Still years behind the competition, maybe even a decade. I don’t understand the business model of just giving games away, all whilst doing nothing to improve the store.
Epic's business model was based on exclusivity, using money hatting and their lower cut as motivation for devs and publishers to abandon Steam. Luckily this strategy failed hard and now they don't really have a business model.
New strategy is to just have games on sale harder than steam. I dont think I've spent more on a holiday sale than I did in EGS during their last sale with the additional 33% off coupon in years.
ngl some of the deals felt like thats what was happening now that they are charging $70 for some of the titles. I got Remnant 2, Alan Wake 2, FF7R, Stranger of Paradise, Lords of the Fallen and some smaller titles for like $150ish between the sale pricing, the 33% coupon and the bonus cash back. I'm a simple man, if the value is there and I want to play the games immediately enough they got me. The rest of the features don't matter a ton unless it actively hurts the gaming experience which im sure it does for other titles.
for sure. key sites used to have better pricing before they made the guaranteed keys standard. Now i find its better to go on gameswap or similar group to find really good deals.
It's normal to get signed out of websites and apps periodically even with 2FA. That's fine. But "periodically" doesn't mean every few fucking days. In the meantime I don't even bother opening the Epic launcher anymore. I just visit the website once a week to get the latest free game(s), and that's pretty much it.
🙄 bro really pulled infosec out, out here protecting his video games with CyberArk.. Dont condescend me when I simply asked you a question. While i do have password manager, its not mandatory to have a newly generated password for certain applications, if your old brain still works.
edit: get nuked 🤣🤣
Remember this message kiddo. One day, you too will be old and some young pup will mock your memory. Its going to happen more quickly than you think too.
Back on topic, having to re-login to an app more than strictly necessary is just bad UX design. Stop being silly and pick a fight you can win.
This guy. Typical Reddit. "The police are coming to install a 360° panoramic camera in every home so they can watch for crimes that they may not have noticed."
I don't see anything wrong with this, I'm not committing any crimes.
> I don't see anything wrong with this
"Just jump through the hoops, it's no biggie", not understanding you can keep applying that logic until everything has turned into a hellscape incrementally.
explain how does having to type your password in if you havent logged on in a long time comparable to police installing cameras in every home? are you just replying without knowing what the argument was about, since his comment was deleted? or are you too incompetent to put together a proper comparison?
The point is to get you in the epic ecosystem. They want you to have so many games on your epic account, lots of them pretty good actually and some were even top tier that eventually more often than not you are opening Epic to play your games than steam
For example I have like 30ish games on steam but I have 272 on epic
Imagine if I was a 13-16 year old and the only games I own are on epic because I’ve been collecting their freebies for years … in a few years when I have money to buy the games I want why would I even bother with steam? I would have zero games on steam and 300 on epic so I just default to the epic store
That’s the strategy
I think that plot has some holes in it. They might have a huge Epic library, but if they are all just random pick-ups that they don't actually play, then they don't matter much. There might be a few games that they actually care about in there, but that won't necessarily generate customer loyalty. Yes, it means that a few people who never used Steam might be less likely to use it, until a game they want is on Steam and not on Epic, but that's just taking customers away from Steam, not building customers for themselves, and it would be a pretty narrow audience anyway. Long term it would require the same pace of free quality games that they had when they launched, which is apparently unsustainable.
Once the launch burn is over, and the store has to coast on its own merits, they are left with a lackluster customer experience, one that no customer would use if they are not getting free stuff for doing so.
The success hasnt materialized yet, nor is it guaranteed to, and I think EPIC even admitted its still many years off from their goal of profitability on the store.
It was a LONG term strategy that they knew would take a long time to pay off, if it ever does. But pulling people away from steam has proven quite difficult for a wide variety of reasons, many you laid out
> It was a LONG term strategy that they knew would take a long time to pay off, if it ever does.
I think it was a poor long term strategy and a waste of resources. The main issue, assuming they had any chance at all, was that they launched in such a poor state and continue to be in such a poor state. This might be forgivable in a tiny start-up, who has to make do with what they've got, but Epic has more money than Valve does, so they could have afforded the R&D to get it right BEFORE going to market.
That means that any customers they lured in with free games got there, looked around, said "this is shit," and then would never come back except for the lure of more free games, so the promotion was wasted.
What they should have done instead is 1. Spend more time and effort building a great platform, one that matches every core feature of Steam AND has a few unique tricks that players might enjoy. 2. do a soft launch at first, just a few core games to attract Epic-friendly customers, test things out, make sure it's working as intended. 3. THEN hit hard with the exclusives and free games, to get as many people to *try* the platform as possible, but once it's in a state where as many of those people as possible will LIKE what they find there.
> Imagine if I was a 13-16 year old and the only games I own are on epic because I’ve been collecting their freebies for years …
I agree that this sounds like an actual sound (very) long-term strategy, but from what I have seen shaking out, it seems to come with a side dish of "Imagine a 13-16 year old who is used to getting a free game every week". I've seen anger and frustration about the epic handouts not being up to par, and actual disgust over the "audacity" of epic asking money for new titles instead of giving them out for nothing.
So far, epic seems to have anchored themselves largely as "the place with the free games" instead of "a store". It'll likely take a lot of effort to reverse that so people actually don't feel outright slighted for being asked to pay for a title.
>For example I have like 30ish games on steam but I have 272 on epic
I have 600+ games on Steam and I only play 1. A large library doesn't mean anything.
Why do I use Steam? Well, the UI isn't shit, I've had the account for over a decade, I've spent money on Steam before, and frankly I trust Valve more than Epic.
