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Games @lemmy.world
Azrael @lemmy.ca

I'm a console gamer so, Why the hate on the Epic Games Store?

I get that Steam is where everything and everyone is at. And that the user experience and functionality is best there BUT having another player to try an compete with Steam is a good thing, right?

If anyone can try, it's the Fortnite Bank.

So, why the hate?

141 comments

  • It's been I think about 7 years and it's not feature competitive for end users with 2011 Steam even though they definitely make more money than 2004-2011 Valve and by 2018 had 14 years of history to look at and feature target based off what competition offered

    The CEO was regularly on Twitter complaining about Windows but refused to help grow Linux adoption. Valve has been doing that since like 2012. He constantly talks about standing with small developers but then in the Apple court case admits they would have been quiet if Apple gave them a special revenue split deal. He complains about Steam and mobile store cuts but doesn't complain about consoles having the same.

    Exclusive deals in lieu of providing a better experience for the end user. Talked up so much about being superior because they're developer focused; didn't have self publishing tools until the end of 2023 - 5 years after EGS launched. It's been 7 years. They haven't made PC gaming any better. They made it worse for a time when they were throwing cash at exclusives rather than store platform feature development

    Recent example of how bad they are with pushing minimal viable products. EGS mobile store was launched the beginning of this year with no library view. You just scroll up and down, side to side looking for games you own mixed among games you don't own. Their concept of minimal viable product is insanely mediocre for how vocal the CEO is and how much money they make and their turnaround time on improving these stores is awful.

    There are numerous Android storefronts that don't have Unreal Engine and Fortnite money keeping the companies funded and somehow Epic comes out the gate mediocre again where its marketing is free games but it's mobile games so what's available is way less headline worthy. They learned nothing from 2018 about the difference between what they consider a minimal viable product and what the market would consider a market competitive minimal viable product

    Years ago Epic put out a kanban board to display a public feature development tracker to assure people they were working on improving the store. They abandoned that quick and I'm pretty sure what few they had on that, most still haven't been implemented

    Their support for handheld is at the level of GOG which barely markets itself and is pretty low revenue as it rarely gets any games that aren't years old. Whether Windows or Linux, Epic for all their billions haven't created a gamepad/TV centric interface. EGS is about at the level of GOG Galaxy which because of its DRM free policy will probably never be a big money maker. That's just insane to me how badly managed EGS is to have so much more money backing it and so little to show for it in the product

    The CEO is a regular blowhard virtue signalling about liberty/freedom on Twitter but can't be bothered to try and pioneer anything for users as a storefront. Since 2018 EGS has been so stagnant while Valve has been expanding Steam as a platform, that EGS is less relevant to me today than when they were throwing out major free games every month. I have no faith in the platform to integrate WINE/Proton, put together a TV/gamepad interface, do something like Steam curators, comparable user review system, crowd sourced game tags - a lot of useless stuff makes it in those but I find them regularly useful at a glance as it's usually pretty obvious which are probably jokes and which are probably legit, user gamepad mapping repository, I've used the guides before. Steam forums are not a place to browse, they're a place to find when you Google a question and the answer is in a Steam forum thread Google/other shows you

    I'd be happy with a suitable competitor. It's just EGS has been terrible at it. I was sad that GameStop did nothing with Impulse. I had higher expectations for EA Origin. Ubisoft/UPlay was always garbage from day one AC2 always online DRM nonsense. I was hyped on GFWL before I learned they were charging for online multiplayer until that failed, also the install limits GFWL had where you had to call support when you reinstalled the game too many times. I was even excited for Windows 8 store until it was eating up peoples storage only reclaimable with a reformat of the drive

    Only GOG exists with a unique selling point, DRM free. Every other competitor has existed just to try and have exclusives to make more money rather than try to attract users with a good service. In the end it turns out there's so many solid to great games released every year that exclusives aren't such a great point anymore. There's not enough of them and exclusives not varied enough to make a storefront platform better than the total Steam package

  • It's a bad experience overall

    The UI was super buggy for me

    I want all my games on Steam and to not have to install multiple apps

  • There are a few layers to it. I'll start with the legit reasons and hope the jackasses don't read too deep in:

