this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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If you're competing against steam, you need to make your experience as good or better than steam.
From what people tell me, because I don't have it myself, the epic game store is really rough around the edges not a fun experience.
I'm fine with a company making their own games exclusive to their own software platform.
I don't like it, but I accept it.
I absolutely hate a company inducing other companies to release only on their software platform. Seems like monopolistic practices rather than competing on services.
It wasn't even to release on their software platform, it was more explicitly a "non-Steam" release as games were available on PC via both Epic and Microsoft's Store.
It literally is? They're literally not competing on services, they're competing via artificial scarcity.
On one level I get this, but on another level...the companies themselves agreed to it. Like, everybody gets pissed at Epic for making the offer. Nobody gets pissed at the company that takes it. So weird. It's almost like your favorite game developer only exists to make money and they got offered more money than what they thought they'd make releasing on Steam.
Development companies, like 4A Games are what people are complaining about when they complain about "Developers." This is different from the programmers or individual game developers who work on the game as people. The words might be conflated, but the company is what's being complained about.
Also, it depends on the game. Metro Exodus was subject to what their publisher wanted to do. The developers behind Phoenix Point, however, received additional funding from Epic to finish their game in exchange for a year of exclusivity. It just depends. Regardless, it kinda just...doesn't matter, right? I mean, it's video games. There are people in the United States who can't afford insulin. A video game being exclusively published for a year via the EGS is, like...the least of our societal problems. And I meant that literally.
And they will share the Steam money with the workers?
That's not really what we were talking about, though. And, to get back on topic, Valve doesn't engage in profit sharing with its workers. You can like a company as much as you want. It's still a company and at its foundation it extracts surplus value from its workers. It exists purely to make money. Like any other company. Any positive sentiment towards it that is not purely an evaluation of the quality of its products and services is misguided and largely a product of public relations, rather than any genuine merit of the entity itself.
Oh, okay, so you mean the company that this guy is talking about where everything was structured like high school cliques?
Or maybe the one in which this transgender employee was referred to by their manager as "it"?
Or maybe you mean the company this former dev talks about where your work space is basically structured so that management can watch your every action at all times?
I mean, it's factually true that they offer the game makers and their associated publishers a much better split than what Valve does. Valve takes 30% off of all purchases. Epic takes 12. Some companies actually get 100% of all profits the first 6 months. You can't say Valve offers more. They might have a better storefront and more users, sure, but those aren't merits of the company itself. It's just merits of a monopoly.
And Valve has always tried to claim that it was "part of the community, rather than standing above it." Which is, of course, bullshit. They're not part of any community. They're a storefront. Their entire purpose is to make money off of other people's labor.
Come on, man, be better than "omg good guy Valve!" It's as shitty a company as any. Don't get suckered into thinking anything else.
You do understand when it says "developers" it's not talking about individual, human developers that sit at a computer and code levels, and instead means "game development companies," right? Also, it's not a "whataboutism" - it's a direct refutation of your argument. Your argument was specifically about Valve being a "good company." I provided evidence that it's not a good company. That's not a whataboutism. A whatabousim would be somebody criticizing Valve and someone else saying "well, what about Epic?!"
Right, but your statements are entirely in response to what you believe Epic's PR statements are saying. Earlier you stated:
This is what you said. You are assuming that Epic has made claims that it helps individual developers (people whose job is to develop games). I don't think this is accurate: I believe that the intent behind Epic's statements is that it aims to help "Game Development Companies."
Either way, it doesn't really matter. Epic, Valve, whomever: they're companies. Loyalty to them is pathetic.
I mean, they have done this. Back when they initiated their marketplace and created paid mods for Skyrim, they basically touted it as a way of allowing artists and content designers to be paid for their work. Valve took almost all the profit from these initiatives. Like, by far almost every single dime. You're just not aware of it because you don't want to be, or haven't been around long enough to see Valve show it's colors as the sleazy corporation it always was.
Okay, but...what about smaller studios that don't have established publishers? Epic Games does offer a developer portal and dev tools for studios to leverage, including self-publishing. It is entirely possible to both be developer AND publisher. Also, Tim Sweeney has said that Epic would gladly stop its exclusivity deals should Valve commit to matching their 88/12 profit splitting: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/epic-boss-says-exclusives-policy-will-change-if-st/1100-6466479/
Quote from Sweeney: "If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam" - note that they included in their verbiage both terms, which as you'll notice is not the same as just saying "developers." They do draw attention to the fact that publishers are among their most prominent business partners.