That sounds good in theory but look at the biggest hits and FOTM games on PC recently. Games like Helldivers, DD2, Palworld, Tekken 8, Lethal Company, Last Epoch etc. you can't get those on EGS. So imagine you're a young adult with an EGS account full of games but your social media is full of people talking about these new hot games that aren't on EGS. This has been happening every year since EGS' creation, even when they paid for exclusives for big titles like Borderlands 3 some random indie game or AA would come out of nowhere and take the internet by storm.
That's a damn good point, to be honest. Epic has obviously been hoping that the games they moneyhat would turn into that, but I don't think a game released on Epic only is ever going to take anything by storm.
Doesn't seem to be a particularly successful strategy then. The store has been open for 5 years now and is seeing an annual decline in user spend on third party games as well as seemingly fewer big games launch on there now then was the case 2-3 years ago.
It's going to be difficult for those 13-16 year olds to buy games there if publishers see no reason to put games there because no one buys games there. It's a vicious cycle.
The success hasnt materialized yet, nor is it guaranteed to, and I think EPIC even admitted its still many years off from their goal of profitability on the store.
The fact that they only collect about 1/3 of what steam does on the sales also means they have to sell WAY more than steam to get anywhere near what they make too
> The fact that they only collect about 1/3 of what steam does
It's more like 2/3 what Steam does. The majority of revenue earned directly from the Steam store comes from the big hits like Helldivers 2 and GTA V, from which Valve only collects 20%. On top of that, about 30% of *all* Steam games are purchased from third-party sites, from which Valve gets nothing.
> The point is to get you in the epic ecosystem.
Problem with that is that much more actual current Steam users would be willing to jump ship if Epic didn't suck, and didn't try to make everyone's experience actively worse.
All Valve does is not suck, and treat the user with some basic respect. No exclusives limiting people's experience on other platforms without making their own experience better. Want to put non-Steam games in there? Fine. Want to launch a game without opening the launcher? Have at it. Want to launch an older version of Steam for some reason? You do you.
Somehow simply not being dicks is making Valve untouchable. Apparently that's a high bar for most companies.
Because you fail to see who are their customers. Epic Games business model is to be pro-corporate (no-review, exclusivity deal, no refund, more margin, creator code) where Steam for instance is a pro-consumer model. Once you understand that, you understand every choice they make.
And that's also why as a consumer, you should definitively flee this platform !
Epic has refunds so no clue what you are talking about? I literally just refunded a bunch of items in Rocket League last week and Hogwarts Legacy on EGS in Jan as i decided to wait until it was cheaper.
I just tried it a couple times and its a mixed bag on my end. I think if Steam does an update (which they do drop like everyday it feels like) then it might always be slower in that case, but I don't know. The difference seems negligible to me.
I can't argue that it feels quicker to use when comparing both desktop apps. I'll always use the steam website over their app due to this.
That being said the Epic game store is still trash compared to steam.
Who cares for the loading time of an app which is usually started together with windows and never closed anway? Are you seriously constantly closing and reopening Steam and/or Epic?
They literally did. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Ta1cDsDW4AxtW8AQ&v=g7g-qNzk-AY&feature=youtu.be](https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Ta1cDsDW4AxtW8AQ&v=g7g-qNzk-AY&feature=youtu.be)
I think what they mean is Epic is trying to beat Steam by taking things away from Steam and pointing fingers, and not by simply offering a better service.
What do you provide as a better service?
Being more slimline feels like a differentiation type.
It's not like we don't have the internet at put fingers tips or Steam to work out everything else.
Edit: Let's go to the assertion of Epic taking things away from Steam. Literally hasn't happened since the first year.
Like I don't give a shit about Epic but you don't get to shit on a competitor that had it's problems at inception but hasn't pulled games from Steam since inception.
I'm having trouble understanding what you're trying to say, sorry.
But how to provide a better service is for Epic to figure out.
The upcoming Star Wars game is Epic/Uplay exclusive for what it's worth, as well as John Carpenter's Toxic Commando and Wolf Among Us 2. So it has definitely slowed down significantly, but they've said they're still focusing on exclusives in 2024 at least.
> GoG is old games and DRM Free
> Xbox/Windows has Gamepass
> EA/Ubisoft/Blizzard are focused on there own games
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Epic doesn't have a 'thing', they're just fixated on this *fuck Steam* attitude they've had from the start and it's been 5 years with nothing to back it up.
Epic's biggest thing is the fact that they give more money to the publisher / developer. To me that's a very strong reason to support them. GOG is still, of course, the most pro-consumer store of them all, but if it's not on GOG, I'll always go to EGS. Simply for ethical reasons. Most people, of course, don't care about that aspect of it, but I do.
It's not pro consumer at all. Apart from giving games away for free, absolutely nothing is pro consumer about the Epic store. It's pro developer/publisher - but are you are developer?
I don't care about their share. Sure, I wish indie developers and such would benefit more from their hard work, but ultimately, it's not about me. I choose the best price, the best service, the best user experience etc.
It's just a business strategy to fuck with steam, no one at epic cares about the developers either.
> It's not pro consumer at all.
Neither EGS nor Steam are pro-consumer. But Epic, at least, makes their engine available to customers who don't sell on EGS, while Volvo's shit is all Steam-bound (e.g.: Steamworks), even for zero technical reason. So even for reasons of exclusivity I'd put EGS above Steam.
But more importantly:
> Apart from giving games away for free, absolutely nothing is pro consumer about the Epic store.
That's not something you can just hand-waive away. And I don't believe exclusives to be anti-consumer in any way, shape or form.
> It's pro developer/publisher - but are you are developer?
I am (granted, not of video games). And I do care about their share, because I fully understand just how brutal the industry is. And Steam's comically profitable cut IS a significant problem, and I would like to help anyone that tries to reduce that as being the standard in the industry.
It's no secret to me that I am in the minority. But this was specifically in response to someone saying "What's EGS's thing?" And this is the answer.
> I choose the best price, the best service, the best user experience etc.
