Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable
Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable
The company behind Fortnite is currently in a legal fight against Google over in-app fees
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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.
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They made Borderlands 3 exclusive on Epic store for a period
I loved the series but never bought it out of spite
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.
Seems like monopolistic practices rather than competing on services.
It literally is? They're literally not competing on services, they're competing via artificial scarcity.
Well, it entirely depends on how you look at things. Sometimes it’s monopolistic, other times it’s actual competition.
With Sony and Xbox, I dislike what Sony does with PS5 exclusives because I don’t think that it convinces people to switch to the PS5. What does do that is the PSVR2 and controller features. The actual features, not exclusives. Games are better on that system, so people can decide to swap.
With PC platforms, I care far far less. In fact, I’d say it’s nearly impossible to compete with the monopoly that is Steam without exclusives. I like steam, but imagine if they change course. PC gaming would be screwed. There is no valid competition.
Epic mostly does timed exclusives (the right thing), they just aren’t giving features which is frustrating. The conversation changes a lot if the platform doesn’t suck. If I like the platform that also has free games and also has new releases for a time, that’s competition and it’s cool with me. But since I like steam and they take games away from the steam monopoly, we call them a monopoly and dislike them.
I absolutely hate a company inducing other companies to release only on their software platform.
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.
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Let’s also not conflate “developers” with “companies”
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.
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And they will share the Steam money with the workers?
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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.
I was a backer for Phoenix point, i took my money back and never bought the game when it came out. People are equally pissed off at developers who take the deal.
Even more so when they release a game that's not even conceptually on the same level as what they promised, grumble grumble.
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I don't like epic like any other guy but point your finger at right people. Gearbox made borderlands 3 exclusive to epic.
Gearbox and Epic made an agreement together not to have it on Steam at release, and I didn't buy it, even once it showed up on Steam.
I voted with my wallet and blame Gearbox and Epic, as without both parties this arrangement wouldn't have happened.
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
Jesus, how can you run a digital storefront in this day and age and not let people post reviews? I read a bunch of those on steam before I buy most of my games.
It took them years to implement a shopping cart. A basic feature that literally every online shop has had since forever.
They are not good at e-commerce.
Lol the Switch e-Shop doesn't have a cart. Unless they added one pretty recently.
But that's Nintendo so...
You know those Electron apps that technically look like a piece of native software, but feel like streaming a web page through an ungodly slow VPN?
That's Epic.
It's slow, clunky, missing features, and it simply feels like some random store selling you games - you don't feel like something stable that will exist in 5 years when you want to download them again.
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.
Steam runs on Chromium too
The store, yes. Steam Input, Proton, the hook for filesystem save writes, the overlay, and so many more important features, do not.
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?
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.
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.
What does it matter what store the game was bought on?
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Marginally worse UI/UX (could be improved a bit by now, I haven't used it for over a year)
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Way harsher build in DRM
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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
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No controller support. I start the Epic launcher over Steam so Epic games get the Steam controller support
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No mod support
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No forums and communities (I know a lot of people don't need these, but still a missing feature for others)
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no community reviews, you better belive what the paid critics tell you
Marginally worse UI/UX (could be improved a bit by now, I haven’t used it for over a year)
Marginally. It does not deserve all the hate.
Way harsher build in DRM
Doesn't this just affect pirates? I don't really care as long as it doesn't mean that performance is sacrificed.
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
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Steam also needs to phone home when you want to switch to offline mode?
No controller support. I start the Epic launcher over Steam so Epic games get the Steam controller support
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).
No mod support
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?
No forums and communities (I know a lot of people don’t need these, but still a missing feature for others)
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?
no community reviews, you better belive what the paid critics tell you
I trust those reviews a lot more than fickle gamers who review bomb games because some dev said something that goes against their beliefs.
Doesn't this just affect pirates? I don't really care as long as it doesn't mean that performance is sacrificed.
LOL. DRM affects everyone, is a bad for consumers and only benefits shareholders.
I would go so far as to say that DRM only affects paying customers.
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
Look into Steam Input if you think they're in any way equal (or even in the same ballpark). The kind of things you can do with Steam Input is incredible, and sometimes pretty mind blowing. You can make radial menus if you want.
DRM only affects people who paid to play the game, the point of cracking a game is to remove the DRM.
Of course steam needs to call home when it's online, but when you are offline you never need to connect again if you don't want to.
Steam itself supports controllers. If you want to play a game without controller support you can use steam to play with a controller regardless.
Modding a game can be a complex ordeal, stream simplifies it (usually) and offers a download manager.
Steam reviews are far more trustworthy than 'official' reviews and that is just a fact. Reviewers are often bought, and even when they aren't they directly paid for they are indirectly pressured to offer inflated scores, operate on a weird scale, and are often incompetent besides (the bad at games stereotype has existed since the 90s at least, and for good reason).
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It's important for the same reason that UX research is a pretty important field nowadays: you wanna make your software/platform/whatever as easy and pleasant to use as possible.
Alternatively, Epic lacks a value proposition. Having games spread across multiple platforms is inconvenient. Most consumers value convenience, so they're going to stick with the most convenient (read: the most dominant) option unless they have some reason not to. For example, as messy and crappy as GOG's storefront is, they've managed to differentiate themselves from Steam first by focusing on making old games playable and then focusing on a DRM-free and more curated catalog. What does Epic offer other than doing the same things Steam does but less well and in a different app?
What does Epic offer other than doing the same things Steam does but less well and in a different app?
I'm not going to count, but by my best guess I have now 100+ games on EGS that I haven't paid a penny for. For me that's a rather large incentive to have the EGS client installed on my PCs. And once I have both installed anyway, I don't see any difference between buying on Steam vs. Epic. I just use whatever is cheaper at the moment.
Exactly this. I buy on gog when I can, just because it's awesome what they are doing .
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.
It matters quite a bit if you're gaming on Linux.