers me not believing they are helping developers from the goodness of their heart, it shows they’re likely running the Walmart strategy of using their vast wealth to choke out their competition until there is none, and then once they have a monopoly, jack everything up, which’d probably include their cut of the pie
Except they only do that because its the only way to get publishers to use them over steam, and once they have a reliable customer base they will reneg on that generosity to gain profit.
We know this business strategy. It will not stay that way.
Quite likely, but until then…
Until then, what? You as the consumer have no incentive to use their worse service, and publishers clearly arent that enticed by it for how few exclusives the store gets?
Or until then, you want to reward a bait and switch that you know is a bait and switch to try and trick you into using a worse product?
Which option are you excited about here?
Their service is in no way worse: I buy games, and I get them.
I’m excited about the fact that someone provides an alternative to the monopoly that is Steam.
… The ability to purchase is not the only aspect of a stores service
It’s all I need: I buy a game, I download and play it. I don’t need anything else.
Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer
You think?
Yes, I do, or else I wouldn’t have mentioned it. I’d prefer the publisher gets money over a middleman store. Isn’t that preferable?
Its a phrase that signals something else, and not a literal content reply.
How about you write what you mean and have quality conversation in the future?
How about you write what you mean
I did. Its a standard phrase used by people in conversation. See defintion #2 below.
Below definition is from here …
you think
- A question one uses at the end of a sentence to express uncertainty. We’re not going to get into trouble—you think?
- A sarcastic rhetorical question used as a retort when someone states the obvious. A: “Wow, I bet that fire is really hot.” B: “You think?”
and have quality conversation in the future?
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, apparently. /shrug
Epic Games launcher/store is nothing more than Tencent spyware using “free games” as bait and masquerading as a Steam competitor.
Well. It’s required for downloading Unreal Engine for development. Not really sure about spyware.
Yeah I am not buying that spyware argument either.
Here’s some info about the spyware that they had in Epic Games that was allegedly “fixed”
You can sell access to your PC for the free games from Epic if you choose to. I choose not to install their garbage app, because I have plenty of other games and I don’t need their free bait.
Once trust is lost, it’s hard to get back.
That shit is 4 years old already and it is fixed no more outrage.
But you do you.
Is it actually not profitable or is this one of those tax writeoff bullshit things where it makes them money in some indirect way
Most likely actually non profitable. With crapton of Chinese cash, they can keep paying studios more of a cut than Steam, giveaway games, pay for exclusivity. Their goal right now isn’t to make money, but to take market share
I had epic game store before they started blasting free games for unreal tournament. That was a fun alpha and was excited to see what it was going to evolve into. Guess not now lol
Fortnite killed that and I’m still bitter about it
See it’s not all negative news on the internet.
And it’ll never be.
Seems to me that the most lucrative thing in gaming is still just making really good games.
Sure, there’s Steam, but that’s a fluke. The exception that proves the rule. Just get back to actual game making.
I mean, Steam is owned by Valve, and they make some pretty good games. Half-Life, Portal are some of the best series out there. I recently played HL Alyx and it was a banger.
Their latest game is garbage tho.
I wouldn’t say garbage, I’d say rushed. The gameplay is debatable, as it’s carbon copy of CS GO with sprinkles.
Call garbage as garbage. Rushed means no quality, means garbage.
So you say every game is either absolute garbage or a masterpiece? Life must be fun.
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