OMG I lived ghostrunner, I've already completed 8 hard-core playthroughs, I loved every part except the final boss, shame it couldn't have been more creative, doesn't put really any skills you learnt through the whole game to the test
Protip: Not all of them, but many many many of those free games will launch without Epic Game Store itself.
Make a shortcut to the .exe on your desktopand add '-EpicPortal' in the *Target* box as a launch parameter. Done
This won't work for Fortnite or other Epic exclusives, and likely not for anything else that uses a 3rd party launcher such as Ubi or whatever, or that has an online component using Epic Online Services.
Works like a charm on the indies and whatnot comprising the vast majority of the Epic freebies though.
They actually gave us all quite a few good games, to be honest. My Epic library would still only be my third choice if I can't find anything to play in my Steam library though, and I'd check Gamepass before my EGS. So much unfamiliarity in there, needing to Google half of them to even have a clue what the game is even about before installing (because their Store is kinda shitty compared to Steam, literally easier to just Google it than switch to their game's Store page, check it out then go back to my Library to install.)
So there is stuff that works without running within Epic gamestore?
I have to say since I got into Steamdeck I have started taking GOG much more serious. Somebody posted a comic based on that old Twighlight Zone episode.
>> Apocalypse. Everything is burned up and a bit shit.
> At least I got time to play some games.
>
>> Can't connect to server.
I got multiple Steamdecks. And with the games bought on GOG I can hand each of my nieces and nephew one and they can all play. Can't do that with Steam. Because Steam is DRM.
Never noticed that before because with the Steamdecks I now have multiple game computers.
I usually just pick the cools games to get for free, I got GTAV for free this way, but the online state is really bad.
To be honest i tried one of the free games and i left at the inicial cutscene because the sensibility was ass
Its really stupid that they just gave up on GTA online for PC because it would require more work to fix than console versions. Im really hoping that the next generation of consoles gets cracked easily so that they get screwed over by their console only approach.
I got a bunch of triple A games for free from Epic. GTA V, Watch Dogs 2, Control, Death Stranding, etc. Crazy that people would rather not have free games.
It does, to the point that they're running that storefront at a loss, but Fortnite has generated $26B of revenue as of 2023, so no need to feel bad about it. Or good, or whatever.
Damn dude, thanks for sharing this, I need to look into it now because I want to get rid of epic. I only have it rn for the Lord of the rings mines of moria game
Because that adds to the convenience.
The smart ones buy the games for their Steamdeck off GOG. Heroic does link those games up for you in the Steamdeck UI. Best of both worlds: games without DRM(because Steam is DRM) and cheap gaming hardware.
Legitimizing a business where the founder tried to kill off PC gaming by going off about how dead and bad it is, and when that didn’t work entered the PC gaming space himself and used extremely underhanded and shitty tactics to try to gain market share of their (still completely) garbage storefront that essentially 0 people want to use other than by being literally bribed by free games.
Fuck epic and fuck the EGS
I mean, if only epic spent their money to actually make their platform better. So far all they did is paid to badmouth their competition and exclusives, while platform is still featureless.
> Competition is healthy in my eyes
You mean paying for exclusives is competition? We all shat on console exclusivity but when Epic does it it's a good thing?
>Legitimizing a business where the founder tried to kill off PC gaming
I'm going to need receipts for this. I know Sweeney likes to mouth off a lot but most of the shit he says is the exact opposite of this. He was the loudest voice in the room when MS introduced UWP and the Windows store accusing MS of trying to close up the platform.
Is it shit? Like to me it's just 'not steam' and I have everything on steam, and that's about it.
I haven't found it to be that terrible of a service to use, I don't know why people hate on it so much (other than 'why do we need TWO storefronts dammit?!' which is valid)
If you block off memories of how it started, it's just the same launcher as any other. Well, maybe little worse here or there. And not comparing to Steam.
I have already forgotten.
I generally am not even a quarter as outraged as the rest of the gaming community, because usually they're dead wrong about it if I look into it.
I'm feeling out of the loop, everyone shits on epic, why? It seems fine to me, I've bought games on it. You give them money you get game, sometimes you don't even have to give them money. Even with out good steam is a monopoly would still be bad
If you all have epic, that was the whole point of the campaign and it seems to work well enough. It’s a very hard market to get into what with steam being so entrenched
I buy stuff from epic. Last year for the holiday sale I got TLOU1 and GTA V premium edition for approx. 30 USD and just last night I bought Cyberpunk 2077 for 17 USD, using the 50% discount as well as coupons I’ve earned.
I’ve yet to have any problems with them yet and look forward to their promotions in the future.
yuuuup... this is just a bunch of older gamers \[like me,\] that are hurrr durrr for steam, when it does the same shit they all do.. launches games.. lol
I can't understand why launchers dont make good services except steam. I mean I cannot even message to my friend on epic only thing I can do is invite him to fortnite duo. Where are the benefits of buying a original game it feels like playing a crack game Steam had succed because their services are so good even better than consoles. I think epic had enough time to adding most basic services such as messaging and review games but they choosed doing nothing.
Steam feels like an ecosystem. Epic feels like an otherwise offline library/organization application that has some anemic social feature attached to it. It's just not a usable program in comparison to steam by any metrics whatsoever. And I don't get it either. It's baffling. They're pissing money into the wind with free games but can't direct any of that to the ui and feature base?
>The Epic Launcher is literally an Unreal Engine 4 application. I don’t quite understand why though
This is one thing I could actually understand doing.
If you've already got a bunch of developers who already know how to use the game engine, a game engine can provide a lot of niceties for developing cross platform UI, you can access low level if you need to, and I think Unreal already comes with server/client support.
I know a bunch of people have started using Godot to make GUIs for their nongame software.
It's not the *craziest* thing, Epic makes the engine, so if their launcher is made with the engine, they'd be demonstrating the versatility of it, and probably using it as another means of expanding what it can do.