    1. EGS was built around the idea of providing what people need/want rather than EVERYTHING. Some of that was truly asinine (no shopping cart for like 2 years?) and some was a conscious choice based on everyone saying they don't want their video game store to be a social media network. Unfortunately... people apparently DO want their video game store to be social media.
    2. Every store handles regional pricing and distribution differently and, allegedly, EGS had worse coverage in a few of the countries The Internet actually knows exists.
    3. Tim Sweney is a complete and utter dipshit and always has been and it is REALLY hard to not hate everything he touches.
    4. EGS rapidly entwined itself with Fortnite because Fortnite makes more than the GDP of some small nations. But we are hardcore gamers so we all hate Fortnite.
    5. Sweeney/Epic actually accidentally argued for consumer rights against Apple which, in turn, led to the full force of Apple running smear campaigns against Epic to make sure that we all realized how much we love walled gardens
    6. Sweeney/Epic ALSO kind of picked a fight with Steam by pointing out how little developers get from any given sale. Which... because we all love Valve means that Epic are assholes and developers all actively want to strive to get the negotiating power of a Call of Duty or Rockstar.
    7. Speaking of. EGS isn't Valve and any alternative is inherently evil because we all love Valve.

    So what was a mediocre store with a lot of free games and a tendency to give developers a giant sack of money for one year of exclusivity became The Devil.

    • Not sure why you're getting downvoted this is actually the most thought out response I've seen.

      Thanks!

      • The why is hinting that people like Valve because they're brainwashed hivemind instead of it being better than Epic.

  • I do both PC and console gaming, and I’ve personally never gotten the Epic hate. As a store it’s not amazing but it’s fine. I will generally go to Steam first but I’m also not going to boycott a game just because it’s Epic exclusive.

    • I'm not petty enough to give up on their free games. I just claim them in the browser to avoid dealing with their launcher.

      But it's important to note that, if their UX is so terrible that people avoid their launcher like the plague, they get fewer chances to tempt users into buying anything. If the sales are low, most developers won't even bother listing their games on EGS. It's a death spiral.

  • People are overly loyal to Steam and don't realise the huge market share they have. It's not technically a monopoly but everyone else is fighting over the 20% that Steam doesn't have so who can blame Epic for throwing money at the problem.

  • Here's another win for Steam:

    Subnautica has a multiplayer mod, but it only works with an older version of the game. Steam lets you downgrade the version, Epic games does not.

  • We don't own our games anymore, so I need to know my library's going to stick around if I'm going to invest in it. Last I heard, EGS hasn't made a profit, so that doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me that it'll still be around in five years.

    I think competition is the answer to a lot of problems consumers face, but unfortunately the "are you going to be there tomorrow?" problem is going to be a major disadvantage for any storefront that competes with Steam. It's why my most preferred shop is GOG, because I still have all my games with them if they close up.

  • Console gamer here as well, though with a PC and redeeming my weekly Epic Games since a few years back. I sometimes play on my PC, but mostly games I don't have on my console.

    Most of what I hear I believe it's mostly due to the Epic Launcher being quite a bit behind standard, and the store not having great costumer service policies. I think Epic's games with timed exclusivity don't garner a lot of respect from the gaming community either, as they rather have freedom of choice to purchase their games on their main storefront.

    Now, I think it'll be obvious, but all of what I mentioned is further impacted by the comparison between Epic (or most other launchers, really) and Steam. Steam might as well be called the "default launcher" at this point, and naturally not everyone can compete (or they don't want to) with the numerous and consistently good business decisions Steam tends to have, which keeps it in the top.

    Not only that, and even though I still benefit from it, I'd say Epic's strategy of offering weekly free games might feel like a sort of 'obvious bribe' to some, a cheap way to try and vainly make gamers turn on their main competitor. Which isn't really moving the needle that much, because gamers preference for Steam isn't due to free games, but good and consumer-oriented business practices.

    I'm sure from gamer to gamer there's more depth to this, but I'd say that's the gist of it.

141 comments