The Epic Store, In Its Current State, is Not Good for Anyone by David Galindo

[Orb]

Check the thread you are in. This is literally the thread for this article.

Dude didn't even read the OP, or he did and didn't understand the article.

Click to shrink...

First of all, it's extremely laughable to imply that I "don't have much experience with PC games" considering I built my own PC, it was my primary method of playing games for nearly a decade, and I even stated within this thread that I have hundreds of games in my Steam library.

And yes, I read the article. I understand the author's points. They seem to matter to a lot of people. They don't matter to me. I don't use any Steam "features" that aren't present in the Epic Store currently. I buy a game there, I scroll to it in my library, and I click on it to play. I don't have friends on Steam. I don't care about Achievements on any platform, let alone a platform that can be gamed like Steam can. I just don't use any of the extraneous stuff. Again, I realize a lot of people do! My point is that for me personally, the Epic Store has all I need, which is a method for me to give developers money and get their game in return. And for my personal use case, the benefit of the Epic Store (giving more of my money to indie devs who I feel have earned it) matters.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

I think it's worth pointing out that most people don't see an issue with Steam having no real competition because Valve has mostly been good guy Valve over the years. It'd be great to have a real competitor so that we don't have to rely on good guy Valve forever more.

Click to shrink...

But Steam has competition. They're just not as big as Steam because they don't offer all that Steam offers. This is the market deciding.
Epic isn't offering anything better than anyone else. Theyre trying ride the goodwill wave of a higher percentage for developers, while being absolute shit at everything else.

I welcome a serious competitor as well, but GoG is the closest we've come.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

The articles assumption that the Epic game's store being a very bare bones storefront is a negative thing is an interesting one.

Yeah the epic games store is not feature rich but if you look at the steam user base how many of them actually interact with 90% of the features on there?

Most of my friends list is steam level 7-11 which is the natural level you reach by just having a steam account and getting achievements and perhaps even participating in one community event.

The best features of steam and the ones that are most likely to be used by people are.
Storefront with reviews and integrated forums
Workshop
Achievements / global stats tracking
Refunds
Regional Pricing
A friends list with group chat capability
Controller compatibility / remapping
Big picture mode.

Everything else, like streaming. trading cards. the bulk of the community features, all feel like bloat that few people are going to get value out of. Most of the time if I want to stream a game to someone on my friends list because they're curious about it, i just set up a twitch stream and give them a link. It's more involved but it's just generally better. Even the marketplace, while yeah it's very well put together it's also not really something you'll interact with unless you're very into CSGO skins, or DoTA2 items.

And of those features listed above I bet most people will only ever intentionally use, the friends list, the storefront with reviews, refunds, regional pricing and controller compatibility. Which to your average user will really just feel like when asked what they use on the steam client will respond by saying "Um the store and my friends list".

Meanwhile the Epic Games Store just giving you a place to buy games feels like a nice thing, I know a lot of people have been wishing that steam was more stripped down, that it's too front loaded with stuff they don't care about. If the store ends up being successful maybe valve should see it as as sign to streamline and slim down the steam client.

 

[MonthOLDpickle]

To be honest, most sell their cards for wallet money. Sure the golden age is over but you get some cash still. Myself I bought more then a few games that way, I bought Dragon's Dogma with card money at launch.

I do not use the friendlist on steam at all. I have friends added to just watch what they buy via the activity feed lol.

 

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

And of those features listed above I bet most people will only ever intentionally use, the friends list, the storefront with reviews, refunds, regional pricing and controller compatibility. Which to your average user will really just feel like when asked what they use on the steam client will respond by saying "Um the store and my friends list".

Click to shrink...

Sounds like pretty big features, especially Refunds, Regional pricing and controller compatibility. Also something they will use without knowing are Cloud Saves. They will notice if they play it on another device or do a clean install and the savegames are still there.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Also something they will use without knowing are Cloud Saves. They will notice if they play it on another device or do a clean install and the savegames are still there.

