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.
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
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.
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)
Yeah and get in return like 10 players? Only who has no faith in their game sells it to the demon
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”?
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.
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.
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)
-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.
Wait a year for the exclusivity clause to expire and it to appear on other stores.
Do you also get this upset when a game only appears on Steam?
I specifically don’t get upset when a game is exclusively on Steam because of how much work Valve puts into Linux gaming, work that Epic directly and actively opposes.
Epic refuses to enable the Linux support for EAC on Fortnite despite being super easy, and specifically removed Linux support for Rocket League.
Isn’t this whole post just a part of a long running gag where people give shit to Epic for their exclusivity deals after they gave Apple so much shit for their walled garden in much the same way?
Two games I anticipated came out on Steam only, so I asked the developers if they planned to sell on alternative platforms and they did, but considering the game isn’t full done yet (they released it in Early Access) Initially I was annoyed, but after their response (they want to focus their effort on the game before adding the extra burden of managing multiple update channels) I understand why they did, on top of being a small team.
I decided to wait for one (came out on GOG on v1.0) and for the second one I decided to buy it on Steam right away since there’s still a lot of work left.
Gog does. The game manor lords is in early access on gog.
Oh no, we don’t complain about Steam exclusivity, monopolies are ok as long as they’re the monopolies that we want, ok? What happens when Valve turns to shit and we made sure there’s no viable alternative? That will never happen! Are you kidding?
When it turns to shit, we have the high seas.
Everything goes to shit eventually, but pre-emptively making yourself suffer is just silly. Enjoy the time you have, and vote with your wallet once they start doing anticompetitive crap like paid exclusivity deals. Until then, we might as well enjoy the fact that Valve isn’t a public company obligated to chase short term profits for shareholders.
“make yourself suffer”
I open Steam, switch to the library open my game and play
I open Epic, open my game from the main screen and play
So much suffering! Heck, I also sent more money to the devs through that suffering!
If you think taking a 30% cut to enrich a billionaire isn’t enshitifaction then I don’t know what to tell you buddy.
I don’t mind it, Steam is nice but I don’t want them to have a monopoly on PC games
Look at all those downvotes from people who took offense to this comment, and WANT Steam to have a monopoly.
Yes, corporations bad. But don’t forget: Steam is a corporation, too.
yeah but the thing is, Steam isn’t even trying to be a monopoly, all of Steam’s competitors just seem to have a hobby of shooting their own foot, repeatedly. Steam is trying to make the gaming experience easier and more fun, and excelling at it!
unlike some other platforms, Steam doesn’t do exclusive deals, literally the only Steam exclusives are Valve’s own games, everything else is up to be decided by devs
They’re in a class action lawsuit now over price fixing. They’re kicking games off Steam if their publishers offer games at lower prices on cheaper stores. They’re trying to be a monopoly.
Steam itself seemingly isn’t trying to have a monopoly.
But damned if there isn’t a massive, very-loud Internet contingent that desperately wants them to have that monopoly.
If your immediate trigger reaction is seething anger when someone says, “I got a good deal on a game from Epic”… maybe that’s not healthy. The “Lord Gaben” meme isn’t meant to be taken 100% literally.
funny you never hear about games being ONLY on steam. it has nice features but riding so hard for a gigantic monopoly is going to bite our asses real bad when gaben retires. nothing lasts forever, and we don’t know who or what will replace the current structure at valve.
not to mention valve has had its share of anti consumer and predatory practices. most of the concessions have been in response to legal threats.
going to bite our asses real bad when gaben retires.
Blizzard was a good company when they released StarCraft, so I purchased StarCraft. Blizzard is a shit company now so I do not purchase or play their games now.
If Steam becomes a shit company in the future I’ll stop using it. I don’t understand the argument of "you should purchase for a shitty company now instead of a good one, because if you purchase from the good one it might one day become a shitty one.
except you didn’t buy all your games from blizzard. we’re talking about having your entire library depend on one company.
But steam isn’t trying to be monopoly. They don’t pay developers to only sell on their platform. Games that are only on steam are only on steam because steam is the only place that developer wants to sell the game.
Otherwise why would anyone use software they aren’t used to? Steam is really good, they’ve been putting massive resources into making it better for many years, and it has all the network effects.
So we’re using a bad mechanism (exclusivity deals) to make people use an inferior product (Epic vs Steam), but “It’s totally going to be better for you in the future bro, trust me!”.
I’m sorry, but can we make it sound any more like a scam? It’s not quite there yet. Can you add something with crypto or AI or an MLM?
Epic has a lot of money, they should find a way to offer a better service in some ways like Gog does.
Federated marketplace protocol really should happen at some point.
