Games

Having healthy competition is a good thing and I've wished for a competitor to Steam for a long time until one day the monkey's paw curled and we got Epic Game Store. To sum it up:

• Epic actively tries to introduce exclusivity deals to PC, something that goes very much against the nature of the platform. It is something we're supposed to be above on PC and let console players deal with. PC gamers simply don't want fragmentation in the market. We hate all the different shitty launchers publishers are making for the same reason too.
• Epic has a very hostile attitude towards Linux. Their anti cheat for example by default detects the mere fact of using Linux as a hack. For a long time if their anti cheat was included it was an absolute no go on Linux. Their store also works like crap on Linux, if at all.
• EGS lacks necessities for then to call themselves a good store like reviews, good support and refund policies, ease of mod support, wishlists, etc.
• Their UI is just plain bad.

But the main point is the first one. If they bothered making a good store they wouldn't need to make most of PC gamers angry by introducing exclusivity deals, but they can't be bothered to do that, so they go for hostile competition instead at the detriment of the customers.

Here are some reasons:

• exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.

• The launcher is spyware

https://www.resetera.com/threads/developing-epic-games-launcher-appears-to-collect-your-steam-friends-play-history-up2-valve-responds-see-threadmarks.105385/

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/epic-launcher-and-privacy/123592

• and epic is owned by tencent 40%

• They not really trying to improve their launcher but instead focus on hurting steam and by extension the users.

Its like some shady guy trying to lure kids to a van by offering free candy.

The launcher is security risk for your system https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/1hm9mh9/epic_games_launcher_had_a_serious_security_flaw/

Even if they have fixed that specific issue, why would you believe they have fixed anything else?

Epic Games Launcher Incorrect Default Permissions Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

CVSS SCORE

7.8

This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Epic Games Launcher. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability.

The specific flaw exists within the product installer. The product applies incorrect default permissions to a sensitive folder. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of SYSTEM.

DISCLOSURE TIMELINE

2024-07-16 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
2024-12-04 - Coordinated public release of advisory
2024-12-06 - Advisory Updated

That timeline is disgusting

So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because "yay free games I'm never going to look at again".

If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.

Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He's taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.

Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.

At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.

Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game

Edit: this apparently happened twice (Unreal Tournament and Rocket League), but it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it. I think the concern was actually that Steam players would lose functionality due to not being supported anymore after the unlisting

The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people's impression of the store. But it's still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.

There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence

Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn't want to support Linux

Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead

Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.

Tim Sweeney is an obnoxious hypocritical dickhead who has only gotten worse and stupider and more hostile over the years, he is constantly spouting anti-consumer and anti-common-sense nonsense while acting like he's saving gamers and nurturing his egotistical martyr complex. He has gotten so bad that he has contradicted his own past self so many times that for awhile there was a literal subreddit "TimCriticizesTim" devoted to it. Also EGS itself is garbage resource-guzzling software that almost nobody actually wants on their computer, most of the people who do use it do it either because they're forced to so they can play games exclusively available on it, or because Epic bribes them to by giving them free games constantly. It is nasty software that collects way more data than it needs to, spying on your files and possibly other stuff too, and they also lied about it (and as far as I know still do).

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

Your question makes it sound like Epic is a small new player at the market and they are trying their best and both is not true.

Epic is actively working on enshittification, Steam, at least for now, isn't. For me it's easy as that.

As a customer, why would I ever shop at Epic if the game is also available on Steam and typically has more features? Epic doesn't solve any problems for me and actively introduces others, like a lack of Linux support. Do I want to play Alan Wake II? Of course I do. Am I going to buy it when they could push an update tomorrow that breaks compatibility with my operating system and offers me no recourse as a customer since it was unsupported in the first place? No, I'm not.

There are things worth solving that Steam does poorly (if they also support Linux customers). Finding out if my multiplayer game will be playable without external servers is a nightmare; DRM sucks, and I want none of it; Steam's multiplayer/friends network has more downtime than is acceptable; Steam Input should be a platform agnostic library; etc. Instead of solving those problems, they made the store enticing for suppliers (publishers) but not customers. If I'm shopping someplace other than Steam, it's GOG and not Epic.

My dislike of epic is that they seem to be buying their way into competing, instead of actually competing on features.

Free games sounds good now, but what happens when the fortnite gravy train runs out, and epic needs to start making a profit? They'll likely have to enshittify fast.

Steam at least has a solid history of being generally good. But who knows what will happen if Gaben ever ascends.

Big issue for me is the direction towards incentivised exclusivity. I can tolerate it on consoles (barely nowdays) because you're paying someone to use your hardware instead of another, and you have to specifically develop for console hardware. That takes time and effort.

Different distribution platforms do not have such issues, and I don't want exclusivity anywhere near PC gaming, unless you're self publishing. Frankly if they weren't banging on about steam using the industry standard % take, while they themselves are trying to undercut and use garbage tactics, I would have absolutely no problem with them, same as Ubisoft and EA's garbage store.