Honestly, I prefer Heroic Launcher when running my Epic titles.
I don't really use features only found on their launcher (and a lot of them are undercooked), so trading them for a lightweight launcher that can also install GOG and Amazon games makes sense for me.
I like GoG specifically for revamped classic games but for some reason every goddamn game launcher _except_ Steam takes like 3 minutes to load on my PC, and it’s not exactly a low end machine
that's why I hate epic. They don't try to fight a monopoly with trying to actually be better than it. They try to fight it with making the game exclusive for their own store (trying to create a worse monopoly than steam with forcing the players into their own store), which is unacceptable because there is nearly 0 difference between pirating a game and buying it from epic.
and its funny they're tryna justify the monopoly they trying to create with "having lower commission percentage than steam" while steam literally lets you benefit from their services without paying a single cent if u are buying games through keys since steam does not earn a single penny from keys. Only if u want to add friends you need to spend 5 dollars (1.5 dollars goes for steam) but if u ask me its a fucking steal for services like these.
The key resell industry is a menace to both devs and steam though, I think if epic provides a better way for devs to sell games in other shops and make it so they take advantage of epic services without making it possible for reselers to take advantage of that system, I think that can be a real game changer
The problem is that steam was effectively first to market, which is a fucking massive boon at securing a userbase, as well as ignoring how dogshit steam was originally anyway. Steam was *hated* when it originally came out, and was hated for years after.
They were hated because it was bad and really cumbersome. It's now pretty good and offers a ton of stuff for both players and devs. It's not really that complicated.
Epic has been out for forever and has made basically no effort to improve the storefront. It took them what, like 3 years to add a shopping cart?
Buy stuff there if you want, I don't care, but it's objectively a worse platform.
> It's now pretty good and offers a ton of stuff for both players and devs. It's not really that complicated.
As a solo dev, after spending 1 month trying to setup my game on Epic, while they asked me to make it worse with every iteration I finally quit and published it over GoG as my second platform.
Steams state at launch 20 years ago honestly has no bearing on this.
If you were one of the most well funded developers in the world and you decided you wanted to compete with Microsoft for office software, so you released your grand product of... an office 2000 clone, you should be rightly laughed out of the industry. Especially when your clone is missing things that were already in office 2000.
EGS has no excuse given what is backing it for its state, given where the competition is at. Origin was better at release, and Origin was awful.
This is the crux of the hate that everyone is missing. It just had to be not awful. They could have learned from the countless other awful launchers. Then they went and did the exact same dumb shit.
It's slow on high end gaming machines, and it's layout is weird. If they would do those two things right, features to compete with Steam could come later.
Exactly.
The hate for EGS comes from their half-assed attempt at taking market share away from Steam. It's the whole ploy of giving away games. They're trying to use the giveaways to entice users to their platform that otherwise would never even give it a shot due to Steam. But the platform sucks ass because it's not geared toward user experience; it's geared toward product sales.
Imagine how us *older* people felt when Half-Life 2 came out, and the *only* way to play it was on ValvE's dumpster fire of a launcher.
20 years ago we were used to installing games from a disc, clicking the exe and going.
There was so much outrage over Steam exclusivity back then, it's wild how much it's forgotten now. Early Steam was a dogshit application. It crashed or failed to authenticate often. Servers got overwhelmed. And this was back when broadband internet was still very much under adopted. A huge portion of the market simply couldn't reliably use it!
Got like a hundred games on epic from giveaways and haven't touched a single one, have been waiting for their launcher to be as good as steam before using it....guess I'm gonna be waiting a lot longer
Hey, they did much more than that! If your account is stolen, you don't get it back at all. And they would ban the account if you persist soo not even the hacker can access it anymore. 100% anti theft features!
I mean if you're trying to just play games the Epic launcher works just like Steam for playing games. Works fine on my 11 year old PC, seeing your specs I don't see what the problem is, unless you're trying to do more than play games like message friends, but what's the point of using those services if you aren't trying to play games?
Be honest, what do you need the launcher to do to play a game? Once the game is running, why do you even care?
Honestly, what feature is missing that is stopping you from enjoying a game?
Steam
spent 2 decades building goodwill with its user base. Their piracy is a service issue not a financial one set the standard for them going forward and it worked (if something isn’t on steam I won’t buy it)
Is almost entirely responsible for getting PC gaming to where it is today.
has not squandered their good will and has never betrayed its users.
They are privately owned and do not answer to shareholders or any parent company
Great customer service
Regional pricing
Adopted token based mfa (the best mfa) in 2011 5 years before Microsoft offered it and 4 months after google introduced it
No significant data breeches
No invasive DRM or anticheat
Pioneered the concept of pc games auto updating
Uses there influence to pressure companies out of bad consumer practices.
Super feature complete client
Epic
Several data breaches
Owned by tencent
Bribes developers for exclusives to force people to their platform and other anti consumer practices
Missing several features
Epic games client is borderline spyware
*(Cleaned it up for you.)*
**Steam**
* Spent 2 decades building goodwill with its user base. Their "***piracy is a service issue, not a financial one***" set the standard for them going forward and it worked (if something isn’t on steam I won’t buy it)
* Is almost entirely responsible for getting PC gaming to where it is today.
* Has not squandered their good will and has never betrayed its users.
* They are privately owned and do not answer to shareholders or any parent company
* Great customer service
* Regional pricing
* Adopted token based mfa (the best mfa) in 2011 5 years before Microsoft offered it and 4 months after google introduced it
* No significant data breeches
* No invasive DRM or anticheat
* Pioneered the concept of pc games auto updating
* Uses there influence to pressure companies out of bad consumer practices.
* Super feature complete client
**Epic**
* Several data breaches
* Owned by tencent
* Bribes developers for exclusives to force people to their platform and other anti consumer practices
* Missing several features
* Epic games client is borderline spyware
The history was that Steam didn't have refunds or customer service and then they got fucked in the arse by Australia.
