3d ago

It's not a store... it's where I get my free games.

re: this article.

The title is a joke. "Free, but you have to make an EGS account" is a bit too rich for me.

108 comments

Call me crazy, but I don't like it when somebody tries to hold me hostage and force me to do things their way..

I like me some freebies, but I could use some friendly recommendations not in the FPS or MOBA category. Outside those two genres, it seems to be just idle clickers and unbalanced pay-to-win RPGs. The reviews on these two remaining categories are typically not very good.

Epic: It's not right that if you want a game on your smart phone you have to go through Apple or Google!
Also Epic: if you want this game you have to go through US!
- Tbf, devs don't have to, and in fact Epic will pay them to be exclusive, unlike Apple who makes devs pay for it and gives no choice.
  Though it's still annoying that Epic does that, from a consumer standpoint. I can't play any Epic-exclusive games because their CEO has a personal vendetta against my platform (Linux), so their company can die for all I care.
  
  Fair, but it shows that Epic only cares about Developers (like themselves) and not Consumers (their customers).
  "It's not fair to force Devs to use a specific service. It's perfectly fine to force users to use a specific service."

I'm not as salty about EGS as a lot of PC gamers seem to be.
......... But god damn is their default client trash.
Thank fuck for Heroic Launcher on Linux (I think it even got a Windows version?)
But honestly, people complain about exclusivity, and seem to not realise (or care?) that certain games would not exist without this kind of funding deal. They are only funded by the platform that pays for their exclusivity. If you want to be mad at something, don't be mad at the devs, don't even be mad at Epic, be mad at Capitalism as an institution, which rules that art needs money to exist.
- You point out that the game wouldn't exist without exclusivity but then immediately point out that it totally could exist if the profit motive did not run our economy.
  The existence of exclusives is a form of cultural capture by capitalists (As is copyright). I would argue that it would indeed be better if Alan Wake 2 was never made if it meant that exclusives stopped being made entirely, and Alan Wake 2 looks like a game I absolutely want to play.

Not on Steam? No direct release? Steam released, but with a bunch of bolt on EULAs/Denuvo/3rd party launchers?
The seas will provide.
- i don't get the "steam good, other launchers bad". it's still a launcher and drm...
  
  no other platform gives as much of a shit as valve does about linux gaming. proton made pretty much every windows game in my library Just Work™ (and no, just wine still isn't enough), meanwhile tim sweeney is actively hostile to linux as a platform.
  
  Ever other platform is just ass. I have played games on Epic, Battlenet, Ubisoft and the EA launcher but they all barely have basic functionality. Meanwhile steam has:
  good UI (store & settings)
  no forced ads
  reviews
  discussions
  workshop
  player stats
  a lot more settlings / options
  Steam seems to be the only one that actually puts any effort in providing a good user experience. It's more than just a store / launcher and noone else is even trying to compete.
  
  Steam's DRM is not mandatory to release a game on Steam. Its there in fact to provide a necessary lesser evil than to encourage every developer/publisher to produce their own. They still unfortunately do, which Steam at least warns customers about, but them providing their own minimal DRM is a good thing, given the context.
  (That said, I still respect gog)
  
  The DRM is optional for use by the devs. Rimworld is one game I know doesn't use it, you can just zip the entire thing up and put it somewhere else and it'll run fine. It's still a launcher. But the only better alternative to a launcher is plain installers to download and hold onto like GOG provides as an alternative to its Galaxy launcher.
  
  Steam is good mostly because the competition is unbelievably incompetent. I cannot see a single good reason for EGS to be a fucking Unreal app, for starters, and a couple of reasons that it shouldn't (the store is just web pages, the text rendering sometimes gets blurry, it uses too many computer resources to run).
  Even GOG, which I always shill for, has some pretty dumb faults, like how it lists different editions of the same game, like a base/deluxe/platinum, as completely different: if you own the platinum version, you might still see the base game on the store page without the "Owned" sticker; more than once I added a game to the cart only to double check and realize that I already owned it. This also happens to games that GOG sells in bundles.
  
  Most games on steam have no drm. Once you've installed them, you can do whatever you want with them. Steam isn't adding drm to everything. The number one best thing about steam is the social integration, the pure simplicity of being able to right click on a friend and hit join game to be able to play with them is amazing. Basically, steam makes things simpler, and other "launchers" are simply ad platforms forced in as a layer between you clicking play and the game opening.
  
