Is the difference between them and Steam really that great in practice though? This link has 30583 games that seem to only exist on Steam. But yeah, there's probably no paid deals involved. Still not a huge difference in practice IMO.
I do think people get caught up in hating Epic, but the difference is that if any of those developers felt like releasing on another platform, they could. The “exclusivity”, such as it is, is just happenstance. Whereas Epic’s exclusives are largely actual contracts.
99% of the games on that list are small-time indie games that only release on Steam because that’s where the market share is, and they probably only have the dev capacity to support a single platform. Steam also has a lot of API support for devs. Those games exist on Epic too, but when people complain about Epic they aren’t complaining about those games, they’re complaining about bigger games that are artificial exclusives, timed or otherwise.
Steam offers the better customer experience, and Epic can’t compete with it, so instead they just buy exclusivity rights to games. It’s arguably anti-consumer, and definitely different from those games that just happen to only be available on one platform or another.
Most of my gaming friends refuse to buy games from Epic or use their launcher.
They’d rather wait for the timed exclusive to expire and buy the game on their platform of choice.
I’ve bought maybe 2 games on Epic because a friend wanted to play it with me at launch. It was Borderlands 3.
But never again, I finished BL3 solo seeing as my friend played with me about 3 times and he never touched it again.
I do collect their free game every week, my Epic library is quite big now and I may play a game from there time to time but I hate the idea of a platform exclusive.
I’d like to know if they are making more money with timed exclusives seeing as nearly nobody I game with wants to buy from them.
EGS is terrible as a store. You can only give reviews only when it asks you to, even then, it is not a free-form review. Your reviews are not visible to the customers. The entire store is designed to bamboozle the customer into buying a shitty game. No wonder most people refuse to use the store to buy games.
Oh we know it’s there. Finding it isn’t the problem, giving epic any money, is.
I’m happy Epic spent their v-bucks on Remedy and let them use it to fund a masterpiece. But when it comes to distributing it, I think a quick visit to the pirate bay is a lot easier to stomach for a lot of people.
And for me it’s not even a principled issue. I just hate using their store. I’m not saying they need parity with the weird social media aspects of Steam (though I have come around to dropping comments on friends’ achievement notifications on the library page). But let me see reviews and let me refund and some other basic stuff I’m forgetting.
Yep, played the yar har edition, it was a pretty good experience up until a major bug prevented me from picking up a key in late game. It’s a good game notwithstanding that, I’d be happy to pay for it - on my platform of choice, where my library has been since before the Epic Game Store even existed.
I recently picked up Dead Island 2 legally because it released on Steam, and it had some bullshit Epic software trying to install in the background to verify your account. Thankfully you can disable it from config.ini, but it still asks you to log in every time you start the game. That’s some fucking shameful shit, and I would be more concerned about Steam’s near-monopoly status on PC gaming if they tried half the shit Epic did, but until that day comes, I’m happy to give steam my money because their platform puts the least bullshit between me and the game, by far.
As a wannabe game developer, I plan to use UE5 and take advantage of the deals that Epic offers for selling on their store, but not the exclusivity. I would actually like to launch there, so that my first sales get me as much money as possible, instead of some storefront, but it’s basically game-suicide to do that.
I wish Epic would smarten up about all the complaints about their stores and exclusivity practices and realize that gamers would use their store if it just had the features it needs. They aren’t as entrenched in Steam’s store as Epic believes. Especially after all the free games that Epic has given away already.
As for “Alan Wake 2 dev”… Wake up! Trying to frame this as a “woe is me” situation is ridiculous. That game had a ton of hype before it was even announced, and failing to capitalize on that is the dev’s and publisher’s fault, not the consumer. A Kickstarter would have been nuts if money was what was needed.
I know epic paid for it and that’s why it’s exclusive to their storefront.
That’s also why I haven’t played it. They made a choice, I’m respecting that choice. I don’t want to support epic, despite me wanting to play this game. So I just won’t play it. Not like gamers are starved for content.
I’m on the same boat and just watched a playthrough. The story is still wacky and pretty good. Unfortunately the SBI and DEI influence is very noticeable.
Sweet baby inc is a company that offers services to game companies to make their games more diverse and inclusive. Their influence is really noticeable unfortunately.
No thats not the reason. It actually fits into the story. The main thing is this scene: youtube.com/shorts/hcOoREvW3lE?si=TZfV4uDugt_Ez8Y…And some other things. Don’t get me wrong. I really like the story and how the game intertwines with control and the remedy multiverse. I just think the SBI influence is noticeable which is a shame in my honest opinion.
DEI is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Not sure on SBI
But unless the game is late-seasons Glee levels of pandering, I assume it having some people who are not straight white men won’t feel that out of place.
Sony has been releasing their games on Steam. Microsoft gave up on exclusivity to their store ages ago and have even started releasing Xbox exclusives like Hi-Fi Rush on PlayStation.
For a lot of games, usually ones with Denuvo, I pick up the PlayStation version and either play it in my living room or stream to a PC or the Deck. Perhaps I’ll end up doing that with Wake 2. I’m kind of reluctant to give support to exclusivity at all though.
I think I’ve seen Alan Wake 2 on Epic while I go and claim the free games.
For some reason I can’t find my credit card when I’m using the Epic Games Store app. I wonder why. Could it have anything to do with Tim Sweeney having a grudge against Linux gamers?
Maybe I’m reading into it, but that phrasing seems intentionally vague. If it’s a permanent exclusive, they could just say so while praising Epic for supporting them.
You know what it’s the worst part of releasing a game in an exclusive store? When the time comes to release it elsewhere, a year or more later, nobody wants to pay full price for a year or more old game and thus they most probably wait for a discount that properly fit older games.
Epic pays you, ever though what are they actually buying from you as Dev/publisher. Epic store don’t make the mony Epic is spending… that’s because sales on the Epic store aren’t even their goal. EGS is basically a huge advertising for Fortnite, games published over there are accessory to the ever present/default Fortnite’s events/promotions. On steam page for GTAV you see ads for Saints Rows, on Saints Row’s Steam page you see ads for GTAV. On EGS Fortnite is always omnipresent: the goal over there is not gamers buy as much games possible, but rather yell “hey! Free stuff? We have free things… Also Fortnite!”. It’s a black hole where wallets are swallowed by Fortnite.
“EGS vs. Steam-monopoly” is a totally faked presumption. What we see is that quite the opposite is happening. Exclusivity damages more all small and big competition around Steam: itch.io, GoG… but also bigger stores from Ubisoft and EA (which saw fair amount of investment in their own PC store in the pre-EGS era and now are mostly forgotten). Basically EGS is digging a more monopolistic trajectory for Steam. Indie are wondering “why should I publish on itch/GoG if Epic pays me?”
I didn’t even know it was having a PC release until like…a game award thing of some kind and was floored that I didn’t hear about it. Realized it was on Epic and wasn’t gonna be a wider release and lost interest.
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