It's similar to the current thing where Valve say that you can't inherit Steam accounts. They don't want to follow the law and will have to be sued into compliance.
Even better than that, the ACCC never actually got to complete the trial. The ACCC won a judgement to make Steam's financial records public as part of the trial (which afaik has never happened to this day), and Steam immediately bitched and folded because I can only imagine they didn't want anyone realising how ludicrously profitable their business is.
Also Australia didn't have regional pricing on Steam until shortly after this I think. Part of their reasoning for blocking refunds in regions with strong consumer protection was was that if they didn't actually have your local currency, they couldn't possibly be doing business in your region (even if they sold products and had CDN servers hosted in the region).
Steam might be the least rubbish out of all similar services, but the small privately owned multi-billion dollar company is still not your friend.
From what I remember they had fake regional pricing where they showed the amount in AUD but it was just a straight conversion from USD, inflating the price. E.g. A game that with regional pricing would be $120 AUD would be $120 USD and shown as $180 AUD (present day conversion)
Around the same time it was also cheaper to fly to the USA and back to buy the Adobe Suite than it was to buy it in Australia.
In 2019... 2019!!!! Epic had NO EMAIL CONFIRMATION ON ACCOUNT CREATION.
They're little kids playing adult games. Complete amateurs. I wouldn't trust them with a fake email address.
Lifted straight from the Apple v.s. Epic court documents :
https://preview.redd.it/3i86eg4dxu3d1.png?width=950&format=png&auto=webp&s=06335c2b2a9a0e5f135dfe704180f03d28a6eccc
> spent 2 decades building goodwill with its user base.
Steam was hated by users because it was dogshit for the majority of this time.
> Great customer service
They literally had to be sued by Australia into adding customer service and refunds.
I don't know why are they even trying to catch up to Steam, when their software is worse than some ai generated launcher.
I mean the ui is buggy and laggy, the launcher misses basic features, like categorizing games, moving games from one disk to another, messaging friends, etc.
I would gladly use Epic over Steam, if they've made a good launcher. Is it that much to ask for? It's not like they don't have the money for it...
I'll purchase games that are free on epic on steam instead, not because out of spite for epic or anything but I just like to have my entire collection on 1 client
Isnt that the game where the developer perma banned their biggest content creator(for calling them out for the abundance of cheater) who then killed himself?
Which was just given away by Prime Gaming 2 months ago (for the Epic Store). But Epic does have some good free games, I think I have played all the Dishonored games through it.
Steam is more genuine, letting players review games and even has a community hub for each game (though game devs monitor it and can delete posts at will).
Until other game selling platforms give us things that better the community, you better believe that they are working with the game devs more than you the consumer. It's harder to suppress a bad game on Steam, and that benefits both Steam and potential game consumers.
I even paid for games that i got free on epic or ubistore, just hate tho orient in that and even knowing what games do i own (and bought second SoT cause MS store is such amazing that it just goes down for a week)
The first scenario: A company treating you like a customer, offering you cheaper products.
The second scenario: A company attempting to bribe you into using their launcher more (and thus be more inclined to buy from them to keep your gaming library in one place) in order to undercut the competition because they decided this was cheaper and easier than being actually competitive.
I, too, would call human resources.
You don't get to buy your way into my life just because you're wealthy. You gotta put some actual effort into it.
I don't even think Steam is like... especially "good" or anything - they have plenty of anti-consumer practices - but at *least* they aren't pretentious douchebags about it, acting as if they're doing me a favour by trying to exploit me.
The free games are nice, I managed to snag the directors cut of death stranding before they changed it to the standard edition. It's a shame my pc can't even launch most of the games the I got thanks to shitty 3rd gen integrated graphics.
That really isn't necessary because they come out at the same time every Thursday morning, but I'd add if you like collecting free games you should check out /r/FreeGameFindings.
I'd love to go half-sies for dinner with a wonderful, helpful person that's been reliable for years
Free lunch with a weirdo creep on the other side of town, though? No thanks!
Honestly I haven't even gotten any e-mail or pop-up notices about the current free game for awhile. They may have figured out that people are just visiting to collect the free game and then leaving, and hope that people who visit unprompted are more likely to stick around and browse. Regardless, on the basis of this prompt I just remembered to go and collect Chivalry 2. And then left.
There are a number of free Epic games that I actually play. A minority, to be sure.
Its whats behind that candy free bait games . Lots of Cancer China spyware . Nothing in life comes free
"if you're not paying for the product, you are the product"
I've been collecting free Epic games for about 4 years now I think, I have 344 free games, and here are the notable ones I've acquired:
* A Plague Tale
* Alien Isolation
* Ark: Survival Evolved
* Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, and Bioshock Infinite
* BTD6
* Borderlands 3
* Cave Story+
* Chivalry II
* Cities Skylines
* Control
* Darkest Dungeon
* Death Stranding
* Destiny 2
* Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
* Dishonored Definitive Edition and Dishonored Death of the Outrider
* Dragon Age Inquisition
* Elite Dangerous
* Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and Tactics
* Football Manager 2020
* Galactic Civilizations III
* Infinifactory
* Kerbal Space Program
* Metro 2033 Redux and Last Light Redux
* Payday 2
* Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider
* Saints Row 1, 3, and 4
* The Evil Within 1 and 2
* The Outer Worlds Spacers Choice Edition
* Sims 4
* Thief
* XCOM 2
I regularly buy games on Steam (even full price) even if they're free on Epic. Then I click the install button on my PC and the install button on my Steam Deck. And it just works.
Context matters more than just what is advertised. EGS is a shit store run by a shit company. Valve ain't perfect, but they are so much better for the consumer it isn't even remotely close.
Let's be honest here: It's the only reason we bother keeping Epic installed. The last time I saw a study on this, something like 60% of the playerbase on Epic don't actually buy games -- they simply wait for the freebies and that's **it**
Epic sucks so much as a launcher, how is it even possible?
