It's slow, it's ugly, it's a pain to use
What are you talking about? First at all, "ugly" is super subjective, that's your opinion. Slow in which way? The launcher works really nice, the downloads are pretty fast and the store only becomes shit when a new sale starts, so I don't know what are you talking about. About the RAM usage, every launcher consumes a similar amount of resources (Except the Bethesda one, that one sucks dick).
the sales these days are garbage
Again, that is pretty subjective and is not something that Valve controls 100%. The discounts are basically always the same, maybe you already have a lot of games and now the ones that you want don't get the discount that you wished. And in the end is the publisher/developer the ones that choose the discount, not Valve.
it's so flooded with crap that I legit don't hear about as many awesome games as I used to
I am gonna be honest with you: I am tired of hearing this argument used constantly. Trash games like assets flips rarely appears somewhere on the frontpage, the only way that you can find them is if you search them on purpose or if you have already like 3000 games viewed on the discovery queue. Games that are good and have something unique to offer gonna be featured in sections like "News and Trending" and gonna sell well, I mean look at "Baba Is You", because people liked the game and is something unique, they are more than 1000 players right now in the game. Oh, and please don't tell me that "is full of anime trash!" because believe or not, people like these games.
the content policy is ambiguous as hell
I'll give you that one.
and the only new features are bullshit trading card lootbox crap nobody cares about.
Sorry, but you are being dishonest here, even if you ignore stuff like the recently announced redesign of the library, Valve on the recent years have added features like Proton for the Linux players, Developer/Publisher homepages, streaming on the store page of a game, etc.
But add all those mistakes together and it's still on par with how much Valve fucked up over the same timespan.
Please, I want you to explain this one to me. What has Valve done in this time span so bad as what Epic has done recently?
But to get this fucking salty over it?
I am salty because Epic's launcher spied my private local files without my fucking permission, they promote anti-consumer practices like saying that any kind of consumer feedback is "toxic" and that's why they don't want reviews and forums, they are forcing people to use an inferior service with exclusives, a service that lacks stuff like a fucking shopping cart and in heavy load moments you even need to wait for logging in the system. There are a lot of reasons of why people are "salty", don't minimize the problems.
You definitely are not that.
Things aren't getting better and Epic is quickly turning it in to a race to the bottom. This joke that just because there is a new store front its somehow producing competition is absurd. Battle.net and Origin are not competing stores because they don't sell the same products. You can't buy Overwatch on Origin, or Battlefield V on Battle.net. And you currently can't buy either of those on any other platform. Thus far those only get away with relatively minor criticism because they also made those games. Epic didn't make Dauntless, or Metro: Exodus, they're not making The Outer Worlds. They're not making Observation. They're not the publishers. They're just buying out the ability to sell it, preventing any other store from competing.
It keeps getting reposted because its relevant:
https://i.imgur.com/kWdcbdE.jpg
And the funny thing is that a lot of these places happen to use Steam keys for many of their games. But funny enough with its keys Steam collects nothing from them. So if you buy a key from GMG, GMG gets the cut and the devs get a cut, but Valve gets no cut.
What is the problem with that decision? I hear this being parroted as a bad thing, but why is having that choice suddenly being seen as someone being " Too Self-Centered "?
There are people who actually like to stay on Steam, as much as people who want to seek alternate services. Railroading people your
choices doesn't make them " See the light ", in fact you expose people to your own Self-Centered opinions.
"I don't like Valve/Steam, therefore no one else should and no else should be using their services."
Before I start, this is going to be one of those long, annoying posts which breaks down a post in multiple parts. I'm not a fan of doing this but I want to be as comprehensive as possible because I'm already fucking sick of the Epic boot-lickers repeatedly saying "I don't see why you're mad." Here's fucking why, don't pretend people aren't explaining their grievances.
Maybe it's because of games like Metro being pulled after advertising themselves on steam for months/years. Maybe it's Tim Sweeney coming out and all but calling customers fucking idiots who don't matter. Maybe it's the stated fact that the Epic store was designed intentionally to not cater to customers and only focus on what publishers and developers want (which apparently is only a higher revenue cut). Maybe try reading literally any thread on the topic to see a litany of issues people have with Epic.
What about GoG? Desura? Gamersgate? Greenmangaming? itch.io? Discord? Origin? uPlay? Why does the Epic store get all this praise just for existing?
What about all those exclusives they're been buying up? Unlike EA, Ubisoft, or Blizzard Epic didn't actually help their exclusives get made. I'd say Epic's exclusives are much worse than the others, since they're not providing a product, they're paying to deny all their competition that product.
