Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
I hate when companies inconvenience me while trying to disrupt a near-monopoly by my benign benefactors.
Pretty sure this is a screenshot of the upcoming game Infinity Nikki and OP must have checked before they added the windows launcher for preload.
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Know what happens when I find out a game is Epic exclusive? I don’t buy it for a year… Sometimes ever. Enjoy the Epic money kings, hope it’s worth it.
Think of it as a “this game is not yet available for purchase” seal. It may also mean “we know our game is not up to standards (it wouldn’t sell well on Steam), so we chose to let idiots at epic decide if they want to pay for it, and hey it worked so that’s something”.
I tried GTA5 when I made an account there. The game was given free. Didn’t play for long though, and I dislike the idea of having more than Steam. (I have GOG for Sims but I don’t use that either)
I tried Rocket League at work. It is fun and I’d like to continue at home…but opening up that Epic Store kinda is a turn-off for the deal.
I don’t like it when something is only available on Epic either. I also don’t like it when someone is only available on Steam - which happens far more often.
I feel the same, when the game is not available on GOG.
Epic pays for exclusivity sometimes. It’s funny, I keep picking up the free epic games but I don’t think I have ever once played a single game on there.
I’ve been picking them up religiously after I found out I missed Frostpunk. The only ones I’ve played were the big names like Control, Death Standing, and the old Fallout games. For everything else, the client doesn’t give you enough information to decide if it’s worth your time or not. I keep having to go back and forth between Epic and Steam to read reviews and the “similar to other games you’ve played” thing. It’s not worth the effort.
I claim but I don’t even have the launcher installed. If it wasn’t for the giveaways I’d completely forget about the place.
I just use the heroic/legendary alternative launcher for any single player games I actually want to play from egs. It’s open source and gives epic less footprint on my machine.
Unfortunately if you want to do anything multiplayer then you need the real client.
I don’t even get the free games…they aren’t worth my time. I’ll pay to get them elsewhere instead even if it’s free there when I’m looking
I’m claiming them for the day when Epic games store shuts down and they give out keys for redeemed games on steam. I’m playing the long game. :D
Bethesda did that after shutting down their launcher.
I just download the games that are drm free (which is actually quite a lot) and put a zip archive on my backup drive(s)
Honestly we should probably have more places to buy games not just steam. Because remember when gabe newell dies there’s no guarantee that steam will still be “good” they are still a corporation. So if epic needs exclusives to keep going we should support that. Competition between corporations is a good thing.
If the list on PCGamingWiki is up to date, there aren’t many Epic exclusives anymore (only 26 currently): https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Epic_Games_Store
And, earlier this year, Tim Sweeney said that many of exclusivity deals weren’t a good investment while the free games have been “magical.”
So, it seems like a problem that is solving itself over time. Epic will probably still have exclusives going forward, but I would expect them to target a few high-value exclusives like they got with Alan Wake 2. Or, maybe they will just do more acquisitions of games to self-publish, like they did with Rocket League and Fall Guys.
I get it being annoying… But why is it such a deal breaker? If the game is good, why not just install it, play the game, leave it when you’re done?
The other storefronts have some cool features (namely gamepass for xbox and all of steamworks and the app stuff for steam), but it doesn’t really matter if the game doesn’t use em.
I just save my money and play something else or buy something else. There’s more games than can be played that I’ve never felt like I was losing out by not buying a game from epic.
Right but I dont see how its anything but a minor annoyance.
Like, if the game is really good… What is so bad about installing the epic client?
I don’t have it installed. I claim through the website.
Some perspective from someone vocally against Epic:
They entered the market and tried to get their foot in the door not by providing a better service or experience to the consumers, but by being underhanded and anticompetitive while accusing their competition of being underhanded and anticompetitive. Add on that with the fact that their CEO lacks any sort of humility and integrity, and I simply do not trust them to give a single shit about me as a customer. If they achieved their goals, I’m confident that they would leverage their position to extract value out of me immediately—be it through ads, increased prices, or selling my data to third parties. I don’t want to support that by giving them any of money.
While I don’t think Valve is my friend either, they at least:
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Have a history of doing things that provide some benefit to their users, even if its clearly out of self-interest.
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Aren’t publicly traded.
Epic Games is not publicly traded.
And TBH their history with Unreal is not that bad. And Valve is already extracting a truckload of money out of us through their percentage cut.