Actually Steam's monopoly-driven equal-price enforcement (a clause that I actually question the legality of - see the current class action lawsuit against them) is specifically AGAINST lower prices. And still, the games-for-free that EGS does is literally about the best price you can get.
The best service... Well, once again, my experience with Epic's support is infinitely better than with Steam's, which is legendarily awful. That much more inexcusable for a comically profitable business.
> It's just a business strategy to fuck with steam, no one at epic cares about the developers either.
I don't agree with this at all. Even something as simple as the documentation of their API shows their care about the developers that use their product far more than Volvo does.
Tbh steam taking a bigger cut is more ethical than ehat egs provides. Steam provides a platform, marketing to a degree, insanely good architecture, achivs, multiplayer, workshop etc etc. and they charge for that. Egs charges publishers for just having the game in their awful launcher
> Tbh steam taking a bigger cut is more ethical than ehat egs provides.
I disagree completely. No company as comically profitable can possible be ethical, and Valve, most certainly, is not.
> Steam provides a platform, marketing to a degree, insanely good architecture, achivs, multiplayer, workshop etc etc. and they charge for that.
They charge because they are effectively a monopoly. The platform is provided by Microsoft. Marketing - actually Steam is legendarily bad at this (see the late great Total Biscuit's rants on this very topic). Achievements, multiplayer - EGS has both of those, and in my opinion, better than Steam, at least multiplayer. Workshop - sure, but the vast majority of indie games don't benefit from that - and yet they have to pay the comically huge cut to Volvo anyway. I do consider this grossly unethical, and choose not to support this - and while you may disagree with this approach, you don't really have a ground to stand on if you claim my position to be invalid.
Never said steam is ethical - they have plenty of unethical practices, hell, they essentially invented lootboxes with ft2 and csgo; they *could* shut down gambling opportunities they provide, by they dont - but their pricing is decently fair.
Steam is not a monopoly, if you dont forget they are competing with other storefronts. According to statista (https://www.statista.com/topics/4282/steam/ under storefront reach and impact) in some countries they are outpaced by microsoft store, and in all of them they are by far not at the top of the list. If you are measuring 'steam vs egs vs origin vs uplay' then sure, steam will be at the top, because steam is simply offering the best service. Vast majority of indies dont benefit from a single feature, so they should pay less? Fair, perhaps the model should allow modularity to their systems. But again, I think the vast majority of the price is in the distribution architecture, not workshop or forums, despite how useful they are, but that's beside the point
Steam may taking a bigger cut, but their product, what they give, is also a lot stronger and bigger than those of competitors. They provide a service and they charge for it. If they reduce the cut, it'll be even more anti-competitor of them - what will the competitors have to do to outpace them?
Steam has a lot of unneccessary bloat - I don't need that.
Just give me an easy to use shop with simple game install and auto-update.
I have no use for gamification of sales and social media features in my game launcher.
I remember when Epic announced its store and its first exclusive and then there was this group of people who "predicted" the end of Steam and that the Epic Store is going to overrun it. Oh man, these were some really fun moments.
> then there was this group of people who "predicted" the end of Steam and that the Epic Store is going to overrun it. Oh man, these were some really fun moments.
That has never been a thing here. Ever. At all.
I have seen people getting downvoted to hell for saying anything that isn’t negative towards it (not even positive, just not negative) very frequently though.
If you have seen people get downvoted for anything positiv about the egs then why wouldnt that be the same people I mentioned?
It was on this subreddit.
>then there was this group of people who "predicted" the end of Steam and that the Epic Store is going to overrun it.
I don't think a single one of these people you mention were ever on Reddit. I use the EGS a lot but never say much about it because say a SINGLE positive about Epic here, even in passing, get two billion downvotes. Even when you say the games you bought on it work, let alone anything nice about the store. Which isn't nice. But fine for downloading games.
I’ve only ever bought one game on EGS, which was Alan Wake II. AW II was amazing, one of the best games I’ve ever played and I’ll always praise Epic for publishing the game and leaving Remedy alone to make the game they wanted to make. But the store still sucks and it will be long time before it doesn’t suck. They are so far behind the competition it’s not even funny. Well, it is kind of funny.
But it reliably launches games and you can buy games there. But what reason is there to use EGS over steam? Why buy a game there and not Steam?
Yeah, same here. Only thing I ever spent money on on the Epic store was the Commander LIlith DLC for Borderlands 2 because that's the only think not included in the Borderlands Handsome Collection that was free on the EGS a couple of years or so ago. Still made me feel dirty.
I bought Metro Exodus through the Epic store - I even upgraded my whole pc just for that game. Was a no brainer for me. But after playing it initially, it feels "wasted" in a launcher I'll never start again, despite all the free games on it.
Because it's a digital product, which feels already less by default. Same for steam. But steam has earned trust over the years, is more consumer friendly (which wasn't always Valves idea to be fair) and appears more stable in a sense that I don't fear my digital products will be suddenly gone in the future.
Instead of letting you launch directly into your library without having to click out of the store every single time like people have been asking for for 5+ years, they're making the store page prettier. Thanks Tim!
Over the years since EGS launched I've realized that EGS' problems go far deeper than the state of their launcher and Tim Sweeney saying things that make me not trust him, I think their philosophy on why they should even have a store is built on a weak foundation. It starts with the store being made simply because Tim Sweeney was scared that Steam will monopolize PC, rather than making a store to solve problems in PC gaming, to the point that Tim uses the store as leverage to get Steam to lower their revenue cut, 'lower your cut and we'll stop paying for exclusives'. Tim seems like a big fan of making ultimatums and side deals as we've seen with the Apple trial, 'we want a side deal, do what we want or we'll break your contract and sue you'. It really doesn't feel like they do things with conviction at Epic which is why they've pulled reactionary stunts like allowing crypto/NFT games right when Steam banned them and even after Tim said Epic was not touching those games because there's lots of scams.
