Didn’t take long for Randy’s tone to change after the Epic bribe money dried up.
I feel like he’s know for this shit like aliens colonial Marines
That and mysteriously disappearing thumb drives
And assaulting the original Claptrap VA, among other things.
Any decent person who would have been “overly optimistic” at the time would have supported epic, and just that. There was no need to go out of his way to trashtalk others like a whiny bitch, especially when at the time said “others” where the place they had a chance to make money before.
Don’t feel too bad. GOG sucks too, it just never had Epic’s enormous pool of Chinese hype money.
Why does GOG suck?
Lose the ‘infinite growth’ promise to shareholders (in fact, lose the whole shareholder thing entirely). That’s the root of all evil right there. It’s the cause of all woes suffered by gamers, devs and even the very sociopathic CEOs who think Epic exclusivity is a sound financial strategy. We all suffer for it, and all to benefit shareholders who, in 2024, still believe the lie that next year’s profits will exceed this year’s. It’s delusional, and even if it weren’t, it would quite literally be cancerous. Cancer is just a board of shareholders in a biological system.
Huh, that was what 5 years ago now? I will remember telling randy he was wrong (in perhaps an alcohol fuelled rant 🤭) only to get swiftly blocked.
Brick voice ‘Ahhh good times!’
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. – Gabe Newell, 2011
Time and again, digital distribution platforms have proved this. Apple Music became a dominant music distribution platform at the height of Napster, LimeWire and other peer to peer sharing apps. They did it, because it was easier to just buy the tracks/albums you wanted than to dig through trackers and websites which may or may not actually have what you want. Netflix became the de-facto source for streaming movies at a time when BitTorrent was common and well known. Again, they made it easy and convenient, while not charging an arm and a leg. Steam also faced competition from BitTorrent piracy. But again, Steam made buying, downloading and running games easier than the pirates. And people are willing to pay for that convenience and not dealing with the crap which floats around the high seas.
And, so long as Steam continues to treat it’s customers right, those customers will keep coming back. And that’s the problem with Pitchford’s whole premise. Developers will go where the customers are. Sure, you’ll get the odd case of a publisher/developer doing an exclusivity deal. But even then, it’s probably limited, because the customers are on Steam. If another storefront wants to draw customers, they need to start with treating customers well. They will still face headwinds, as Steam has a large “first mover” advantage. But, success is going to start with making customers want to come back.
yea let’s just forget about the illegality of those things and how companies, ISPs and law enforcements fight tooth and nail to shut those services down repeatedly.
You ever wonder why these companies don’t operate in countries that don’t have strict piracy laws and can’t shut down sites with court orders? Because it’s still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.
Re-read what I wrote, but hop down off your high horse first, it’s obvious you weren’t able to read it clearly from up there. I’m neither promoting nor defending piracy. Quite the contrary, I’m praising the legitimate services (and Steam in particular) for understanding that competition with piracy isn’t all about money, it’s often about the quality of service. Funny enough, your own comments are actually a point in favor of this:
You ever wonder why these companies don’t operate in countries that don’t have strict piracy laws and can’t shut down sites with court orders? Because it’s still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.
Yet somehow, with a lot of time, money and effort put into shutting down piracy, the pirates were able to provide a better service. Seriously, step back from the whole “napster bad” for a moment and think about the dissonance of the situation. Large companies, pulling in millions of dollars a year, with no need to worry about law enforcement or monied interests coming after them, somehow failed to create anything resembling a functional digital marketplace. They were stuck in the physical distribution paradigm and fought tooth and nail to avoid digital distribution. At the same time, a few kids, with little money, and law enforcement trying to shut them down created a pretty good user experience. Sure, some of that is not having to worry about licensing. But, a large part of it is understanding what the users want and giving it to them.
It wasn’t until Apple came along and basically created “Napster, but legitimate” that music piracy really fell off. Netflix pulled off something similar with video (though that is rebuilding some rough edges at the moment) and Steam did it for games. Sure, piracy still exists, and it will always be a problem. But, a lot of piracy can be tamped down by having a good service available.
After the Borderlands 3 incident, not surprising.
What is this incident?
Probably referring to the 6-month timed exclusivity on PC for EGS that Borderlands 3 went through.
As someone who sunk hundreds of hours into each of 1 and 2, the staggered launch felt like it did so much damage to player base as well as player interest. Felt like when I was interested in it none of the old hardcore raiders I used to play with were and vice versa. And thats after I was the one to crawl to epic because I was afraid of missing out that sweet endgame co op high I got from 1 and 2.