Click to shrink...

Oh right yeah that's a very good point! And an incredible feature.

 

[Pyros Eien]

Sounds like pretty big features, especially Refunds, Regional pricing and controller compatibility. Also something they will use without knowing are Cloud Saves. They will notice if they play it on another device or do a clean install and the savegames are still there.

Click to shrink...

The epic store doesn't have cloud saves? Every store has them, even the crappier ones like Origin, I'd be surprised if it was missing. I personally turn them off as I don't like the idea of them sometimes fucking up my local saves due to connection issues and bugs and what not, it's only happened once on steam many years ago but since then I turn it off, if I need saves I'll just upload them somewhere and I do manual backups of my saves via .bat scripts every now and then.

Probably should get to installing it though, tomorrow they have Subnautica for free and while I don't care for their exclusivity practice, I'm never one to ignore free games(that I want to play that is, the rest I don't bother with).

 

[Deleted member 1849]

The epic store doesn't have cloud saves? Every store has them, even the crappier ones like Origin, I'd be surprised if it was missing. I personally turn them off as I don't like the idea of them sometimes fucking up my local saves due to connection issues and bugs and what not, it's only happened once on steam many years ago but since then I turn it off, if I need saves I'll just upload them somewhere and I do manual backups of my saves via .bat scripts every now and then.

Probably should get to installing it though, tomorrow they have Subnautica for free and while I don't care for their exclusivity practice, I'm never one to ignore free games(that I want to play that is, the rest I don't bother with).

Click to shrink...

The Epic store doesn't even have a functional search bar right now.

Everyone is saying "give them time, they'll improve, of course they don't have the features of Steam", but they don't even have the features of early Origin.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

People here have literally been talking about features that aren't modules too. Forums, customized content, etc.

Click to shrink...

You think it costs money to set up a steam forum?

 

[ThankDougie]

You think it costs money to set up a steam forum?

Click to shrink...

You think it's easy to moderate forums? Look at Valve man. How many hate groups are there? I honestly can't tell if you're trolling at this point.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

You think it's easy to moderate forums? Look at Valve man. How many hate groups are there? I honestly can't tell if you're trolling at this point.

Click to shrink...

...so you think it costs money to set up a steam forum, got it. You are ridiculous.

 

[ThankDougie]

...so you think it costs money to set up a steam forum, got it. You are ridiculous.

Click to shrink...

Who you going to pay to moderate it? Who monitors it? Who manages all the logistics? You ever worked in a company that has to manage the amount of data that Valve managers on a daily basis? It's a fucking nightmare. You can have all the money in the world and still screw that part up. It's not just a matter of money, it's a matter of recognizing the need for resources and allocating them within a corporate structure. It's not easy. Fuck off with the continuous insults.

 

[Alexandros]

Keep it civil, people.

 

[Ghost_Messiah]

Well, I bit the bullet and downloaded the launcher, because of Ashen, and impressions so far are that it's very bare bones and for a "light weight" client it's very laggy, and I have a high-end gaming laptop. Games so far are just the exclusives they bought, and obviously at this point the library has nothing on Steam.

Still in two minds whether I'll buy anything, and the games seem more expensive? Wonder if Steam will respond in some way in the near future.

 

[StereoVSN]

So is the whole 2 Refunds for the life time of the account plus one extra per year true? Because if so it's not only ridiculous but seems to break EU laws.

Oh, and LOL on no cloud saves.

 

[Deleted member 1849]

So is the whole 2 Refunds for the life time of the account plus one extra per year true? Because if so it's not only ridiculous but seems to break EU laws.

Oh, and LOL on no cloud saves.

Click to shrink...

Yes, but I don't think it's "one extra per year", I think it just resets to 2. https://www.resetera.com/threads/lets-discuss-the-awful-epic-game-store-refund-policy.86741/

Thread was closed because no new information and too many epic threads, which I think is a shame because I'd like to talk about the refunds policy specifically and there's no thread for that, but all the information is there.