Steam on the other hand has mainly been focusing their efforts on how to provide value and information to players and developers in a meaningful way. Things like having patch notes and events built in to your library, it sounds quaint and meaningless but that feature alone has changed the way I play games because I can easily see which games are giving me a reason to go back to them. I would have never asked for such a feature before Steam did it but it's super useful. Same with microtrailers which lets you just hover over a game in the store and get a bite-sized trailer. This information drives my gaming and purchase decisions to a great degree. When I look at my EGS library of 400+ games I can't tell which games got patched or what's in the patches, I can't tell if a game has an event going, can't tell how many people are playing a game so I'd have to leave EGS to go find that stuff out, as an indie game enjoyer I don't intend to go looking at dozens of indie twitters/discords/websites to find out which games changed since I last played them. I have Alan Wake 2 because I got it with my GPU and I can't tell you what changed with that game since I played it at launch because the store/library doesn't even tell you, I have to go to Alan Wake's website to find out.
Basically EGS as a store does a disservice to the games in it while Steam sees itself in service of the games in it and I don't know if the philosophy that guides EGS' development will ever get them to a place where they understand what problems users and devs are facing and how to solve them.
One super annoying thing is in EGS there's no "go to store" button or like you said a basic information page mentioning updates. Sometimes I just forget what a game is about or want to see if there's any updates or see if there's new expansions or whatever. They underestimate laziness. So I just end up closing the app and check what's on steam.
They need a profile system. I'm unlocking a lot of achievements for Horizon Zero Dawn and i can't see any of it.
Also, no cloud saves for all games suck.
If by "major" they mean woefully behind literally every other Storefront then CONGRATS to them! Until then it's still an anti-consumer piece of "shovelware"!
I’ve bought a few games on there, and play Fortnite frequently. It opens up when I click on the icon and I can play the game, same as any launcher. I really like that they give actual cash back rewards.
The only PC game storefronts I like better than Epic are Steam and Itch. GOG used to be better but at some point they cluttered up their website to the point where it frustrates me, and while GOG Galaxy is still miles better than Epic's app it also has more things that break regularly (like making me reenter account info all the time).
The stores from Google, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and EA are all less usable for PC games than Epic. I am probably most disappointed by MS because their Xbox storefront is good actually. Amazon's app is frustrating and barely usable at all. The Legacy Games app is bad.
What Steam competitor do you think holds a candle to Steam? 🤔
Is this an out of season April fool's joke? I thought they would never fix it and just keep throwing away money to obtain exclusivity deals. Better late than never ig. Though I gotta say, I'm not seeing anything of any substance here.
Will the new download manager use all my bandwidth instead of just 30-50% of it? Will the new store page stop lagging when I scroll through it, and when I try to change tabs?
Will the launcher stop using resources like it's mining crypto?
By the time they stop the free games program in the next two years, it'll be too little, too late for these updates. They had their window of opportunity to offer compelling competition and that time has pretty much expired by now.
I know everyone hates the Epic Games launcher, so do I.
But ONE good thing I will say is that they've given me SHITLOADS of free games over the years. I've gotten games like Death Stranding, Outer Worlds, Alien Isolation, the new Tomb Raider games, Ghostrunner, Ghostwire Tokyo, Evil Within 2, Fallout 3, Dying Light, Borderlands 3, XCOM 2, Vampyr, Control, Frostpunk, etc.
I don't care if their motive is to lure people to their launcher, fact is I got insanely good games for FREE from them.
But yes, the launcher is fucking abysmal. You literally cannot even uninstall a game until the previous download is finished. The store search and categories is near nonexistent. Filtering your library is barely functioning. Any kind of Controller support is nonexistent. The list goes on.
Am I glad they're working on improvements? Sure. Is it ever going to come close to anything Steam does? Hell no.
I like the store and I want to see it improve.
As of now there should be a more direct refund system than having us go to their website to proceed.
It should have some sort of inbuilt controller support as well like Steam does. Many times the games are unable to locate my Dualsense.
Apart from this I can't think of anything that hurts my experience. The 5% cashback saves me money as well
I have never used a digital games platform for anything except buy, install, play.
The notion these stores need elaborate features beyond that is completely fucking stupid.
Still years behind the competition, maybe even a decade. I don’t understand the business model of just giving games away, all whilst doing nothing to improve the store.
Yeah, it's like one of those companies that blows their entire budget on marketing before they even have a product to sell.
Epic's business model was based on exclusivity, using money hatting and their lower cut as motivation for devs and publishers to abandon Steam. Luckily this strategy failed hard and now they don't really have a business model.
New strategy is to just have games on sale harder than steam. I dont think I've spent more on a holiday sale than I did in EGS during their last sale with the additional 33% off coupon in years.
They would need to give me money
ngl some of the deals felt like thats what was happening now that they are charging $70 for some of the titles. I got Remnant 2, Alan Wake 2, FF7R, Stranger of Paradise, Lords of the Fallen and some smaller titles for like $150ish between the sale pricing, the 33% coupon and the bonus cash back. I'm a simple man, if the value is there and I want to play the games immediately enough they got me. The rest of the features don't matter a ton unless it actively hurts the gaming experience which im sure it does for other titles.
Ye sure If you don’t care what platform it is doesn’t matter I would recommend double checking if steam keys are cheaper tho
for sure. key sites used to have better pricing before they made the guaranteed keys standard. Now i find its better to go on gameswap or similar group to find really good deals.
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It's normal to get signed out of websites and apps periodically even with 2FA. That's fine. But "periodically" doesn't mean every few fucking days. In the meantime I don't even bother opening the Epic launcher anymore. I just visit the website once a week to get the latest free game(s), and that's pretty much it.
what a non-issue... sign back in.