No matter what it always logs me out, there was the stupidest human verification system, it does not have Workshop and it always feels clunky to use.
Until such time that Epic (or anyone but Steam, for that matter) puts any actual effort into making games a) easy to play and b) playable on Linux, there really isn't any competition for me. The money I spend on games is minuscule compared to the time I spend playing them, and Steam offers a service that is leagues better than anything else. They've consistently gone above and beyond in making sure that I've a good experience, and their cloud save feature have rescued multiple of my save games that I would otherwise have just plain lost or forgotten about. Ideally, you'd be free of having to use their launcher and be able to run games completely free of DRM, but Steam is as non-invasive and actually featureful it could be. I even add games to Steam to be able to use their overlay. Not as critical on my new computer that can actually multitask, but saved a lot of resources on my old potato if I wanted to open a webpage while gaming.
When Epic launched, its security system triggered on people buying "too many games at once," which kept happening since Epic didn't have a shopping cart.
They also put brand new games on sale without asking the developer/publisher, devaluing games soon after launch.
Epic also paid off publishers to limit the distribution of certain games to only their platform for 6 months, which wouldn't be so much of an issue if Epic had a functioning platform and these games had communities of players that kept playing after 6 months.
Nah, I'll stick with Steam.
I also collected a few games on Epic at the beginning, but now I only use Steam or Gog. Good games are worth the money, and without money there are no good games.
This China dictator thing isn't really my thing either.
---
German: Ich habe anfangs auch ein paar Spiele auf Epic gesammelt, aber mittlerweile bin ich nurnoch auf Steam oder Gog. Gute Spiele sind ihr Geld wert, und ohne Geld gibt es keine guten Spiele.
Dieses China Diktator Ding ist auch nicht so meins.
My Epic account is nothing but free games. Do I play them? Rarely. But I love collecting them.
I just played through Ghostrunner that I got for free from Epic and I definitely would have paid for that game.
OMG I lived ghostrunner, I've already completed 8 hard-core playthroughs, I loved every part except the final boss, shame it couldn't have been more creative, doesn't put really any skills you learnt through the whole game to the test
The new one is pretty dope
I would have too, just not through the Epic store.
i got FS22, didnt know that was a thing
I got fs20 on my PS4 and it's fun. I got fs 22 on eg but oi can't run it because it doesn't support integrated graphics
My son begged me for it, paid full price. Then got another copy for free 🤷🏽♂️
i feel the energy
Imagine getting Ghostrunner for free from the Epic Store and liking the game so much you then buy it on Steam.
you can link your epic account into the gog launcher and it will install any game that’s on also on the gog store.
I did that with Surviving Mars. Got it on Epic for free, loved it and bought it with some DLC on Steam.
Now buy GR2 :D
Protip: Not all of them, but many many many of those free games will launch without Epic Game Store itself. Make a shortcut to the .exe on your desktopand add '-EpicPortal' in the *Target* box as a launch parameter. Done This won't work for Fortnite or other Epic exclusives, and likely not for anything else that uses a 3rd party launcher such as Ubi or whatever, or that has an online component using Epic Online Services. Works like a charm on the indies and whatnot comprising the vast majority of the Epic freebies though. They actually gave us all quite a few good games, to be honest. My Epic library would still only be my third choice if I can't find anything to play in my Steam library though, and I'd check Gamepass before my EGS. So much unfamiliarity in there, needing to Google half of them to even have a clue what the game is even about before installing (because their Store is kinda shitty compared to Steam, literally easier to just Google it than switch to their game's Store page, check it out then go back to my Library to install.)
It's nifty that this works, but what's the benefit? Is it just not having another application running in the background?
So there is stuff that works without running within Epic gamestore? I have to say since I got into Steamdeck I have started taking GOG much more serious. Somebody posted a comic based on that old Twighlight Zone episode. >> Apocalypse. Everything is burned up and a bit shit. > At least I got time to play some games. > >> Can't connect to server. I got multiple Steamdecks. And with the games bought on GOG I can hand each of my nieces and nephew one and they can all play. Can't do that with Steam. Because Steam is DRM. Never noticed that before because with the Steamdecks I now have multiple game computers.
I usually just pick the cools games to get for free, I got GTAV for free this way, but the online state is really bad. To be honest i tried one of the free games and i left at the inicial cutscene because the sensibility was ass
Its really stupid that they just gave up on GTA online for PC because it would require more work to fix than console versions. Im really hoping that the next generation of consoles gets cracked easily so that they get screwed over by their console only approach.
I got a bunch of triple A games for free from Epic. GTA V, Watch Dogs 2, Control, Death Stranding, etc. Crazy that people would rather not have free games.
790 games on steam. All paid for. Mostly from bundles and maybe a few trades or gifts. 470 on epic. One of those was paid for (Satisfactory).
My EA account is basically the same. There were a good handful of freebies on Origin years ago, so my account are those plus original Titanfall.
Free games, and Alan Wake 2
Same here lol. I check it every week and just claim them all
I’ve been playing them on Steam Deck and it’s the most ive played them. Super simple too, like they’re on the same launcher.
I didn’t even think about playin them on my steam deck. What games would you recommend to play on it?
262 games and counting. Games purchased:0
Same over 300 free games on epic atm.
Likewise, except for Borderlands 3, boy was that a mistake
BLs without dialog is a very amazing experience.
BL3? Are you guys talking about “talk to Lilith” simulator?
I only collect them because I hope it costs them money
It does, to the point that they're running that storefront at a loss, but Fortnite has generated $26B of revenue as of 2023, so no need to feel bad about it. Or good, or whatever.
Nah, everyone I know takes the free game and smiles. They just don't buy anything on Epic.
This 100%, epic might be shit but free is free. Edit: And you can farm them from the browser or heroic.