I loved BL1 and 2 so much, my pets are named after characters from the games. The staggered launch of BL3 caused me to forget about it for years after release.
The DLC didn’t help either, I was thinking about getting it to hop back on right around the same time the steam players were ready for something else for a bit. I actually really liked the game. Story was whatever but had as much fun as I can have by myself in a game like that.
I played a ton of 2 and presequel but only just bought 3 at like a 90% discount and even then I’m not exactly interested in playing it.
And the fact that Epic couldn’t cobble together a content delivery platform that supported preloading before BL3’s release.
And the fact that they used Steam essentially as an advertising platform until the TOS was changed.
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And, around launch, didn’t have payment processors in multiple countries meaning people were just fucked by exclusives
WTF. I would fucking love barebones launcher. I was holding off using epic launcher because it was so laggy and slow when it first came out. I was using legendary before, but stopped using Epic altogether. Might just give it a try again.
I’m starting to feel steam is getting bloated and plain annoying. I just want a launcher to launch a game and pair with my friends after a long day at work. I don’t want a crappy browser following me around in the background. I already have a browser if I need it. We use a different app for voice so could do away with all the other bs as well.
If all you want is to launch a game, why keep the ‘launcher’ at all? Games used to just… start. No separate program needed.
EA at least made an attempt, but still not as fully featured.
GOG’s launcher is better and it’s not even a requirement for their games!
I log into EGS via heroic a few times a year to claim a free game. Yet to ever play any said free games 🤷
Remember to claim The Callisto Protocol!
Things I need a storefront/launcher to provide me:
- Reviews
- Wish list
- Beta/Alternate build installations
- Friend list, chat, game invite functions
- Mod browser
- Refund policy
- Excellent search and discovery tools
Nice to have:
- Forum for guides/support
- Game sharing
- Ability to move game files
As a family…I need the family sharing provided by steam. Especially the recent beta version. It’s fantastic.
- Linux support
Two things that would be nice to have is:
-
If Steam’s mod directory didn’t REQUIRE you to buy the game on Steam
-
Shared Games could be played simultaneously
Their store, their policy, their framework, their infrastructure, their rules. Deal wirh it and install mods like any other user does. Manually
I do, but there are a lot of Cities Skylines mods for example that cannot be found elsewhere.
-
The Epic Games Launcher is so far behind on features compared to Steam it’s not even funny. Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front and to try and force users onto the platform with exclusivity deals and sweeten the deal with free games.
The one user-centric killer feature Epic has in their stack IMHO is the built-in multiplayer crossplay. Except it’s not even exclusive to their store ironically (you do need an Epic account for it though).
Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front
Forget competing, they lack even the basics.
What do you consider basic that it’s still missing? To be honest I’ve felt content with it as a game launcher for a while now, but I admittedly don’t use it that often either.
Remote play together, local network streaming, etc.
I guess our opinions differ, because I don’t consider either of those to be “basics”. They’re nice features for e.g., Steam to have, sure, but they’re not “game launcher 101” imo.
That’s a fair take. We all have different priorities.
We use in home streaming nearly every day now, so it’s a must have for me. Remote play together is critical for certain games as well.
For me it’s the inability to set my status to “invisible”.
It’s not that I don’t want to game with people, but sometimes I want to practice alone without being bombarded by invites.
Fair enough! I barely use its social side since most of the games I’ve played on there are singleplayer titles - honestly didn’t even know that wasn’t there yet!
Linux support.
I kinda understand it not being a priority; even if they dedicated the resources to both create and adequately maintain Linux support, I imagine very few of the games on the platform have native support anyway. Sure, many would work (to varying degrees) with the various bags of tricks available, but it’s still an extra step of compatibility that’s sort of beyond their immediate control.
Fuck off. They paid to remove support for Linux from Rocket League because their launcher doesn’t support it.
Existing games that had Linux support already.
Thanks for so politely and cordially sharing that information
edit: I would be even more appreciative if it were true: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rocket-league-ending-mac-and-linux-support-because-they-represent-less-than-0-3-of-active-players
Quoting their statement:
Regarding our decision to end support for macOS and Linux:
Rocket League is an evolving game, and part of that evolution is keeping our game client up to date with modern features. As part of that evolution, we’ll be updating our Windows version from 32-bit to 64-bit later this year, as well as updating to DirectX 11 from DirectX 9.