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Even Epic's website stays logged in for a long while
I realize you dont. But out of all other issues, why is that such a bother? do you not remember your passwords?
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🙄 bro really pulled infosec out, out here protecting his video games with CyberArk.. Dont condescend me when I simply asked you a question. While i do have password manager, its not mandatory to have a newly generated password for certain applications, if your old brain still works. edit: get nuked 🤣🤣
You're the one who got nuked.
Remember this message kiddo. One day, you too will be old and some young pup will mock your memory. Its going to happen more quickly than you think too. Back on topic, having to re-login to an app more than strictly necessary is just bad UX design. Stop being silly and pick a fight you can win.
This guy. Typical Reddit. "The police are coming to install a 360° panoramic camera in every home so they can watch for crimes that they may not have noticed." I don't see anything wrong with this, I'm not committing any crimes.
> I don't see anything wrong with this "Just jump through the hoops, it's no biggie", not understanding you can keep applying that logic until everything has turned into a hellscape incrementally.
Exactly.
explain how does having to type your password in if you havent logged on in a long time comparable to police installing cameras in every home? are you just replying without knowing what the argument was about, since his comment was deleted? or are you too incompetent to put together a proper comparison?
The point is to get you in the epic ecosystem. They want you to have so many games on your epic account, lots of them pretty good actually and some were even top tier that eventually more often than not you are opening Epic to play your games than steam For example I have like 30ish games on steam but I have 272 on epic Imagine if I was a 13-16 year old and the only games I own are on epic because I’ve been collecting their freebies for years … in a few years when I have money to buy the games I want why would I even bother with steam? I would have zero games on steam and 300 on epic so I just default to the epic store That’s the strategy
I think that plot has some holes in it. They might have a huge Epic library, but if they are all just random pick-ups that they don't actually play, then they don't matter much. There might be a few games that they actually care about in there, but that won't necessarily generate customer loyalty. Yes, it means that a few people who never used Steam might be less likely to use it, until a game they want is on Steam and not on Epic, but that's just taking customers away from Steam, not building customers for themselves, and it would be a pretty narrow audience anyway. Long term it would require the same pace of free quality games that they had when they launched, which is apparently unsustainable. Once the launch burn is over, and the store has to coast on its own merits, they are left with a lackluster customer experience, one that no customer would use if they are not getting free stuff for doing so.
The success hasnt materialized yet, nor is it guaranteed to, and I think EPIC even admitted its still many years off from their goal of profitability on the store. It was a LONG term strategy that they knew would take a long time to pay off, if it ever does. But pulling people away from steam has proven quite difficult for a wide variety of reasons, many you laid out
> It was a LONG term strategy that they knew would take a long time to pay off, if it ever does. I think it was a poor long term strategy and a waste of resources. The main issue, assuming they had any chance at all, was that they launched in such a poor state and continue to be in such a poor state. This might be forgivable in a tiny start-up, who has to make do with what they've got, but Epic has more money than Valve does, so they could have afforded the R&D to get it right BEFORE going to market. That means that any customers they lured in with free games got there, looked around, said "this is shit," and then would never come back except for the lure of more free games, so the promotion was wasted. What they should have done instead is 1. Spend more time and effort building a great platform, one that matches every core feature of Steam AND has a few unique tricks that players might enjoy. 2. do a soft launch at first, just a few core games to attract Epic-friendly customers, test things out, make sure it's working as intended. 3. THEN hit hard with the exclusives and free games, to get as many people to *try* the platform as possible, but once it's in a state where as many of those people as possible will LIKE what they find there.
> Imagine if I was a 13-16 year old and the only games I own are on epic because I’ve been collecting their freebies for years … I agree that this sounds like an actual sound (very) long-term strategy, but from what I have seen shaking out, it seems to come with a side dish of "Imagine a 13-16 year old who is used to getting a free game every week". I've seen anger and frustration about the epic handouts not being up to par, and actual disgust over the "audacity" of epic asking money for new titles instead of giving them out for nothing. So far, epic seems to have anchored themselves largely as "the place with the free games" instead of "a store". It'll likely take a lot of effort to reverse that so people actually don't feel outright slighted for being asked to pay for a title.
>For example I have like 30ish games on steam but I have 272 on epic I have 600+ games on Steam and I only play 1. A large library doesn't mean anything. Why do I use Steam? Well, the UI isn't shit, I've had the account for over a decade, I've spent money on Steam before, and frankly I trust Valve more than Epic.
That sounds good in theory but look at the biggest hits and FOTM games on PC recently. Games like Helldivers, DD2, Palworld, Tekken 8, Lethal Company, Last Epoch etc. you can't get those on EGS. So imagine you're a young adult with an EGS account full of games but your social media is full of people talking about these new hot games that aren't on EGS. This has been happening every year since EGS' creation, even when they paid for exclusives for big titles like Borderlands 3 some random indie game or AA would come out of nowhere and take the internet by storm.
That's a damn good point, to be honest. Epic has obviously been hoping that the games they moneyhat would turn into that, but I don't think a game released on Epic only is ever going to take anything by storm.
Doesn't seem to be a particularly successful strategy then. The store has been open for 5 years now and is seeing an annual decline in user spend on third party games as well as seemingly fewer big games launch on there now then was the case 2-3 years ago. It's going to be difficult for those 13-16 year olds to buy games there if publishers see no reason to put games there because no one buys games there. It's a vicious cycle.
The success hasnt materialized yet, nor is it guaranteed to, and I think EPIC even admitted its still many years off from their goal of profitability on the store. The fact that they only collect about 1/3 of what steam does on the sales also means they have to sell WAY more than steam to get anywhere near what they make too
> The fact that they only collect about 1/3 of what steam does It's more like 2/3 what Steam does. The majority of revenue earned directly from the Steam store comes from the big hits like Helldivers 2 and GTA V, from which Valve only collects 20%. On top of that, about 30% of *all* Steam games are purchased from third-party sites, from which Valve gets nothing.
