4 ms·

Five years after it took on Steam, Epic Games Store is yet to make a profit

47 points by CharlesW 3y ago

superkuh 3y ago
Epic game store is a weapon for attacking other game developers. It was never to make a profit. It's just to provide an sealed off area for Epic to buy competitors/etc and cut them out of more open competitor ecosystems. Like when they bought Psyonix, said they wouldn't change anything in Rocket League, then 6 months later unreleased(!) the game for multiple operating systems removing all online play (the only real game mode). They claimed this was because of Direct X transition problems. But they still support Playstation which uses the same old Direct X. It's all lies. And lets not forget the innumberable times Epic has cloned games made by other companies in their engine and released them for "free" on "epic game store".
standardUser 3y ago
To this day, and for close to 20 years, Steam is one of the only applications I allow to run in the background (of my Windows PC). It's always been a remarkably lightweight application. It seamlessly keeps itself and my installed games up to date. And the 'workshop' is fantastic for most modding needs. Hard to think of a complaint really, aside from the occasional pop-up ad, but those have never been too obtrusive and they haven't gotten worse over the years.
- izend 3y ago
  "It's always been a remarkably lightweight application" Early in it's life it was not known as a lightweight application, I'm pretty sure it gave Java a bad reputation for Desktop apps.
- reactordev 3y ago
  This is the trust that Steam has produced and why no other store will ever come close. This long standing trust that they won’t muck with your running apps, that they won’t just throw popups on your screen (except when launching, tisk tisk), and that they will support the infrastructure required to keep those games and apps up to date. Second would be Microsoft’s Store. On Apple it would be the other way around: Apple Store over Steam store. But aside of the native OS “store”, steam is the only 3rd party store I allow on my PC.
  - ohhnoodont 3y ago
    Valve has earned a lot of good will. But Steam is, in my opinion, by far the least impressive program they've released.
- saidinesh5 3y ago
  With their migration to Chrome/electron/not sure what it is, Steam isn't as light weight as it used to be. Especially on older PC's. It noticeably slows down the start up, does eat a lot of ram. It's definitely noticable on a friend's 2014 laptop with 8GB ram and a slower SSD.
  - oxygen_crisis 3y ago
    > It noticeably slows down the start up On my gaming PC I went into the Windows 10 Task Scheduler and added a task to run "steam.exe -silent" when the machine is idle for 10 minutes. That way it doesn't slow down booting but it does eventually get around to the updates if I fire it up and walk away.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > It's always been a remarkably lightweight application. Don't know if I agree. I remember having to turn it off a lot in the early days - but that was ~20 years ago. I will grant that unlike a lot of software it hasn't bloated too much in the intervening years, while hardware has gotten a lot faster.
- ohhnoodont 3y ago
  Steam consistently draws CPU resources. I make sure to disable it on startup. The storefront webview-wrapper also chugs hard and is much slower than just opening the site in a web browser. It updates every time it's launched. It always shows some kind of popup/advertisement... It's software I begrudgingly install.
  - RunSet 3y ago
    I installed Steam because Valve bought Counter-Strike and made Steam a requirement to update it or play it online. Since Counter-Strike was originally a free mod, Steam only allows me to access what it took from me in the first place. Alexander wanted to fulfill a wish for Diogenes and asked him what he desired. Diogenes replied, "Stand out of my light."
    - jackstraw14 3y ago
      Surely you can see that Steam has come a long way since then. Hope you're not really still upset about that.
      - ohhnoodont 3y ago
        I feel the software has become significantly worse since its original Counter Strike release.
- webkike 3y ago
  It's also the only social network I haven't deleted my account for yet
upon_drumhead 3y ago
I haven’t bought a single game from EGS yet I get the free games every week. I wonder how much profit they would make by turning off the free game spigot.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  I used to grab those also, but I never played them, so I stopped bothering. I'd rather just play them on Steam, especially now that I have a Steamdeck.
