re: this article.
The title is a joke. "Free, but you have to make an EGS account" is a bit too rich for me.
Call me crazy, but I don't like it when somebody tries to hold me hostage and force me to do things their way..
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Epic: It's not right that if you want a game on your smart phone you have to go through Apple or Google!
Also Epic: if you want this game you have to go through US!
Tbf, devs don't have to, and in fact Epic will pay them to be exclusive, unlike Apple who makes devs pay for it and gives no choice.
Though it's still annoying that Epic does that, from a consumer standpoint. I can't play any Epic-exclusive games because their CEO has a personal vendetta against my platform (Linux), so their company can die for all I care.
Fair, but it shows that Epic only cares about Developers (like themselves) and not Consumers (their customers).
"It's not fair to force Devs to use a specific service. It's perfectly fine to force users to use a specific service."
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Not on Steam? No direct release? Steam released, but with a bunch of bolt on EULAs/Denuvo/3rd party launchers?
The seas will provide.
i don't get the "steam good, other launchers bad". it's still a launcher and drm...
Ever other platform is just ass. I have played games on Epic, Battlenet, Ubisoft and the EA launcher but they all barely have basic functionality. Meanwhile steam has:
- good UI (store & settings)
- no forced ads
- reviews
- discussions
- workshop
- player stats
- a lot more settlings / options
Steam seems to be the only one that actually puts any effort in providing a good user experience. It's more than just a store / launcher and noone else is even trying to compete.
Don’t forget non-profitable free-to-use features such as:
- Steam Link
- Cloud storage for saves and screenshots
- Over the internet couch co-op (I don’t remember the name.
And there’s probably more that I’m forgetting. These things cost Valve money to make and maintain. Only a small portion of users actually use these features and yet it’s not locked behind some subscription or whatever and instead can be used by all users of the platform.
They cost money to make, but the only one of those that costs them a significant chunk to maintain is cloud saves. As far as I can tell their streaming solution is strictly peer-to-peer, in the vein of Moonlight or Parsec.
And all of those are definitely profitable for Steam via... well, look at this thread. Their technological advantage on the client feature set is worth billions to them. They are in the process of spinning it off into a separate hardware platform and OS. That's Microsoft money they stand to make, on top of all the Microsoft money they are already making.
I mean, those are cool, don't get me wrong, they have by far the best feature set in the PC market, and arguably in all of gaming... but it's not a gift, it's either feature parity with competitors or investment in their market position.
Theres also steamvr link to make meta's quest headsets better and also all the steam for linux stuff like proton and gamescope
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no other platform gives as much of a shit as valve does about linux gaming. proton made pretty much every windows game in my library Just Work™ (and no, just wine still isn't enough), meanwhile tim sweeney is actively hostile to linux as a platform.
Steam's DRM is not mandatory to release a game on Steam. Its there in fact to provide a necessary lesser evil than to encourage every developer/publisher to produce their own. They still unfortunately do, which Steam at least warns customers about, but them providing their own minimal DRM is a good thing, given the context.
(That said, I still respect gog)
Valve does not discourage third party DRM at all. I wanna say there are dev FAQs where they actively encourage it, in fact. Let me look for the quote...
...Here we go. They straight up point out that their DRM isn't enough and recommend making GaaS games and leaning into their platform features to make pirate copies and non-DRMd copies not work or work worse. And they support third party DRM explicitly.
I don't see how this is consistent with discouraging DRM use. People project a lot on the go-to defenses for this particular argument, and it's weird.
The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.
We suggest enhancing the value of legitimate copies of your game by using Steamworks features which won't work on non-legitimate copies (e.g. online multiplayer, achievements, leaderboards, trading cards, etc.).
The Steam wrapper can and should be used in combination with other DRM solutions. To do so, apply the Steam wrapper in compatibility mode first before applying any other DRM. Apply it first so that it does not interfere with the DRM solution. Compatibility mode will disable DRM capabilities of the wrapper.
The DRM is optional for use by the devs. Rimworld is one game I know doesn't use it, you can just zip the entire thing up and put it somewhere else and it'll run fine. It's still a launcher. But the only better alternative to a launcher is plain installers to download and hold onto like GOG provides as an alternative to its Galaxy launcher.
Steam is good mostly because the competition is unbelievably incompetent. I cannot see a single good reason for EGS to be a fucking Unreal app, for starters, and a couple of reasons that it shouldn't (the store is just web pages, the text rendering sometimes gets blurry, it uses too many computer resources to run).
Even GOG, which I always shill for, has some pretty dumb faults, like how it lists different editions of the same game, like a base/deluxe/platinum, as completely different: if you own the platinum version, you might still see the base game on the store page without the "Owned" sticker; more than once I added a game to the cart only to double check and realize that I already owned it. This also happens to games that GOG sells in bundles.
To be fair, "it just works" and they haven't tried to screw us over, which is almost unprecedented.
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Most games on steam have no drm. Once you've installed them, you can do whatever you want with them. Steam isn't adding drm to everything. The number one best thing about steam is the social integration, the pure simplicity of being able to right click on a friend and hit join game to be able to play with them is amazing. Basically, steam makes things simpler, and other "launchers" are simply ad platforms forced in as a layer between you clicking play and the game opening.
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I'm not as salty about EGS as a lot of PC gamers seem to be.
......... But god damn is their default client trash.
Thank fuck for Heroic Launcher on Linux (I think it even got a Windows version?)
But honestly, people complain about exclusivity, and seem to not realise (or care?) that certain games would not exist without this kind of funding deal. They are only funded by the platform that pays for their exclusivity. If you want to be mad at something, don't be mad at the devs, don't even be mad at Epic, be mad at Capitalism as an institution, which rules that art needs money to exist.
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I like me some freebies, but I could use some friendly recommendations not in the FPS or MOBA category. Outside those two genres, it seems to be just idle clickers and unbalanced pay-to-win RPGs. The reviews on these two remaining categories are typically not very good.
store simping is really cringe ngl
It's not simping if telling people to stay out of there is the digital equivalent of telling people to stay out of number 4 reactor hall at Chernobyl.
Is it simping when Steam is just better though? So many useful things that Epic doesn't have. Especially on the Linux side.
Epic paid them a bunch of money for the exclusivity. Money they needed to produce the game. Remedy needs the money upfront. And Epic takes less of a cut than Steam.
I feel like you're mad at the wrong people?
The formula goes like this:
- Release the title on first-party platforms.
- Profit until the sales dry up. If potential players haven't bought the game at that point because of platform-related reasons, they won't likely be convinced otherwise.
- Once that happens, release the title on all other platforms.
- Profit more.
Sony's had great success when they started bringing first-party titles to PC. Square is feeling the squeeze after the disappointing sales of the FFVII remakes. DARQ's developer rejected third-party exclusivity and was met with praise and sales exceeding expectations.
The fact is, some people will never consider buying on EGS. Whether their reasons are legitimate or not is irrelevant. It is only by the choice of one ~~man~~ overgrown man-child that both Epic and Remedy are kept from greater sales and greater profits.
Sony releasing games on PC yet region locking them to countries with PSN access is beyond absurd.
It's almost like they hate money.
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