Like, it seems like a very clear solution to an online monopoly risk. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
Surely we’ve learned by now that decentralization and markets don’t mix well
I’m not following.
Markets were originally decentralized, and while that has its problems, a decentralized market is miles better than a monopolized market.
Like, are you thinking of Etsy or Amazon or something? Because those are all run by a single point-of-sales and logistics collectives.
What we’re talking about is basically building a means for getting all the websites around the web of small shops and such (or in this case all the various game store fronts like steam, itch.io, GOG, and EPIC GAMES) and giving you client which allows you to browse and order from them simultaneously. All that store’d have to do is add the protocol to their server and add themselves to a list.
Each server would likely have to utilize a payment service. In that fashion it’d be no different than how stores host their own websites you can order from. In my mind, the federated protocol would simply be a means for a person to browse stores similar to how one can navigate a mall or market.
For games, the further benefit after would be that via a client of the protocol, you could then download your games from the various stores in a singular library page.
GoG has been a competitor for as long as I can remember. It’s not exactly a fair comparison because they mostly carry older games. But you can buy a ton of games off GoG. Itch.io exists, however it’s a bit niche. Origin, humble bundle, Microsoft store. You can use all of these and get the majority of the games steam offers. Why don’t people? Because steam is just better. Steam has competition. It has a ton. People don’t feel that way cause EVERYONE who games on PC buys from steam. But it’s not because steam has a monopoly, it’s because steam offers more than their competitors, and does it better.
I don’t like monopolies. I agree with you. However, a monopoly existing because they are snuffing out the competition and forcing it to be the only option for consumers is different than a monopoly that exists because consumers choose it over and over again because of their pro consumer policies.
Now because this makes it seem like I’m saying “steam is the best”, there’s a good bit of stuff steam has done that I don’t like. But they understand what the gaming scene is and not just see the consumers as cash cows.
Why don’t people? Because steam is just better
I am skeptical that this is the main reason (even though it’s true and is a reason). I think people don’t like the idea of having their games library split across multiple services, and don’t like using/learning software they aren’t familiar with, or that other people aren’t using.
That’s a possibility. You could also make a point that it’s cultural at this point to use steam if you PC game. The exact reason steam is used is split across many different points. However, I stand by my statement. If games like league, valorant, osrs, or anything from blizzard can exist strongly in the pc scene, I think it heavily refutes your points. For those people at least. These are all games that don’t use (or for some are mainly used by) the steam client.
Gog does now have a launcher, but you can still download the offline installer files for games.
Steam, Epic, GOG, it’s all the same to me. I’m not gonna fanboy over one platform and miss out on a game. That’s just ridiculous.
I get it being annoying… But why is it such a deal breaker? If the game is good, why not just install it, play the game, leave it when you’re done?
The other storefronts have some cool features (namely gamepass for xbox and all of steamworks and the app stuff for steam), but it doesn’t really matter if the game doesn’t use em.
Speaking for myself, if it’s Epic only, it means I have no assurances as a customer that they’re going to keep letting me play the game on Linux. If I bought Alan Wake II, I’m doing so knowing that they don’t support my operating system and could break compatibility with Wine with any random update. If that happens on Steam, I can reasonably expect a refund if it was previously Verified, and because of the verification system, they also have an incentive not to break compatibility. So if I play Alan Wake II some day, it’ll be because it was a free giveaway on Epic, because I’m not paying for that.
Yeah, that’s true on Steam as well.
There are a whole bunch of games that actively removed compatibility with SteamOS, and Linux by extension. Apex Legends was the most recent and the most vocal about it.
That was on the developers, not the storefront, though. Epic has specifically decided they don’t give a flying fuck about Linux.
Now this is a good reason.
And random note, but I didn’t get a notification for this reply?
I just save my money and play something else or buy something else. There’s more games than can be played that I’ve never felt like I was losing out by not buying a game from epic.
Right but I dont see how its anything but a minor annoyance.
Like, if the game is really good… What is so bad about installing the epic client?
Some perspective from someone vocally against Epic:
They entered the market and tried to get their foot in the door not by providing a better service or experience to the consumers, but by being underhanded and anticompetitive while accusing their competition of being underhanded and anticompetitive. Add on that with the fact that their CEO lacks any sort of humility and integrity, and I simply do not trust them to give a single shit about me as a customer. If they achieved their goals, I’m confident that they would leverage their position to extract value out of me immediately—be it through ads, increased prices, or selling my data to third parties. I don’t want to support that by giving them any of money.
While I don’t think Valve is my friend either, they at least:
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Have a history of doing things that provide some benefit to their users, even if its clearly out of self-interest.
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Aren’t publicly traded.
