Alan Wake 2 [XBSX|S, PC, PS5]

Epic is the publisher, so they at least in part payed for the development. Understandable arrangement, but Steam is definitely the place to be for sales. I do think the "if it's not on steam I'm not buying it" mentality is dumb.

Steam and the Epic Store aren’t substitutes though. The Epic Store is literally just a store. I would buy something off Epic only if I absolutely had to and wouldn’t be happy about it.
 
Steam and the Epic Store aren’t substitutes though. The Epic Store is literally just a store. I would buy something off Epic only if I absolutely had to and wouldn’t be happy about it.

Well if Epic is the publisher and at least in part funded the development, why wouldn't they put it on their own store where they don't have to pay another company, especially when they're pricing the game at $50 USD. I'm guessing people wouldn't be happy if they put a version on steam at a higher price. It's probably good to have many stores where you can buy games, and you can have many clients on your pc.
 
Steam and the Epic Store aren’t substitutes though. The Epic Store is literally just a store. I would buy something off Epic only if I absolutely had to and wouldn’t be happy about it.

Just curious as to why? It's certainly a PITA to have games spread across multiple stores but something like Playnite makes that essentially a non-issue.

Or is there some other reason?
 
Steam and the Epic Store aren’t substitutes though. The Epic Store is literally just a store. I would buy something off Epic only if I absolutely had to and wouldn’t be happy about it.

And their storefront is so crap (and launcher is really bad) and consumer unfriendly (I'd say predatory) that I won't even go there for the free games anymore. I tried it and hated every moment of the experience.

Currently I only get games through either Steam or GoG. Unfortunately, that means I'll be one of the millions of people that would likely play Alan Wake 2 but won't. Same as how I stopped playing COD and all EA games when those left the Steam store and their storefronts were crap.

Achievements, friends, voice chat, reviews to name a few.

Reviews is the big one there. Not allowing user reviews is so scummy as it's one of the main ways to ensure a developer is not only supporting a game after launch but that it isn't doing something underhanded after reviews are out. Also, remote play on Steam without having to get 3rd party apps is nice. Developer update notes (future patches, what they are working on, etc.) on the store page is also very welcome. There's just a ton of quality of life benefits of using Steam.

It's not like Epic couldn't make a good storefront, I mean just do what Steam is doing. If they ever invest as much into their storefront to make it worth using versus just spending money for exclusivity to buy consumers, I'd reconsider as I'm not against using other stores.

Regards,
SB
 
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Epic paid the entire game, they didnt pay a little :) Its a publisher deal like any of the regular ones. We want your team to make this game, here's the money. Around $50 million if im not misremembering from some article a while back. Their only chance for sales is on consoles though, epic's store doesnt seem to exist for people at large. Doubt it'll ever be on Steam, this is Epic's game fully
 
Dont buy games from the Epic story, but UE games from Steam... Dont know, seems inconsistence to me.

Seeing these comparisions between DLSS and FSR 2, i think DLSS Ultra Performance can be a good setting for people who play on the TV or farther away from the monitor:
 
What's wrong with epic store? It's the only store with drm that some of its games can be played without the store or fully offline

So probably some devs / pubs hates that
 
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What’s wrong with UE games on Steam? People don’t like the Epic Store but that has nothing to do with Epic games and engines.
UE5 is the only relevant middleware engine. So supporting games with UE5 on Steam is supporting a company which is dictating what is relevant for gaming and what is not. UE5 broke the hardware raytracing acceleration on the PC plattform. UE5 runs poorly on nVidia GPUs. Image quality is falling apart when you move outside the "comfort zone" of the Engine, performance is really bad. Simple effects like reflections are not possible anymore, indoor lighting is a decade old.

Buying Alan Wake 2 on the Epic store is the lesser evil of both.
 
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PC people are weird. Apparently the brand loyalty wars have now hit the digital storefronts. I remember when Steam was considered a computer virus when it launched with the Orange Box. Now anything but Steam is digital evil for some people. It's just a store. The games are what matters. I'll buy good games regardless of which storefront they're on. Having a single store is probably not good.
 