There are multiple reasons for this change, but the primary one is that there are new types of content and features we’d like to develop, but cannot support on DirectX 9. This means when we fully release DX11 on Windows, we’ll no longer support DX9 as it will be incompatible with future content.
Unfortunately, our macOS and Linux native clients depend on our DX9 implementation for their OpenGL renderer to function. When we stop supporting DX9, those clients stop working. To keep these versions functional, we would need to invest significant additional time and resources in a replacement rendering pipeline such as Metal on macOS or Vulkan/OpenGL4 on Linux. We’d also need to invest perpetual support to ensure new content and releases work as intended on those replacement pipelines.
The number of active players on macOS and Linux combined represents less than 0.3% of our active player base. Given that, we cannot justify the additional and ongoing investment in developing native clients for those platforms, especially when viable workarounds exist like Bootcamp or Wine to keep those users playing.
Steam is the only game store that is on linux
itch.io also has a Linux app
Oh yeah
Let me know when Heroic integrates it
you didn’t mention your distro. is that because it’s ubuntu?
I use arch btw
No, because it isn’t 2015 anymore.
so you admit you weren’t using arch in 2015? pffft
Nah it’s not ubuntu
The one thing I like about them is they recognized why people really wanted to stick with steam: they have a large established library and don’t want to bounce back and forth.
They took that and said “ok we’ll give you free games every week until you have a large library here and won’t want to leave!”
Jokes on them, I now have a large library of completely free games on epic and still use steam for the games I want to buy because I refuse to support their exclusivity bullshit.
I mean, Steam is also very functional and has a ton of support features. Especially for modding. It’s not just stockholm syndrome.
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You can send a snail mail to opt out, which is scummy at best, but technically you can opt out.
This is what’s known as a dark pattern and is the exact thing the US government is suing Adobe over.
Making service cancellation or opt-out deliberately difficult is exploitative and something that should be illegal. Any company that does it doesn’t deserve a cent from you.
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Epic feels like a kid’s toy compared to steam imo. Just overall less usable and dumbed down.
Can you also launch the games through steam to get features like the overlay and stuff
I believe you can, I haven’t tried though. The games install like any other and have an .exe you can point to through steam so it would probably just be a matter of having the epic launcher open as well when you go to play.
Ah cus I have a faint memory of getting games thru Amazon and launching thru steam but idr if I had the overlay
I get the games on epic but I haven’t even bothered playing them because I game exclusively on linux and just have not bothered with lutris / heroic etc. Proton with steam is just effortless and after years of tinkering with wine back in the day I want the simplicity
Heroic also makes it effortless, but I agree with all your points.
You don’t need a subscription like Prime to get the free games? I was under the impression you do.
Hell no
Well that’s fuckin’ sick lmao
There are even more free games from prime for the epic store, but the epic store has it’s own free games too that don’t require any subscription to anything.
Wait now it appears I’m the one out of the loop. When did that start?
No idea, I only noticed it a couple weeks ago. The prime gaming redemption site where I used to get stuff for lost ark now has a listing for free games, does amazon games, epic games, and gog games. The epic games are different ones than the free ones directly from epic.
Neat, well thanks for the heads up
They were giving them away to anyone who made a free epic account.
There’s only one thing I want from gearbox anymore. For them to re-enable the online servers for Battleborn so I can finish the damn story mode for a game I bought.
ReBorn doesn’t work on Linux yet, (or at least it crashes for me).
well the only thing i want from gearbox is them not sucking so i guess we can’t all have what we want
I want them to let Civvie 1v1 Randy, it’s been a long time coming.
Let them fight in a sewer.
A glorious mental image
Be sure to sign the citizen’s initiative!
Already have. Unfortunately even if it becomes law one day, it will only apply going forward in time.
with the amount of money they apparently had available to spend on this little jolly, it’s absolutely incredible how much they fumbled things by trying to force their way in instead of asking nicely
if they just hadn’t done exclusives, and had instead relied on their decreased split to offer lower prices, while chucking in the odd free game, they’d probably be a lot closer to the 50% of revenue they were hoping for when they started
valve is actively abusing their monopoly by preventing epic from offering the same product(s) at lower prices in their storefront, and their customer base are happy about it because of thoroughly epic pissed everybody off with their opening move
what chumps
I was actually excited about a new storefront that, if anything, might’ve made steam improve and then there was that game awards where it felt like every single game they showed was an epic exclusive and I lost all interest.
