Steam: Here's a discount.
Epic: You're not allowed to buy or play any Unreal Tournament games anymore.
Steam: Here's a sale on a bunch of catered stuff
Epic Games: Here's a premium game and you cannot purchase it on any other platform because we paid the the dev to take the money and run.
Steam: here’s a platform. We know some corpos won’t release games without DRM, so here’s our in-house solution that’s non-intrusive, but if you don’t want to put DRM in your game, we won’t force you. Want to include a backup installer? Cool. No worries. Oh you don’t have solid internet? That’s cool, if you get the games installed somehow, you can use offline mode indefinitely with no issues, sorry it took us so long to work out the bugs.
Epic: YOU MUST YSE OUR SHITTY DRM FOR ANY GAME RELEASED ON OUR PLATFORM, AND YOU MUST BE ONLINE AT ALL TIMES OR YOU CANNOT PLAY THE GAMES YOU PURCHASED.
Steam: here's the launcher. It opens in a few minutes
Epic: You better go get yourself a coffee with that money you saved on the free game cause we're gonna be here a while
Ich will Unreal Tournament spielen!!1!
Oh my god what a throwback. At first I was like why do I understand German.
Classic, right in the feels! ❤️
What? Why no unreal tournament?
Steam: supports all PC platforms
Epic Game: supports only cringe
Compared to stuff like GoG, where multiple open source launchers exist. Those launchers work with steam too, but you are required to have the proprietary Steam launcher installed.
I'm still gonna take it though. Free is free.
And for that price I'll jump through some minor hoops to get them onto my Steam Deck.
It's surprisingly easy. Just install Lutris and than Epic via Lutris with Proton as runner and you're good to go. I wouldn't have thought it works just like that.
Never going to be able to play more than a small percentage of my library anyway, might as well add another game to the pile.
I've got so many free games at this point that when a favorite YouTuber like Oboeshoegames does a video on an old game and it looks good, quite often I already have it.
Remember folks, if the product or service is free to use, it's likely the actual product is you and your data.
In this case I think it's mostly to get people to use the App regularely and so expose more people to the store.
That's not mutually exclusive to datamining though*. Yes they have a product in their stores, but the customers are unwitting products (to another customer-group) themselves (tbf this happens a lot, which does NOT make it ok however)
*not saying this happens, I don't know if the EPIC store datamines, I have never used it as I am on linux so I may as well not exist to EPIC
Honestly though, peoples priorities are wierd. Refuse to use Epic while handing over waaayy more sensitive data to Google.
If you're concerned about data collection, start with changing your search engine. Then maybe your browser. Then your email provider...
(Written from GrapheneOS)
Please install my innocent game launcher, yes of course it needs to be root to install games and prevent cheating. I'll give you a free game if you install it !
I treat my PC like a console at this point. Don't use it for anything but gaming because of all the insane stuff games are doing with essentially making you install spyware. Figure I'd give them as little data as I can. I even have it on a separate network that can only communicate with the internet, not the rest of my LAN.
What access does it actually have? Or is this a flippant comment?
And does steam have the same level of access?
You don't actually need to have Epic installed to take advantage of the free games: https://github.com/derrod/legendary
First-class Linux support from Steam means they'll get my support every time over Epic.
Even worse, Epic's been dropping linux support from games they buy and then they prevent others from implementing it by not supporting it in their launcher and EAC
Redeem all free games from Epic. Never install their launcher. You get a free library to use with Geforce Now.
Wait question - can you actually do this? I'm trying but it seems like you can only sign into games with epic, not actually play your games there?
Get Heroic Games Launcher
Got 347 games on there atm. I paid for four of them (Outer Wilds + DLC, Journey to the Savage Planet, Untitled Goose Game and Tetris Effect).
