Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Epic pays for exclusivity sometimes. It’s funny, I keep picking up the free epic games but I don’t think I have ever once played a single game on there.
I claim but I don’t even have the launcher installed. If it wasn’t for the giveaways I’d completely forget about the place.
I don’t even get the free games…they aren’t worth my time. I’ll pay to get them elsewhere instead even if it’s free there when I’m looking
I’m claiming them for the day when Epic games store shuts down and they give out keys for redeemed games on steam. I’m playing the long game. :D
Bethesda did that after shutting down their launcher.
I just download the games that are drm free (which is actually quite a lot) and put a zip archive on my backup drive(s)
I just use the heroic/legendary alternative launcher for any single player games I actually want to play from egs. It’s open source and gives epic less footprint on my machine.
Unfortunately if you want to do anything multiplayer then you need the real client.
I’ve been picking them up religiously after I found out I missed Frostpunk. The only ones I’ve played were the big names like Control, Death Standing, and the old Fallout games. For everything else, the client doesn’t give you enough information to decide if it’s worth your time or not. I keep having to go back and forth between Epic and Steam to read reviews and the “similar to other games you’ve played” thing. It’s not worth the effort.
I recently discovered that I can buy, download, and launch games from my Epic Games library without having the Epic Games Bloatware even installed.
Heroic Games Launcher serves as a storefront, installer, and launcher for Epic Games, GOG, and Amazon.
This needs to be the top comment. Yes, you can use it on both Windows, Mac and Linux.
Steam Deck included!
I installed it when I got my deck earlier this week, even though I don’t have any games on Epic (yet)
NOW this is interesting. Still won’t give Epic my money but I get plenty of games from Twitch for EGS.
Exe files exist in the games folder.
I’ll still skip games with multiplayer for obvious reasons but this is great.
Every time someone takes the epic deal it just makes it easier to choose which game to ignore forever
I say this every time Epic comes up but it remains the same.
Steam is the pro-consumer storefront. Epic is the pro-developer storefront. What Epic seems to fail to understand is that by being so staunchly pro-developer, they effectively become anti-consumer. And as a consumer, I’m just not going to spend money on an anti-consumer marketplace.
When Epic considers adding necessary pro-consumer measures like actual user reviews so I can hear how a game actual performs from real end users, then and only then will I consider Epic a real storefront viable for consumers.
Epic is the pro-developer storefront.
I think their historically-bad UE5 documentation and laser focus on adding features optimized for Fortnite but terrible for other uses beg to differ.
They’re the pro-shareholder storefront. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Epic’s main selling point was it’s lower storefront fee (15% vs 30%, if I recall). It didn’t offer any other benefits for consumers and I think Epic realised rather quickly that the people who are actually supposed to be paying money for all of this are the buyers and not the sellers, and thus they’ve resorted to strategies like making games “exclusive” or trying to bribe players with free games.
I understand that they are pro-developers, like, they only tale 15% of the sales etc. But why are they anti-consumers?
I use Heroic Games Launcher on Nobara Linux and my experience is more seamless than buying and installing games from Steam. I don’t have to bother with Epic Games Launcher, I just download a game and run via proton or wine.
I gave what I see as a significant example in my original comment. Not being able to see comments or reviews from those who have purchased games through the storefront is a problem for me. If a game has a bug or problem, especially if it is one that could potentially be tied to or unique to the EGS version, I would like to know about it. That EGS currently doesn’t provide readily available user feedback when it frankly has been the standard as defined by steam, just doesn’t for me.
So you have to ask yourself why they wouldn’t include such a simple a rudimentary feature - the only result I can come up with is to appease developers who want to prevent being negatively impacted by bad reviews. Thus what we have is prioritizing the wants of developers at the expense of features which benefit consumers.
Know what happens when I find out a game is Epic exclusive? I don’t buy it for a year… Sometimes ever. Enjoy the Epic money kings, hope it’s worth it.
The one upside is if the game flops it gives lots of users a chance to not buy it. But any game with multiplayer it effectively kills the MP mode.
Epic did save me from wasting money on Borderlands 3, so I’ll give them that.
There are too many games to care about the tiny amount of them that aren’t available on steam.
There are so many games that I don’t even care about all the games available on Steam (that I’d be willing to play). We have so many games coming out that I’d have to play game for a living to play all the games I want to play, and even then I’m not 100% sure I’d be able to play everything I’d be open to play. I have multiple games that I’ve purchased and installed thinking “I’ll get to them soon enough” and they’re just taking drive space. I also have multiple games on my wishlist that are “waiting for a discount” but I’m probably never going to pick them up because actually they’re waiting for my backlog to clear and it will never clear.