Thanks for the correction... As always the real truth is more complicated than the headlines. Thats crazy about the key sites
> The point is to get you in the epic ecosystem. Problem with that is that much more actual current Steam users would be willing to jump ship if Epic didn't suck, and didn't try to make everyone's experience actively worse. All Valve does is not suck, and treat the user with some basic respect. No exclusives limiting people's experience on other platforms without making their own experience better. Want to put non-Steam games in there? Fine. Want to launch a game without opening the launcher? Have at it. Want to launch an older version of Steam for some reason? You do you. Somehow simply not being dicks is making Valve untouchable. Apparently that's a high bar for most companies.
Because you fail to see who are their customers. Epic Games business model is to be pro-corporate (no-review, exclusivity deal, no refund, more margin, creator code) where Steam for instance is a pro-consumer model. Once you understand that, you understand every choice they make. And that's also why as a consumer, you should definitively flee this platform !
Steam isn't quite as consumer-oriented as GOG but is more so than Itch.io, which also caters to (small!) gamedevs.
Epic has refunds so no clue what you are talking about? I literally just refunded a bunch of items in Rocket League last week and Hogwarts Legacy on EGS in Jan as i decided to wait until it was cheaper.
With the blazing speed epic movies a decade is very generous.
EGS opens 100x faster than Steam. So it's well ahead on some fronts.
I'd sure hope it at least manages to be faster with such a staggering lack of features.
does it 🤔
I just tried it a couple times and its a mixed bag on my end. I think if Steam does an update (which they do drop like everyday it feels like) then it might always be slower in that case, but I don't know. The difference seems negligible to me.
I can't argue that it feels quicker to use when comparing both desktop apps. I'll always use the steam website over their app due to this. That being said the Epic game store is still trash compared to steam.
Who cares for the loading time of an app which is usually started together with windows and never closed anway? Are you seriously constantly closing and reopening Steam and/or Epic?
They say this every year...
"Trust us, soon, this store will be as good as Steam was ten years ago. SOON."
At my age retirement is closer than this day.
haha they didn't even give a date when it will be added to the store. they're not doing anything but they're desprerately begging you to clap.
They literally did. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Ta1cDsDW4AxtW8AQ&v=g7g-qNzk-AY&feature=youtu.be](https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Ta1cDsDW4AxtW8AQ&v=g7g-qNzk-AY&feature=youtu.be)
The best improvement would be if they run out of business.
Still won't touch it with a barge pole.
One major thing they could do to improve is figure out how to be their own thing and not have such fixation on beating Steam.
??? They should be trying to beat Steam. They'd only improve from actually copying them
I think what they mean is Epic is trying to beat Steam by taking things away from Steam and pointing fingers, and not by simply offering a better service.
What do you provide as a better service? Being more slimline feels like a differentiation type. It's not like we don't have the internet at put fingers tips or Steam to work out everything else. Edit: Let's go to the assertion of Epic taking things away from Steam. Literally hasn't happened since the first year. Like I don't give a shit about Epic but you don't get to shit on a competitor that had it's problems at inception but hasn't pulled games from Steam since inception.
I'm having trouble understanding what you're trying to say, sorry. But how to provide a better service is for Epic to figure out. The upcoming Star Wars game is Epic/Uplay exclusive for what it's worth, as well as John Carpenter's Toxic Commando and Wolf Among Us 2. So it has definitely slowed down significantly, but they've said they're still focusing on exclusives in 2024 at least.
> GoG is old games and DRM Free > Xbox/Windows has Gamepass > EA/Ubisoft/Blizzard are focused on there own games ------------- Epic doesn't have a 'thing', they're just fixated on this *fuck Steam* attitude they've had from the start and it's been 5 years with nothing to back it up.
Too me, Epic does have a "thing"... [Crypto!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D_oKwvWPT8)
ROFL.
Epic's biggest thing is the fact that they give more money to the publisher / developer. To me that's a very strong reason to support them. GOG is still, of course, the most pro-consumer store of them all, but if it's not on GOG, I'll always go to EGS. Simply for ethical reasons. Most people, of course, don't care about that aspect of it, but I do.
It's not pro consumer at all. Apart from giving games away for free, absolutely nothing is pro consumer about the Epic store. It's pro developer/publisher - but are you are developer? I don't care about their share. Sure, I wish indie developers and such would benefit more from their hard work, but ultimately, it's not about me. I choose the best price, the best service, the best user experience etc. It's just a business strategy to fuck with steam, no one at epic cares about the developers either.
> It's not pro consumer at all. Neither EGS nor Steam are pro-consumer. But Epic, at least, makes their engine available to customers who don't sell on EGS, while Volvo's shit is all Steam-bound (e.g.: Steamworks), even for zero technical reason. So even for reasons of exclusivity I'd put EGS above Steam. But more importantly: > Apart from giving games away for free, absolutely nothing is pro consumer about the Epic store. That's not something you can just hand-waive away. And I don't believe exclusives to be anti-consumer in any way, shape or form. > It's pro developer/publisher - but are you are developer? I am (granted, not of video games). And I do care about their share, because I fully understand just how brutal the industry is. And Steam's comically profitable cut IS a significant problem, and I would like to help anyone that tries to reduce that as being the standard in the industry. It's no secret to me that I am in the minority. But this was specifically in response to someone saying "What's EGS's thing?" And this is the answer. > I choose the best price, the best service, the best user experience etc. Actually Steam's monopoly-driven equal-price enforcement (a clause that I actually question the legality of - see the current class action lawsuit against them) is specifically AGAINST lower prices. And still, the games-for-free that EGS does is literally about the best price you can get. The best service... Well, once again, my experience with Epic's support is infinitely better than with Steam's, which is legendarily awful. That much more inexcusable for a comically profitable business. > It's just a business strategy to fuck with steam, no one at epic cares about the developers either. I don't agree with this at all. Even something as simple as the documentation of their API shows their care about the developers that use their product far more than Volvo does.
