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- cross-posted to:
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Fuck epic but honestly good. Closed app stores suck
Epic really hasn’t done anything bad. If their worse thing is exclusive deals that make indie studios lots of money, that’s not them being bad. The worst thing you can really pin against epic is Sweeney doesn’t like Linux. Which it’s not really an os for everyone.
My biggest concern with Epic is their insistence on kernel level anti-cheat which is just ridiculous overkill and probably being used as spyware let’s be honest. They have many ties to China’s Tencent which has a 40% stake in the company and is known to basically just be an extension of the Chinese government.
There’s also the very odd fact that just having the Epic Games Store open in the background will deplete your laptops battery life by up to 20%. Is it just horribly optimized and uses all that battery even when idling, or is it doing something nefarious in the background? We don’t know.
As for exclusives, they have bought exclusives that were mostly crowd funded from the start which is quite the kick in the teeth to the early investors that helped get the project off the ground. And there were even some exclusives that were already listed for pre-order through Steam, forcing everyone to need to get a refund.
Plus, any good will that they’ve purchased so far is just in service of making a good name for themselves. They’ve been losing around $400 million per year since 2019 just to bring in new users. They’re going to suddenly turn around and start being cut-throat as soon as they think they can.
They are not consumer friendly, they want to dictate trends in gaming. Valve is already the king of that throne and they’re fairly benevolent and have pushed trends that are good for gaming and consumers overall. I have serious doubt that Epic would be anywhere near as good for gaming as Valve has been if they should actually become profitable, and an industry leader. Especially when it’s projected that they won’t be profitable until 2027, which means they’ll need to recoup their investment of nearly $3.2 billion since 2019.
Epic really hasn’t done anything bad.
You don’t consider bribing game publishers to only release on their platform instead of actually competing bad?
I don’t mind if they fund development and then release only on their platform. I do mind of they snatch up games that could have seen a broader release, if they weren’t so lazy and actually developed a store worth using.
You don’t consider bribing game publishers to only release on their platform instead of actually competing bad?
No, not really. Sony, Microsoft, Stadia, and most storefronts have exclusives with benefits. There are 30,000 exclusives on steam.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Steam
Overall, you should be made at the studios that accept the offer instead of Epic. Epic is just trying to fund indie teams, typically already using their game engine.
I agree though, their storefront sucks and their client is pretty bad too. Although that doesn’t make them “bad”. That just means they have different priorities. I don’t find Linux DEs usable either. They aren’t bad, they just have different priorities.
There are 30,000 exclusives on steam.
There’s a huge difference between paying a publisher to only publish on your platform and publishers picking their distribution platform themselves. Valve pays 0 dollars for publishers to be exclusive to Steam.
No, not really. Sony, Microsoft, Stadia, and most storefronts have exclusives with benefits.
I never said any of them are any better, just because it’s industry standard doesn’t make it good. If you pay publishers to release games exclusively on your platform and you are not actively funding development you are anti-competitive in my eyes. (Also Stadia doesn’t exist anymore)
Overall, you should be made at the studios that accept the offer instead of Epic.
I am mad at both and I do not support either.
Epic is just trying to fund indie teams
If only that were true I would be less mad. Most of the time they try to snatch up games that are already finished or were already planning to release on Steam/GOG. Sometimes they even pull games from other stores (Rocket League and Fall Guys) after they released or just before they release (Metro). That’s not the practices of someone who wants to compete but someone who wants to get into the market by force without actively doing anything good for the industry.
Valve pays 0 dollars for publishers to be exclusive to Steam.
Being on Steam has always been a benefit to publishers. Even in 2004, people wanted on the platform because it’s the platform that Half-Life 2 launched. That is a built-in install base that will have advertising right in their face about your game. Valve pays 0 dollars because Valve doesn’t have to pay money, they already have other ways of paying.
I never said any of them are any better, just because it’s industry standard doesn’t make it good. If you pay publishers to release games exclusively on your platform and you are not actively funding development you are anti-competitive in my eyes. (Also Stadia doesn’t exist anymore)
EA partnered with Valve to bring EA games to Steam. (https://www.techspot.com/news/82538-ea-confirms-rumors-partnership-valve-bring-games-back.html) This was a direct agreement made with Steam. Not only has money changed hands but Valve has adjusted their revenue rates to get people to release on their platform because of this. Steam has built-in exclusivity clauses. You can release on other platforms but you can’t price your game differently on other platforms. Additionally, if you have a store page on Steam, you must release it on Steam at the same time or sooner than everyone else. Valve does anti-competitive stuff like this all of the time. People just make excuses or accept it but this is Valve driving away competition.
Most of the time they try to snatch up games that are already finished or were already planning to release on Steam/GOG. Sometimes they even pull games from other stores (Rocket League and Fall Guys) after they released or just before they release (Metro). That’s not the practices of someone who wants to compete but someone who wants to get into the market by force without actively doing anything good for the industry.
You should look up where most of the Valve games come from. Counter-Strike, Dota 2, L4D, Portal, Team Fortress, etc were all game studios bought up and told they’d only get to make games for Valve. Remember In the Valley of Gods? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_Santo_(company) Valve bought the team under the promise they’d continue making a game and just put the dev team on Half-Life: Alyx. I’d say Valve is almost worse because they don’t make publishing deals, they’ll buy and adsorb you into their collective.
Almost poetic that Google’s default settings campaign lost them a case against a store that pays for exclusivity.
Yeah sure, exclusive deals excluding even those who pre-ordered games on other platforms are “not bad”.
Taking games (looking at you, Fall Guys) which were available on other platforms for years off those platforms to make them exclusive after the fact is “not bad”.
Adding restrictive anti cheat measures to games which worked perfectly on Linux before is “not bad”.
I might not understand the whole thing but how did Google lose when apple won. Is Google ecosystem not more open and allows side loading of apps. I have many apps not from Google Play store on my android.
Google had deals that were revealed. For example Spotify was exempt from paying those 30%.
Android has a larger marketshare.
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Epic, creator of the popular online multiplayer game Fortnite, first filed its lawsuit against Google in 2020 alleging that the tech giant’s app store practices violated federal and California state antitrust laws.
The lawsuit against Google was just one piece of Epic’s flashy effort to rally app developers large and small against mobile software’s entrenched gatekeepers.
Epic argues that both tech giants violate antitrust laws by forcing app users to make payments through their own systems and taking a significant cut of in-app revenues in the process.
In their defense, Apple and Google generally point to concerns around security to justify their shared desire to steer app users toward a central software authority.
“It proves that Google’s app store practices are illegal and they abuse their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition and reduce innovation.”
The court’s decision mostly favored Apple, though did require the iPhone maker to open up its software market by allowing developers to direct customers to alternative payment options.
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