Duuuuude this is the way
Can't hear anything over the exclusives
I'm old and out-of-the-loop. What are they giving away? I dont see it on their website. But again, I'm old. And kind of stupid.
don't be so hard on yourself. over time, we all just stop paying so much attention to every single internet drama, it's tiring and we have better stuff to do.
and the point is that epic games has been really liberal with the freebies for their users ever since they set up shop as a competitor to steam. they give away a game every couple of weeks and even more on certain special seasons, including triple a games. someone following them since the begging must have a library well over a hundred games now, completely for free. despite that, they are finding very hard to find sympathy and market share among certain sectors of the gaming community, because their store is just not at the level of steam and some other questionable practices, even so far as to still be operating at a loss even now years later. you can see the giveaway games just below the current discounts at the home page or in the free games page almost at the top https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games and of you use telegram there's a channel that notify you every time there's something new for free https://t.me/epicfreegames
"every couple of weeks"
As in...a new game ever Thursday for years with a couple of repeats here and there?
They also don't operate at a loss, it's the marketing budget that they redirected.
Thanks for taking the time to explain, that was very informative. I'm not hard on myself, btw. Im a 45 year old white guy who thinks he's hot shit. Thanks for the encouragement, though.
I think that I forgot to say it at the time, but thanks for your response. You helped to clarify the issue for me.
There's lists online of all the titles if you are curious. You might be lucky and see some of them again, it happened a few times that they brought back previously given games, too :)
This is great information, thanks for sharing. Could you elaborate on "questionable practices"? I'm aware of locking certain games out of steam for some time (borderlands 3 for example). Is there more I didn't know about?
On the Epic Games Store they always have one or two games that users can claim for free (and keep forever). They change the games they offer for free every few weeks or so (or on some holidays even daily). Sometimes these are really awesome ones and sometimes they suck :) Currently you can get The Elder Scrolls Online for free. They are doing this for some years now and now I have a huge selection of games that I haven't payed a single dollar for.
Currently: Murder by Numbers and Elder Scrolls Online
Tomorrow: Home World Remastered Collection and Severed SteelThey give away two games every week https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games
You have to install their launcher afaik.
They periodically give away games in the store there.
Right now it looks like Elder Scrolls Online.
But they occasionally give away halfway-decent games like in the past I've seen The Witcher 3, Civ 6, Death Stranding, StarWars Battlefront II, etc.You don't need to install the launcher anymore. Heroic launcher can run most of your epic store games. (both on Windows and Linux!)
So enjoy the games without the major privacy concerns
It'a a no-brainer when they're legit buy-to-pay games and not games-as-service. My only problem is that they keep giving away games that I already paid for on Steam, like Witcher 3, Civ 6, Mordhau. I missed out on death stranding, apparently.
Epic Games murdered Fall Guys
Each and every one
When I had an old slow computer I hated using extra launchers for everything, heck I even kept steam closed when I didn't need it to save resources. But now I have something half decent I don't mind having a couple running in the background
yeah i don't get the hate for the epic store, who tf is annoyed by free games. And the Store isn't that bad sure it doesn't have as many functions as steam, but thats not necessarily bad steam has a lot of useless stuff. As a store the experience with epic is much more streamlined
Store doesn't even work on Linux
Just use the store in the browser. And if you meant the client, it's garbage anyways. I'm happy with Heroic Launcher. I take the free games and just never spend a dime with them. Fools
Thats news to me since I am using it just fine on Linux through bottles.
You can usr Heroic Launcher. Works fine on Steam Deck.
You can only like one thing, thems the rules
Xbox or playstation, coke or Pepsi, dicks or puss
Then you have to go online and talk shit about the ones you didn't pick.
It's in the bible.
For me, the main concern is that Epic doesn't have a system of purchasable keys, even after all these years. Most stores in PC have had a system with keys that has allowed users to purchase games from 3d party sites such as GreenManGaming and the like. That system has been one of the key reasons why prices have stayed in check in the platform, and why cool stuff like HumbleBundles exists.
Without this kind of system, every time a game is exclusive to the Epic platform, it, in effect, has a single price point with no possible competition or alternative, which is no different than a console ecosystem... And a lot of the pricing on those is not great, to say the least.
Until they have that, supporting the growth and consolidation of that store would be potentially shooting myself in the foot as a consumer.