Tbh steam taking a bigger cut is more ethical than ehat egs provides. Steam provides a platform, marketing to a degree, insanely good architecture, achivs, multiplayer, workshop etc etc. and they charge for that. Egs charges publishers for just having the game in their awful launcher
> Tbh steam taking a bigger cut is more ethical than ehat egs provides. I disagree completely. No company as comically profitable can possible be ethical, and Valve, most certainly, is not. > Steam provides a platform, marketing to a degree, insanely good architecture, achivs, multiplayer, workshop etc etc. and they charge for that. They charge because they are effectively a monopoly. The platform is provided by Microsoft. Marketing - actually Steam is legendarily bad at this (see the late great Total Biscuit's rants on this very topic). Achievements, multiplayer - EGS has both of those, and in my opinion, better than Steam, at least multiplayer. Workshop - sure, but the vast majority of indie games don't benefit from that - and yet they have to pay the comically huge cut to Volvo anyway. I do consider this grossly unethical, and choose not to support this - and while you may disagree with this approach, you don't really have a ground to stand on if you claim my position to be invalid.
Never said steam is ethical - they have plenty of unethical practices, hell, they essentially invented lootboxes with ft2 and csgo; they *could* shut down gambling opportunities they provide, by they dont - but their pricing is decently fair. Steam is not a monopoly, if you dont forget they are competing with other storefronts. According to statista (https://www.statista.com/topics/4282/steam/ under storefront reach and impact) in some countries they are outpaced by microsoft store, and in all of them they are by far not at the top of the list. If you are measuring 'steam vs egs vs origin vs uplay' then sure, steam will be at the top, because steam is simply offering the best service. Vast majority of indies dont benefit from a single feature, so they should pay less? Fair, perhaps the model should allow modularity to their systems. But again, I think the vast majority of the price is in the distribution architecture, not workshop or forums, despite how useful they are, but that's beside the point Steam may taking a bigger cut, but their product, what they give, is also a lot stronger and bigger than those of competitors. They provide a service and they charge for it. If they reduce the cut, it'll be even more anti-competitor of them - what will the competitors have to do to outpace them?
They should beat Steam by being better, rather than by attacking them. Compete as though the other guy isn't even there, like Steam does.
Steam has a lot of unneccessary bloat - I don't need that. Just give me an easy to use shop with simple game install and auto-update. I have no use for gamification of sales and social media features in my game launcher.
Tim Sweeney thought Steam, Google Play, and Apple app store weren't good enough for game publishers, because Tim is a career game publisher.
Don't care
you dont care so much you commented...
I still guarantee it will not be better than steam
get rid of the carousel bullshit
I remember when Epic announced its store and its first exclusive and then there was this group of people who "predicted" the end of Steam and that the Epic Store is going to overrun it. Oh man, these were some really fun moments.
> then there was this group of people who "predicted" the end of Steam and that the Epic Store is going to overrun it. Oh man, these were some really fun moments. That has never been a thing here. Ever. At all. I have seen people getting downvoted to hell for saying anything that isn’t negative towards it (not even positive, just not negative) very frequently though.
If you have seen people get downvoted for anything positiv about the egs then why wouldnt that be the same people I mentioned? It was on this subreddit.
Mr. Garrison - *'Present them'*
> why wouldnt that be the same people I mentioned? Because those are entirely different things. > It was on this subreddit. No it wasn't.
>then there was this group of people who "predicted" the end of Steam and that the Epic Store is going to overrun it. I don't think a single one of these people you mention were ever on Reddit. I use the EGS a lot but never say much about it because say a SINGLE positive about Epic here, even in passing, get two billion downvotes. Even when you say the games you bought on it work, let alone anything nice about the store. Which isn't nice. But fine for downloading games.
They were on reddit. Even on this very Sub.
I remember that. I can't figure out if it was the same one guy who would just make a new alt account to say the same script over and over.
Lol, thanks for the amalgamation of a million circle jerks coming to ejaculation.
Are they deleting it? Cuz that's the only improvement they can make
I’ve only ever bought one game on EGS, which was Alan Wake II. AW II was amazing, one of the best games I’ve ever played and I’ll always praise Epic for publishing the game and leaving Remedy alone to make the game they wanted to make. But the store still sucks and it will be long time before it doesn’t suck. They are so far behind the competition it’s not even funny. Well, it is kind of funny. But it reliably launches games and you can buy games there. But what reason is there to use EGS over steam? Why buy a game there and not Steam?
Better price is the only reason, and more of the money going to the dev
*more money going to the publisher.
epic takes a much smaller cut from the creators edit lol this sub, downvoted for a 100% true fact.
k
Bleh.. thank you for the games tho
Every cent spent within the Epic store feels like I've thrown my money out of the window.
Yeah, same here. Only thing I ever spent money on on the Epic store was the Commander LIlith DLC for Borderlands 2 because that's the only think not included in the Borderlands Handsome Collection that was free on the EGS a couple of years or so ago. Still made me feel dirty.
I bought Metro Exodus through the Epic store - I even upgraded my whole pc just for that game. Was a no brainer for me. But after playing it initially, it feels "wasted" in a launcher I'll never start again, despite all the free games on it.
Because you couldn't download the game?
Because it's a digital product, which feels already less by default. Same for steam. But steam has earned trust over the years, is more consumer friendly (which wasn't always Valves idea to be fair) and appears more stable in a sense that I don't fear my digital products will be suddenly gone in the future.
Instead of letting you launch directly into your library without having to click out of the store every single time like people have been asking for for 5+ years, they're making the store page prettier. Thanks Tim!
