As a user, the Epic store is massively inferior to the Steam store on the merits. The UI is worse, the download and update speeds are worse, the interface is worse, the portability is worse, the social layer is worse, almost everything about it is worse. You're acting like they're remotely comparable in end-user experience, which they aren't. Gamers don't necessarily want a monopoly, they just don't want to be forced to use a shittier store to play certain games. If Epic actually put any effort into their store I think there would have been a lot less backlash.
I don't want a monopoly. The thing I REALLY don't want though is exclusivity in games. The only possible outcome I see without Steam being the monopoly is other stores trying to win over users via exclusives. We already see this with the Epic Games Store. And since Valve has pretty much shown they are the good guys over the decades I am willing to accept Steam as a monopoly to ensure we don't get a Netflix, Disney+, HBO, Prime, Apple TV+ situation with PC gaming.
Natural monopolies are fine; coercive monopolies are not. As long as Valve offers a better product/service at a cheaper cost than their competition and that's why they have a monopoly, then there is nothing wrong with that.
TBF, monopolies are convenient. It's simple & easy to get all your stuff on Amazon nice and quick, but then you get intense concentration of wealth and bad working conditions, for example.
There's always this kind of contradiction between the convenience humans want, and the problems that come with any kind of monopoly.
Is this game good? I've resisted installing Epic Store so far, but this looks pretty neat. Does it feel Zachtronics-y? If so, I'll probably pull the trigger.
Because the competition is being done by throwing money at it... and not in the let's build a fantastic, quick and nice launcher with a world class user experience and amazing tools for developers...
But in the same way VC funding artificially lowers the costs/prices to the consumer until they've captured a market and then bam, time to pump them for all they've got.
I use it to just grab a game if it's free... and every time I realise they still haven't added dark mode to checkout to match the rest of the app, and get my retinas burnt by the sudden contrast flip.
Because competing with steam through exclusive deals and free games is not competing, it's racing to the bottom. I don't see any actual improvements or innovations in the Epic Games Store, it looks like a pure money grab.
All Steam-like clients are useless middlemen. More of them is not a good thing. Every desktop OS on the planet already has ways to install and manage programs, and they don't demand a cut.
What is with people and not wanting to install EGS on their pcs? Is it just the hip thing to do, they've seen it plastered all over reddit so they've decided to jump on board? It's another game store... they have 1-2 free games every single week, and they're not junk games. Get the free games on the website and when you come around to installing it someday you'll have a huge library. There was backlash against Steam when it first came out too, look now.
Because it's a terrible client with virtually no features, yet their business tactics strongarm players into using it. Nobody likes to be forced to use a certain product. EGS doesn't even offer a fraction of what Steam can do. Here's what I can come up with off the top of my head; I'm sure others can chime in with more.
Steam has a robust marketplace, with user reviews and a slew of sorting and shopping cart features.
Steam has friends, chat, voice chat, and group chat.
Steam has built-in, turnkey stream broadcasting of games.
Steam allows friends to drop in and play a game cooperatively with you, even if they don't own the game too.
Steam has remote play with friends.
Steam has remote streaming to devices around your home, and big screen mode so you can plop on the couch and enjoy an optimized UI and a gamepad.
Steam has robust gamepad support and configuration.
Steam has industry-leading Linux support.
Steam has VR mode, with custom spaces, interfaces, and a market of useful tools and mods to enhance the experience.
Steam has a music player and a built-in web browser.
Steam lets you add non-steam games to your library for convenient access.
Steam has customizable user profiles and fun social features, like card trading.
Steam has experimental mods and features via Steam Labs.
Now, ask yourself, how does it feel when EGS coerces players into using their inferior storefront through strongarm business practices.
Well, Steam also started by strongarming players into it if you want to play Half Life 2. Also Steam is still strongarming players by Steamworks integration. Half of AAA games use Steamworks, and if you don't want to use Steam, you can't play the game, even if you buy a boxed copy.
(Not the person you're replying to) These are all reasonable complaints! I, personally, barely care about _any_ of them (in particular, I don't think I've ever read a review on Steam, I almost-never play multiplayer or modded games, and I would hate to stream my games), so, for me, Epic is exactly as fully-featured as Steam is - but these are reasonable reasons why other people might feel a gap.
(EDIT: in particular, I always find the complaint that Epic lacks a shopping cart to be hilarious, because I hadn't even noticed that Steam _has_ a cart until that was pointed out. I can't imagine ever wanting to buy more than one game at once!)
Because it's Epic. They bought up my favorite game, ended Linux support for it, pulled it from Steam, turned it into another cosmetic money-grab, and continue to make it worse every update. The latest changes excited the community a bit but I'm positive they're part of a plan that the community is going to be absolutely furious about and then, to kick a dead horse, they'll add EAC, even though it's impossible to cheat.
Petty reasons? Yeah, but they haven't offered anything worth changing my mind over yet.
Tangentially related, but they killed party match-making with rank disparity requirements. Not sure if this was to prevent smurfing, but I can't play with friends who are over one rank higher.
It's a crap client that isn't up to the standards of modern game clients. I still can't move my game downloads to a backup in instances where I reformat my machine (or move to a new machine) and expect them to work when moved back. Meanwhile that kind of thing has worked in steam for a decade, and games I install via GoG don't care anyway because they don't need a client to work. IIRC Epic still doesn't have a working cloud save feature either. I get really tired of having to download 400GB of games just because the free games from Epic don't like being moved around.