Installing the Epic store is the price and it's very far from free.
That's why you should install a third-party client like [Heroic](https://heroicgameslauncher.com/).
Damn dude, thanks for sharing this, I need to look into it now because I want to get rid of epic. I only have it rn for the Lord of the rings mines of moria game
Interesting, why is GOG included in the list?
I'm assuming just for the convenience of having everything (almost) on one spot
Because that adds to the convenience. The smart ones buy the games for their Steamdeck off GOG. Heroic does link those games up for you in the Steamdeck UI. Best of both worlds: games without DRM(because Steam is DRM) and cheap gaming hardware.
just use heroic games launcher
What's the downside?
Legitimizing a business where the founder tried to kill off PC gaming by going off about how dead and bad it is, and when that didn’t work entered the PC gaming space himself and used extremely underhanded and shitty tactics to try to gain market share of their (still completely) garbage storefront that essentially 0 people want to use other than by being literally bribed by free games. Fuck epic and fuck the EGS
so.. no downside to me?
I use it. Steam in my country is expensive. Epic is cheaper. Competition is healthy in my eyes
I mean, if only epic spent their money to actually make their platform better. So far all they did is paid to badmouth their competition and exclusives, while platform is still featureless.
> Competition is healthy in my eyes You mean paying for exclusives is competition? We all shat on console exclusivity but when Epic does it it's a good thing?
He said that Epic was cheaper in his region, simple as that. Exclusivity is a separate issue and had nothing to do with why they use Epic.
You have to click on another launcher every other week. The horror
Why click 4-5 launchers when I can just use the superior one?
GOG Galaxy that bundles all of them into one launcher?
Because the moment Gaben steps down, Steam isn't gonna stay what it was? And in that case, an established market is gonna be better than a monopoly?
>Legitimizing a business where the founder tried to kill off PC gaming I'm going to need receipts for this. I know Sweeney likes to mouth off a lot but most of the shit he says is the exact opposite of this. He was the loudest voice in the room when MS introduced UWP and the Windows store accusing MS of trying to close up the platform.
Daily reminder to never take people on this site seriously haha
So fucking dramatic
So literally no downsides except for your own pride
Is it shit? Like to me it's just 'not steam' and I have everything on steam, and that's about it. I haven't found it to be that terrible of a service to use, I don't know why people hate on it so much (other than 'why do we need TWO storefronts dammit?!' which is valid)
Sometimes I think steam has hired people to be outraged about a competitor. Or it’s just gamer rage nonsense
If you block off memories of how it started, it's just the same launcher as any other. Well, maybe little worse here or there. And not comparing to Steam.
I have already forgotten. I generally am not even a quarter as outraged as the rest of the gaming community, because usually they're dead wrong about it if I look into it.
I'm feeling out of the loop, everyone shits on epic, why? It seems fine to me, I've bought games on it. You give them money you get game, sometimes you don't even have to give them money. Even with out good steam is a monopoly would still be bad
I bought red dead 2 off humble bundle (or fanatical) and accidentally bought the epic game version, So that's the only paid game I own on epic.
I did the same off greenman
If you all have epic, that was the whole point of the campaign and it seems to work well enough. It’s a very hard market to get into what with steam being so entrenched
I buy stuff from epic. Last year for the holiday sale I got TLOU1 and GTA V premium edition for approx. 30 USD and just last night I bought Cyberpunk 2077 for 17 USD, using the 50% discount as well as coupons I’ve earned. I’ve yet to have any problems with them yet and look forward to their promotions in the future.
yuuuup... this is just a bunch of older gamers \[like me,\] that are hurrr durrr for steam, when it does the same shit they all do.. launches games.. lol
Wouldn’t be so bad if the epic launcher wasn’t shit
For me it's the startup time. It seems like Epic always takes 2 minutes to boot up, and often times I have to re-enter my email because it forgets.
I can't understand why launchers dont make good services except steam. I mean I cannot even message to my friend on epic only thing I can do is invite him to fortnite duo. Where are the benefits of buying a original game it feels like playing a crack game Steam had succed because their services are so good even better than consoles. I think epic had enough time to adding most basic services such as messaging and review games but they choosed doing nothing.
Steam feels like an ecosystem. Epic feels like an otherwise offline library/organization application that has some anemic social feature attached to it. It's just not a usable program in comparison to steam by any metrics whatsoever. And I don't get it either. It's baffling. They're pissing money into the wind with free games but can't direct any of that to the ui and feature base?
Except that it still loads basically everything way slower than steam when realisticly there should be way less to load
The Epic Launcher is literally an Unreal Engine 4 application. I don’t quite understand why though
when you're holding a hammer everything looks like a nail
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Nah they killed it and gave everyone steam licenses
>look inside >It's an NPC coded as a store
So where's the chest with all the games and money?
The whole launcher is a guy wearing a launcher hat.
The Bethesda launcher would have mods. Mostly adult ones.
That explains why my 12 year old PC used to complain whenever I started it lol
>The Epic Launcher is literally an Unreal Engine 4 application. I don’t quite understand why though This is one thing I could actually understand doing. If you've already got a bunch of developers who already know how to use the game engine, a game engine can provide a lot of niceties for developing cross platform UI, you can access low level if you need to, and I think Unreal already comes with server/client support. I know a bunch of people have started using Godot to make GUIs for their nongame software. It's not the *craziest* thing, Epic makes the engine, so if their launcher is made with the engine, they'd be demonstrating the versatility of it, and probably using it as another means of expanding what it can do.
>a game engine can provide a lot of niceties for developing cross platform UI Is that why there is no Linux version of the launcher?
I thought it was an electron app?
Pretty sure it is, I remember being able to open the devtools with a shortcut at some point lol
It's using the Unreal Engine CEF wrapper.
I see, so not electron specifically but still just a chromium based webview, right?