Carmack is absolutely a character though, lol. I have to wonder how controversial EGS would be without him.
Fair point with neither being publicly traded. I should have been more clear on that.
Unreal the engine, or the game series? From the perspective of a consumer, I don’t think either of them seem to be in good shape these days, unfortunately.
Er… Carmarck is in Id. Epic’s founder and CEO is Tim Sweeney.
Ah yeah I meant Sweeny.
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Some people prefer not to do business with entities whose business practices they don’t support.
Speaking for myself, if it’s Epic only, it means I have no assurances as a customer that they’re going to keep letting me play the game on Linux. If I bought Alan Wake II, I’m doing so knowing that they don’t support my operating system and could break compatibility with Wine with any random update. If that happens on Steam, I can reasonably expect a refund if it was previously Verified, and because of the verification system, they also have an incentive not to break compatibility. So if I play Alan Wake II some day, it’ll be because it was a free giveaway on Epic, because I’m not paying for that.
Now this is a good reason.
And random note, but I didn’t get a notification for this reply?
Sorry I forgot to send it, won’t happen again, boss.
What do you mean, are you on some client that has notifications disabled by default?
Genuine fediverse noob here.
The guy you’re replying to was joking, saying they are in charge of your notifications.
Lemmy notifications depend on the client you’re using. I’m using Sync which is far from perfect with push notifs, usually they only pop up when I open the app.
I am just using the browser UI, and just mean the notifications on the site.
Sometimes I get a reply with no notification even within Lemmy, and someone else said this happens to them too.
I think sometimes they’re just slow, so you may have clicked into the thread before it found out you needed a notification. I’m not an expert though. It’s just a guess based on personal experience.
Yeah, that’s true on Steam as well.
There are a whole bunch of games that actively removed compatibility with SteamOS, and Linux by extension. Apex Legends was the most recent and the most vocal about it.
That was on the developers, not the storefront, though. Epic has specifically decided they don’t give a flying fuck about Linux.
Well, you still don’t get to play it, and you sure as hell aren’t getting a refund, so I’m not entirely sure how that changes the situation at all.
No, you see is different because Steam is love and Gabe is perfection, you know?
The level of quasi-religious fervor is… kind of scary. Especially given that it’s over this one billionare techbro. I mean, good for them, they have a great product and a better understanding of how to make money with only light enshittification, but still…
If and when they do something shitty, I’ll be right there with you calling them out for it, but I don’t see anything here that fits that description
… because now your weird obsession with blaming Steam for all things going wrong with gaming has less ground to stand on?
Because not having a game available is not having a game available. You still, and I can’t believe I have to type this twice, don’t get to play the stupid game.
For the record, I blamed Steam for nothing here. Some guy said he feels more assured that Steam will keep Linux compatibility, I pointed out that this is not the case. It’s not even Steam’s fault, compatibility is being dropped either for technical reasons or due to anticheat, and there is no indication that it will be any different with Epic going forward.
What they said, exactly:
If that happens on Steam, I can reasonably expect a refund if it was previously Verified, and because of the verification system, they also have an incentive not to break compatibility.
Emphasis mine.
They didn’t say it won’t happen. They said they have far more confidence that it’ll be much less likely to happen. And that they have a reasonable expectation of refund if the developer pulls that.
There are no guarantees here, but Valve has put a lot of time and effort into making Linux games work, and Epic has not. No, they can’t stop developers from pulling those stunts, but they’re no more happy about it than we are and, from everything I’ve been seeing, are actively working on getting developers to stop doing that.
Also, the anticheat excuse is mostly a lie, the ones Destiny 2, Rust, and Apex Legends use are compatible with Linux, and just require, as I understand it, checking a box and including a file in a specific spot, so those are just outright anti Linux for the sake of hating Linux and Linux gamers.
Which game?
It is also available on the pirate bay.
TPB is a honeypot now.
And unless you’re an idiot, it’s pretty nigh impossible to get caught in that honey trap.
An exclusive on Epic Games may as well just not even exist, as far as I’m concerned. Didn’t play Anno 1800 until it was finally released on Steam. Nice discount too.
So they still got your money eventually. That’s a double win, in their eyes.
In what way is that a “double win”?
In what way is it not? They get Epic’s money for exclusivity and know they’ll still get sales after it ends from people that “boycott” them for doing that.