Does it suck that Alan Wake is Epic exclusive. Sure. Does it really matter to me? Not really because I’m oversaturated with games I want to play. Missing one great game doesn’t matter when I already have a backlog of great games I won’t purchase because I have a backlog of great games I’ve purchased that I won’t play because I have a backlog of great games I really want to play.
The only games I have on EGS are the ones I collect via Amazon Prime. It’s basically a game key graveyard.
But GOG? That’s where all the good games come from.
gog doesn’t have regional pricing and their launcher at this point is worse than epic’s. as an old fuck I like having old games back but it’s not convenient at all.
Galaxy definitely sucks, but to say it’s worse than EGS seems pretty far out there. EGS has been caught snooping around files and taking system logs without notice on top of just being overly resource intensive, totally bare bones and easily broken.
I’m talking user experience. egs used to be the slowest app I’ve ever used but right now egs starts and works faster for me than gog. also its video player works faster than steam’s, by like a mile. I don’t know if it’s just me because I never hear anyone complain about steam’s video player but for me it’s so goddamn terrible in so many ways I want to punch a wall every time I’m curious about a game while browsing steam because the video just takes fucking ages to get going and the controls are horrendous. I end up just searching on YouTube.
Exclusives of any kind are bullshit marketing ploys, at best.
The way Coffee Stain explained it for satisfactory is that the exclusivity windfall gave them enough runway to finish the game.
If the system of temporary exclusivity in exchange for upfront development cash continues I think it’s an overall win for the gaming community as games get to come out at less rushed pace and with potentially less cash generation grabs in the game itself.
That’s great that devs can benefit from it, I will not purchase the game until it’s available on other platforms due to Epic’s general shitty behavior.
So venture capitalism. Because that worked out so well for consumers with the rest of the tech industry. Wcgw?
Nothing has gone wrong, and it’s been going on for years at this point. But yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe aliens will invade us because people use Epic. Maybe the sun will go supernova because the Epic store doesn’t have reviews.
Who knows, anything could happen.
🧲 time
I feel the same, when the game is not available on GOG.
I haven’t tried GOG but their business model seems awesome. Do their games work on Linux / Mac?
Lutris is a game launcher for Linux that can install games from your GOG, Epic, and Steam accounts. I believe it even supports Proton which is a compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux (which is a Valve project that is based on Wine).
Nice! I’ll give it a spin
Depends on the game developers, if they offer/upload a Linux/Mac version. On Linux, you have to either install/update your games manually, or use a third-party client. Idk about Mac. Third party clients can also integrate Wine for Windows games.
You don’t need to update them manually if you installed them using Heroic. You only need to update them manually if they were manually installed using a offline installer.
Which is what I said: “On Linux, you have to either install/update your games manually, or use a third-party client.” With third-party client I meant a client like Heroic.
If a game works on Windows, there’s a 95% chance it works as good or better on Linux. The same can be said for MacOS apps, and Android apps, as there are packages to run those on Linux as well.
which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Yar, me as well.
For what reason? Why is Epic so bad? I’m not fishing for a reaction. I genuinely don’t know why most people here hate Epic
Edit: ok, so what I gather from the comments is that Epic has a slightly worse service and that you guys are way too invested in a stupid dispute between two companies that only care about your money. Cool 👍
Copied from a comment I posted in this thread:
I got exactly one free epic game (subnautica) that I uninstalled and bought immediately the day I couldn’t play the game because I lost Internet and there was no goddamned offline mode.
Epic store is shovelware, and I can’t believe the amount of people who defend a 4th rate store comparing itself to the gold standard that can’t even offer basic functionality expected of a modern platform.
Lol I stayed away because the anticompetitiveness was immediately obvious (they should have opened with the free games but showed their hand early by starting with exclusivity deals), but I’m not surprised it gets even worse.
Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.This tells me that
- Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
- Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
- Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.
The Epic Games Store is a user data collection platform first, and a pretty bad game store/client second. It’s slow, buggy, difficult to navigate (though that’s somewhat subjective), and sometimes doesn’t work without an Internet connection, even for games you already have downloaded locally and installed.
Disclaimer: I understand that any games store, including Steam, collects user data. But at least those other stores provide working, user friendly features in exchange for the data collection they do.
Hey sailor… ;)
Yo ho ho, There is no sailing on the high seas when we are talking about multiplayer games! Alive service game, it be!
I only play single player games, so your attack has no effect on me!
online-fix ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
Just wait till it’s on GOG or Steam, no game is worth the hassle of Epic Games store.
I ignore epic totally
EGS buyers can beta test it for me, that’s fine.
