I'm a console gamer so, Why the hate on the Epic Games Store?
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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?
wrote on 19 May 2025, 04:54 last edited by baggie@lemmy.zipBig 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.
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Meanwhile Valve pushing
unrelatedunregulated gambling to everyone, including children, through their case unboxing systemwrote on 19 May 2025, 05:27 last edited byWrote unrelated instead of unregulated, which changed the meaning of my sentence. Fixed it.
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Whataboutism makes you look like an idiot
wrote on 19 May 2025, 05:42 last edited byYou’re saying Valve acts for gamers, not for profits. I’m proving you wrong. You’re just entitled and love Valve.
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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.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 06:19 last edited byYeesh I knew Epic was run by dick heads but I didn't know they were this slimy, I'm glad I've only bought one game on their platform (Subnautica below zero), and that's only because I got the original Subnautica for free from their weekly giveaway and loved it. I'll continue to get the free games from them as it's good to take a chance on games that you otherwise might never learn about.
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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.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 06:35 last edited byDon't forget that Sweeney himself said that the Epic store is slow.
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Which operating system is that?
wrote on 19 May 2025, 06:40 last edited byTempleOS
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Threatening Steam's monopoly. And the unwashed Stockholmed masses hate that.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 07:51 last edited bywe've been rumbled!
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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?
wrote on 19 May 2025, 09:30 last edited byCompetition 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.
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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.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 09:52 last edited byEpic wants temporary monopolies and that's already antitrust.
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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?
wrote on 19 May 2025, 12:21 last edited byPart of the hate is against Sweeny. The rest of the hate is that it isn’t steam.
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Tim Sweeney traveled to Saudi Arabia with Donald Trump's entourage this past week.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 15:03 last edited byUgh, you're right. As if I needed another reason to hate that skeevy asshole.
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Not to diss you, or take away from your argument, it's quite a good one.
But I do think EGS has reviews now. They suck but I they have some sort of review system now.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 15:31 last edited byI couldn't find reviews. What I did find was a 5 star based rating system which is not the same thing at all. With steam reviews the text is more relevant to me than if they did or did not recommend the game.
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I couldn't find reviews. What I did find was a 5 star based rating system which is not the same thing at all. With steam reviews the text is more relevant to me than if they did or did not recommend the game.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 15:55 last edited byIf you scroll below the stars, it has corporate reviews provided by opencritic. Which is what i confused with real reviews.
Honestly, the stars are better than ign and other craptastic critics.
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Teens aren’t kids. Gambling is addictive to everyone.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 17:19 last edited byTeens are kids, they've just got half a brain and adult hormones mixed in. They still need guidance and supervision.
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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?
wrote on 19 May 2025, 17:41 last edited byI 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.
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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)
wrote on 19 May 2025, 19:06 last edited byI 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!
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Part of the hate is against Sweeny. The rest of the hate is that it isn’t steam.
wrote on 19 May 2025, 19:30 last edited byDon't forget about exclusives!
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I hadn't heard about a game being made unplayable after they bought it, that's seriously shitty. What game was it?
wrote on 19 May 2025, 23:08 last edited byFor unplayable, Rocket League had very good Linux and macos native builds.
Epic required them to delete support for those operating systems as part of the acquisition of Psyonix -
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?
wrote on 20 May 2025, 00:03 last edited byI 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.
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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?
wrote on 20 May 2025, 02:08 last edited byIt's a bad experience overall
The UI was super buggy for me
I want all my games on Steam and to not have to install multiple apps