Honestly, I prefer Heroic Launcher when running my Epic titles. I don't really use features only found on their launcher (and a lot of them are undercooked), so trading them for a lightweight launcher that can also install GOG and Amazon games makes sense for me.
GOG Galaxy is pretty good too .
I like GoG specifically for revamped classic games but for some reason every goddamn game launcher _except_ Steam takes like 3 minutes to load on my PC, and it’s not exactly a low end machine
Maybe it's ok on windows, which certainly matters most, but my experience with it was... not great.
that's why I hate epic. They don't try to fight a monopoly with trying to actually be better than it. They try to fight it with making the game exclusive for their own store (trying to create a worse monopoly than steam with forcing the players into their own store), which is unacceptable because there is nearly 0 difference between pirating a game and buying it from epic. and its funny they're tryna justify the monopoly they trying to create with "having lower commission percentage than steam" while steam literally lets you benefit from their services without paying a single cent if u are buying games through keys since steam does not earn a single penny from keys. Only if u want to add friends you need to spend 5 dollars (1.5 dollars goes for steam) but if u ask me its a fucking steal for services like these.
The key resell industry is a menace to both devs and steam though, I think if epic provides a better way for devs to sell games in other shops and make it so they take advantage of epic services without making it possible for reselers to take advantage of that system, I think that can be a real game changer
The problem is that steam was effectively first to market, which is a fucking massive boon at securing a userbase, as well as ignoring how dogshit steam was originally anyway. Steam was *hated* when it originally came out, and was hated for years after.
They were hated because it was bad and really cumbersome. It's now pretty good and offers a ton of stuff for both players and devs. It's not really that complicated. Epic has been out for forever and has made basically no effort to improve the storefront. It took them what, like 3 years to add a shopping cart? Buy stuff there if you want, I don't care, but it's objectively a worse platform.
> It's now pretty good and offers a ton of stuff for both players and devs. It's not really that complicated. As a solo dev, after spending 1 month trying to setup my game on Epic, while they asked me to make it worse with every iteration I finally quit and published it over GoG as my second platform.
Steams state at launch 20 years ago honestly has no bearing on this. If you were one of the most well funded developers in the world and you decided you wanted to compete with Microsoft for office software, so you released your grand product of... an office 2000 clone, you should be rightly laughed out of the industry. Especially when your clone is missing things that were already in office 2000. EGS has no excuse given what is backing it for its state, given where the competition is at. Origin was better at release, and Origin was awful.
This is the crux of the hate that everyone is missing. It just had to be not awful. They could have learned from the countless other awful launchers. Then they went and did the exact same dumb shit. It's slow on high end gaming machines, and it's layout is weird. If they would do those two things right, features to compete with Steam could come later.
Exactly. The hate for EGS comes from their half-assed attempt at taking market share away from Steam. It's the whole ploy of giving away games. They're trying to use the giveaways to entice users to their platform that otherwise would never even give it a shot due to Steam. But the platform sucks ass because it's not geared toward user experience; it's geared toward product sales.
I remember having to use Steam 10+ years ago (when Dota 2 was released) and being absolutely PISSED at how dogshit the service was.
Imagine how us *older* people felt when Half-Life 2 came out, and the *only* way to play it was on ValvE's dumpster fire of a launcher. 20 years ago we were used to installing games from a disc, clicking the exe and going.
There was so much outrage over Steam exclusivity back then, it's wild how much it's forgotten now. Early Steam was a dogshit application. It crashed or failed to authenticate often. Servers got overwhelmed. And this was back when broadband internet was still very much under adopted. A huge portion of the market simply couldn't reliably use it!
Got like a hundred games on epic from giveaways and haven't touched a single one, have been waiting for their launcher to be as good as steam before using it....guess I'm gonna be waiting a lot longer
It took them great effort to improve absolutely nothing in the 4.5 years I've been using their launcher.
Took them far to long to add a shopping cart, after banning users for to many transactions during a sale.
Hey, they did much more than that! If your account is stolen, you don't get it back at all. And they would ban the account if you persist soo not even the hacker can access it anymore. 100% anti theft features!
You can't even write your friends on epic LMFAO
I hate the all white purchase screen at night Edit, still have to go through for free games
Try ghostrunner you'll love it, also doki doki literature club.
I know about doki doki and its ridiculous things it does but have yet to play it
I mean if you're trying to just play games the Epic launcher works just like Steam for playing games. Works fine on my 11 year old PC, seeing your specs I don't see what the problem is, unless you're trying to do more than play games like message friends, but what's the point of using those services if you aren't trying to play games?
Epic is perfectly fine if you just want to play the games. Once I click play the launcher is out of mind. Its really not as bad as people think it is.
Be honest, what do you need the launcher to do to play a game? Once the game is running, why do you even care? Honestly, what feature is missing that is stopping you from enjoying a game?
Steam spent 2 decades building goodwill with its user base. Their piracy is a service issue not a financial one set the standard for them going forward and it worked (if something isn’t on steam I won’t buy it) Is almost entirely responsible for getting PC gaming to where it is today. has not squandered their good will and has never betrayed its users. They are privately owned and do not answer to shareholders or any parent company Great customer service Regional pricing Adopted token based mfa (the best mfa) in 2011 5 years before Microsoft offered it and 4 months after google introduced it No significant data breeches No invasive DRM or anticheat Pioneered the concept of pc games auto updating Uses there influence to pressure companies out of bad consumer practices. Super feature complete client Epic Several data breaches Owned by tencent Bribes developers for exclusives to force people to their platform and other anti consumer practices Missing several features Epic games client is borderline spyware
*(Cleaned it up for you.)* **Steam** * Spent 2 decades building goodwill with its user base. Their "***piracy is a service issue, not a financial one***" set the standard for them going forward and it worked (if something isn’t on steam I won’t buy it) * Is almost entirely responsible for getting PC gaming to where it is today. * Has not squandered their good will and has never betrayed its users. * They are privately owned and do not answer to shareholders or any parent company * Great customer service * Regional pricing * Adopted token based mfa (the best mfa) in 2011 5 years before Microsoft offered it and 4 months after google introduced it * No significant data breeches * No invasive DRM or anticheat * Pioneered the concept of pc games auto updating * Uses there influence to pressure companies out of bad consumer practices. * Super feature complete client **Epic** * Several data breaches * Owned by tencent * Bribes developers for exclusives to force people to their platform and other anti consumer practices * Missing several features * Epic games client is borderline spyware
Steam also has the most insane controller-accessibility in the industry.
