Submitted 10 hours ago by Azrael@lemmy.ca to games@lemmy.world
I get that Steam is where everything and everyone is at. And that the user experience and functionality is best there BUT having another player to try an compete with Steam is a good thing, right?
If anyone can try, it’s the Fortnite Bank.
So, why the hate?
People are going to list all the features Steam has over Epic, ignoring that Steam has had ~22 years to get to where it is. The original Steam experience was garbage, and lots of us older gamers knew what would happen and hated that Steam would be the primary catalyst to killing off physical media for PC games back in the mid-2000s, especially as broadband internet access was becoming far more accessible.
Don’t get me wrong, Valve has done alright so far in terms of game ownership, but once Gabe dies/retires, it’s only a matter of time before some greedy fucks force Valve to go public and the pure enshittification process begins.
Having healthy competition is a good thing and I’ve wished for a competitor to Steam for a long time until one day the monkey’s paw curled and we got Epic Game Store. To sum it up:
But the main point is the first one. If they bothered making a good store they wouldn’t need to make most of PC gamers angry by introducing exclusivity deals, but they can’t be bothered to do that, so they go for hostile competition instead at the detriment of the customers.
When they buy publishers, they had them actively remove Linux support, such as Rocket League
Also chinese conglomerate tencent owns a large stake in epic.
Here are some reasons:
exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.
The launcher is spyware
resetera.com/…/developing-epic-games-launcher-app…
forums.unrealengine.com/t/…/123592
and epic is owned by tencent 40%
They not really trying to improve their launcher but instead focus on hurting steam and by extension the users.
Its like some shady guy trying to lure kids to a van by offering free candy.
The launcher is security risk for your system reddit.com/…/epic_games_launcher_had_a_serious_se…
>thlm 5mo ago Epic Games Launcher Incorrect Default Permissions Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability CVSS SCORE 7.8 This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Epic Games Launcher. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the product installer. The product applies incorrect default permissions to a sensitive folder. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of SYSTEM. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 2024-07-16 - Vulnerability reported to vendor 2024-12-04 - Coordinated public release of advisory 2024-12-06 - Advisory Updated That timeline is disgusting
So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because “yay free games I’m never going to look at again”.
If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.
I don’t hate times exclusives that much because that’s done extra cashflow for the dev to be able to either finish their game or polish it further. I still don’t think we’d have gotten Alan Wake 2 at least the version we got without that epic deal. I also don’t know if square would’ve bothered even entertaining the idea of porting all of the kingdoms hearts games either.
reddit.com/r/fuckepic/
There’s A LOT to talk so you better check there. If you don’t want to check, wait till your account get hacked and try ask support to get it back! You can give all the info you want but 99% of the times they just say “fuck you” and you lost everything
It is a good thing to have competition. The hate is because they are doing things people don’t generally like. Exclusivity deals for one thing. Epic can’t really compete with steam because they are too far behind on features, so they resort to exclusivity deals which aren’t really good for any consumer. One could argue it is the fault of publishers taking them, but that is just looking at it from a purely business perspective. As a consumer, I don’t really care about the business side… I don’t profit from it.
I do both PC and console gaming, and I’ve personally never gotten the Epic hate. As a store it’s not amazing but it’s fine. I will generally go to Steam first but I’m also not going to boycott a game just because it’s Epic exclusive.
Tim Sweeney is an obnoxious hypocritical dickhead who has only gotten worse and stupider and more hostile over the years, he is constantly spouting anti-consumer and anti-common-sense nonsense while acting like he’s saving gamers and nurturing his egotistical martyr complex. He has gotten so bad that he has contradicted his own past self so many times that for awhile there was a literal subreddit “TimCriticizesTim” devoted to it. Also EGS itself is garbage resource-guzzling software that almost nobody actually wants on their computer, most of the people who do use it do it either because they’re forced to so they can play games exclusively available on it, or because Epic bribes them to by giving them free games constantly. It is nasty software that collects way more data than it needs to, spying on your files and possibly other stuff too, and they also lied about it (and as far as I know still do).
Tim Sweeney traveled to Saudi Arabia with Donald Trump’s entourage this past week.
I rather gladly take my free games from them.
Your question makes it sound like Epic is a smell new player at the market and they are trying their best and both is not true.
Epic is actively working on enshittification, Steam, at least for now, isn’t. For me it’s easy as that.
Exactly. The app has been shitty for almost a decade now. How much slack are we supposed to cut to a multibillion dollar company?
