Technically not "owned by" Tencent, but they have around 40% share or something. Obviously a huge influence in the company.
The Epic Games store for PC and Mac [2018-12]
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
Comparing the clients with their launch dates aligned, I honestly struggle to see much of a difference between GOG Galaxy and EGS in terms of features and roadmaps. At what point did you decide that GOG's feature set had progressed enough to stop protesting it with the vehemence you now use for Epic's?
And nearly that same number of people on the planet would have used it, due to Steam's entrenched lock-in and network effects.
Are all exclusivity deals deserving of death threats, or just Epic's? Where is your crusade against those developers who take moneyhats from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple, et al?
That certainly was a clusterfuck, and a valid complaint. I hope Epic learned major lessons from the mistakes of that first sale on a then-5-month-old store, lessons they are incentivized to learn as the $10 discounts came out of Epic and not the developers' bottom lines (which, while obviously not damage-free, belies your claims that Epic didn't give a shit about them). Such fuckups are, of course, not an EGS exclusive, as the Steam Summer Sale one month afterward had devs caught unawares to see their games removed from user wishlists en masse due to Valve's promotional giveaways; do you still hold a secondhand grudge on their behalves over that as well?
Explain, clearly, how you believe Epic is a monopoly here or otherwise.
This is a lie. Epic is not owned by Tencent, and repeating this lie is intended only to repurpose anti-Chinese sentiment against them in the absence of anything real.
Since it's so obvious, what has Tencent's influence been on the EGS?
Last edited:
40% of Epic is literally owned by Tencent.
So? They're a minority shareholder with no ability to order Epic around and nothing to do with the store.
Saying they own Epic in totum is a lie, and implicating them as a reason to avoid the EGS is FUD.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Your posts make no sense. Instead of only disagreeing with others and coming up with what if replies, maybe try using some actual logical arguments to try and convince people why EPG isn't a bad thing.
For example silent Buddha made a good point about people not liking Epic buying up exclusives yet you come up with a reply about death threats. What does that got so do with anything?
For example silent Buddha made a good point about people not liking Epic buying up exclusives yet you come up with a reply about death threats. What does that got so do with anything?
I wrote one post in this thread making those arguments six months ago, and left it at that. In the time since, increasingly unhinged attacks on the EGS have spiraled into a full-blown fucking hate movement, so clearly letting fake news and FUD fester in this thread without pushback was a mistake.
I don't see a good point. I see the same selectively sustained complaints about exclusives reserved for Epic, when bought exclusives have been a part of the videogame industry for as long as it's been one. To reiterate my reply: why are EGS exclusives so much more deserving of vitriol than all the others? Timed exclusives on a free launcher are such a low barrier compared to having to buy a completely different console or platform that I really can't see any rationale for this shrieking mob other than such deep complacence with the Steam monopoly that any competitor who cannot be ignored must be destroyed.
Silent_Buddha's point is so banal that it was preemptively addressed by the Ooblets developers last month, triggering an avalanche of abuse from entitled manchildren:
https://ooblets.com/2019/07/we-did-the-thing/ said:
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I am hugely befuddled by the store wars. I view the stores, and more important the software front-end for launching games, as a means to an end. Like a lot of people my first experience of Steam was trying to install/play Half-Life 2 where the experience was just bad because it was the first version of the software and it felt like I had to install this community app to play a game. When I try to recall playing Half-Life 2, more than anything about the game I recall being annoyed at Steam. Chat options - fuck off, auto-load on boot - fuck off, etc etc. Steam isn't too now bad but the Mac client is doing with weird UI shit which isn't Mac-like and is very slow. And as my Mac keeps warning me, this Steam shit isn't 64-bit, what fucking decade is this? Steam doesn't crash, but the updates to the software are a bit much. Comparatively the EGS software feels a lot more streamlined. I don't miss the 'community hub' of Steam but I do like the Steam Workshop for mods.
Neither is more compelling than the other so I just tend to buy where something is cheaper or exclusive, if there is price parity I will use EGS so the devs/publishers get a larger cut.
Neither is more compelling than the other so I just tend to buy where something is cheaper or exclusive, if there is price parity I will use EGS so the devs/publishers get a larger cut.
