For what it’s worth there’s an open source launcher that is 100x better than Epic’s official one called Heroic. You can use that if you want to avoid their slow, ad-spamming store.
I’m aware of it. It doesn’t resolve the biggest problems with Epic. In fact, it arguably makes them worse, by encouraging more people to accept Epic’s policies and run their code. (Note that Epic Store games run Epic code regardless of how they’re launched; it’s built in to the executables.)
All signs point to that program being a failure for them, which is why the exclusivity offers and announcements started drying up, but I guess this is them trying a revised strategy.
Getting 100% of your revenue is pretty wild, epic taking 12% was already massively competitive though.
Pc gamers are just so hostile to anything but steam that it’s unlikely it’ll trigger third parties to go with epic over steam. 70% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Pc gamers aren’t going to be accepting of anything but steam anytime soon.
The reason players prefer Steam is because the other products are not good. If a launcher wants to compete with Steam, they need to do things that Steam does better than Steam or do things that Steam cannot do yet. Right now, I log into Steam and I am immediately in my library without any ads or recommendations, ready to launch because Steam lets me pick where I load in. When I log into Epic, I am stuck in the store page with a full app rotating banner of a bunch of games I am not interested in. Plus the library is limited in scope and I have to slowly navigate through all the games to find the game I want to play. Same with Blizzard, Ubi, all of them.
I don’t know if you intended it this way, but saying that Steam users are hostile of other launchers makes us sound like we are unreasonable in what we are asking for. If Epic was better than Steam, I would use it. It’s not.
More importantly, as a consumer you really ought to not be bothered whether CEO #1 gets 100% of the money or has to split 30% with CEO #2. Either way, some rich old farts are getting richer and fartier.
Yeah, sure, indie games and all. That’s nice. But it’s all the company side, and as a consumer we ought to look at consumer values, in which Steam is just strictly superior. It has features that are actually useful, a far far far far larger library, and most of us have a significant portion of our library there already.
Plus, hey: It doesn’t log you out every 2-3 days for not reason. 😑
It's all just Epic talking points. "Lower cut means more money for developers! Lower cut means lower prices!" It's never been proven to be true. Shit in some cases I'd much rather my money go to Valve than the developers anyway. Much rather fund Linux/Vulkan/VR development than whatever bullshit Rockstar, EA or Activision are up to.
And steam works like a charm in Linux with windows games.
Also works fine with joysticks like dualsense. (Although for some reason they started overriding the native driver with their own steam API after launching steam games even if the game is set to disable steam input).
Going more on topic. I still go for the lower price (and I tend to buy games from 1-3 years ago which are cheaper). But if the price difference is small, I go with steam.
Okay I’ll play along. What other launchers are good? I personally use steam and gog galaxy so that already personally invalidates your argument to me. But I am curious what launchers you consider good that PC gamers have shit all over since you’re the one making the argument.
i’m not saying that other launchers are good, i’m saying that it doesn’t matter what other launchers exist, pc gamers will not use anything other than steam right now. you can make the most perfect launcher in existence, but it wouldn’t matter because pc gamers want to use steam.exe - it’s where their friends are, it’s where all their stuff is. they won’t use anything else by sheer fact that it’s not steam
But you don’t know that. You’re only saying that because that’s what you think will happen. Give me a genuinely good launcher and I’ll use it. The problem is that with how much time and resources that’s been dedicated to Steam, that’s next to impossible to even stand as equals to.
Not to mention that in cases like Epic, they don’t really care about actual user experience.
You won’t. You want to think you will, but you won’t. Every time epic games added one of these essential features, endless gamers would come out of the woodworks to announce that its not good enough, and they will literally boycott a game for having epic exclusivity.
A launcher has to add value, and not just launch shit. Most of these launchers do not add any value at all, they’re just another unnecessary layer between you and playing a game.
I agree that the epic launcher sucks, but Steamworks has also refused crossplay forever (both cross platform between PC and consoles, and cross launcher on PC, which is why a lot of the not ancient games on gog didn’t have multiplayer), meanwhile EOS gets you cross platform and cross launcher crossplay support. Pretty much anyone who wasn’t a huge AAA dev used steamworks for multiplayer until epic launched eos.
Cross platform multiplayer isn’t held back by Steamworks. It’s held back, mostly, by Sony and Nintendo. You notice that PlayStation and Nintendo are the only platforms that regularly do not allow cross platform play. Even in games that do have cross platform play, Playstation usually only allows it with other consoles and not PC. Because Sony is fucking stupid.