 

[Toadofsky]

The Epic store doesn't even have a functional search bar right now.

Everyone is saying "give them time, they'll improve, of course they don't have the features of Steam", but they don't even have the features of early Origin.

Click to shrink...

You'd think a billion dollar company and having Steam Spy in your employ would have made you put thought into some basic features. Nah, that's being entitled to expect that.

 

[Joe Spangle]

The articles assumption that the Epic game's store being a very bare bones storefront is a negative thing is an interesting one.

Yeah the epic games store is not feature rich but if you look at the steam user base how many of them actually interact with 90% of the features on there?

Most of my friends list is steam level 7-11 which is the natural level you reach by just having a steam account and getting achievements and perhaps even participating in one community event.

The best features of steam and the ones that are most likely to be used by people are.
Storefront with reviews and integrated forums
Workshop
Achievements / global stats tracking
Refunds
Regional Pricing
A friends list with group chat capability
Controller compatibility / remapping
Big picture mode.

Everything else, like streaming. trading cards. the bulk of the community features, all feel like bloat that few people are going to get value out of. Most of the time if I want to stream a game to someone on my friends list because they're curious about it, i just set up a twitch stream and give them a link. It's more involved but it's just generally better. Even the marketplace, while yeah it's very well put together it's also not really something you'll interact with unless you're very into CSGO skins, or DoTA2 items.

And of those features listed above I bet most people will only ever intentionally use, the friends list, the storefront with reviews, refunds, regional pricing and controller compatibility. Which to your average user will really just feel like when asked what they use on the steam client will respond by saying "Um the store and my friends list".

Meanwhile the Epic Games Store just giving you a place to buy games feels like a nice thing, I know a lot of people have been wishing that steam was more stripped down, that it's too front loaded with stuff they don't care about. If the store ends up being successful maybe valve should see it as as sign to streamline and slim down the steam client.

Click to shrink...

Mate im not having a go at you but this is the strangest argument ive read on this whole Steam / Epic thing. I mean you list a load of positive things about using the Steam client, things that should be pretty standard for any launcher, but dont see them as a reason as to why people prefer using Steam?

And your last point is interesting - People are saying that new competition will force Steam to 'step up their game', but you think it will get them to remove features?

 

[Faabulous]

Guys, there is no competition on the costumer side. The competition is for devs.

Epic has guessed (correctly in my view) that if they attract the right developers and offer them a better deal, they don't need to compete with steam in any other way. If the game you want to play is exclusive to the epic store you need to download the epic launcher and buy through them. That's it.

Sure, steam absolutely needed competition on the attracting devs side, but to even pretend they are competing for users with these extremely anti-consumer acts is ludicrous, they never even intended to compete.

Honestly, I completely understand why people are upset. What epic is doing is a monopoly by definition, most IP law is based on legal monopolies (of who gets to sell and use your intellectual property) but when you abuse your legal monopoly on IP through exclusive licenses to neuter competition (since competing is hard) in other adjacent markets people do become upset and a lot of them might be driven to piracy since that becomes more convenient. Epic has to know that, I'm just worried that the indies who agreed to those deal, didn't know.

 

[Lakeside]

Guys, there is no competition on the costumer side. The competition is for devs.

Epic has guessed (correctly in my view) that if they attract the right developers and offer them a better deal, they don't need to compete with steam in any other way. If the game you want to play is exclusive to the epic store you need to download the epic launcher and buy through them. That's it.

Click to shrink...

I guess that's one take. There will be some subset that just doesn't buy a game that they would otherwise. As long as that is a small enough minority then I guess the devs win.

 

[SweetNicole]

Given the number of similar threads on the topic, we're consolidating a number of the Epic Store threads down to a single thread. Please use this new thread for discussion about the Epic Store. New threads can of course be made if they are significant enough to fall under the "new news = new thread."

https://www.resetera.com/threads/epic-games-store-discussion.86783/