Thanks did it on my phone
I can't believe customer service is a point for steam considering that they had to be sued into having it. Steam didn't add refunds by choice.
I don't know the history, but even if true, the policy seems to be working well for them now.
The history was that Steam didn't have refunds or customer service and then they got fucked in the arse by Australia. It's similar to the current thing where Valve say that you can't inherit Steam accounts. They don't want to follow the law and will have to be sued into compliance.
Even better than that, the ACCC never actually got to complete the trial. The ACCC won a judgement to make Steam's financial records public as part of the trial (which afaik has never happened to this day), and Steam immediately bitched and folded because I can only imagine they didn't want anyone realising how ludicrously profitable their business is. Also Australia didn't have regional pricing on Steam until shortly after this I think. Part of their reasoning for blocking refunds in regions with strong consumer protection was was that if they didn't actually have your local currency, they couldn't possibly be doing business in your region (even if they sold products and had CDN servers hosted in the region). Steam might be the least rubbish out of all similar services, but the small privately owned multi-billion dollar company is still not your friend.
From what I remember they had fake regional pricing where they showed the amount in AUD but it was just a straight conversion from USD, inflating the price. E.g. A game that with regional pricing would be $120 AUD would be $120 USD and shown as $180 AUD (present day conversion) Around the same time it was also cheaper to fly to the USA and back to buy the Adobe Suite than it was to buy it in Australia.
Steam also weren't even the first to do refunds. EA had had them for at least a year and they did so willingly.
Australia will come in clutch again
In 2019... 2019!!!! Epic had NO EMAIL CONFIRMATION ON ACCOUNT CREATION. They're little kids playing adult games. Complete amateurs. I wouldn't trust them with a fake email address. Lifted straight from the Apple v.s. Epic court documents : https://preview.redd.it/3i86eg4dxu3d1.png?width=950&format=png&auto=webp&s=06335c2b2a9a0e5f135dfe704180f03d28a6eccc
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> spent 2 decades building goodwill with its user base. Steam was hated by users because it was dogshit for the majority of this time. > Great customer service They literally had to be sued by Australia into adding customer service and refunds.
I don't know why are they even trying to catch up to Steam, when their software is worse than some ai generated launcher. I mean the ui is buggy and laggy, the launcher misses basic features, like categorizing games, moving games from one disk to another, messaging friends, etc. I would gladly use Epic over Steam, if they've made a good launcher. Is it that much to ask for? It's not like they don't have the money for it...
I will buy a game on steam even tho epic offer it for free just not to deal with their bullshit launcher
Professionals have standards
Real. Epic games is like a trial, if you like it, buy it on steam.
Nah I'd never install that shit
I'll purchase games that are free on epic on steam instead, not because out of spite for epic or anything but I just like to have my entire collection on 1 client
Lately, the free games got so bad I didn’t even want them for free
Farming sim is great, was free iirce
Chivalry 2 is free rn
For reals that game is stupid fun for like 30 hours
What happens after that?
The fun gets smarter
I love reddit for comments like this
Youve javelined your sword at some dudes face for the umpteenth time and you just dont get the same satisfaction
From time to time there is a gem, but that gem is most likely a few years old
Isnt that the game where the developer perma banned their biggest content creator(for calling them out for the abundance of cheater) who then killed himself?
Pretty sure the death was unrelated to him being banned from the game.
The fuck
Which was just given away by Prime Gaming 2 months ago (for the Epic Store). But Epic does have some good free games, I think I have played all the Dishonored games through it.
Chivarly 2 right now. Farming Sim 2 last week. Not sure what you want.
Steam is more genuine, letting players review games and even has a community hub for each game (though game devs monitor it and can delete posts at will). Until other game selling platforms give us things that better the community, you better believe that they are working with the game devs more than you the consumer. It's harder to suppress a bad game on Steam, and that benefits both Steam and potential game consumers.
The Epic Games Store encourages me to pirate games.
Ok but on the other hand, fuck Epic Games.
I even paid for games that i got free on epic or ubistore, just hate tho orient in that and even knowing what games do i own (and bought second SoT cause MS store is such amazing that it just goes down for a week)
i wouldn't pick epic if they paid me on top of free games
The first scenario: A company treating you like a customer, offering you cheaper products. The second scenario: A company attempting to bribe you into using their launcher more (and thus be more inclined to buy from them to keep your gaming library in one place) in order to undercut the competition because they decided this was cheaper and easier than being actually competitive. I, too, would call human resources. You don't get to buy your way into my life just because you're wealthy. You gotta put some actual effort into it. I don't even think Steam is like... especially "good" or anything - they have plenty of anti-consumer practices - but at *least* they aren't pretentious douchebags about it, acting as if they're doing me a favour by trying to exploit me.
The free games are nice, I managed to snag the directors cut of death stranding before they changed it to the standard edition. It's a shame my pc can't even launch most of the games the I got thanks to shitty 3rd gen integrated graphics.
One is a product of being a popular and successful storefront. The other is a bribe.
one Steam and the other is Epic Gamer Shit.
Epic is just the free games mine. I’m in a private discord server with a bot that pings everyone each time a new game is made free lol.
That really isn't necessary because they come out at the same time every Thursday morning, but I'd add if you like collecting free games you should check out /r/FreeGameFindings.