  - iamcreasy 3y ago
    I used to buy games on Epic Store during sales, but don't anymore since I got Steamdeck, and I've also repurchased those games on Steam. I don't care about Steam Community points - I'd rather pay a few bucks extra for the convenience.
- bdw5204 3y ago
  I suspect the only thing most people use EGS for is to claim the weekly free games and the free Amazon games.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  The only reason I got on Epic was the free games. I've only spent money on Steam and GOG. When the spigot is turned off. I'm not buying anything.
deaddodo 3y ago
And it will continue to be unable to do so because they are only targeting making it a better experience for developers, not consumers. The app is less usable than Steam (in general), and most user's experience with it is just being forced onto it because certain devs hopped over on an exclusivity contract. So it's already soured in most people's mouths. No one is interested in investing in another walled garden when they've invested thousands of USD in one that generally works better.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Better for developers? Hardly. Epic game store is a weapon designed to attack other game developers. Especially the ones foolish enough to use Epic's engine which allows Epic to easily clone the game then release it for free on their walled garden.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    I was referring specifically to the only thing they've done being to charge a slightly lower dev cut, while having a worse client, support and library with all the same problems (walled garden, potential of losing library due to shut down). I can speak anecdotally to the fact that I invested in an alternative platform once (Impulse) and already had to migrate to Steam (repurchasing much of that content) once. I'm not willing to do it again without a significant benefit in doing so.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      > Impulse Haven't thought about that one in a long time. I remember it was pretty OK until GameStop bought it.
      - deaddodo 3y ago
        I only hopped onto it for Sins of a Solar Empire. As soon as it was sold to GameStop, stardock rereleased all their library on Steam and I just repurchased there. So now if something is exclusive off of steam, I either wait or don't buy it.
activitypea 3y ago
Whenever I open the Epic Store, I'm in disbelief that the company behind Unreal Engine is okay with having such a sluggish piece of software. It has a fraction of a fraction of Steam's features, and yet feels 10x bloated. The visual response to clicking anything in the interface takes what feels like hundreds of milliseconds. It feels worse than any Electron app I've ever used, and I can't imagine why. I know that's not a main reason of why it's floundering, but I also wonder if it's a bigger turnoff for the average PC player than Epic's willing to admit.
- saidinesh5 3y ago
  Funnily enough, heroic games launcher - an electron app with support for multiple stores , including epic, feels faster than whatever the epic app/store is. It's a weird world where a third party, more feature rich Linux app is more performant than the official Windows app on Windows ...
- ohhnoodont 3y ago
  I honestly feel Steam is also incredibly slow compared to just opening their site in a browser. All of these game launchers are just janky DRM and some of the worst software our industry has to offer.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - darklycan51 3y ago
    This is actually really common, I don't get it really, with Warcraft 3 Reforged they swapped the UI to WEBUI because they didn't know how to use legacy FDF files. Not only did they get rid of the cool 3d menus made with actually rendered 3d models (mdx) but they swapped them to webms instead (lost a lot of unique animations). Anyways, the UI loads incredibly slow, it's very laggy, yet if you open it in browser, it is actually fairly smooth, what is going on? nobody can tell.
- darklycan51 3y ago
  I don't understand how such a big company can mess something so simple? like okay you don't have the features but how do you make it seem so laggy?
ryandrake 3y ago