Look, I'm not saying you can't criticize Epic. Their launcher is terrible. But if you're going to criticize something, do it honestly and while at least moderately well informed.
They aren't whataboutisms because they're explicitly about the topic of discussion. They're evidence against your core argument because your core argument is about a particular conclusion you've drawn and the basis on which you've drawn that. As such, your usage of the term is incorrect.
Sure. I'll provide article links. Just like you did...oh wait.
https://www.gameskinny.com/news/pay-for-skyrim-mods-revenue-for-valve-and-creators-frustrates-pc-gamers/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/steam-skyrim-paid-mods/
Relevant part: "By paying for mods and supporting the people that made them, you enable those artists and creators to continue working on their mods and inspire new modders to try their hand in creating new, higher quality items and experiences." - Valve frames their initiative as providing a way for gamers (and it's implied, themselves) to help modders. Takes almost all the money. Classic Valve.
I think the crux of this is that you are reading their advertisement (which is what it is) as them saying "literally every single developer who works with us in any capacity will directly benefit from doing so." This is not what they are saying. They are advertising their platform, specifically towards smaller developers who are going to try and self-publish. They aren't saying they're going to benefit everyone equally. It's a business. If you have a large studio that is attached to a publisher, and that publisher goes with Epic, yeah, they probably aren't going to see any extra money from that. But they weren't going to see any money from that anyway, regardless if their game launches on EGS or Steam. But a smaller developer or indy development studio might benefit from developing their game with Epic's tools and might benefit from the greater split of revenue they get from the EGS. In that case, some developers might materially benefit from that. Others might not. But the point isn't that Epic promises to help each and every developer. They're framing themselves as a better platform for smaller, independent developers to launch on. That's the purpose of those statements. This is fairly obvious purely by way of understanding the context in which those statements are made. You haven't really argued that no one benefits in any way from contracting with Epic. You've only argued that there are some people who wouldn't. But these are not conceptually equivalent.
Okay, cool. You can think he's lying all you want. I would imagine that it makes your position a lot easier to maintain if you refuse to believe new information presented to you that directly undermines your argument.
No, I'm not. You can criticize it for a lot of things. Their launcher is really bad compared to Steam's. EGS has dogshit account security. The EGS fails to account for regional pricing, so it kinda sucks as a functional online store. The lack of community features also hinders user feedback to developers and the financial safety net their contracts create also kind of insulates developers from the need for bugfixes and feature updates, which means that the games on their platform are just generally shittier than they might otherwise be if released on something like Steam. These are all functional criticisms. As far as a business goes, they're not any worse or better than Valve. They're both just businesses and they both functionally operating in order to maximize profit. Your criticisms of Epic as a business are based almost entirely in a sentiment spoonfed to you by capital G Gamers on the internet. You hate Epic and love Valve. Not because of anything they've actually done that hurts you in a meaningful way. But because others hated it and you lack the mental or emotional capacity to actually think for yourself.
Just tragic.
Go outside. Touch some grass. Read a book. Talk to people with real problems.
I don't like epic like any other guy but point your finger at right people. Gearbox made borderlands 3 exclusive to epic.
Oh yeah they have bad actor vibes all over. The fact that they're pushing exclusive titles... That demonstrates that they're willing to make the gaming landscape worse for people to increase their own profits.
They can compete on revenue share, they don't have to compete on exclusivity. That's console level bullshit.
It still has no review system.
They still have no Linux version.
They still have many bugs in the store.
It... its a mess
Steam runs on Chromium too. I haven't used Epic so I can't compare the two, but it's one of the reasons that Steam can be clunky sometimes too.
I don't really get that sentiment. You buy a game -> You download the game -> You press the icon on the desktop/start menu/wherever -> you play the game.
What does it matter what store the game was bought on? The buying experience is a typical store experience on each platform. On my fiber connection the download speeds between epic and steam are both maxing out, and both synchronize saves across my PC and Ally. What else is there that makes one store so much better than the other, other than fanboyism and nostalgia?
Epic games made their store UI so bad that buying games on it initially was actually frustrating and difficult. It might be better now, but at the time you had no shopping cart and had to go through about 10 menus to purchase anything.
Steam lets me add many games to my cart, and then 2 pages later I'm installing them.
