The glory days of Epic Games are long gone and Tim Sweeney is a god damn moron.
Valve revolutionized Linux gaming; Tim categorically rejects it.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams; Tim welcomed them with open arms.
Valve enforces honesty regarding AI slop; Tim wants to literally deceive people.
All that on top of what they did with third-party exclusives.He’s like that annoying kid who didn’t get invited to a birthday party and vowed to always do the opposite of what the popular kid does. Petulant fucking overgrown child.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams
would’ve been nice if they banned gambling, too, but that’s part of their business model unfortunately.
I hear people say this sometimes, but I don’t know what they mean. Is there part of Valve’s system that has a gambling mechanic I’ve just never engaged with?
Or is it one of their games that has gambling?
Because I’ve been using it for years as basically my sole gaming interface and haven’t seen any gambling.
Loot boxes in Counter-Strike
There is a massive secondary market for in-game items (primarily CS skins) that Valve refuses to combat or even officially acknowledge. Some of it is legitimate, some of it is literal lottery for children. And since every transaction takes place on Steam, they get a cut of that.
All their big multiplayer games have lootboxes and stuff like that.
LordGabn has to buy Aston Martin’s so how.
At least the shit is all cosmetic not like EA sports games with their UT packs I guess. Low bar.
It might be cosmetic, but it can be sold, which fuels the addiction mechanic. EA is bad, too, but this whataboutism.
I think difference is EA is more a game company so people see a game they like then judge the monetization because its a full priced game that turns out to have f2p monetization.
But, Valve is more judged for its experience as a launcher and less for its games. So with the launcher itself being the draw things like Valve game lootboxes can be something people are completely unexposed to as they play other games.
But, EA is still at a stage where the products that receive the most visibility are their games, and the launcher and services side so underwhelming it isn’t a selling point.
Its like Costco versus a company known for its pizza. Costco is a warehouse store people love going to that happens to sell pizza, but is judged on multiple things that draw them there over other stores as opposed to pizza. A pizza company is just known primarily for its pizza so judged on the quality of their pizza.
The launcher?! This bloatware is the second worst thing about Valve’s services right after the gamble mechanics.
Gambling mechanic is as impactful to me as Costco selling alcohol and junk food. I don’t play those games, so only reason I’m even aware of it is because of people bringing it up. Those who seek it out can get it those who come for other things can avoid it.
And I like the steam launcher when it comes to linux compatibility, steam workshop, reviews, categorizing my games, note function, and gamepad support. I absolutely would not want to go back to the old days of CDs for games. Too many to manage and keep track of. And I like my Steam Deck for introducing me to Linux gaming, and being one of the few launchers that actually has Linux support and doesn’t need to rely on third party work arounds.
Those who don’t value that can buy from Epic or other launchers the way some people don’t see the difference buying from Costco vs Walmart and see membership fees as a waste of money. Or go over to consoles to be free of launchers entirely.
I’d say the only thing that bothers me about Steam is that you can’t completely ignore updates for games, so have to go into offline mode or save a copy then update then replace the directory or use steam console to retrieve the old version if you accidentally updated. That’s been my only gripe as a Steam user for games like Skyrim where I don’t want updates.
I don’t want to discredit Steam’s features like compatibility layers, but the software itself is a mess. It is an unnessecary RAM-heavy chromium instance, to be fair, just like most other launchers. I replaced it with Playnite which is streamlined, responsive and more feature rich for managing a library (Steam still needs to be installed of course because they don’t offer offline installer like GOG). And I’d argue that console user saren’t free of launcher, they are locked into a very specific one.
But as someone who’s neither been to Costco nor Walmart, what is the difference?
Of course epic doesn’t understand empowering consumers with information. They don’t care about consumers. If they did, they’d maybe try adding some long requested features to their storefront.
Sweeney’s customers are the shareholders. Not the gamers.
And that’s why he’ll fail.
Tum Sweeney: “Please stop labeling all these turds, because everything will be made with shit at some point”
Epic Games had glory days?
Unreal Tournament 2004 was a spectacular arena shooter back in the day before Battle Royale and MOBAs completely took over. Aged like fine wine too.
Yeah, I’m old.
ut99 > 2k4! But it is a close call, admittedly.
But also, epic released some absolute bangers in the 90’s, though admittedly as a publisher. eg. Castle of the Winds, One Must Fall 2097.
I remember one must fall 2097!
An it included linux native binaries! on the disk! It was absolutely fantastic, i played a lot in invasion servers for years and years.
Godlike
That was fun!