Buying the game later doesn’t hurt them, it just reinforces the same behavior later.
That’s not what a boycott is. If I don’t buy a game because it’s exclusively on Epic, it’s not because I’m taking a moral stance. It’s because it’s invisible to me.
A boycott is when I don’t play Epic/EA/Unisoft/Blizzard-Activism games for the company’s historic shitty behavior.
I’m aware of what an actual boycott is.
Getting Epic’s money isn’t a slam dunk for profit. You’re hedging your bets taking guaranteed Epic money for lower potential sales vs non-guaranteed Steam money for higher potential sales. Having a bad exclusivity deal on Epic and then selling your game at a loss (90% discount) on steam isn’t profiting both ways, and something isn’t profiting either way.
I also disagree with the sentiment that you’re reinforcing bad behavior. If anything, you’re signalling to them that you won’t support exclusivity deals, and are happy to wait for a deep discount on Steam. Ultimately, that’s a win for consumers.
That said, fuck exclusivity deals, and I’m much in the same boat where I’m hard pressed to support developers that take them.
Unless they’re actively losing money in their deal, they’re not gonna care if the sale comes immediately or years later. If Epic exclusive + late “hold outs” = $$$, they’re just gonna do that until the equation changes.
It’s less money in their pockets and more money in ours. That’s not going to be a double win in their books.
Nobody ever hurt a company or made them reconsider their decisions by giving them money, no matter how little it was.
Economists cannot predict the future, as much as some people might wish they could.
Whatever break even point the devs of Anno 1800 considered when making the decision between releasing only on Epic and releasing to all platforms may have seemed reasonable at the time the devs were gearing up to release the game, but performance of said game is never guaranteed. Sure you may have statistics to influence things one way or another, but it’s still a gamble.
We don’t know if Epic exclusive + late discounts > full game purchases on all platforms specifically for Anno 1800, and it appears that you’re claiming which way that equation points with no evidence. Do you work for Epic? For Ubisoft? For Blue Byte? Are there public sources pointing to game sales? What research are you pulling from that considers game futures?
I will respect that you’re right about predicting devs’ decisions based on which way that equation points. Everyone is downvoting you though because you’re making it seem like you know the answer when clearly there’s more to this game, and financial gaming decisions like this.
You’re not an expert. You’re a chatter. Unless you can prove otherwise.
If I like the game then good for them. Epic didn’t get any of my money and they’re the one I have an issue with.
You need a better definition of „they“. Because I don’t buy from Epic for one particular reason, so they (Epic) don’t get my money. If the game is good and I want to play it I will do so later and at that point the developer still deserves my money.
They lose day 1 hype, tho. Sure, the game eventually comes to steam, but that’s after it’s already been overplayed on twitch and YouTube’d to death.
In what way does that matter outside of driving sales? Which people like op happily still gave them?
It’s not “new”. There is no FOMO. Early adopters for games are a large chunk of sales.
If that was actually a concern, why would companies do it at all?
Why do companies do exclusive launches? Presumably they think the money they get from Epic is more than the movement money they’ll lose in sales. Whether or not they’re right is another question.
Basicaly they do not think their game is any good. So if someone takes the deal. I instantly loose interest. I mean if even the developer think it is no fun…
Presumably they think the money they get from Epic is more than the money they’ll lose in sales
Congrats on getting the point.
When I see sales of Playstation games on PC the numbers are very underwhelming compared to other big third party titles. In contrast helldivers 2 got insane numbers when it launched simultaneously.
I don’t think launch hype sales can be overlooked and how much may potentially be lost. If people are willing to wait then by the time game is available hype is less and it’s more likely for people to move on or wait for even steeper sales.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to convince me about it. I’m not the one deciding to sell out to Epic.
if it was discounted then they didn’t get as much money.
And? It’s still profit. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be listed.
Profit matters on a quarterly basis.
If a company gets the full profit of their game as they predicted they might in 1 quarter, then that’s basically the best case scenario.
If instead that full profit is spread of multiple years, then quater-to-quarter the game might look like it is underperforming, or severely so.
The timing of profit matters just as much as how much profit there is. Time value of money is a pretty useful concept in the financial world.
and… instead of getting $60 immediately, they are getting $30 or whatever later. clearly one is better than the other, no?
It would be except I forgot it existed while it was in purgatory on Epic