Good. Anything to dissuade a future computing dystopia where every application developer has its own "store" that you need to install in order to get their applications which are exclusively offered on their store. I don't want to have to install N stores to obtain (approximately) N applications. Ideally, I don't want to install a "store" onto my PC at all! I already have an application that allows me to download bits from your site: A browser.
- reactordev 3y ago
  Bandwidth issues aside, how would you sync your local data with updates and such via the browser? This isn’t 1998. You don’t just download an installer and play anymore. There’s DLC, there’s updates, there’s extras.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    But those things existed in 1998 (well, at least by 2000). Half-life had updates, expansion packs, mods. Doom had all of that back by 1995. Woldfenstein probably did as well. I used to keep a folder of downloaded updates should I need to reinstall in the future.
- least 3y ago
  I don't know, I kind of like that I don't have to download an installer for every single game I download and go to dozens of websites to download the games, which all would need to input my credit card credentials, and potentially make a separate account. This sounds far worse to me.
  - sshine 3y ago
    I have GOG and Steam installed. For GOG I wish I didn't have to install it, because it's so rare that I play that one game I got from there. For Steam I'm happy I have most of my games there, because I only need to install one program to access them.
    - 3y ago
AlexandrB 3y ago
I have conflicting feelings about the Epic Games Store. On the one hand, Valve definitely needs to have competitors to avoid the kind of "enshittification" we see in other tech products. On the other hand, Epic's tactics - especially securing exclusives - have been quite anti-consumer. Epic's Fortnite has also popularized a bunch of monetization tactics that, frankly, suck. I guess what I'm saying is: use GoG whenever possible.
- activitypea 3y ago
  Valve is a private company, and therefore much less susceptible to enshittification, at least in theory. That's bound to come crashing down when GabeN retires, though.
  - hightrix 3y ago
    This is the real worry. Steam and valve are extremely consumer friendly and many of their decisions feel like they take the user into account before the accountants, contrary to many other video game products today. I really worry when GabeN leaves that the company will either go public or be bought out by PE/VC and then the last bastion of goodwill in video games will die and fast painful death.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  There is no way to enter the market in any meaningful way without exclusives. It's not the end of the world to have two launchers.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    GoG/CD Projekt Red did it somehow. Even their own games are not exclusive to the platform.
    - tracerbulletx 3y ago
      Gog's market-share is not substantial. Considering that non DRM software is very compelling, the Gog example actually just proves my point, you need exclusives to move the needle. It's a fact.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mrsilencedogood 3y ago
Not too much new info here. It's been interesting to me to watch this "fight" from a user perspective. I say fight in scare quotes because it seems to mostly be EGS whinging and splashing about and Steam just ignoring their existence entirely. But it's interesting to me because I've always felt like Steam's moat was weird. I mean, it's PC. There's no moat in the same way that Android or iOS have. Prior to steam, people just put their items on their dang desktops, for crying out loud. Still can. Still do, for most software that's not games. And there's obviously ~0 cost to installing multiple launchers. It's what, a few bits of disk space (nothing compared to the size of even a small indie game, which will easily be 1GB nowadays) and an icon in your app tray, if you even let it run on startup. AND people already use multiple launchers! It's not an fdroid vs playstore scenario, where grandma isn't going to install fdroid. Grandma is already installing random exe's from all over the internet. And gamers already have company-specific launchers - battlenet, EGS for fortnite, and so on. And they have an existing install base, from fortnite! Though I suspect most of their users are mobile. But it's a big leg up vs trying to crack the chicken and egg problem of no games = no installs = no games. And yet, here we are. They can't even hardly give away games for free! They offer half the fees and frickin pay popular