If I want to know if a game runs well or has issues, Steam’s reviews and discussion forums are a pretty good first source. Epic makes me look elsewhere for that pretty important info. If we assume all Epic consumers enter their storefront educated about their purchase ahead of time, then, sure, what’s not to like about giving devs a bigger piece of the pie at the same price point?
Epic Store store started out geared toward developers and influencers, with the assumption that price (and exclusivity) was enough to draw consumers. Nothing particularly wrong with that from a business standpoint, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t slightly tilted against consumers right now, at least in terms of information (quantity, not necessarily quality).
The barrier of entry to the store is relatively low (yet another login, yet another potential leak vector for your personal info), but how is it different than a legit Steam key reseller like the Humble, GMG, Fanatical, etc. (that I believe give devs a better cut than Steam while offering consumers all the benefits of Steam)? I guess Unreal Engine devs are the biggest winners.
I haven’t had many problems with Steam’s launcher or prices, so I may be missing something. That’s not stopping me from grabbing the free games (even though most of them have or will be included in a game bundle or PS+/GWG),.
isdn6, you still haven’t mentioned how Steam games were denied to you. Mind sharing? How do other stores avoid it?
Epic Store store started out geared toward developers and influencers, with the assumption that price (and exclusivity) was enough to draw consumers. Nothing particularly wrong with that from a business standpoint, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t slightly tilted against consumers right now, at least in terms of information (quantity, not necessarily quality).
The barrier of entry to the store is relatively low (yet another login, yet another potential leak vector for your personal info), but how is it different than a legit Steam key reseller like the Humble, GMG, Fanatical, etc. (that I believe give devs a better cut than Steam while offering consumers all the benefits of Steam)? I guess Unreal Engine devs are the biggest winners.
I haven’t had many problems with Steam’s launcher or prices, so I may be missing something. That’s not stopping me from grabbing the free games (even though most of them have or will be included in a game bundle or PS+/GWG),.
isdn6, you still haven’t mentioned how Steam games were denied to you. Mind sharing? How do other stores avoid it?
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
In my experience, the discussion forums vary game to game. Visit the forums for Paradox games like Stellaris, CKII and EUIV and it's all very polite and well mannered, visit community hub for Assassin's Creed or Far Cry and it's pretty toxic out of the gate. And you can never ever mention you're using a Mac, even if you have an eGPU with Geforce 2080 and are boot camped into Windows, you'll just people telling you to buy a PC.
Steam's launcher is a bit rougher (laggy, less responsive) on linux and macOS. It didn't used to be this bad, it's got worse over time. EGS is noticeably snappier but maybe it'll get worse over time. I do appreciate an uncluttered snappy UI
I mentioned in my first post that I generally only bought games from stores that are DRM-free by policy, and while on that basis I hadn't installed Steam and wouldn't install EGS, I supported Epic's entry insofar as it brought some needed competition to a monoculture. From my perspective and priorities there's little difference between Steam and EGS, so gamers who were religiously for one and against the other at first seemed silly, and then, as the outrage and disinformation campaigns continued to ramp up, baffling and obnoxious.
No. They added the ability to play single player games in offline mode back in Feb. Initially you couldn't even do that
Oh that's nice. I didn't know there were DRMless games on there.
What % of games are actually like that?
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
And this is an issue if you need support. Like a lot of communities that are simply too big to moderate, the asshats drown out folks legitimately willing to help and having been one of the latter in a large community, when it turns toxic you just lose to will to spend time in it so you stop reading leaving just the asshats. It's markedly different across the communities, sometimes by genre. RPG/RTS communities are generally pretty cool. But, for example, every reply to any new subject in the general forum for Fallout 4 at launch was almost entirely responses from Bethesda-haters telling everybody play New Vegas. WTF.
Steam community hubs? No thanks, if want to pain I'll go out and kick over a hornet's nest, the net effect is much the same and at least the Hornet's aren't mocking my choice of hardware or game.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
CDKEYs sell GTA V on PC and the platform is shown as Rockstar Social Club, which is interesting - I'd never realised this before. I assumed it was like Bethesda games (Fallout 3, NV, 4, Skyrim etc) which also have their own launcher but 'ownership' is bound to Steam keys - if bought through Steam.