As a customer, why would I ever shop at Epic if the game is also available on Steam and typically has more features? Epic doesn’t solve any problems for me and actively introduces others, like a lack of Linux support. Do I want to play Alan Wake II? Of course I do. Am I going to buy it when they could push an update tomorrow that breaks compatibility with my operating system and offers me no recourse as a customer since it was unsupported in the first place? No, I’m not.
There are things worth solving that Steam does poorly (if they also support Linux customers). Finding out if my multiplayer game will be playable without external servers is a nightmare; DRM sucks, and I want none of it; Steam’s multiplayer/friends network has more downtime than is acceptable; Steam Input should be a platform agnostic library; etc. Instead of solving those problems, they made the store enticing for suppliers (publishers) but not customers. If I’m shopping someplace other than Steam, it’s GOG and not Epic.
Does steam really have frequent multiplayer downtime issues? I’ve never notice any issues, but I don’t play a lot of multiplayer anymore.
It’s a lot of cutting out for about a minute, but that’s just enough to interrupt a fighting game match. If it was once per week at a predictable time, that might be okay, but it’s been happening more and more lately when it used to only be on Tuesdays.
Generally is extra competition not a good thing for customers?
Generally, yes. But Epic is not competitive in any way.
Unless it’s infrastructure or something with a natural monopoly.
The main competition with steam is buying physical copies of things. If we want to support retailers selling physical copies of games and bricks and mortar shops, that’s a good thing.
Alas, I think the games industry is chosing to abandon them. And Steam has the ability to add games purchased outside of Steam to it for convenience. Unlike Epic it puts the user close to the top of priorities.
Absolutely, competition is allways good for the consumer, even in this case.
Since EGS offers a worse experience, I will use Steam instead.
Blackmailing customers onto your service isn’t competition.
People are overly loyal to Steam and don’t realise the huge market share they have. It’s not technically a monopoly but everyone else is fighting over the 20% that Steam doesn’t have so who can blame Epic for throwing money at the problem.
As others said, EGS is just a fucking cancer, not a competition. A good competition to Steam is actually Microsoft App Store. It’s a very streamlined mobile-like experience.
Eww
My dislike of epic is that they seem to be buying their way into competing, instead of actually competing on features.
Free games sounds good now, but what happens when the fortnite gravy train runs out, and epic needs to start making a profit? They’ll likely have to enshittify fast.
Steam at least has a solid history of being generally good. But who knows what will happen if Gaben ever ascends.
Yeah, if they stopped spending money on exclusivity, they could invest in store features.
So you don’t like them because they could potentially be bad in the future?
That’s an argument to come up with in the first please, phew.
No, EGS is plenty shitty now; what they’re saying is that EGS’s one singular saving grace - the free games they give away - likely won’t last for the reason they outlined.
Whichever gaming store I buy into, I am going to spend thousands on games. I need to be able to trust that they’ll still exist in the future.
I trust (whether correctly or not) gaben more than sweeney.
Of course, the smart thing to do is buy from GOG and keep the games backed up yourself, but failing that, steam is the next most reliable store front.
This all boils down to a personal opinion though.
ITT: Epic is awful, Steam is great!
Me: Is GOG a joke to you people???
Kinda, unfortunately.
It was great when it had its niche, and I still buy games there occasionally, but it has poorer integration with pretty much anything, Galaxy is bloated as hell, and it has explicitly no linux/deck support.
Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.
They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you’re playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.
Chat is… better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It’s actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.
One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I’m not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I’ve heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren’t afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.
We don’t own our games anymore, so I need to know my library’s going to stick around if I’m going to invest in it. Last I heard, EGS hasn’t made a profit, so that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me that it’ll still be around in five years.
I think competition is the answer to a lot of problems consumers face, but unfortunately the “are you going to be there tomorrow?” problem is going to be a major disadvantage for any storefront that competes with Steam. It’s why my most preferred shop is GOG, because I still have all my games with them if they close up.
Here’s another win for Steam:
Subnautica has a multiplayer mod, but it only works with an older version of the game. Steam lets you downgrade the version, Epic games does not.
I bought a couple games on epic when they were cheaper. I don’t think I’d do so again.
There’s probably other stuff I’m not thinking of. It’s just not as good a service.
Honestly, haters gonna hate.
I don’t care about features, I care about a good price. If the game is cheaper on Epic, I buy it there.
People should like Epic for giving more money to developers than Steam.