Dont buy games from the Epic story, but UE games from Steam... Dont know, seems inconsistence to me.

Seeing these comparisions between DLSS and FSR 2, i think DLSS Ultra Performance can be a good setting for people who play on the TV or farther away from the monitor:

I've been playing Alan Wake 2 on a 60" 1080p60 plasma without VRR support from about 10ft away.
I was blown away with how good DLSS is in this game, to the point where I had to get up stare at the screen from a foot away, and pixel count in a lot of scenes until I was satisfied that changing the DLSS preset was even doing anything.

Normally the lower DLSS presets do not look very good at all on a 1080p display, although I'll use them on occasion when gaming on my 1440p desktop.

I played two hours last night at DLSS Ultra Performance (360p internal) on that 1080p display and other than the hair fizzling a bit during rapid camera pans and disocclusion, and very thin geometry like the cross-street power lines in Bright Falls breaking up and not being completely solid, it looks shockingly fantastic. In any of the interior or forest areas it's extremely difficult to see the difference between DLSS UP (360p) vs DLAA (1080p).
 
I've been playing Alan Wake 2 on a 60" 1080p60 plasma without VRR support from about 10ft away.
I was blown away with how good DLSS is in this game, to the point where I had to get up stare at the screen from a foot away, and pixel count in a lot of scenes until I was satisfied that changing the DLSS preset was even doing anything.

Normally the lower DLSS presets do not look very good at all on a 1080p display, although I'll use them on occasion when gaming on my 1440p desktop.

I played two hours last night at DLSS Ultra Performance (360p internal) on that 1080p display and other than the hair fizzling a bit during rapid camera pans and disocclusion, and very thin geometry like the cross-street power lines in Bright Falls breaking up and not being completely solid, it looks shockingly fantastic. In any of the interior or forest areas it's extremely difficult to see the difference between DLSS UP (360p) vs DLAA (1080p).

One thing I've noticed with UE5 titles that use nanite is that they upscale much better than other games. I think it's because the resolution of the geometry is closer to the internal resolution before upscale (closer to 1 polygon per pixel). I think Alan Wake 2 is similar. The presentation looks softer as you upscale from lower resolutions, but overall it doesn't look that bad. Geometry still tends to look pretty good upscaled, so you have nice edges. I think it's the same thing. They push a lot of triangles with mesh shaders so they're probably closer to 1 polygon per pixel for the internal resolution before upscale.
 
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That is why I say that it is nonsensical to compare DLSS quality with FSR quality. DLSS performance already looks better than FSR quality. Geforce cards have a significant speed advantage due to DLSS in games that support DLSS. The difference is even greater in games with ray reconstruction.

EDIT

I'm not interested in how many pixels are natively calculated but how good the image quality is. One should not compare the same number of pixels but the same or similar image quality.
 
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Epic paid the entire game, they didnt pay a little :) Its a publisher deal like any of the regular ones. We want your team to make this game, here's the money. Around $50 million if im not misremembering from some article a while back. Their only chance for sales is on consoles though, epic's store doesnt seem to exist for people at large. Doubt it'll ever be on Steam, this is Epic's game fully

Maybe. Maybe not. Six months from now it's in Epic's best interest to capture revenue from the diehards that refused to buy it from their store.
 
PC people are weird. Apparently the brand loyalty wars have now hit the digital storefronts. I remember when Steam was considered a computer virus when it launched with the Orange Box. Now anything but Steam is digital evil for some people. It's just a store. The games are what matters. I'll buy good games regardless of which storefront they're on. Having a single store is probably not good.

Nothing about brand loyalty for a lot of us. We gave it a try, hated the experience of using their store and launcher. Try to soldier through for half a year for the free games, still couldn't stand using the store. Uninstalled and not going back until they improve their storefront.

Why is choosing not to use a shitty storefront from a company that would rather spend money to buy consumers than to provide the consumers with a good storefront to use considered brand loyalty? I mean I don't shop at some grocery stores, car dealers, furniture stores, etc. for the exact same reasons.

Regards,
SB
 
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