The weekly free games shopping cart is convenient. Never play them, but collecting them is super simple.
They have a cart like any other storefront. I'm not sure if this was something they had from day one, but at least it's not something new to the store at this point. But even if there weren't a cart, how realistic is the scenario for the typical user that they go and buy 10 games all at once? Sounds to me like some fictional scenario to heap unwarranted hate on the epic store.
I mean I get it if someone says "I don't really mind either way, but if I had to choose I'd rather buy on Steam because it's slightly more convenient". But the EGS gets so much hate everywhere and my question is what the problem is with the store that would warrant that much hate? I really don't understand where that much vitriol is coming from.
I don't remember the full scenario cause it's been a few years, maybe it was trying to get a free game, maybe it was trying to buy something. But it was an incredibly frustrating experience and I haven't opened epic launcher in a few years partly due to it, I know there wasn't a cart at the time though, which while maybe not the most inconvenient was really fucking weird.
Oh but there are many steps missing.
You start the launcher -> it forgot your device and password, so wait for the confirmation code via mail, enter your info again, then solve three capchas
Browse the store -> except there's no functioning tag search and the shop sucks, so you need to know exactly what to buy and how it's called to even find it
Chose a game -> but there's no tabs or secondary windows, so every time you inspect a shop page and try to get back your search gets reset; please enter all your search criteria again and scroll back to the point you've been before
Start the game -> but your own library is a hot mess; click through 13 pages of huge icons representing an alphabetical order until you find the picture representing what you want to play
And then you play.
As long as you don't notice Epic all is smooth sailing. Every step of actually using the launcher is a pain though. Sometimes I forget how annoying it all is and try again. Aaaaaand it forgot my device and password again. Then I curse at my PC and open steam.
Same thing with Ubisoft's launcher, such a trainwreck.
Seems like these are all corner cases, straw men, and not every day things. I actually sort of agree with the sentiment about “what does it matter”. But there is one big thing that you missed: stability and trust. If Epic decides to wrap it up one day, you’re done. Steam is less likely to do that since primary business model and profit generator.
Pick the platform with the best deals, and weigh in the stability/trust argument. For me that means using Epic for free weekly games, and Steam whenever they have sales. Almost never buy any other time unless a large group of friends are starting something. FOMO is real.
If an unreliable login, a bad storefront, tedious store pages, and a less than user-friendly library aren't enough to call a launcher worse than the competition, what even would qualify them as a bad product?
I mean sure, my PC doesn't crash nor goes up in flames when I open Epic, but that's about it.
I see, yeah that's the second argument against epic that I've read so far that I would call valid. I never thought about them just doing a google and closing doors.
Marginally worse UI/UX (could be improved a bit by now, I haven't used it for over a year)
Way harsher build in DRM
No proper offline mode. Its an opt-in feature you better have enabled while your connection worked and even then you have to reconnect every other day
No controller support. I start the Epic launcher over Steam so Epic games get the Steam controller support
No mod support
No forums and communities (I know a lot of people don't need these, but still a missing feature for others)
no community reviews, you better belive what the paid critics tell you
Marginally. It does not deserve all the hate.
Doesn't this just affect pirates? I don't really care as long as it doesn't mean that performance is sacrificed.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Steam also needs to phone home when you want to switch to offline mode?
What are you going on about here? Every single title I played from the EGS I could play with controller just fine (I don't do K+M so I play everything with controller and I never had a problem games just auto-recognizing both my bog standard xbox controller as well as whatever is build into the ROG Ally. Also the 8bitdo fighting stick works out of the box).
First real argument against EGS I've read so far. But doesn't mods just replace files in the file system anyway? What would you need a storefront support for?
Yeah, they aren't for me either, but I can see that there are people who would see this as something positive to have. But then again, isn't everything running in discord today anyway?
I trust those reviews a lot more than fickle gamers who review bomb games because some dev said something that goes against their beliefs.
LOL. DRM affects everyone, is a bad for consumers and only benefits shareholders.
How so? It never once affected me and I consider myself a consumer.
Search for Manhunt and Midnight Club DRM case, this is the most obvious problem with DRM.
You could also look for the stuff that happens with arcade games from SEGA and etc.
Steam offline mode doesn't need to phone home, you can use steam entire offline as long as you're not downloading any new games or updating
The only feature I miss in the Epic client is a way to make yourself appear as offline. Other than that, Steam has a bunch of social features that I couldn't care less about.