  To be fair, "it just works" and they haven't tried to screw us over, which is almost unprecedented.
  
  i honestly believe the biggest part to this is steam having been around for a long time, and being a kind of the default video game store. people dont like being forced to get another launcher for a game, so whenever a game isnt on steam, they get mad at the whichever launcher its on.
  i dont think there is very much critical thinking about drm, expoitative store platforms and capitalism going on.
  
  G*mers are Stockholmed crazy style.
  
  Seeing the console wars play out on the basis of which DRM platform you want to put in your PC is wild.
  
  It’s like, diversity… but not.
- Fanbois of a different flavor but with the lovely twist where none of them accept they are fanbois.
- mmm... delicious fish

store simping is really cringe ngl
- It's not simping if telling people to stay out of there is the digital equivalent of telling people to stay out of number 4 reactor hall at Chernobyl.
- Is it simping when Steam is just better though? So many useful things that Epic doesn't have. Especially on the Linux side.

Wait what game was that?
Oh wait you mean Shenmue 3? Yakuza's like "Good Shenmue" anyway
- Alan Wake 2, as mentioned by the article I linked. Sales have dried up before it became profitable, but Sweeney has confirmed that it wouldn't be released on Steam.
  
  Oh, I don't really remember anyone giving a shit about Alan Wake 1.
  As a writer, I give any story ABOUT a writer a hard fucking pass.

Epic paid them a bunch of money for the exclusivity. Money they needed to produce the game. Remedy needs the money upfront. And Epic takes less of a cut than Steam.
I feel like you're mad at the wrong people?
- The formula goes like this:
  Release the title on first-party platforms.
  Profit until the sales dry up. If potential players haven't bought the game at that point because of platform-related reasons, they won't likely be convinced otherwise.
  Once that happens, release the title on all other platforms.
  Profit more.
  Sony's had great success when they started bringing first-party titles to PC. Square is feeling the squeeze after the disappointing sales of the FFVII remakes. DARQ's developer rejected third-party exclusivity and was met with praise and sales exceeding expectations.
  The fact is, some people will never consider buying on EGS. Whether their reasons are legitimate or not is irrelevant. It is only by the choice of one ~~man~~ overgrown man-child that both Epic and Remedy are kept from greater sales and greater profits.
  
  Sony releasing games on PC yet region locking them to countries with PSN access is beyond absurd.
  It's almost like they hate money.
  
  Egs does not work on linux. It is just not an option.
  
  We don't know what their contract says, but if the studio head is saying "never", then presumably that's what the contract says.
  Who's the man-child here? Tim Sweeney? The CEO of Remedy?
  I haven't been keeping up with the weird Gamer tantrum about Epic so I'm not up on who you guys are mad at. Or why.
- "epic takes less of a cut" yeah but they're getting 0 right now because they don't get any money at all from it until the money upfront is earned back by epic which at this rate they're not going to so while remedy got the money to make the game I don't think they'll ever see another penny for it

My main gripe with it being on EGS is I just don’t know when it’s on sale. For Steam games I can add to my wishlist and get notified when a game comes on sale. If I can’t do that for a particular game I tend to forget it exists.
I can imagine Epic aren’t too concerned about sales, the funding probably comes from the same bucket that funds all those free games. The long term vision of getting to make EGS a think trumps short term profits.
- Maybe this site can help
  
  Thanks I hadn’t seen that. I’ll take a look

From the article you posted nobody at Remedy complained that the game was underperforming because of Steam nor does Epic grant them any continuous revenue stream that they would rely on beyond AW2 shipping.
Remedy employs 300+ highly skilled and paid people in one of the countries with the highest standards of living while having no access to your live service cosmetics battle pass skibidi money. This means they HAVE to have upfront cash somewhere in the loop because they happen to make very technically bespoke, well crafted titles take years to make. That's the same reason why Tencent has a minority share in 80% of VG companies you know at this point - including Remedy - one time purchases just don't do the trick anymore if you want to even ship a game, especially if you don't crowd it with scammy monetization.
It's one thing not to like some frontend (and yea EGS is ass on many accounts) but blaming a company for making a sound business decision by safeguarding their ability to produce games that are very much a lost best from a purely financial standpoint is seriously odd. It's not just Alan Wake - do you know the proportion of game time players have spent on titles released in 2023 or 2024 during those same years? It's less than 10% - nearly all the rest is live service. Within that same group you're fighting against your BG3s (you know, the same game that was nearly cancelled because Larian was strapped for cash) and any other solo game that happened to be successful. It's dire.
Nobody at Remedy is pretending EGS is the better platform, seeing this under any other lens than basic business logic is honestly weird. Wanna know why anyone would sign an exclusivity deal with Epic? Just look at the state of the games industry.

Could you post the article text? It's ad-walled

108 comments