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?
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 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
To my knowledge you still can’t easily discover / reuse existing game files, the launcher usually redownloads them anyways.
Even the Xbox app supports this (for most games)
I just went through this yesterday! I did a big upgrade on my wife’s computer, fresh install of Windows on a 2TB NVMe drive replacing the aging 120GB SSD that somehow didn’t completely fill up, etc. Etc. really loved pointing epic at the installs on the secondary drive and it just ignoring them and instead spending 3 hours downloading Fortnite after we just spent 1 hour applying the last update yesterday (and another hour on a different update the day before too!) on the drive that’s RIGHT THERE IN THE COMPUTER!
I’m pretty sure Steam has been able to do that since launch, though I do remember the legendary loading bar that would progress then regress then progress and regress all with the same text message there so it wasn’t perfect in 2003. Roller coaster early on but by like 2007 it was pretty solid
I’m pretty sure EA Origin was able to do that day one or within a year of release. Origin was OK from what I remember just that it took stayed stagnant and I’m guessing onboarding games to the platform being a terrible process considering how sparse releases were on there
Steam is a mature platform. It doesn’t roll out new user facing features often. Yet somehow I think the gap has widened since 2018 vs EGS
And Epic has had a lot more financial resources available when they launched their store. Estimated valuation of $15 billion in 2018, Valve’s was half that in 2022.
I don’t really see an excuse for Epic to have ever had missing features, they entered the market with plenty of templates for what does and doesn’t work
Iirc the epic store didn’t even launch with a cart
I find EGS launcher to be incredibly slow, so I don’t even bother claiming their free games using it. I use the browser instead. The annoying part is EGS launcher will prompt my 2FA if I don’t open it at least monthly, which is also too much of a bother.
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.
Because in 2025 people get info about games they are buying from the app store instead of twitch or YouTube or the game devs website. Give me a fucking break dude.
When I’m browsing, it’s my first stop. I want to see the minimum specs to estimate how well it’ll run, how the devs market their game at a glance, year of release, rating, etc. Then if it looks interesting it’s time for external reviews.
The only way I know anything about the games I buy is by reading the store page. If I have to go looking for the dev’s website, it’s because something has gone wrong.
I would recommend doing more research before buying, but I’m a kinda a cheap bitch
I feel like I get a pretty good idea of what a game is like from reviews and discussions.
Oh, I must have misinterpreted you. That’s about what I do.
Haha, no problem.
ITT: Epic is awful, Steam is great!
Me: Is GOG a joke to you people???
Kinda, unfortunately.
It was great when it had its niche, and I still buy games there occasionally, but it has poorer integration with pretty much anything, Galaxy is bloated as hell, and it has explicitly no linux/deck support.
Eta: apparently GOG actively funds Heroic launcher, didn’t know that, thanks for pointing it out to me.
So I learned recently that GOG actively funds Heroic. Which really takes some weight off of Heroic’s support for GOG game autopatching and cloud saves, meaning it may be a bit hacky and officially in “beta”, but it’s very unlikely for GOG to object to its presence.
They may not “officially” support Linux, but they don’t “explicitly” lack support.
Also, tip of the hat to Heroic, it works extremely well and very reliably. I was frustrated with Lutris and I am bummed out by how Galaxy didn’t quite get there as the one universal support launcher to handle all your libraries, but Heroic is good enough as a replacement I don’t mind nearly as much anymore. Even on Windows I’d consider it over Galaxy.
Oh, that’s actually nice to hear, makes me re-evaluate gog somewhat.
I don’t use heroic much but it’s never too late to start.
Yep. As I understand it it’s via affiliate links, so if you buy GOG games through the storefront in the Heroic UI they get a small cut, but the Heroic devs say they have spoken to GOG reps and they are broadly supportive, so unless that changes I don’t think their ability to support GOG features would be compromised any time soon.
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
Meanwhile Valve pushing
unrelatedunregulated gambling to everyone, including children, through their case unboxing systemWhataboutism makes you look like an idiot
Not OP but your very first sentence was
It’s very simple, valve is a gamer company.
It’s not “whataboutism” to directly respond to your point and try to argue they aren’t a gamer company.
I do agree with you overall though that Epic can suck it.
You’re saying Valve acts for gamers, not for profits. I’m proving you wrong. You’re just entitled and love Valve.
Counter Strike is a M rated game
Oh so they have no responsibility at all then. Might as well stop checking IDs when people enter casinos or buy alcohol because they’re not supposed to if they’re underaged.
They make a deliberately addictive mechanic that they know ruin peoples’ life, and they also know they have a big young audience, but you think that’s fine? Shame of you, really.
It’s also in TF2 btw
And whatever you say, it’s still exploiting adults. In many countries, like France, casinos are legally obliged to detect addicted people, prevent minors from playing, and let people opt out legally, and never allow them to gamble afterwards. Valve blatantly doesn’t respect this and takes efforts to bypass the law. They got banned in Belgium and France, and used a legal loophole to avoid being banned in France.
You’re acting like a Valve fanboy. Be objective. Apart from that, Valve is an overall good company for the video games industry, but they act like a piece of shit in other places.