Here are my reasons:

• no Linux support - Heroic works, why doesn't Epic do what GOG do and revenue share w/ Heroic?
• exclusivity deals, which reduces options outside of EGS
• Epic's anticheat works on Linux, but their own games that use it don't, that's a pretty big slap in the face

I certainly want more competition to Steam, but that competition needs to do something other than exist for me to use it. GOG is that, and if they properly supported Linux, they'd get most of my gaming money. But they don't, so they only get some of it.

Yeah, this probably reads like a Linux fanboy post or something, but I've been using Linux longer than Steam supported it with its client, and I'll still be here if Steam leaves. It's my platform of choice, and a vendor needs to meet me here if they want my business. Valve did, so they get my money. I honestly don't need much, I just need games to work properly on my system.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/ij48bf/rfuckepic_for_dummies_2020_edition/ old but gold

There's A LOT to talk so you better check there. If you don't want to check, wait till your account get hacked and try ask support to get it back! You can give all the info you want but 99% of the times they just say "fuck you" and you lost everything

Edit: Can you customize your profile pic there? :)

Granted not everyone cares, I remember them giving away a pfp with Sifu but there's still no pfp customization. Why? They don't care about you but about your money

It's very simple, valve is a gamer company. Epic is a money company. Every single thing each respective company does shows that. I'm not a bitch, I'm never going to let those Epic cunts have a penny of my money. Fucking with the games industry, fucking with gamers, locking exclusives, it's all bullshit & they can suck my cock

It is a good thing to have competition. The hate is because they are doing things people don't generally like. Exclusivity deals for one thing. Epic can't really compete with steam because they are too far behind on features, so they resort to exclusivity deals which aren't really good for any consumer. One could argue it is the fault of publishers taking them, but that is just looking at it from a purely business perspective. As a consumer, I don't really care about the business side.. I don't profit from it. So I don't really wonder why gamers are mad at epic for it.

Epic doesn't support my operating system.

ITT: Epic is awful, Steam is great!

Me: Is GOG a joke to you people???

I bought a couple games on epic when they were cheaper. I don't think I'd do so again.

• the client isn't as good. It's slower, the way it paginates your games (I got a lot of free ones) is annoying. It really wants to show you store stuff
• less (zero?) Linux support
• don't think it does the game recording steam does
• I don't think it has the remote play together steam does

There's probably other stuff I'm not thinking of. It's just not as good a service.

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.

Imma try to add something that hasn't been mentioned in the top comments.

Epic's refund policy is shit, comparable to nintendo. I buy a game, it doesn't work, I don't want to waste my time trying to figure out why, so I ask for refund, Epic said no. I've never had this problem at a physical retailer, and I've never had this problem with Steam.

another player to try an compete with Steam

Here is the mistake. It does not trying to compete. It only tries to catch as many fish in its bucket as possible, while leveraging (burning) Fortnite money.

It's a wasted effort, and it will never come close to Steam like this. It may even die along with Fortnite, or degrade further.

First, the EGS software is really bad. It’s slow, clunky, a pain to navigate, and is missing loads of basic features that Steam has had for decades.

Second, rather than improving their offering to make it more competitive and appealing to consumers, they’ve utilized coercive tactics like exclusivity to force adoption rather than earning it on merits.

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.

Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.

They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you're playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.

Chat is... better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It's actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.

One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I'm not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I've heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren't afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.

Competition is good, yes and no.

Exclusivity is not competition, it's lock in for me. So epic should get it's head out of its ass and offer games on both platforms equally. THAT is competition.

I am not a fan of steam. Not a fan of having a library that could change at anytime at anyone's whim but mine. So I prefer gog (yes I know some titles are drm free on steam and it's not perfect on gog either / this is just for context).

Anyhow steam is well established and forcing me to use your store and launcher will just lead to me ignoring you (doing that for origin, uplay, epic) because it's a luxury problem.

Same with all that streaming shit. Also there are other ways if you piss off people a lot, yarr!

The companies forget who made them big. And for epic I count myself in on that massively, still owning game boxes of e.g. Xargon (look it up, and my EU? box is not to be found on ebay) and equally for EA.

And I will not stand for anti consumer behaviors. Got enough money to spend at my age but theyre not getting it like this.

Tim Sweeny can eat shit.

I rather gladly take my free games from them.

I hate it because it's like they're trying their hardest to make a shitty storefront.

It's awful.

I get almost none of the information I need when on a game's store page. Meanwhile, I get all the info I need and then some on the same game's Steam page.

It's like they don't want to sell their product.

I do definitely appreciate the weekly free games. Sometimes, like this week, they have solid offerings. It's Dead Island 2 this week, btw.

I don't like the Epic Game Store because Epic has turned it's back on Linux. Their client doesn't run on Linux which is where I do all my gaming. I also recognize the economic fuckery they're doing to gain popularity. They're spending their Fortnite war chest money on subsidizing games to give them away for the purpose of monopolizing their game store. It's not fair for other game stores like GOG who can't just buy game licenses for everyone to become popular.

I hate console gamers as they've perverted the FPS genre.

Epic makes their money off microtransaction stores and they bought exclusive rights to a bunch of titles a while back, meaning you could ONLY play them on Epic.

There are worse companies, though.