• Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I really don’t understand how people still hang on to defending EGS. It’s been shit since release, it’s still missing basic features years later, and it’s been found doing tons of shady shit.

    I’m all for more competition in these spaces, because, you know, competition pushes the companies to one up each other and build compelling features. But EGS is just blatantly missing shit and is explicitly user-hostile by buying exclusivity to their vastly inferior platform. Steam hasn’t had to react at all because they’re still so far ahead, and Epic is just fucking trolling users by forcing them onto their platform without working cloud saves or even non-buggy installs.

    The irony that they flag-wave “user choice” while doing this just totally baffles me.

    • Abucketofpuppies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      But they are great for indie developers. They’ve done a lot to serve the indie community by buying their games and distributing them as a free game. It gets indie studios out of the hole and into the public eye.

      • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        EGS itself is a graveyard for indie games, game discovery is complete shit and they have no plans on improving it..

        When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it’s more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.

        Steam has great features to advertise indie games such as dedicated events and such so a lot of indie hits have come from it, like Valheim, Fall Guys, Among Us, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Rimworld, Factorio, The Forest, etc.

      • joshhsoj1902@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        It may have been great, but not in a sustainable way.

        For Epic those exclusive contracts were part of their advertising budget.

        I honestly wonder how many indie games that started as an epic exclusive are still around today because of that exclusivity deal or if they only survived because eventually the exclusivity expire and they were able to list on other platforms

    • cheeZzBread@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      You don’t have to love them but they’re still the closest thing to any competition at all. You can complain but they’re most likely to improve if they’re profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down. I get the “buying exclusivity” complaint, but honestly it’s fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.

      • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You don’t have to love them but they’re still the closest thing to any competition at all.

        That’s arguably true. But as I said above, the only reason competition is good is if it actually is a reasonable alternative and the companies and products they’re competing with have to make changes to keep customers, which in turn benefits customers of both platforms. Steam hasn’t had to do a thing to deal with EGS. It’s brought no benefits so it serves no purpose Because of this, GOG is better competition in many ways.

        On the other hand, as I said above, it has brought many disadvantages and actively harmed customers with unclear game ratings, lack of things like cloud save, fragmentation in their game libraries, and legitimately broken games and wastes of money.

        You can complain but they’re most likely to improve if they’re profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down

        How would this hurt customers? There wouldn’t be EGS exclusives. People would have consolidated purchases. Steam wouldn’t change. GOG wouldn’t change.

        The only argument you could make is the lost purchases on EGS, which wouldn’t have existed if EGS hadn’t started in the first place. That’d be a loss EGS created. So it only furthers the point. EGS pretty much only harms customers.

        I get the “buying exclusivity” complaint, but honestly it’s fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.

        Okay, sure, the company is working in their own best interest. And? It still actively hurts the consumer. There is no value they are providing to the consumer. If there was an exchange in which the company provided some value in exchange for that detrimental action, it would be warranted.

        But EGS offers literally nothing but problems to the consumers.

      • PixxlMan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Instead of shelling out millions to shadily buy themselves into exclusivity, maybe they ought to have invested in their platform? I feel the state of the Epic Games Store reflects their view of gamers - mindless moneybags drooling for the latest releases, not as customers using a platform to play games. I don’t think we’d be better off with them in the game.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s not missing features if you want a launcher to launch games and not to accumulate cards and hats.

      • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        …if all I wanted was a game launcher, Playnite and pirated .exes are 100% free. Steam at least has features that you are paying for, nobody is forking over $60 for games on Epic just for the privilege of using their shitty launcher unless they are an idiot (or they got a lot of cash to spare I guess).

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          You might also want to support the devs that bring you those games? But from what you’re saying I guess you pay for games just to make sure Valve gets money and you don’t care about the people actually making the games 👍

          • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            So let me pirate it and then donate to the devs or something. Or let me purchase it directly from them. Why should Epic get 10% for doing literally nothing? People like to focus on Epic vs Valve, but Steam could literally not exist at all and Epic would fail. They don’t offer a product that is better than piracy. That’s the bare minimum standard they need to achieve and they can’t even do that. A pirated .exe + Playnite is an objectively better product than a $60 purchase on Epic, it’s just the facts. Anyone that spends money on that store is a fool.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Didn’t know pirated games come with auto updates, cloud saving, achievements, working multiplayer (when applicable) 🤔

              If the only way your argument makes sense is by being disingenuous maybe you should keep it to yourself…

              • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                lmao so features in a store are all of a sudden important now? That’s not what you said before, you said all EGS needed to do is launch the game. It’s almost like… features in a gaming platform are important. Like I said. Now if only you could take this newfound realization and apply it to Steam vs EGS…

                You can set up auto-updates and cloud saves pretty easily, hell there’s even some crazy stuff like this for achievements (EGS social features are so barebones, who cares about achievements on there anyway?).

                Multiplayer is a given, everyone knows you can’t pirate multiplayer games with official servers. But if you were to play a multiplayer game, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be on EGS unless there was forced cross platform because you know it will be dead. I notice when I play Risk of Rain 2 that there will be hundred of Steam lobbies while the cross-play Epic lobbies are completely empty. Epic players literally cannot play that game online. Money well spent for the three people that actually bought that game on EGS, I’m sure they are really thankful they could give Epic their 10% cut for doing nothing when they could have just gotten the game for free or on Steam and had a better experience.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Well, it seems they’re important to you so I’m pointing out the hypocrisy that’s all 🤷 You buy from Steam because of the features, say pirating is better than buying from Epic because of the lack of features, I point out the features they have that you don’t get from pirating and now you’re still being disingenuous, so that conversation can end.

                  • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    lol you mean your hypocrisy? You said features don’t matter. “All Epic needs to do is launch the game, that’s good enough!” But now you are saying features do matter. Which is it? Taking this new stance to it’s logical conclusion, Steam would obviously be the superior choice, would it not? Steam has more features than Epic, right?

                    Pirated games have features that Epic games don’t by the way, namely the fact that you own the game and you are not limited by DRM. In my personal opinion that is worth way more than EGS achievements which are completely useless on a store with no social features anyway.