up and coming double-A titles for exclusivity. And yet still Steam is huge and games will release on EGS and on Steam and literally (there's a tweet with an example somewhere) games will see <1% of sales come from EGS. So - what's Steam's moat? It's CLEARLY there. And I think it's simple that it's just brand and trust. Gamers (sorry, forgive me use of the term) are used to being jerked around and treated like crap, and they're tremendously suspicious of big game companies, since they're so good at ruining everything just to eke out more profits even if it kills the dang thing long-term. But Steam has their trust because 1) they have a very good track record of not f'ing people over and 2) people trust Gabe because they know Valve is privately held and Gabe is in control. So there's this capitalist/shareholder capriciousness that's simply not a factor in Valve's business but is literally the entire business of EGS. Do people think Valve is here for charity? Certainly not. And yet there's absolutely this perceived difference between Valve and Epic where Valve is the "I make money by making customers happy, just like I have done for twenty years" type of money-making company and Epic is clearly driven in a much more stereotypically slimy sort of capitalist fashion. I'll throw in one random anecdote: I'm sure everyone else saw the HN threads about the OLED Steam Deck? Where they're like, making screws easier for people to tinker with in the newer revision? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about with Valve. Gamers love Valve and Valve loves gamers loving valve (especially since it drives so much revenue).
Racing0461 3y ago
First phrase in title is a bar.
jackvalentine 3y ago
When it launched all I can remember from the press was ‘steam takes too much money from developers and we will take less’. That’s not really a selling point for me, the person who buys games to play them. To this day I can’t name a single gamer-facing feature epic game store has over Steam that would entice me to give up 20 years of built up trust. I buy games on GOG a bunch, I buy games primarily on Steam and have a steam deck. What’s in it for me on EGS?
- jackmott 3y ago
  [dead]
- saidinesh5 3y ago
  > When it launched all I can remember from the press was ‘steam takes too much money from developers and we will take less’. In an ideal world, that means Devs would've been able to pass those savings to end users and Epic could've competed on at least game prices. Not sure if it is some price parity rule by steam (there was a lawsuit) or something else, this hasn't happened so far..
  - jackvalentine 3y ago
    The publishers are just pocketing the extra cash, and why wouldn't they? Looks like even in situations where Steam isn't in play (Epic/Console exclusive games) the publishers just sell it at the same price as other platforms that take more of a cut: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...
- jonhohle 3y ago
  Epic gives away a game (or two) every Thursday, often older AAA titles. I have over 100 games on EGS and don’t know if I’ve ever made a purchase there.
  - jackvalentine 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sleepybrett 3y ago
5 years and it still lacks some of the basic features that steam has (some by choice, who wants to moderate forums)... They got landlorded by apple and valve and got bigmad and tried to landlord .. but their landlord game is weak.
asynchronous 3y ago
It’s super popular to hate on the Epic Store for a bunch of reasons, but let me break from the crowd and give them some credit: directly due to Epic competing with Steam, Steam actually improved drastically over the last 5 years. For almost a decade before that Valve had been asleep with the monopoly, I’m personally grateful someone forced them to improve.
nathants 3y ago
epic has one good multiplayer game, steam has none. both are doodoo platforms, and only run on a doodoo operating system that serves you ads before it’s finished booting. we can definitely do better. in the mean time, i’m glad for steam and epic and windows. at least we have one good game to play while we build a better tomorrow. you can’t just code 24/7. it’s not healthy.
- id00 3y ago
  By "one good multiplayer game" you mean Fortnite, right? That can explain this peculiar comment. Also SteamOS doesn't serve any ads when it finished booting
goodboyjojo 3y ago
i like steam and gog the best. also i like itch, gamejolt and glorious trainwrecks. i really like finding indie game sites to see what's there