They offer no value to the end user other than the free games to bait people onto their store.
For me it’s just because I don’t want another piece of software on my machine that adds essentially no value on its own running in the background that I also have to manage to ensure that it’s not running in the background when I don’t want it to.
I’m resistant (and I think this is the case with others as well) to the idea that games must exist inside of their creator’s special portal; it’s a level of abstraction that I wish did not exist. Every modern desktop OS has some way of directly installing applications and many of them also provide their own stores (Mac App Store, Windows Store, etc.). The only thing “game store competition” is doing is creating a “now you have [x] standards” problem where the pitch of “all your games are located in one place” ends up becoming “all your games are in a bunch of places which you’ll be able to access after you’ve installed several different applications”.
Yea it's a bit odd although I understand it. People want all their games in one place. That being said, as much as I love Valve, Steam and what they're doing for the gaming community, I definitely want more competition in the PC game market.
Competition is ultimately beneficial for the consumer, after all :)
I understand people having ideological issues about not wanting to deal with Epic, but don't let dogma stand in the way of experiencing some real innovation.
What I mean is that besides the free games, one big reason to install Epic is to play around with Unreal 4/5 game engine. There's some very impressive innovation going on in the game engine space, and whatever you may think of Epic the company, Epic the engineering organization is knocking it out of the park here.
From zero experience you can build a photorealistic open world game environment in about a week of watching Youtube tutorials and downloading free assets from the Unreal marketplace. Anybody who hangs out on HN should be able to pick it up very quickly. Frankly it's pretty amazing what you can do with Unreal in very little time. Unreal 5 (still early access) looks even more impressive in its capabilities - watch some Youtube videos about it.
I firmly believe that entertainment is heading in the direction of anybody being able to create their own worlds to play in, with multiplayer to host their friends no less. Unreal (and Unity) are the adult version of the tools kids are already using on Roblox and Minecraft and both engines are improving by leaps and bounds. Think of using those tools as the gateway to the non-Meta metaverse, where anybody can create and run their own huge, quirky, and amazing virtual world.
Readit News
I don't need another launcher agent on my computer for your auto-update telemetry loving nonsense, for trying out a game I might not even like!
Nothing much more than that really.
But in the same way VC funding artificially lowers the costs/prices to the consumer until they've captured a market and then bam, time to pump them for all they've got.
I use it to just grab a game if it's free... and every time I realise they still haven't added dark mode to checkout to match the rest of the app, and get my retinas burnt by the sudden contrast flip.
Nope.
Steam has a robust marketplace, with user reviews and a slew of sorting and shopping cart features.
Steam has friends, chat, voice chat, and group chat.
Steam has built-in, turnkey stream broadcasting of games.
Steam allows friends to drop in and play a game cooperatively with you, even if they don't own the game too.
Steam has remote play with friends.
Steam has remote streaming to devices around your home, and big screen mode so you can plop on the couch and enjoy an optimized UI and a gamepad.
Steam has robust gamepad support and configuration.
Steam has industry-leading Linux support.
Steam has VR mode, with custom spaces, interfaces, and a market of useful tools and mods to enhance the experience.
Steam has a music player and a built-in web browser.
Steam lets you add non-steam games to your library for convenient access.
Steam has customizable user profiles and fun social features, like card trading.
Steam has experimental mods and features via Steam Labs.
Now, ask yourself, how does it feel when EGS coerces players into using their inferior storefront through strongarm business practices.
(EDIT: in particular, I always find the complaint that Epic lacks a shopping cart to be hilarious, because I hadn't even noticed that Steam _has_ a cart until that was pointed out. I can't imagine ever wanting to buy more than one game at once!)
Petty reasons? Yeah, but they haven't offered anything worth changing my mind over yet.
Personal grudge of the week.
They offer no value to the end user other than the free games to bait people onto their store.
I’m resistant (and I think this is the case with others as well) to the idea that games must exist inside of their creator’s special portal; it’s a level of abstraction that I wish did not exist. Every modern desktop OS has some way of directly installing applications and many of them also provide their own stores (Mac App Store, Windows Store, etc.). The only thing “game store competition” is doing is creating a “now you have [x] standards” problem where the pitch of “all your games are located in one place” ends up becoming “all your games are in a bunch of places which you’ll be able to access after you’ve installed several different applications”.
Competition is ultimately beneficial for the consumer, after all :)
On top of that, I don't like Epic's business and legal practices. Can't buy my soul with free games.
No one wants to use their store, so they pay for games to appear exclusively. I hate this so much for certain games I'll just buy it on console.
What I mean is that besides the free games, one big reason to install Epic is to play around with Unreal 4/5 game engine. There's some very impressive innovation going on in the game engine space, and whatever you may think of Epic the company, Epic the engineering organization is knocking it out of the park here.
From zero experience you can build a photorealistic open world game environment in about a week of watching Youtube tutorials and downloading free assets from the Unreal marketplace. Anybody who hangs out on HN should be able to pick it up very quickly. Frankly it's pretty amazing what you can do with Unreal in very little time. Unreal 5 (still early access) looks even more impressive in its capabilities - watch some Youtube videos about it.
I firmly believe that entertainment is heading in the direction of anybody being able to create their own worlds to play in, with multiplayer to host their friends no less. Unreal (and Unity) are the adult version of the tools kids are already using on Roblox and Minecraft and both engines are improving by leaps and bounds. Think of using those tools as the gateway to the non-Meta metaverse, where anybody can create and run their own huge, quirky, and amazing virtual world.
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