- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.world
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I got 222 games on epic games store but haven’t bought any at all.
By redeeming Epic giveaways and never buying anything you are sending profits to the developer while simultaneously costing Epic money. Win/Win.
The developers get paid a flat rate for allowing their game to be free, not per download. You are not sending the developer any money and allowing epic to inflate their user numbers (up 167% !!!) to investors.
Not that I am doubting you, but I’d really like to see a source for this. I would like to learn more about it.
Download the games too. Up their infastructure costs.
Really? Anything good?
Subnautica is good
Harry Potter was free a few weeks ago. Both Styx games are free in a few days, which are excellent stealth games. Epic games routinely gives out good games for free.
There’s some really good ones mixed in with intensely not-me games that get given away. Touch Type Tale, Strange Horticulture, Sunless Skies, Turmoil, Two Point Hospital, Sable, Lego 2k Drive, LOTR Return to Moria, Farm Simulator 2022, Bus Simulator 2021, The Bridge, etc.
I got Outer Worlds with all dlcs included, that’s the only game I’ve installed and played from my EGS collection. I think I got Control there too, which I’ve been curious about.
Oh those are both dope games!
They fave away disco elysium, two point hospital, death loop, sifu and such in 2025
I dont even login to get the free games anymore. Fuck 'em they aren’t interested in making a good experience.
Same, I don’t even claim the free games anymore
Whats the point? I’ve got to wrestle the client to play them and my speeds are capped ridiculously low. Steam at least doesnt seem to have a tiny cap on update and game downloads. Though sometimes whatever is hosting workshop can be slow.
Heroic Launcher.
Yeah, that’s how I used to claim games but then I gave up. Got rid of that routine
I only have an account to accumulate the games they give away for free every week that I never actually play because they aren’t on steam.
Same, I think I will use their games as demos on epic to see if it is worth buying on steam if I am unsure but I have yet to do this haha
I’ve never even claimed a “free game” from those assholes. Fuck 'em.
I caved and bought Alan Wake 2 and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memories because I lost hope of them ever coming to Steam. The few exclusives they have explains the minimal growth pretty succinctly. I hope nobody involved is surprised
Yar me hearty 🏴☠️
And that’s why I would never purchase any games there lol
Alan Wake 2 is the only title I ever bought on Epic too. Do not regret it, despite my dislike of Epic and EGS. My desire to support Remedy was magnitudes larger than any desire to protest Tim Sweeny.
I’d sooner post them some cash and pirate it, honestly.
Full-circle back to the days of buying computer games through the mail.
It’s the best game I’ve played in years, but I’d rather but physical or in any other manner than giving money to epic. Still waiting for any other chance.
I wouldn’t give them a dime even if it meant playing my favorite series’ sequel. I don’t like the people behind it, I don’t like how they think, I don’t like what they envision for the industry, and I don’t want to contribute in any measure to any of that ever happening.
Borderlands 3 launching as an Epic exclusive saved me from making the mistake of purchasing it. By the time is was available elsewhere reviews were pretty universal on it not being worthwhile.
I always felt there was promise to a new store with a big backing to challenge Steam. I think Steam is great and it’s my primary PC games store, but I see the concern of only having one real player in the market. But EGS simply hasn’t done it. It feels like they recognized the reasons Steam is such a huge player in the space; it’s not just the library and the sales, but the level of consumer-focused support and features the platform offers. And that’s the key, Steam is a platform, not just a store.
EGS has never become a platform. It’s missing features, it’s social features are anemic, it’s like they put some effort in to get it off the ground and not broken, and then have just hoped giving away free games will somehow magically convince people to spend money there.
I think there’s reasons to be concerned about Steam, but you cannot ignore how broadly consumer friendly the platform is. Their hardware initiatives only highlight what a complete package their ecosystem is and they’re loaded with some of the most consumer-friendly choices in the industry.
EGS is stuck in no-man’s land. Steam is a better platform, GoG is more consumer-friendly. Humble has Choice which can be a good deal. Fanatical does a better job with sales and credit from purchase. EGS just kind of sits in a no-mans land with no compelling features other than you don’t need to spend money to get games, which is great for us but a terrible business strategy for Epic.
One of the reasons EGS fails is Fortnite in my opinion. In Fortnite they have done all these things: they created a platform with social abilities and all that. Fortnite still brings them lots and lots of money, but this shouldn’t be in Fortnite it should be in their launcher. It could be even more integrated than Steam does. Why not let games grant you skins you can use in other games as a character model (given the game supports it)?
Skins part would work only if that is a game made by Epic and only if they would want to implement it. If we are talking about skins that after purchase are available in every or most games - that will never happen. That idea is dead on arrival. I recall web3 supporters claimed that this will happen and even then everybody laughed at them.
By going the route exclusives they deliberately avoided being competition and cemented themselves as the early access platform with no features.
Hades was as good as it was because it had a year to be mediocre on EGS first
The problem is these stores (Epic but also the Microsoft Store and Amazon’s PC game store) only come along because some executive says “hey what if instead of Valve taking a cut from most PC games, we took a cut from most PC games”, there’s 0 interest or intent for them to be competition (as seen by the exclusives) for Steam or improve the developer/user experience.
Any time these massive companies offer a cheaper subsidised alternative to any existing product it’s to push out the smaller players with less resources and build their own monopoly.
Absolutely. It’s also an immense amount of work to get a platform up to a competitive standard with Steam; I’m not sure a small company will ever be able to catch up in any short term time frame.