47 points by CharlesW 3y ago

Epic game store is a weapon for attacking other game developers. It was never to make a profit. It's just to provide an sealed off area for Epic to buy competitors/etc and cut them out of more open competitor ecosystems. Like when they bought Psyonix, said they wouldn't change anything in Rocket League, then 6 months later unreleased(!) the game for multiple operating systems removing all online play (the only real game mode). They claimed this was because of Direct X transition problems. But they still support Playstation which uses the same old Direct X. It's all lies. And lets not forget the innumberable times Epic has cloned games made by other companies in their engine and released them for "free" on "epic game store".

standardUser 3y ago

To this day, and for close to 20 years, Steam is one of the only applications I allow to run in the background (of my Windows PC). It's always been a remarkably lightweight application. It seamlessly keeps itself and my installed games up to date. And the 'workshop' is fantastic for most modding needs. Hard to think of a complaint really, aside from the occasional pop-up ad, but those have never been too obtrusive and they haven't gotten worse over the years.

izend 3y ago
"It's always been a remarkably lightweight application" Early in it's life it was not known as a lightweight application, I'm pretty sure it gave Java a bad reputation for Desktop apps.
reactordev 3y ago
This is the trust that Steam has produced and why no other store will ever come close. This long standing trust that they won’t muck with your running apps, that they won’t just throw popups on your screen (except when launching, tisk tisk), and that they will support the infrastructure required to keep those games and apps up to date. Second would be Microsoft’s Store. On Apple it would be the other way around: Apple Store over Steam store. But aside of the native OS “store”, steam is the only 3rd party store I allow on my PC.
- ohhnoodont 3y ago
  Valve has earned a lot of good will. But Steam is, in my opinion, by far the least impressive program they've released.
saidinesh5 3y ago
With their migration to Chrome/electron/not sure what it is, Steam isn't as light weight as it used to be. Especially on older PC's. It noticeably slows down the start up, does eat a lot of ram. It's definitely noticable on a friend's 2014 laptop with 8GB ram and a slower SSD.
- oxygen_crisis 3y ago
  > It noticeably slows down the start up On my gaming PC I went into the Windows 10 Task Scheduler and added a task to run "steam.exe -silent" when the machine is idle for 10 minutes. That way it doesn't slow down booting but it does eventually get around to the updates if I fire it up and walk away.
AlexandrB 3y ago
> It's always been a remarkably lightweight application. Don't know if I agree. I remember having to turn it off a lot in the early days - but that was ~20 years ago. I will grant that unlike a lot of software it hasn't bloated too much in the intervening years, while hardware has gotten a lot faster.
ohhnoodont 3y ago
Steam consistently draws CPU resources. I make sure to disable it on startup. The storefront webview-wrapper also chugs hard and is much slower than just opening the site in a web browser. It updates every time it's launched. It always shows some kind of popup/advertisement... It's software I begrudgingly install.
- RunSet 3y ago
  I installed Steam because Valve bought Counter-Strike and made Steam a requirement to update it or play it online. Since Counter-Strike was originally a free mod, Steam only allows me to access what it took from me in the first place. Alexander wanted to fulfill a wish for Diogenes and asked him what he desired. Diogenes replied, "Stand out of my light."
  - jackstraw14 3y ago
    Surely you can see that Steam has come a long way since then. Hope you're not really still upset about that.
    - ohhnoodont 3y ago
      I feel the software has become significantly worse since its original Counter Strike release.
webkike 3y ago
It's also the only social network I haven't deleted my account for yet

upon_drumhead 3y ago

I haven’t bought a single game from EGS yet I get the free games every week. I wonder how much profit they would make by turning off the free game spigot.

cableshaft 3y ago
I used to grab those also, but I never played them, so I stopped bothering. I'd rather just play them on Steam, especially now that I have a Steamdeck.
- iamcreasy 3y ago
  I used to buy games on Epic Store during sales, but don't anymore since I got Steamdeck, and I've also repurchased those games on Steam. I don't care about Steam Community points - I'd rather pay a few bucks extra for the convenience.
bdw5204 3y ago
I suspect the only thing most people use EGS for is to claim the weekly free games and the free Amazon games.
2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
The only reason I got on Epic was the free games. I've only spent money on Steam and GOG. When the spigot is turned off. I'm not buying anything.

deaddodo 3y ago

And it will continue to be unable to do so because they are only targeting making it a better experience for developers, not consumers. The app is less usable than Steam (in general), and most user's experience with it is just being forced onto it because certain devs hopped over on an exclusivity contract. So it's already soured in most people's mouths. No one is interested in investing in another walled garden when they've invested thousands of USD in one that generally works better.

superkuh 3y ago
Better for developers? Hardly. Epic game store is a weapon designed to attack other game developers. Especially the ones foolish enough to use Epic's engine which allows Epic to easily clone the game then release it for free on their walled garden.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  I was referring specifically to the only thing they've done being to charge a slightly lower dev cut, while having a worse client, support and library with all the same problems (walled garden, potential of losing library due to shut down). I can speak anecdotally to the fact that I invested in an alternative platform once (Impulse) and already had to migrate to Steam (repurchasing much of that content) once. I'm not willing to do it again without a significant benefit in doing so.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > Impulse Haven't thought about that one in a long time. I remember it was pretty OK until GameStop bought it.
    - deaddodo 3y ago
      I only hopped onto it for Sins of a Solar Empire. As soon as it was sold to GameStop, stardock rereleased all their library on Steam and I just repurchased there. So now if something is exclusive off of steam, I either wait or don't buy it.

activitypea 3y ago

Whenever I open the Epic Store, I'm in disbelief that the company behind Unreal Engine is okay with having such a sluggish piece of software. It has a fraction of a fraction of Steam's features, and yet feels 10x bloated. The visual response to clicking anything in the interface takes what feels like hundreds of milliseconds. It feels worse than any Electron app I've ever used, and I can't imagine why. I know that's not a main reason of why it's floundering, but I also wonder if it's a bigger turnoff for the average PC player than Epic's willing to admit.

