5 ms·

There are plenty of cross-store games on PC. And even if some games end up being exclusive you might still benefit as a player thanks to the competition. If Epi

by simias 6y ago

There are plenty of cross-store games on PC. And even if some games end up being exclusive you might still benefit as a player thanks to the competition. If Epic started offering a very bad user experience game devs would hesitate to publish exclusively through them because they'd fear reduced revenue. It's also a very good thing for game devs who aren't at the mercy of the whims of a single company. Steam no longer wants to work with you? Go to GOG, Epic or even self-publish.

jaegerpicker 6y ago
Epic DOES offer a terrible experience, especially on Mac. It crashes ALL the time. It's terribly slow. It regularly consumes over 50% of available Ram and CPU. It still has exclusives and it's the only place I can get Unreal Engine if I want it. The PC game market is a prime example of how this common knowledge not being true at all for consumers. A couple of years ago steam was really the App Store for games and the user experience was far better. Now it's the worst it's been ever. Gog, UPlay Connect, Origin, Steam, Epic Game store etc... All with exclusives, all with massive privacy issues, all worse for consumer's. The only way to truly improve it for consumer is to require that all platform's be open source. That I could get behind but it will never happen.
Arainach 6y ago
> Epic started offering a very bad user experience game devs would hesitate to publish exclusively through them because they'd fear reduced revenue. This is demonstrably not true. Epic's launcher has been a laughing stock since it was announced. * It only recently got any form of Achievements (that are completely undiscoverable) * It has no way to join a party with your friends. I think it has Friends support but am not sure because you can't do anything at all with your Friends so I never even look. * It has no way to get support (their "troubleshoot" guide amounts to 'clear your cache, run as Admin, then try reinstalling: https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/epic-games-store-c73/launcher-support-c82/troubleshooting-epic-games-launcher-issues-a2676 https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/epic-games-store-c73/la...) * Half the time their UI elements don't work (I just went into the "Troubleshoot" section and the back button doesn't work, so I had to close the whole window and start over) * There are no user reviews of games * Their store and library sorting is a mess that makes it difficult to find anything * They launched without even having cloud save support Epic's game store is underpowered, buggy, and miserable to use - and plenty of companies still do exclusive deals with them because Epic holds a bag of gold in front of their face. They even do it when it breaks their own promises, like when IOI decided to launch Hitman 3 after promising they'd import Hitman 2 purchases - and then apparently totally forgot that Hitman 1 and 2 were on Steam and Hitman 3 was on Epic, so while XBox and Playstation users got their levels migrated on day one PC users are still out of luck a month later.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Is all of that really a problem when the companies seem to have shown that none of that matters? The increased cut is apparently more valuable to them. And I also should note, half of those items don't need to implemented in a store. People ask for them because they are implemented as extras in other stores, but strictly speaking the distribution and support are the only things the store needs to have to be called a store. Achievements, friend lists, user reviews, and cloud saves can be provided by separate services and work just as well, and could result in a higher cut for the vendors if the store doesn't have to shelter the cost for that.
  - Arainach 6y ago
    That sounds like the same class of argument as "all an operating system needs to provide is process scheduling and hardware access". It doesn't match user expectations and it certainly isn't a good user experience. Having to sign into a different account for every game to get basic functionality is a nightmare. Users want to purchase a game from a store, install it, play it, and have everything work. That's it - no other configuration or connections required.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      The answer to that isn't putting all stores but one out of business, it's having a single-sign-on provider. Also, I doubt you would criticize an embedded OS for only having process scheduling and hardware access, because that's probably all it was designed to do. Similarly, a low-cost store may want to skip on providing all those extra features so they can keep prices down.
- vinger 6y ago
  None of those sounds like a very bad user experience. A very bad experience is games disppearing different games appearing after purchasing something else, games not working, memory usage too high..etc No user reviews, no easy help button for noobs, no cloud save, only recently got achievements, can't crush a friends party. all sound like little nice to haves that don't add much value. Does it allow me to find/play the game? Everything else takes time away from playing.

by simias 6y ago

jaegerpicker 6y ago

Epic DOES offer a terrible experience, especially on Mac. It crashes ALL the time. It's terribly slow. It regularly consumes over 50% of available Ram and CPU. It still has exclusives and it's the only place I can get Unreal Engine if I want it. The PC game market is a prime example of how this common knowledge not being true at all for consumers. A couple of years ago steam was really the App Store for games and the user experience was far better. Now it's the worst it's been ever. Gog, UPlay Connect, Origin, Steam, Epic Game store etc... All with exclusives, all with massive privacy issues, all worse for consumer's. The only way to truly improve it for consumer is to require that all platform's be open source. That I could get behind but it will never happen.

Arainach 6y ago

> Epic started offering a very bad user experience game devs would hesitate to publish exclusively through them because they'd fear reduced revenue. This is demonstrably not true. Epic's launcher has been a laughing stock since it was announced. * It only recently got any form of Achievements (that are completely undiscoverable) * It has no way to join a party with your friends. I think it has Friends support but am not sure because you can't do anything at all with your Friends so I never even look. * It has no way to get support (their "troubleshoot" guide amounts to 'clear your cache, run as Admin, then try reinstalling: https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/epic-games-store-c73/launcher-support-c82/troubleshooting-epic-games-launcher-issues-a2676 https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/epic-games-store-c73/la...) * Half the time their UI elements don't work (I just went into the "Troubleshoot" section and the back button doesn't work, so I had to close the whole window and start over) * There are no user reviews of games * Their store and library sorting is a mess that makes it difficult to find anything * They launched without even having cloud save support Epic's game store is underpowered, buggy, and miserable to use - and plenty of companies still do exclusive deals with them because Epic holds a bag of gold in front of their face. They even do it when it breaks their own promises, like when IOI decided to launch Hitman 3 after promising they'd import Hitman 2 purchases - and then apparently totally forgot that Hitman 1 and 2 were on Steam and Hitman 3 was on Epic, so while XBox and Playstation users got their levels migrated on day one PC users are still out of luck a month later.

cycloptic 6y ago
Is all of that really a problem when the companies seem to have shown that none of that matters? The increased cut is apparently more valuable to them. And I also should note, half of those items don't need to implemented in a store. People ask for them because they are implemented as extras in other stores, but strictly speaking the distribution and support are the only things the store needs to have to be called a store. Achievements, friend lists, user reviews, and cloud saves can be provided by separate services and work just as well, and could result in a higher cut for the vendors if the store doesn't have to shelter the cost for that.
- Arainach 6y ago
  That sounds like the same class of argument as "all an operating system needs to provide is process scheduling and hardware access". It doesn't match user expectations and it certainly isn't a good user experience. Having to sign into a different account for every game to get basic functionality is a nightmare. Users want to purchase a game from a store, install it, play it, and have everything work. That's it - no other configuration or connections required.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    The answer to that isn't putting all stores but one out of business, it's having a single-sign-on provider. Also, I doubt you would criticize an embedded OS for only having process scheduling and hardware access, because that's probably all it was designed to do. Similarly, a low-cost store may want to skip on providing all those extra features so they can keep prices down.
vinger 6y ago
None of those sounds like a very bad user experience. A very bad experience is games disppearing different games appearing after purchasing something else, games not working, memory usage too high..etc No user reviews, no easy help button for noobs, no cloud save, only recently got achievements, can't crush a friends party. all sound like little nice to haves that don't add much value. Does it allow me to find/play the game? Everything else takes time away from playing.