Parents should do their damn job and prevent their kids from playing what they arent supposed to, or teach them right from wrong.
Teens aren’t kids. Gambling is addictive to everyone.
Teens are kids, they’ve just got half a brain and adult hormones mixed in. They still need guidance and supervision.
I mean… Do you support the recent proposal to ban online porn? How about alcohol?
Valve provides a game, an appropriate age rating, a description of the monetization scheme, and a way for users to freely trade items.
If minors transform that into a gambling addiction, it’s certainly a big problem, but I don’t see how that translates into “Steam bad, Epic Games good”
Do you support the recent proposal to ban online porn?
No, but that’s another subject. Not easy to regulate and is not as life threatening as many other things. We all consumed some when minors and it never was a huge deal for most people. Gambling is much worse imo, as it impacts your finance. Gambling is already banned/regulated and Valve is avoiding the current laws.
How about alcohol?
It’s already pretty well restricted for minors. The world would be better without it, but as nicotine, can’t go back now that people are used to it.
but I don’t see how that translates into “Steam bad, Epic Games good”
Never said that.
I talked about this because the original comment said Valve wasn’t here for money. Why do they push gambling then?
Wrote unrelated instead of unregulated, which changed the meaning of my sentence. Fixed it.
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.
People are going to list all the features Steam has over Epic, ignoring that Steam has had ~22 years to get to where it is. The original Steam experience was garbage, and lots of us older gamers knew what would happen and hated that Steam would be the primary catalyst to killing off physical media for PC games back in the mid-2000s, especially as broadband internet access was becoming far more accessible.
Don’t get me wrong, Valve has done alright so far in terms of game ownership, but once Gabe dies/retires, it’s only a matter of time before some greedy fucks force Valve to go public and the pure enshittification process begins.
Okay, but have EGS really improved in any significant way in the 7 years they’ve been up? I don’t see it. Plus, a smart competitor would absolutely look at Steam’s history and learn from it; they don’t seem to have done that at all.
If they had spent the same amount of money on developing the storefront that they have on exclusivity deals, EGS could have been a worthy competitor.
I don’t disagree that Epic could definitely be doing better with their storefront. They have made improvements, albeit at a glacial pace. They’ve added achievements and reviews, but it’s still a pale comparison to what Steam offers. That being said, no one seems to dig at GoG’s shitty storefront and app nearly to the same degree. Luckily, GOG allows third-party access, so you can at least replace their app with other alternatives.
Regardless, I’m not defending Epic, I was simply trying to avoid doing the mindless “fuck Epic” and offer some counterargument. Epic is a shitty company, but some competition is better than zero competition. Yes, GOG exists, but they hardly have any marketshare at all and if CDPR ever stops supporting it as much as they have been, their future likely isn’t looking so great. It’s like AMD vs Nvidia. Both companies aren’t great, but I’d rather both exist than only Nvidia and/or AMD; and of course, even more competition would be even better.
Agreed on all points. Sorry if I sounded overly antagonistic.
Removed by mod
People are going to list all the features Steam has over Epic, ignoring that Steam has had ~22 years to get to where it is.
And then there are people talking about how steam has had those 22 years, while completely ignoring how epic could just copy how steam did things and work from there.
Sure, they can’t see what happens in the back end, but I somehow doubt that valve is doing anything ground breaking there that others can’t think of.
Lol, no one is listing steam features. Epic is perfectly capable of being pieces of shit and a garbage company without needing comparison.
EGS is today as old as steam was in 2010. Yet it is still behind 2010 steam’s features. All that on top of all the unethical and shady stuff they have done and the many different ways they make gaming worse for everyone.
Their Guides feature didn’t come out until 2012sh, same with workshop. The only thing Steam had in 2010 that Epic doesn’t have right now is Community, which launched around 2007sh.
Like I said, Steam was not that good for a long time.
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.
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.
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.
Generally is extra competition not a good thing for customers?
Absolutely, competition is allways good for the consumer, even in this case.
Since EGS offers a worse experience, I will use Steam instead.
Blackmailing customers onto your service isn’t competition.
Does steam really have frequent multiplayer downtime issues? I’ve never notice any issues, but I don’t play a lot of multiplayer anymore.
It’s a lot of cutting out for about a minute, but that’s just enough to interrupt a fighting game match. If it was once per week at a predictable time, that might be okay, but it’s been happening more and more lately when it used to only be on Tuesdays.
Isn’t steam responsible for match making only, and the actual game company is responsible for the servers? Are you sure its not the game servers?
Either way, that would be very frustrating if its happening mid round.
Typically, when Steam handles the matchmaking, it’s peer to peer. But in general, they also sort of broker the connection between you and the other player or server. Street Fighter 6 runs its own servers and matchmaking, but if Steam cuts out, I lose my connection to them.
Threatening Steam’s monopoly. And the unwashed Stockholmed masses hate that.
we’ve been rumbled!
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.
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.
Epic wants temporary monopolies and that’s already antitrust.
so thats what this drama ive been seeing on reddit as well.
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.