EDIT - Turns out, I had my info somewhat outdated, this was introduced at some point recently, at least with some retailers.
However, on second check it doesn't apply to games with Epic Store exclusivity, apparently (or at least the ones I've checked). It seems to only apply to games that are not exclusive. So concern still valid, unfortunately.
If someone has more info about it I'd love to hear it because it looks unclear at the moment.
And being against them is centralising the market in Valve's hands, which is exactly what people feared would happen when they released Steam and started having games release exclusively on their platform.
They give a better share of sales to the devs and also guarantee revenues, which means some games would never have seen the light of day/some devs would have gone bankrupt without Epic supporting them.
So by not supporting them you're also sitting yourself in the foot.
Oh and by the way, Epic's free games are DRM free in the vast majority of cases... Guess that's a bad thing too for some reason?
Epic Games hasn't done it much lately, but when they first launched they paid a few big games to be Epic Games Store exclusives which is obviously anti-consumer behaviour. That and they're owned by China, so the chances of your data being funneled out to China is practically 100%. Also, Epic has historically been critical of gaming on Linux with the CEO going so far as to say that Linux users are a bunch of whiners and that Epic will never support Linux just to spite them. A very immature response to say the least.
That and they’re owned by China, so the chances of your data being funneled out to China is practically 100%
a) Tencent has a minority share b) what the fuck is China going to do with my data? Target ads a little more precisely the one time a year I go on newegg or whatever? Shouldn't you be much more concerned about an entity like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft having that information? And it's not like at least two of those don't have a history of working with the US government and others, i.e. governments that actually impact your life.
Epic Games hasn’t done it much lately, but when they first launched they paid a few big games to be Epic Games Store exclusives which is obviously anti-consumer behaviour.
Exclusivity deals on their own were pretty bad, but what really pissed people off was that some of the games that were made exclusive were crowdfunded.
The Data collection would be a solid point, but the people who loudly voice that concern are normally the people who have 500+ hours in LoL, Valo, Clash of Clans, Clash Royal etc., all of them from companies that are mostly/ completely (Riot Games 100%,Supercell 85%) owned by tencent, while they own less than 50% of Epic, yet for some reason the possibility of data collected by China is only a big problem for people, when it comes to Epic Games.
Also as a european, i don't really care if the Data gets funneled to the USA or China, both equally bad imo.
First impressions matter and Epic fucked up big time when they launched the store. There were a lot of missing features that were available on other storefronts and it was a pain to use. Another thing that really pissed people off was when they made exclusivity deals for games that were crowdfunded. A lot of people did not like that they lost the ability to play on a platform that they preferred when they directly contributed to a game being made. It was also scummy to make deals for games that were already announced on Steam (i.e. Metro: Exodus, Darq) While the store is better now and they're funding games instead of making exclusivity deals, there is a reason why a lot of people do not trust Epic or continue to dislike them despite the free games.
Yeah... I still remember when they gave a game away by mistake (it simply had a price tag of 0 dollars) and took it back right after saying that they would have let users keep it if they did such mistake. That's funny
Tencent, a Chinese company is a major owner of Epic. Westerners simply hate Chinese owned tech due to political reasons. Huawei and especially TikTok are other examples.
I hate Tiktok because it's spyware. Show me the source code to prove me wrong.
I hate Epic because they abandoned the Unreal and Unreal Tournament series, delisted from any store(including single player games) and turned off the Master Server preventing official multiplayer.
I hate AAA game developers because of what the MBAs did to milk every cent of out of their customers.
Y’know, back in the day, we’d have friends that were Muslim or gay, that would have bullies around at school trying to beat them up. We’d call the bullies assholes, break their legs, and tell them to change their stance or have their arms broken next.
Now, because those bullies happen to wear a suit and make speeches on government TV, and also want to ship our gay and Muslim friends off to prisons, hating them is considered “political”. Or, they highlight their own race and say we’re being “xenophobic”. Or, they simply lie and say that there is no genocide going on.
Man, can’t we just go back to breaking legs when assholes become religiously intolerant?