Steam has been adding new curation methods for years. Only fucking morons like Jim Sterling see the actual trash on steam because you can only see it if you actively look for it. Steam outright doesn't recommend negatively reviewed games in 999 of 1,000 cases. Boo fucking hoo, you'll see a piece of shovelware every few months. If only steam had a button on every store page so you'll never see that product again.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/57978/65e852b2-a137-4aac-a230-1d39389fba6b/curation.png
If only.
Not in Europe. Hell, not in most places outside of the good ol' US of A. Fuck man, Metro Exodus was €10 more on Epic's store than it was on steam.
Hey, remember when EA did this and gave away free games every months? Remember how people didn't give them a free pass for being shit when they did it? Bethesda gave Morrowind away for free on Bethesda.net and everyone said "Yeah but I have to use your shit launcher." Why does Epic get to ride the "They give away free games" train but everyone else is treated like they're trying to manipulate customers?
As an exclusive, for a game they didn't help create. (And no I'm not a fan of steam having exclusives either, but Valve don't pay for developers to make steam exclusives, that's just publisher/developer laziness).
The Epic Game Fund has been going for years, it is not part of the Epic Games Store. I have no problem with Epic as a developer or an engine studio, I have an issue with them as a store front.
I do, which is why it still being objectively the best client after all this time is fucking hilarious. Epic's launcher is one of the worst stores out there currently, I'd only rate Bethesda.net lower. You can't give Epic a pass for being worse than steam because they're "new" they had all the time in the world to develop their store before releasing it, fuck steam was more fully featured in 2004.
As is the Epic store. Epic's store is worse to use and is uglier. It's very slightly faster and it uses less RAM, but it also has no features.
Does the Epic store even have sales yet? Steam's sales are crap these days, I agree, but Epic doesn't get a point by default.
Steam is not an advertising platform, it is a store front. If you want to find new games on steam you have the discovery queue. Guess what, the more you use it the better it gets because it's curated based on your preferences. As I said above, you will not see the shovelware shit Jim Sterling loves to highlight for views if you don't actively search for it. That is curation.
I'll take an ambiguous policy over an actively hostile policy, but that's just me.
Steam struggles to add new features because they already have all the required features of a storefront and more, including reviews, review aggregation, and forums for every game, things Epic have openly stated they don't want. BTW, how many months will it take to add a shopping cart to Epic again? 6 or more?
I hope you don't have Discord, Epic, Origin, or GoG launch on startup, because they're all just as bad. Though you shouldn't really have these programs opening on startup anyway, just launch them when you need them.
Origin has never actually been a bad program, it just doesn't have any features people come to expect from steam. That said it's head and shoulders above the Epic store, but as I said fucking everything is right now.
A few things is charitable. I haven't heard a single positive they've done with the store.
A bit feature light. It doesn't have a shopping cart. This car doesn't have any doors, it's a bit feature light.
Oh my friend, that was one of the worst but it's far from the only one. Absolver was announced on steam, now it's an Epic exclusive. Phoenix Point was kickstarted as being on steam or GoG, now it's an Epic exclusive. The Outer Worlds was adding achievements to steam the day it was announced as a fucking Epic exclusive. Control was advertised as being on steam, now it's an Epic exclusive.
100% agree with you on the Tencent thing. Their's no evidence they're controlling Epic's actions, but that doesn't exonerate Epic's actions, it just makes it worse. Also, as an amateur
programmer I don't see how you could accidentally scrape files from steam's folders and take files the steam API doesn't give you access to. "Whoops, I accidentally stole your user data."
Hahaha. What exactly did valve do in this timespan? Release a shit card game no one wants to play? Yeah that's bad, but it's fucking miniscule compared to all the shit Epic has done.
My issues isn't that it's another login (though that is annoying), my issue is Epic are known to be shit when it comes to support and it's well known that just having an Epic account runs the risk of getting spammed by moron 12 year olds trying to jack your account by guessing passwords. Epic will do nothing to help you if that happens. You probably won't use your account (because let's face it 12 year olds don't know what they're doing), but having your email inbox filled with emails about failed login attempts is far too common for users of the Epic store. I should note in 12 years of using steam I haven't ever had someone try to access my account.
You seem pretty salty about it yourself, mate.
Well that was a bad game with a terrible ending, and it was exclusive to the platform of the publisher who funded its creation. Also people were pissed off that it was an Origin exclusive back then too.
This on the other hand is Epic actively preventing consumer choice, preventing competition, and removing the ability for people to discuss the games released on their store.