But stores like Fanatical, GreenManGaming, GameBillet, etc. have the better idea of just being stores that focus on getting customers better deals. They don’t even attempt to edge onto Steam’s turf because a storefront can’t compete with Steam, nor can a half-baked launcher.
Reality is that Valve has functionally a 20 year head start on any company that wants to try and edge in on their turf. So it can’t be done just to get a cut of sales because you’re not going to have the follow-through to build the user base if that’s your reason.
I disagree with your statement. 20 years of head start could also be seen as 20 years of polishing a previously non-existent service. Today Steam’s features are widely known. Just make an app with same or similar features and you’re golden. The blueprint is there!
As an example of “what-could-have-been” I would present Immich which is an alternative to Google Photos and iCloud. Developed by a tiny group of people. It does lack some features that Google Photos/iCloud has. But for the most part it easily could substitute anyone’s photo-storing needs.
If bunch of people with no money in their pocket and only free time off work managed to develop a fully functional, well polished photo app that would rival market giants, why cant market giants make something that would rival Steam?
I see your point, but I also think that Steam is so much more than what your example gives. In your case, Steam also has Instagram built in, it has photography forums, it has low-level interfaces to standardize hardware control across multiple camera brands and types, it has a body & lens store, it offers additional software to aid in photo editing, and… and… and…
It’s really an impressive accomplishment what Valve have done with Steam and the hardware/software in its orbit. And that’s not even mentioning all the work that they’ve poured into the open-source community to make Linux a viable gaming platform. Yes, it serves them all in the end, but little of it is easy and it’s all taken a lot of work over the years.
Comparing a photo app to steam is like comparing basic addition to quantum physics.
The sheer amount of complexity that goes into the business side out side of just the app it self is truly immense.
Steam is more then just an app. It’s entire business empire with years and years of connections, agreements and contracts, secondary services, infrastructure and more.
Even if you managed to clone steam 1:1 you would still have nothing. The app alone is honestly the least important aspect of the entire thing.
Point of my comparison is that even if photo app as good as Google Photos can be recreated with barely any money in the pocket, companies that have pockets full of money could do much more than a simple photo app. Epic has cash to fund a fairly competitive Steam clone. Microsoft is in exact situation and probably has even more money than Epic. Both of them have teams that could do this in a span of a year or so. They are just choosing not to.
Steam is more then just an app. It’s entire business empire with years and years of connections, agreements and contracts, secondary services, infrastructure and more.
Yeah. So is MS and Epic. And they both are older than Valve.
Don’t they have Fortnite?
I only have an account at all because the Witcher III wasn’t in a Steam sale when I bought it.
Login. Get free game. Log out.
That’s it lol.
why even do that…
Epic pays some amount of the price of the game to the devs for every free game claimed, so it costs Epic money and makes money for game devs in exchange for a bit of your time. Sometimes you end up trying a game you never would’ve purchased and end up loving it. For example, I snagged Sable a few months ago for free through Epic and was absolutely blown away by how good that game was. It wasn’t even on my radar but I saw it come up as the weekly free game and thought it looked neat so I downloaded it and booted it up
Epic pays a flat rate to make the game free, not per download.
That certainly changes the calculation quite a bit, but how many people can be anticipated to claim a given free game is definitely going to be a point of negotiation on how much to pay the publisher to giveaway a given game, so in a roundabout way it does ultimately cost Epic more money if you do claim the games without downloading them
You’re still being an “active user” that they can use to pad their numbers and entice investors.
If you want to hurt Epic the best way to do it is to not log into their system at all.
I mean defining “active users” is an inherently political choice in any metric. You’re ultimately choosing how to slice the data for analysis, so if you adjust your metrics on customers who only claim free games vs customers who actually spend money on the platform the data can tell completely different stories.
I suppose the point is, collecting the free games probably creates non-negligable costs for Epic, and how that looks on their released metrics is entirely up to how the data gets sliced
It’s a negligible cost. Evidenced by the fact that despite a significant number of “new users” just collecting the free games and not spending any money, EGS continues to give away free games.
Clearly padding the number of users is worth it to them more than the ‘cost’ of those users claiming a free license on their account. Otherwise they would stop doing it.
Waiting for them to cut their losses within the next couple years. Sunset the money-losing platform and revoke all the free game licences
I have hundreds of games on epic. I get the free game every time it changes. Never paid for a single thing from them.
Not number of users, mind you, that’s the increase in mass of the exact same users.
what does that mean
He’s saying that there’s no new users, the existing users are 173% fatter.
That the users have put on a lot of weight 🤷
People do multiple accounts to ban-evade. They cheat, get banned, and move to another account. Games were free, so nothing of value is lost to cheaters.
Besides Epic giving out free games, I also have Luna that has weekly free games to claim. They got plenty of good games to claim in Epic Store. Never claimed a single game. Don’t even have Epic Store account and have no will to do so. Fuck Epic. Their business model is shit. They do not want to compete with Valve, they just want to extort them with attraction of free games and release store exclusives.
GoG is generally the better alternative to steam than epic.
Steam isn’t perfect but it works and has a decent consumer oriented service. GoG is doing great with conservation and drm free options but their launcher isn’t amazing. Pair either with Heroic games launcher or similar for a great experience on almost any OS
What’s Heroic Games Lawnchair?
A Linux launcher that can be used to launch games from the epic store and others. So, basically a workaround so you don’t need to use the epic launcher.
It also runs on windows as well, and has Amazon games integration.
Users are the product