saidinesh5 3y ago
Funnily enough, heroic games launcher - an electron app with support for multiple stores , including epic, feels faster than whatever the epic app/store is. It's a weird world where a third party, more feature rich Linux app is more performant than the official Windows app on Windows ...
ohhnoodont 3y ago
I honestly feel Steam is also incredibly slow compared to just opening their site in a browser. All of these game launchers are just janky DRM and some of the worst software our industry has to offer.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- darklycan51 3y ago
  This is actually really common, I don't get it really, with Warcraft 3 Reforged they swapped the UI to WEBUI because they didn't know how to use legacy FDF files. Not only did they get rid of the cool 3d menus made with actually rendered 3d models (mdx) but they swapped them to webms instead (lost a lot of unique animations). Anyways, the UI loads incredibly slow, it's very laggy, yet if you open it in browser, it is actually fairly smooth, what is going on? nobody can tell.
darklycan51 3y ago
I don't understand how such a big company can mess something so simple? like okay you don't have the features but how do you make it seem so laggy?

ryandrake 3y ago

Good. Anything to dissuade a future computing dystopia where every application developer has its own "store" that you need to install in order to get their applications which are exclusively offered on their store. I don't want to have to install N stores to obtain (approximately) N applications. Ideally, I don't want to install a "store" onto my PC at all! I already have an application that allows me to download bits from your site: A browser.

reactordev 3y ago
Bandwidth issues aside, how would you sync your local data with updates and such via the browser? This isn’t 1998. You don’t just download an installer and play anymore. There’s DLC, there’s updates, there’s extras.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  But those things existed in 1998 (well, at least by 2000). Half-life had updates, expansion packs, mods. Doom had all of that back by 1995. Woldfenstein probably did as well. I used to keep a folder of downloaded updates should I need to reinstall in the future.
least 3y ago
I don't know, I kind of like that I don't have to download an installer for every single game I download and go to dozens of websites to download the games, which all would need to input my credit card credentials, and potentially make a separate account. This sounds far worse to me.
- sshine 3y ago
  I have GOG and Steam installed. For GOG I wish I didn't have to install it, because it's so rare that I play that one game I got from there. For Steam I'm happy I have most of my games there, because I only need to install one program to access them.
  - 3y ago

AlexandrB 3y ago

I have conflicting feelings about the Epic Games Store. On the one hand, Valve definitely needs to have competitors to avoid the kind of "enshittification" we see in other tech products. On the other hand, Epic's tactics - especially securing exclusives - have been quite anti-consumer. Epic's Fortnite has also popularized a bunch of monetization tactics that, frankly, suck. I guess what I'm saying is: use GoG whenever possible.

activitypea 3y ago
Valve is a private company, and therefore much less susceptible to enshittification, at least in theory. That's bound to come crashing down when GabeN retires, though.
- hightrix 3y ago
  This is the real worry. Steam and valve are extremely consumer friendly and many of their decisions feel like they take the user into account before the accountants, contrary to many other video game products today. I really worry when GabeN leaves that the company will either go public or be bought out by PE/VC and then the last bastion of goodwill in video games will die and fast painful death.
tracerbulletx 3y ago
There is no way to enter the market in any meaningful way without exclusives. It's not the end of the world to have two launchers.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  GoG/CD Projekt Red did it somehow. Even their own games are not exclusive to the platform.
  - tracerbulletx 3y ago
    Gog's market-share is not substantial. Considering that non DRM software is very compelling, the Gog example actually just proves my point, you need exclusives to move the needle. It's a fact.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mrsilencedogood 3y ago

