The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
you guys can pay developers all you want but nobody is gonna stick if your launcher is still shit
What was the alternative for the first ten years? Nothing better for sure.
The alternative back then was to buy physical games or to pirate them.
As bad as the Steam experience was at the time, it was still convenient. Nowhere else could you reliably download games at those speeds, and you could legally purchase games without leaving the house, not to mention the prices.
When a new product like a TV from a new manufacturer shows up people judge it by standards from 10 years ago as opposed to current ones? Same from software?
I’m not fully sure the steam comparison works only because that was a different time.
With that said I still think epic has staying power if for no other reason than anyone mildly interested has a massive epic library sitting there. I don’t spend a ton of time thinking about epic, but I do want to keep my account because of all those games.
Making it seem like Steam’s problems for the first ten years were some software bugs inherent to all software.
It required you login every 48 hrs to two weeks to play most games for DRM purposes, they had no return policy, app’s buttons barely worked, overlay made games run considerably worse, it frequently took up a shitton of resources. The 48 hr thing meant that if you were offline for a bit and Steam was down or slowed (any time a bit sale happened or a big game was launched) most games were unplayable.
Steam came out in 2003 and tons of people complained about Steam DRM hearkening the end of actually owning videogames until at least 2012. GoG came out in 2008, didn’t require a launcher at all, sidestepped everything wrong with Steam.
There’s been non-buggy, not anti-consumer software as long as there’s been computers, Steam prior to like 2016 was not that. There’s been an alternative, buying physical games (until they all started using Steam DRM or worse) and GoG.
Yeah Epic Launcher is barebones. Both Steam and Epic are anti-consumer because of DRM, and making users beholden to any buggy software update to play software they purchase. At least Epic pays devs.
Steam literally forced me to install it when I bought Portal on CD back in the day.
The only thing that was on that CD was a Steam installer and a code.
Just use playnite or one of the alternatives, it’s so much easier launching every game from the one place.
I only open epic launcher once a week to get the free game I’ll never play and that’s it.
Yeah being able to add and launch the more nefariously obtained games along side legitimate games is one of my favourite things about it. The filter to quickly see owned vs installed across every account is also up there as a top feature.
But why does the launcher matter when all you need it for it to launch a game?
Because it’s actually dogshit. Like in every thinkable way a launcher “could be bad” it is.
Examples:
-Cannot move games or files, IN ANY CAPACITY. If you move a game folder or file the Epic launcher loses sight of it and the launcher has no way at all to tell it where existing files are. I learned this when I tried to move GTA V and had to reinstall the full game in the exact same location so that epic could see it.
-The launcher is the slowest loading launcher and service in the world. I have a 7800x3D and an nvme and EGS is the slowest launcher on my computer by a country mile (fucking Uplay is faster). Also on top of that, it has a major hard on for making you log back in on the same fucking computer (what feels like weekly). Meanwhile I don’t touch steam for 2 weeks and, guess what? It still logs me in! How the hell did they figure out that crazy tech?!
-It has absolutely 0 of the function the steam launcher has. Besides letting you spend money on games and launch them. No communities, workshop, friends features, profiles, voice calling, steam share, remote play together, etc.
I could go on but this all just grinds my gears when they do nothing but tout how they are “for gamers” and “for developers” when they’re clearly just here for fucking money. They use anti consumer practices to lock people into an ecosystem that for some reason they refuse to improve (wild fucking concept, maybe people would use their launcher if it wasn’t one of the least functional ones available!), and instead try to bait people in and keep them around with a free game a week. I’ll never, ever willingly give a cent to epic games. They’ve proven they don’t give a fuck about gaming or the consumer experience
edit: changed you to they when referring to Epic Games at the end