Some people don’t like to hear it, but Fortnite is basically the new Unreal Tournament… in the same way it’s the new Rockband. For the latter, it’s easy: Epic acquired Rockband and Guitar Hero creator Harmonix, and Fortnite Festival is just the latest version of that code, only you can’t use instrument controllers with it, only gamepads (or, I suppose, keyboards or touch screens). So what Fortnite really is, it’s a free-to-play showcase of the Unreal Engine. It’s meant to show off what it can do and anyone can pick it up and play for free. Of course, it doesn’t have all the features of Unreal Tournament. It’s pretty much just battle royale with base building. But it’s the newest version of the same engine and it’s a shooter. Not the same thing… but your skills with older UT definitely translate. My nephew got me to play it. I’d never played it before, and he had spent money on the skins and the extra stuff, so he would go around making big purple explosions and he’d attract attention. Me, I was blown away by the detail, but I found the movement just as fluid as I remembered. Once I got the hang of weapons and their grades, I was scouting out the best pistols and SMGs I could find, and shadowing his character, and when he got into fights, I’d circle around, flank his enemies, and we’d win every fight. We won our first match and I don’t think we’ve lost a match. If we did, we finished in the top 5-10%. We have an unconventional playstyle, and it’s really all me. He plays like most Fortnite players, and they engage him as such. I play like a UT player… or, more accurately, I play it like a Deus Ex player (which was based on the same UE1 that UT99 was). I pick my shots and I shoot to kill. My nephew doesn’t think I’m playing the game right, but he’s having fun and he likes winning.
That said, I don’t love the game. I keep it on my Xbox, but I only play with him (or, I suppose, I’d be open to playing with anyone who asked). Even solo (I did that once on my iPhone when Fortnite came back to iOS this year or last) I still do alright for myself. Rarely take the top spot though. I need a decoy. But if there are 100 players, there’s no shame in being in the last 5 of them.
only you can’t use instrument controllers with it
Not 100% on drum compatibility as I have no interest in Festival, but it not only supports guitar controllers, but PDP even made new models for it.
RIP Rock Band, fuck Epic.
Oh, so you have to buy new ones? Yeah, no. I have Xbox 360 and Xbox One (RB3 and RB4 era) instruments and neither generation work. I’m not buying a new guitar for Fortnite. That’s crazy.
I heard there’s a new guitar controller out (Gibson?), some like 20th anniversary thing? And I’m wondering who this is for. These games are dead.
YARG and Clone Hero (and others) exist, they’re obviously not as big as Fortnite but big enough. Also the Gibson thing you’re referring to is from CRKD, who started putting out new guitars over the summer, plus the already mentioned PDP Riffmaster. So it seems there’s at least enough demand out there that 2 companies started making new controllers for these games.
Epic Megagames certainly did.
Jill of.the Jungle was fun
Unreal 1 was a milestone, and Unreal Engine always has been very popular, now more than ever.
Objectively yes. From the 90s to the early ‘10s.
Sounds like Epic needs to try to make a online game store to compete with Steam, but filled with AI slopware.
Some of us want quality over mass produced crap stolen from others.
I like how he’s basically admitting that it’s a negative that would hurt the game sales. Because consumers don’t want it.
Yep all those people not liking the idea of AI labels telling on themselves. For how much the AI bros talk up AI they are incredibly skittish about having to show what products were created using it. If it is so awesome why the fear?
Like an artist who traces their drawings, but doesn’t want to disclose it so more people will assume they free handed it.
I think I just understood why UE5 sucks that much…
Bullshit translator: “I want to sell more AI made games, so i can reduce costs by firing everyone, and being held accountable for using AI is gonna prevent me from bilking idiots to increase my fortunes by another billion or 5”
Bingo.
Sweeney has Steam living rent free in his head. Whining about Monopoly
Meanwhile, Epic Games already has something resembling a monopoly with the unreal engine, its buggy and resource hungry as fuck, and just seems to be getting worse. Necessitating an arms race of computer upgrades just to run the newest games on their obtuse engine thats being used for everything now. Epic certainly isnt doing anything about it. Its just a money printer for Tim’s legal battles.
re: unreal - and unity - have stopped caring about devs and just chase new tech like nanite or new advertising shite.
godot ftw, they’ll never come back and say “hey we’re changing the contract now you gotta pay for every install” or “hey everything is AI now”.
If the developer puts shampoo in the game box, I’d probably want to know that before opening it.
This sounds like “If we let men marry men, what’s next? Men marrying goats?”
His leap of logic sounds more like, “If we let men marry men what’s next? Cars eating babies?”
yeah dumbfuck that’s why we require ingredients what the hell is this man oh - oh
oh yeah
this adds up hold on
yeah: DAIN BRAMMAGE
Epic Boss Tim Sweeney can go fuck himself
“Waaaahhhh! Waaaaahhhh! Why is Steam such a good service? That should be illegal! Tell them they should be worse!”
That’s all I’m hearing from these other corpos.
Anyway, here’s a userscript/browser addon to make Steam’s AI warnings into a popup: https://github.com/seeeeew/aiwarningforsteam
He doesn’t sound very epic to me.
