Epic fails to compete with Steam because “EGS is a shop, Steam is a community”, says Witchfire lead, as Epic has “nothing to do but to buy”
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Alright I know people rag on Epic all the time… but it’s truly incredible how hard they keep dropping the ball. It’s been SEVEN YEARS since it was created and it still feels so basic and terrible to use.
The store is drab and uses huge chunks of space just to advertise fortnite and f2p rewards. Discovery is terrible and the store is full of crypto scams and AI spam shovelware, which is ironic because Epic started off being very selective about what’s allowed to be published there. The store also feels like adware because it keeps spamming random notifications and ads unless you turn it off.
The best part is that Epic constantly blames users for not wanting to leave Steam instead of admitting their store sucks. They keep spending tens of millions buying exclusives and giving away games for free rather than spending any time improving the store. Seriously, what are they doing over there?
I think Epic was very arrogant in their approach assuming consumers have no self control over buying things, so assumed they’d get them no matter what if they made things exclusive to their store. That pissed off vocal people would still not be able to resist not buying games.
Which actually is not a bad bet to make, but turned out to surprisingly not work as well as they hoped it would. And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.
And they still seem lost when it comes to trying to figure out how to win consumers over. It’s like they got advice from Randy Pitchford from 2K telling them the way to win consumers over is to berate them and attack the competition.
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Epic fails to compete with Steam because “EGS is a shop, Steam is a community”, says Witchfire lead, as Epic has “nothing to do but to buy”
Why do gamers refuse to use the Epic Games Store? Former Epic exclusive Witchfire developer Adrian Chmielarz explains its because Steam is a home.
FRVR (frvr.com)
Sweeney is overly opinionated and will dictate to you how you will use your products. Valve largely short of the app’s drm just gives me the games and the app just sits in the background, this is why GOG is the true contender to Steam as they have a similar approach.
We don’t want to be told how to play our games, give us services to help do so by all means, but otherwise it’s a take money and leave situation.
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The meme of “Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself” is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.
- Remote Play (stream your own game from another PC)
- Remote Play Together (can stream a game to friends without a copy of the game and play together)
- Linux, Proton
- Well designed hardware innovations
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.
Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won’t think he’s trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.
Honestly, remote play together has probably sold me more games than all of the summer/winter sales combined. I don’t play multiplayer games much, so I don’t really invest in them. If my friends are enjoying one we will remote play it together and I can make a decision to purchase after that. Otherwise, I would just never purchase them. Because of that, I’m also now incentivized to purchase any remote play together games that come across my feed and I think would be even a little fun so that I can return the favor. If they enjoy it then I will often just buy them a copy and they will get to share the experience with their go-to multiplayer friends who also go on to purchase the game. That may not be everyone’s experience with remote play together, and it’s possible that they are missing out on more sales than they are generating, but I doubt it from my personal experience.
Being the go to gaming platform really just means you’re a money printer at a certain point. I have quite an extensive friends list on Steam, often adding people from conventions on steam and nowhere else. I have never once met somebody at a con and exchanged epic information with them. But because of my extensive friends list I’m introduced to a bunch of games that I would never have heard of or seen otherwise. It’s basically free advertising for all of those titles. I might not personally be interested in any of those games, but if I notice I have friends with a similar gaming history, I will look into whatever other titles they are playing as possible gifts for topics to bring up next time we’re chatting about games.
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I think Epic was very arrogant in their approach assuming consumers have no self control over buying things, so assumed they’d get them no matter what if they made things exclusive to their store. That pissed off vocal people would still not be able to resist not buying games.
Which actually is not a bad bet to make, but turned out to surprisingly not work as well as they hoped it would. And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.
And they still seem lost when it comes to trying to figure out how to win consumers over. It’s like they got advice from Randy Pitchford from 2K telling them the way to win consumers over is to berate them and attack the competition.
And even when people do buy the exclusives on their store, what reason do they have to buy anything else there?
Just like the free games, it would work as advertising, to initially attract people that then decide their product is worth using. But it will never work for making people use their store for anything else as long as it’s as terrible as it is.
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The meme of “Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself” is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.
- Remote Play (stream your own game from another PC)
- Remote Play Together (can stream a game to friends without a copy of the game and play together)
- Linux, Proton
- Well designed hardware innovations
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.
Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won’t think he’s trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.
- Steam multiplayer networking
- Steam Input
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The meme of “Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself” is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.
- Remote Play (stream your own game from another PC)
- Remote Play Together (can stream a game to friends without a copy of the game and play together)
- Linux, Proton
- Well designed hardware innovations
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.
Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won’t think he’s trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.
I have never had remote play together work smoothly enough to actually play. Even when on the same network the input lag is problematic.
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Yeah it felt like they literally marketed themselves as exclusively pro developers while having nothing for the consumer, which I’ve always thought was a really fuckin weird stance to take if you want to compete with Steam.
Meanwhile if you’re part of Steam’s partner program you know that Valve are constantly improving things on the backend for devs and publishers. Just about the only “developer-friendly” thing Epic does that Steam doesn’t do better is asking for a smaller cut.
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It’s called shortsighted management.
Valve has had success with Steam because they ask themselves “What do gamers want, and how can we turn a profit by giving it to them?” For example, many of us want to mod our games. Enter the Steam Workshop. It’s free, convenient and exclusive so it fidelizes (is that a word in English?) customers and indirectly makes them money while improving their image in the market.