Not too much new info here. It's been interesting to me to watch this "fight" from a user perspective. I say fight in scare quotes because it seems to mostly be EGS whinging and splashing about and Steam just ignoring their existence entirely. But it's interesting to me because I've always felt like Steam's moat was weird. I mean, it's PC. There's no moat in the same way that Android or iOS have. Prior to steam, people just put their items on their dang desktops, for crying out loud. Still can. Still do, for most software that's not games. And there's obviously ~0 cost to installing multiple launchers. It's what, a few bits of disk space (nothing compared to the size of even a small indie game, which will easily be 1GB nowadays) and an icon in your app tray, if you even let it run on startup. AND people already use multiple launchers! It's not an fdroid vs playstore scenario, where grandma isn't going to install fdroid. Grandma is already installing random exe's from all over the internet. And gamers already have company-specific launchers - battlenet, EGS for fortnite, and so on. And they have an existing install base, from fortnite! Though I suspect most of their users are mobile. But it's a big leg up vs trying to crack the chicken and egg problem of no games = no installs = no games. And yet, here we are. They can't even hardly give away games for free! They offer half the fees and frickin pay popular up and coming double-A titles for exclusivity. And yet still Steam is huge and games will release on EGS and on Steam and literally (there's a tweet with an example somewhere) games will see <1% of sales come from EGS. So - what's Steam's moat? It's CLEARLY there. And I think it's simple that it's just brand and trust. Gamers (sorry, forgive me use of the term) are used to being jerked around and treated like crap, and they're tremendously suspicious of big game companies, since they're so good at ruining everything just to eke out more profits even if it kills the dang thing long-term. But Steam has their trust because 1) they have a very good track record of not f'ing people over and 2) people trust Gabe because they know Valve is privately held and Gabe is in control. So there's this capitalist/shareholder capriciousness that's simply not a factor in Valve's business but is literally the entire business of EGS. Do people think Valve is here for charity? Certainly not. And yet there's absolutely this perceived difference between Valve and Epic where Valve is the "I make money by making customers happy, just like I have done for twenty years" type of money-making company and Epic is clearly driven in a much more stereotypically slimy sort of capitalist fashion. I'll throw in one random anecdote: I'm sure everyone else saw the HN threads about the OLED Steam Deck? Where they're like, making screws easier for people to tinker with in the newer revision? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about with Valve. Gamers love Valve and Valve loves gamers loving valve (especially since it drives so much revenue).

Racing0461 3y ago

First phrase in title is a bar.

jackvalentine 3y ago

When it launched all I can remember from the press was ‘steam takes too much money from developers and we will take less’. That’s not really a selling point for me, the person who buys games to play them. To this day I can’t name a single gamer-facing feature epic game store has over Steam that would entice me to give up 20 years of built up trust. I buy games on GOG a bunch, I buy games primarily on Steam and have a steam deck. What’s in it for me on EGS?

jackmott 3y ago
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saidinesh5 3y ago
> When it launched all I can remember from the press was ‘steam takes too much money from developers and we will take less’. In an ideal world, that means Devs would've been able to pass those savings to end users and Epic could've competed on at least game prices. Not sure if it is some price parity rule by steam (there was a lawsuit) or something else, this hasn't happened so far..
- jackvalentine 3y ago
  The publishers are just pocketing the extra cash, and why wouldn't they? Looks like even in situations where Steam isn't in play (Epic/Console exclusive games) the publishers just sell it at the same price as other platforms that take more of a cut: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...
jonhohle 3y ago
Epic gives away a game (or two) every Thursday, often older AAA titles. I have over 100 games on EGS and don’t know if I’ve ever made a purchase there.
- jackvalentine 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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sleepybrett 3y ago

5 years and it still lacks some of the basic features that steam has (some by choice, who wants to moderate forums)... They got landlorded by apple and valve and got bigmad and tried to landlord .. but their landlord game is weak.

asynchronous 3y ago

It’s super popular to hate on the Epic Store for a bunch of reasons, but let me break from the crowd and give them some credit: directly due to Epic competing with Steam, Steam actually improved drastically over the last 5 years. For almost a decade before that Valve had been asleep with the monopoly, I’m personally grateful someone forced them to improve.

nathants 3y ago

epic has one good multiplayer game, steam has none. both are doodoo platforms, and only run on a doodoo operating system that serves you ads before it’s finished booting. we can definitely do better. in the mean time, i’m glad for steam and epic and windows. at least we have one good game to play while we build a better tomorrow. you can’t just code 24/7. it’s not healthy.

id00 3y ago
By "one good multiplayer game" you mean Fortnite, right? That can explain this peculiar comment. Also SteamOS doesn't serve any ads when it finished booting

goodboyjojo 3y ago

i like steam and gog the best. also i like itch, gamejolt and glorious trainwrecks. i really like finding indie game sites to see what's there