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What's up with Epic Games? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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I can't seem to find that one comment explaining the issue with them...

But for the sake of promoting conversation on Lemmy, what's the issue with Epic, and why should I go for Steam or GoG?

Note: Piracy is not an answer. I understand why, and do agree to a certain extent... But sometimes, the happiness gained by playing something from a legitimate source is far greater 🥹... coming from someone who could never ever afford to purchase games, nor could my parents... Hence I've always played bootleg, or pirated games.

TL;DR

What's wrong?

Their launcher has a terrible UI AND UX.
They make exclusive deals with studios to prevent other platforms from getting games. (Someone mentioned that Steam did the same thing in their infancy. Also, I have another question; why is it ok for Sony and Microsoft to make exclusive games for their consoles but not ok for these PC platforms to do so?)
They have been invested in by a Chinese company, Tencent. (Someone mentioned that it isn't that big of a deal, but idk.)
They are actively anti-linux for some reason.

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[-] Veritrax@lemmy.world 54 points 9 months ago

I personally don't like Epic for paying developers for exclusivity deals, keeping games off other PC platforms for a year or more. Artificial scarcity is bad for consumers.

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

Definitely a terrible idea.

Using money to jump ahead in the line is a terrible mindset. Provide good features, you'll get your recognition.

[-] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Which they don't do. Their platform has very few features, and doesn't even have a cart. (Well last time I booted EGS like a year ago).

They have almost no features and of the features they do provide, none of them are great. Their only "feature" is operating at a loss, subsidized by megacorps, for many years like Amazon to gain a bunch of market share.

Luckily for gamers, steam already existed so they couldn't corner the market and enshittify the entire industry like amazon did.

[-] hh93@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

No it won't - people are lazy

Even CDProjekt sold many more copies on steam than GOG when you

Actually own the ge there instead of renting a licence for it.
Know that 100% of your money go to the game developers.
Get many additional goodies for free

Don't tell me people are choosing the better deal when it's all just steam having the might of "I have most of my games there already" on their side...

[-] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works -3 points 8 months ago

It doesn't really bother me since it's still on pc anyway, it doesn't matter massively where you get a game from (unless you specifically want drm free copies).

[-] GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Especially when Epic is funding development with those deals.

[+] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -7 points 8 months ago

Why not say fuck the developers instead? They're the ones accepting guaranteed income in exchange for exclusivity, maybe you should be mad at then for not taking a chance at the "influencer making your game popular enough that you recoup your cost" lottery.

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 5 points 8 months ago

Por que no dos?

If I'm not buying anything on Epic then I'm also not buying from developers that agree to Epic's exclusivity. Two birds, one stone.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -5 points 8 months ago

They got paid for the exclusivity, after that if they don't sell as much then so be it, but just releasing on Steam is like choosing to play the lottery as a retirement plan and signing an exclusivity deal is like having a job, one might pay tens of millions or nothing, the other you're sure will let you buy food for the next couple of years.

There's tons of games on Steam that the devs have put everything they had in it only to never see any success and then you've got games like Vampire Survivors where nothing happened for months until suddenly a YouTuber started playing it and it became a major success. And I mean, good for Luca (and eventually for his team), but for every successful small dev there's tens of unsuccessful ones...