Epic’s management instead asks themselves “How can we make money off of gamers?” without trying to understand the market. They see that there are many free games on Steam, and many console exclusives, and their tiny MBA brains decide that the only way forward is with free games to lock us to their platform (that’s what Valve did, right?) and exclusives so we have no choice. And they have no idea why Valve waste their time with Workshop, Community forums for each game, Proton (Linux and Mac are such a tiny share of the market!) or any of that not-obviously-profitable filler that is in fact what sets Steam apart as a service rather than just a storefront.
Builds customer loyalty = se fideliza
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I think Epic was very arrogant in their approach assuming consumers have no self control over buying things, so assumed they’d get them no matter what if they made things exclusive to their store. That pissed off vocal people would still not be able to resist not buying games.
Which actually is not a bad bet to make, but turned out to surprisingly not work as well as they hoped it would. And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.
And they still seem lost when it comes to trying to figure out how to win consumers over. It’s like they got advice from Randy Pitchford from 2K telling them the way to win consumers over is to berate them and attack the competition.
It’s also not 2009: Netflix streaming isn’t new. The consumer cost, time, administration and inevitable enshittification of a platform walled garden is not lost on gamers. No one wants 4 streaming services or have to open up a separate launcher depending on what game company created it.
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I think Epic was very arrogant in their approach assuming consumers have no self control over buying things, so assumed they’d get them no matter what if they made things exclusive to their store. That pissed off vocal people would still not be able to resist not buying games.
Which actually is not a bad bet to make, but turned out to surprisingly not work as well as they hoped it would. And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.
And they still seem lost when it comes to trying to figure out how to win consumers over. It’s like they got advice from Randy Pitchford from 2K telling them the way to win consumers over is to berate them and attack the competition.
And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.
Yeah I’ve been boycotting them from the start and still am, because fuck 'em
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This post did not contain any content.
Epic fails to compete with Steam because “EGS is a shop, Steam is a community”, says Witchfire lead, as Epic has “nothing to do but to buy”
Why do gamers refuse to use the Epic Games Store? Former Epic exclusive Witchfire developer Adrian Chmielarz explains its because Steam is a home.
FRVR (frvr.com)
Tim Swiney said on the game product page there should be no disclosure of Ai usage in the games, in response to Steam “forcing” the disclosure of what is being used Ai for. Just shows how I will avoid Epic Games Store even more than before. There are plenty other reasons. Epic will not buy me as a “user” by giving me free games (however I do not blame anyone else doing so, free is a great deal to be honest).
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The launcher is still just awful. Its only purpose is to give me free games. It has never felt polished or finished at all.
Why would I want to use a worse product?
I use their website to get the free games then use Heroic Launcher to download and run them.
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I don’t use EGS because it they actually locked in significant market share they would enshittify so fast your head would spin.
They’re innovating, then. They chose to enshittify before getting significant market share.
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Tim Swiney said on the game product page there should be no disclosure of Ai usage in the games, in response to Steam “forcing” the disclosure of what is being used Ai for. Just shows how I will avoid Epic Games Store even more than before. There are plenty other reasons. Epic will not buy me as a “user” by giving me free games (however I do not blame anyone else doing so, free is a great deal to be honest).
I check their free games once a week, and take any that pique my curiosity - after all, Epic still has to pay the actual publishers of the games, right? Then, if I enjoy the game enough, I buy it on Steam. Yes, for the cheevies.
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Sweeney is overly opinionated and will dictate to you how you will use your products. Valve largely short of the app’s drm just gives me the games and the app just sits in the background, this is why GOG is the true contender to Steam as they have a similar approach.
We don’t want to be told how to play our games, give us services to help do so by all means, but otherwise it’s a take money and leave situation.
GOG is actually losing ground, in my opinion. I still use it, as that’s where I bought the Witcher games (and some old classic collections), but the launcher is SO persistently annoying. If Steam is running and minimized to the tray, I never see it unless I want to. GOG Galaxy pops to the front and demands input WAY too often.
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I use their website to get the free games then use Heroic Launcher to download and run them.
Now that is a serious big-brain maneuver!
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The meme of “Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself” is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.
- Remote Play (stream your own game from another PC)
- Remote Play Together (can stream a game to friends without a copy of the game and play together)
- Linux, Proton
- Well designed hardware innovations
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.
Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won’t think he’s trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.
Also all the consumer friendly shop page stuff like labeling anti features
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I use their website to get the free games then use Heroic Launcher to download and run them.
I just collect them directly through heroic these days
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Oh, yeah. Forgot you could do that through the embedded web browser. Really, I only get them when I see the deals pop up on Lemmy. I’ll ‘purchase’ it on my phone. I haven’t even opened Heroic in a while.
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The reviews are a part of the community, even if they’re not found in the “Community” part of Steam.
But yeah, EGS has many failings, pretty much all of which were pointed out right at the start. They weren’t improved upon because Epic don’t want to deliver the best possible experience or promote the capability of the PC as a gaming platform. They just want you to buy digital shit, get bored of it, and then buy more digital shit at the lowest possible cost to them. Effort costs money so they won’t make any.
When they first launched, their whole main message was “it’s a cheaper cut for the devs!” Perhaps I’m being selfish, but that’s not a message that resonates to me as a buyer.
Hint: most of us don’t get hot and bothered about exactly how much margin Walmart lets Tyson take on their chicken nuggets, so trying to apply that message to games is weird.