Except that’s also a lie. Steam does keep a higher percentage of the sales price for itself than Epic does, but it also allows people to activate game keys without taking any money. Steam only makes money from games sold on Steam itself. So developers can sell games through other stores and even through their own website, and keep up to 100% of the sales price. Effectively, this means that Steam takes roughly the same amount of money that Epic does, or in some cases even less probably.
They don’t get a cut from keys, yes, but the magnitude of all this is an assumption for which I haven’t seen a credible source yet.
Without putting these amounts in perspective, “that’s a lie” is quite a bold statement.
100%.
Gamers act like Gabe Newell is a god, when he’s just a billionaire that charged them more than he needed to, like all the others.
Newell is a billionaire like all the rest at 3.5B, but Sweeney is our savior fighting the good fight at 4.5B. Okay /s.
Console gamer here as well, though with a PC and redeeming my weekly Epic Games since a few years back.
Most of what I hear I believe it’s mostly due to the Epic Launcher being quite a bit behind standard, and the store not having great costumer service policies. I think Epic’s games with timed exclusivity don’t garner a lot of respect from the gaming community either, as they rather have freedom of choice to purchase their games on their main storefront.
Now, I think it’ll be obvious, but all of what I mentioned is further impacted by the comparison between Epic (or most other launchers, really) and Steam. Steam might as well be called the “default launcher” at this point, and naturally not everyone can compete (or they don’t want to) with the numerous and consistently good business decisions Steam tends to have, which keeps it in the top.
Not only that, and even though I still benefit from it, I’d say Epic’s strategy of offering weekly free games might feel like a sort of ‘obvious bribe’ to some, a cheap way to try and vainly make gamers turn on their main competitor. Which isn’t really moving the needle that much, because gamers preference for Steam isn’t due to free games, but good and consumer-oriented business practices.
I’m sure from gamer to gamer there’s more depth to this, but I’d say that’s the gist of it.
I’m just there for the free games
commander@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
It’s been I think about 7 years and it’s not feature competitive for end users with 2011 Steam even though they definitely make more money than 2004-2011 Valve and by 2018 had 14 years of history to look at and feature target based off what competition offered
The CEO was regularly on Twitter complaining about Windows but refused to help grow Linux adoption. Valve has been doing that since like 2012. He constantly talks about standing with small developers but then in the Apple court case admits they would have been quiet if Apple gave them a special revenue split deal. He complains about Steam and mobile store cuts but doesn’t complain about consoles having the same.
Exclusive deals in lieu of providing a better experience for the end user. Talked up so much about being superior because they’re developer focused; didn’t have self publishing tools until the end of 2023 - 5 years after EGS launched. It’s been 7 years. They haven’t made PC gaming any better. They made it worse for a time when they were throwing cash at exclusives rather than store platform feature development
Recent example of how bad they are with pushing minimal viable products. EGS mobile store was launched the beginning of this year with no library view. You just scroll up and down, side to side looking for games you own mixed among games you don’t own. Their concept of minimal viable product is insanely mediocre for how vocal the CEO is and how much money they make and their turnaround time on improving these stores is awful.
There are numerous Android storefronts that don’t have Unreal Engine and Fortnite money keeping the companies funded and somehow Epic comes out the gate mediocre again where it’s marketing is free games but it’s mobile games so what’s available is way less headline worthy. They learned nothing from 2018 about the difference between what they consider a minimal viable product and what the market would consider a market competitive minimal viable product
Years ago Epic put out a kanban board to display a public feature development tracker to assure people they were working on improving the store. They abandoned that quick and I’m pretty sure what few they had on that, most still haven’t been implemented
Their support for handheld is at the level of GOG which barely markets itself and is pretty low revenue as it rarely gets any games that aren’t years old. Whether Windows or Linux, Epic for all their billions haven’t created a gamepad/TV centric interface
The CEO is a regular blowhard virtue signalling about liberty/freedom on Twitter but can’t be bothered to try and pioneer anything for users as a storefront. Since 2018 EGS has been so stagnant while Valve has been expanding Steam as a platform, that EGS is less relevant to me today than when they were throwing out major free games every month. I have no faith in the platform to integrate WINE/Proton, put together a TV/gamepad interface, do something like Steam curators, comparable user review system, crowd sourced game tags - a lot of useless stuff makes it in those but I find them regularly useful at a glance as it’s usually pretty obvious which are probably jokes and which are probably legit