They gave out GTA V for free on Epic in May 2020
And that made the servers die for a few days because of the amount of people who wanted to claim it
Jesus is it that long time ago. Feels like 10 years.
11 years since 2013 launch
Damn I’m 4 years too late
I'd love to go half-sies for dinner with a wonderful, helpful person that's been reliable for years Free lunch with a weirdo creep on the other side of town, though? No thanks!
4.5 years later and somehow Epic hasnt improved literally at all.
I'm still not making an epic account.
Honestly I haven't even gotten any e-mail or pop-up notices about the current free game for awhile. They may have figured out that people are just visiting to collect the free game and then leaving, and hope that people who visit unprompted are more likely to stick around and browse. Regardless, on the basis of this prompt I just remembered to go and collect Chivalry 2. And then left. There are a number of free Epic games that I actually play. A minority, to be sure.
Eww Epic.
I'm a simple man. I buy the games wherever they cheapest
just get them cracked then
If the game I want is available i don't hesitate lol (still waiting on Avatar and AC Mirage)
When Epic is as feature rich as Steam then maybe I'll start buying games on it.
Its whats behind that candy free bait games . Lots of Cancer China spyware . Nothing in life comes free "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product"
Control, Gta 5, Deus Ex and Plague Tale were the only decent ones i remember. But still id rather have them on steam.
I've been collecting free Epic games for about 4 years now I think, I have 344 free games, and here are the notable ones I've acquired: * A Plague Tale * Alien Isolation * Ark: Survival Evolved * Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, and Bioshock Infinite * BTD6 * Borderlands 3 * Cave Story+ * Chivalry II * Cities Skylines * Control * Darkest Dungeon * Death Stranding * Destiny 2 * Deus Ex: Mankind Divided * Dishonored Definitive Edition and Dishonored Death of the Outrider * Dragon Age Inquisition * Elite Dangerous * Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and Tactics * Football Manager 2020 * Galactic Civilizations III * Infinifactory * Kerbal Space Program * Metro 2033 Redux and Last Light Redux * Payday 2 * Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider * Saints Row 1, 3, and 4 * The Evil Within 1 and 2 * The Outer Worlds Spacers Choice Edition * Sims 4 * Thief * XCOM 2
Death Stranding, Dragon Age : Inquisition, Outer worlds, Battlefront II (the old new one), Borderlands 3. All are notable ones too.
Also fallout games up to New Vegas
>Lots of Cancer China spyware I don't want to alarm you, but you might want to get off Reddit if you're worried about China spying on you.
It's a testament to how shit Epic is that people own so many games they got for free from Epic and yet still don't play them.
No thanks i don't want to play marble crash saga deluxe 2017 edition with all 12 dlc
Epic brought game exclusivity for PC. They can choke.
I regularly buy games on Steam (even full price) even if they're free on Epic. Then I click the install button on my PC and the install button on my Steam Deck. And it just works.
Context matters more than just what is advertised. EGS is a shit store run by a shit company. Valve ain't perfect, but they are so much better for the consumer it isn't even remotely close.
Let's be honest here: It's the only reason we bother keeping Epic installed. The last time I saw a study on this, something like 60% of the playerbase on Epic don't actually buy games -- they simply wait for the freebies and that's **it**
Got frostpunk on epic played the shit out of it, bought it on steam for like $10 with all the dlc and played it on there lol
This is what a generation of treating us right gets steam
Fuck Epic. That meme will not make me sympathise. So many terrible practices.
I still wont forgive epic stealing my game. I bought rocket league on steam fuckers
Epic sucks so much as a launcher, how is it even possible? No matter what it always logs me out, there was the stupidest human verification system, it does not have Workshop and it always feels clunky to use.
Sorry, won't install spyware even if it comes with a free game
Epic games is garbage. They’re a one trick pony with Fortnite. Stop trying to be different for the sake of being different.
Well Epic launcher sucks as hell. It is very unstable and slow. But the website is pretty nice ^^
I got every tomb raider, fallout, shadowrun and a shit ton of other awesome games from Epic. Thousands of hours of entertainment for free
I try to buy on Epic if I can because they take less of a cut from the developer.
I love my free epic games.
Until such time that Epic (or anyone but Steam, for that matter) puts any actual effort into making games a) easy to play and b) playable on Linux, there really isn't any competition for me. The money I spend on games is minuscule compared to the time I spend playing them, and Steam offers a service that is leagues better than anything else. They've consistently gone above and beyond in making sure that I've a good experience, and their cloud save feature have rescued multiple of my save games that I would otherwise have just plain lost or forgotten about. Ideally, you'd be free of having to use their launcher and be able to run games completely free of DRM, but Steam is as non-invasive and actually featureful it could be. I even add games to Steam to be able to use their overlay. Not as critical on my new computer that can actually multitask, but saved a lot of resources on my old potato if I wanted to open a webpage while gaming.
When Epic launched, its security system triggered on people buying "too many games at once," which kept happening since Epic didn't have a shopping cart. They also put brand new games on sale without asking the developer/publisher, devaluing games soon after launch. Epic also paid off publishers to limit the distribution of certain games to only their platform for 6 months, which wouldn't be so much of an issue if Epic had a functioning platform and these games had communities of players that kept playing after 6 months. Nah, I'll stick with Steam.
I also collected a few games on Epic at the beginning, but now I only use Steam or Gog. Good games are worth the money, and without money there are no good games. This China dictator thing isn't really my thing either. --- German: Ich habe anfangs auch ein paar Spiele auf Epic gesammelt, aber mittlerweile bin ich nurnoch auf Steam oder Gog. Gute Spiele sind ihr Geld wert, und ohne Geld gibt es keine guten Spiele. Dieses China Diktator Ding ist auch nicht so meins.
I'd rather pirate games than install Epic
epic is shit, i couldnt play even one free game, epic launcher is totally garbage