I don’t even know wtf you mean by “cross launcher.” Every source of the game on a PC has always been able to connect with other players who got the game on different stores. IE Steam players can play with EGS players and Origin players just the same. If you just mean launching the game from one launcher rather than another… Steam lets you do this! You can add literally any fucking program to Steam and have the benefit of the overlay and even controller support when the game doesn’t have it native. Can’t say that about any of the rest of them.
I don’t even know wtf you mean by “cross launcher.” Every source of the game on a PC has always been able to connect with other players who got the game on different stores.
Incorrect. Games that use steamworks for multiplayer can only play with other steam users. This has been an issue for people buying games on gog for over a decade. Big AAA devs use their own multiplayer backends, but most AA and indie use steamworks (or eos these days).
Steamworks doesn’t support crossplatform or crosslauncher multiplayer, period. Every game that has cross-launcher play between steam and eg. gamepass, gog, epic, etc. has it because they either didn’t use steamworks for multiplayer, or they replaced steamworks multiplayer for either EOS, GoG Galaxy, or their own custom multiplayer backend. This is not up for debate, this is something anyone even somewhat familiar with steamworks or gog would already know.
Homeworld Remastered only recently got cross-launcher multiplayer when they replaced steamworks with their shift backend. Same for Homeworld Deserts of Kharak.
Deep Rock Galactic doesn’t support cross-launcher play or crossplay between the gamepass (xbox or pc) and steam versions because the steam version uses steamworks multiplayer. DRG support crossplay between the MS store and xbox console versions.
Brutal Legend straight up doesn’t have multiplayer on GoG because it relied on steamworks and they didn’t bother implementing anything for gog, so they just removed it.
Off the top of my head, No Man’s Sky, Stellaris, Grim Dawn, and Darktide all had to write their own multiplayer backends to replace steamworks to get cross launcher play.
Literally every multiplayer game that was steam exclusive and then releases on epic removes steamworks and replaces it with EOS because steamworks doesn’t support cross-launcher play (eg. Rising Storm 2, Mordhau)
edit: GOG docs that specifically point out that steamworks doesn’t support crossplay.
In the future you should do literally any research to avoid making an ass of yourself.
That’s not entirely true, I like GOG. But I will say that a big part of why I dislike the use of so many launchers is because 98% of my game library already exists on steam. Publishers would like to use the storefront analogy but I think that gamers look at it more like moving house, and no one likes to move house.
Also you have to consider that a lot of modern day PC gamers grew up with consoles where there are no launchers there is just the home page and the games.
That’s not to touch on the much more prevalent and important topics like privacy concerns and the like.
Eh no, it’s entirely true. We’ve a decade of data showing that almost all pc gamers will not use a storefront and launcher that is not steam. Even if you personally buy games on gog occasionally.
It’s a win win for everyone I care about. Developers get 100% of their revenue, Valve gets competition, and we can download those games over and over so Epic pays for outrageous server costs with no profit in sight.
Good for the devs who need the money but as a customer Steam just provides more, and if not Steam, GOG is DRM-free and ItchIO enables smallers indies to get their games out there. Epic isn't even on my list of places to buy. The only thing I bought in Epic, funny enough, was Fortnite Save the World, and I didn't get much out of that.
How is it bad for a game to only be available through a shitty CCP subsidiary’s shitty storefront that no one wants to contaminate their computer with?
I’m a self proclaimed valve fanboy, I use Linux with proton and wine-ge, and I buy games on the epic store. I try not to have purchasing biases, if the price is good on epic and it’s feature parity with other PC storefronts, I’ll buy it on epic and install with heroic launcher. I’ve only ran across a few games that don’t have feature parity with steam, the biggest being that remnant doesn’t have cloud saves on epic. However, these cases are few and far between and most of the time I’m fine buying on epic.
Exclusives are a cancer. At least if you made them, i could somewhat understand. But paying third party developers to not sell their game on certain platforms is stupid.
I visited Games Gathering Kyiv before the full-scale war, there, among small indie booths, was the booth where the developers showcased this game. They are young guys from Kyiv, Ukraine. I had a little chat with them. Once guys and a gal. There, I played it, and, obviously, bought it as soon as it became available on Steam, to support fellow Ukrainians. The game is very funny. I had a great time playing it even before its release.
I don’t agree with Epic trying to artificially segment the PC market with needless timed exclusives. If they want to compete with Steam, make a better product, but don’t remove choice from the consumer. With that being said, I vote with my wallet and time on this one, I won’t install Epic, or give them money.
I doubt it was, sorry I didn’t intend to imply this title was an exclusive. It’s just the practice of Epic securing timed exclusives is scummy, so I don’t use their store due to that reason, free games or no.
store.epicgames.com
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