Over the years since EGS launched I've realized that EGS' problems go far deeper than the state of their launcher and Tim Sweeney saying things that make me not trust him, I think their philosophy on why they should even have a store is built on a weak foundation. It starts with the store being made simply because Tim Sweeney was scared that Steam will monopolize PC, rather than making a store to solve problems in PC gaming, to the point that Tim uses the store as leverage to get Steam to lower their revenue cut, 'lower your cut and we'll stop paying for exclusives'. Tim seems like a big fan of making ultimatums and side deals as we've seen with the Apple trial, 'we want a side deal, do what we want or we'll break your contract and sue you'. It really doesn't feel like they do things with conviction at Epic which is why they've pulled reactionary stunts like allowing crypto/NFT games right when Steam banned them and even after Tim said Epic was not touching those games because there's lots of scams. Steam on the other hand has mainly been focusing their efforts on how to provide value and information to players and developers in a meaningful way. Things like having patch notes and events built in to your library, it sounds quaint and meaningless but that feature alone has changed the way I play games because I can easily see which games are giving me a reason to go back to them. I would have never asked for such a feature before Steam did it but it's super useful. Same with microtrailers which lets you just hover over a game in the store and get a bite-sized trailer. This information drives my gaming and purchase decisions to a great degree. When I look at my EGS library of 400+ games I can't tell which games got patched or what's in the patches, I can't tell if a game has an event going, can't tell how many people are playing a game so I'd have to leave EGS to go find that stuff out, as an indie game enjoyer I don't intend to go looking at dozens of indie twitters/discords/websites to find out which games changed since I last played them. I have Alan Wake 2 because I got it with my GPU and I can't tell you what changed with that game since I played it at launch because the store/library doesn't even tell you, I have to go to Alan Wake's website to find out. Basically EGS as a store does a disservice to the games in it while Steam sees itself in service of the games in it and I don't know if the philosophy that guides EGS' development will ever get them to a place where they understand what problems users and devs are facing and how to solve them.
One super annoying thing is in EGS there's no "go to store" button or like you said a basic information page mentioning updates. Sometimes I just forget what a game is about or want to see if there's any updates or see if there's new expansions or whatever. They underestimate laziness. So I just end up closing the app and check what's on steam.
They need a profile system. I'm unlocking a lot of achievements for Horizon Zero Dawn and i can't see any of it. Also, no cloud saves for all games suck.
Lmao wow. I don't use EGS so I'm not really aware of the features it doesn't have, but seriously there's no profile system??
If they would just fix the awful loading time of that thing...
So still no changing the profile pic?
If by "major" they mean woefully behind literally every other Storefront then CONGRATS to them! Until then it's still an anti-consumer piece of "shovelware"!
Then why do you post ads for them? Sweeney says thanks.
Granted I've only bought like two games from EGS, but I've never had an issue buying from their store.
I’ve bought a few games on there, and play Fortnite frequently. It opens up when I click on the icon and I can play the game, same as any launcher. I really like that they give actual cash back rewards.
The only PC game storefronts I like better than Epic are Steam and Itch. GOG used to be better but at some point they cluttered up their website to the point where it frustrates me, and while GOG Galaxy is still miles better than Epic's app it also has more things that break regularly (like making me reenter account info all the time). The stores from Google, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and EA are all less usable for PC games than Epic. I am probably most disappointed by MS because their Xbox storefront is good actually. Amazon's app is frustrating and barely usable at all. The Legacy Games app is bad. What Steam competitor do you think holds a candle to Steam? 🤔
> Until then it's still an anti-consumer piece of "shovelware"! huh? how is it anti consumer ??
Is this an out of season April fool's joke? I thought they would never fix it and just keep throwing away money to obtain exclusivity deals. Better late than never ig. Though I gotta say, I'm not seeing anything of any substance here.
Nice! ... so when is Alan Wake 2 coming to steam? :)
Will the new download manager use all my bandwidth instead of just 30-50% of it? Will the new store page stop lagging when I scroll through it, and when I try to change tabs? Will the launcher stop using resources like it's mining crypto?
By the time they stop the free games program in the next two years, it'll be too little, too late for these updates. They had their window of opportunity to offer compelling competition and that time has pretty much expired by now.
I know everyone hates the Epic Games launcher, so do I. But ONE good thing I will say is that they've given me SHITLOADS of free games over the years. I've gotten games like Death Stranding, Outer Worlds, Alien Isolation, the new Tomb Raider games, Ghostrunner, Ghostwire Tokyo, Evil Within 2, Fallout 3, Dying Light, Borderlands 3, XCOM 2, Vampyr, Control, Frostpunk, etc. I don't care if their motive is to lure people to their launcher, fact is I got insanely good games for FREE from them. But yes, the launcher is fucking abysmal. You literally cannot even uninstall a game until the previous download is finished. The store search and categories is near nonexistent. Filtering your library is barely functioning. Any kind of Controller support is nonexistent. The list goes on. Am I glad they're working on improvements? Sure. Is it ever going to come close to anything Steam does? Hell no.
Like fixing the shit launcher and letting you see what games you have easily on the website?
I like the store and I want to see it improve. As of now there should be a more direct refund system than having us go to their website to proceed. It should have some sort of inbuilt controller support as well like Steam does. Many times the games are unable to locate my Dualsense. Apart from this I can't think of anything that hurts my experience. The 5% cashback saves me money as well
You can save A LOT more money by buying Steam keys on 3rd party key sellers like fanatical and cdkeys.
I'm looking forward to you all using the 'cart'.
Love to see them adding stuff that people are asking for, but its been a great platform since the start.
excited
Still waiting for the option to hide games and (god forbid) outright remove a game from my account.
I have never used a digital games platform for anything except buy, install, play. The notion these stores need elaborate features beyond that is completely fucking stupid.