Something that's always glossed over when people praise Epic is that if a game is an Epic exclusive you can only buy it on Epic. If a game is a steam exclusive you can buy it and any fucking store because every other non-launcher store sells steam keys. Epic don't sell Epic key on any other store, and in the future Humble Bundle will be the only ones allowed to do so, and only for non-exclusive.
Why are people salty about Epic? I fucking wonder.
Also, before anyone is dumb enough to call steam a monopoly.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/57978/0e64c099-1350-4876-8112-c80c70e53cb9/LvB8E2h.png
Learn what a fucking monopoly is.
To everyone else. I am deeply sorry about how fucking long this post is. I just wanted to be comprehensive so I can just link back to this shit in the future. I'm sick of typing this shit out.
Valve sucks, but fuck Epic.
Anyone else remember the time when people made games to make a good game and considerations such as “if we sign with egs will we still be in profit if every single customer refunds?” Weren’t even considered?
I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks.
How could another game storefront possibly dethrone Steam today?
To me it seems like you need to pick between two options:
1 - Stay mediocre and with a comparatively small library (Origin, Uplay, Microsoft store, etc)
2 - Employ aggressive tactics to give yourself a chance in wedging yourself in
Epic is seemingly trying to take on Steam for real. There might literally not be another way of doing it than what they're doing.
Things like a better client and better service doesn't really count for much unless you also have an attractive games library.
You know, Epic could at the least have a product that relatively equals Steam in comparison. Then at least it'd be understandable because they're just trying to "get a chance" for their better/equal product. This is not that.
Epic Games has a worse product in every way. Consumers do not want to use it. Instead of fixing the issues consumers have with the store, Epic is content to throw money at the issue and force consumers to use it.
It's not like they have a good product that is unfortunately being ignored. They're trying to force a far inferior product into success by just throwing money at people and hoping consumers will just deal with it.
Maybe you can do stuff that benefits the consumer instead of fucking his ass like Epic likes to do. Instead of exclusives, why not make deals so every game releases on both Steam AND the Epic Store? Maybe offer the game cheaper and with some extra stuff like an exclusive skin. Epic can also give the users features that Steam lacks.
Epic can be aggressive and don't be dicks on the same time, they need to offer a nice service that attract people.
I tried to find a less loaded word than "hivemind" (which, indeed, is cringy and stupid) to represent the idea "certain worldviews have dominance within any social community, and drown out competing views in a manner disproportionate to how many people actually hold that view", but apparently "collective" wasn't the right one. I wasn't trying to say everyone on Facepunch holds identical opinions, just that there's a lot of generally shared consensus. That's what makes a community - everyone agrees with most everyone on enough things that we see each other as friends, not foes. Most of us agree Half-Life was awesome, and Loss was dumb and hilarious, and Brexit is a pretty bad idea. You can easily find people here who will disagree with one of those, perhaps totaling more than people who agree with all of them... but it'll take a bit of searching to find someone on here who disagrees with all three.
I notice a curious thing going on with my first post. At the time of this writing, the comments replying to it are universally disagreeing... but about 30-40% of the ratings are positive (agree or coins, versus dumbs/disagrees). So there is definitely some amount of "people who think the backlash to Epic is excessive but do not wish to voice that opinion because the dominant meme on Facepunch is that Epic is is trash garbage and dissenters will be harshly criticized", as I expected.
I didn't know scraping a customer's PC for identifying information on launch was necessary to compete with steam. As it stand Epic's store isn't a mediocre service, it's a barely functioning one.
If they forcefully get a large enough userbase, it might actually catch on eventually though - and no doubt would the application/storefront improve.
Dislike their tactics all you want, but it seems to me like it might be the most effective strategy at the moment once the initial negative press fades away.
But maybe I'm wrong, time will tell.
So not only do you care about ratings but you're using ratings to try to say you're right and everyone who disagrees with you is just "memeing".
But they already had a large userbase through the behemoth of Fortnite. The openly hostile, anti-consumer bullshit came after they already had their users.
It will not get better, they've openly stated their intent and contempt for their users.
I didn't mention anything about that at all.
I'm well aware of the differences, and what Epic has done wrong. I still stand by that what they're doing is necessary because no one else is going to break Steam's chokehold over the PC gaming space otherwise. If y'all had your way, Steam would be the only PC gaming marketplace because most of you still see Valve as the best buddy underdog that they were ten years ago rather than the lumbering, uncaring giant that they are now. I've more than once been told now that "Valve is a monopoly that I'm okay with!", which is frankly stupid thinking. It's irrational, and only coming from the fact that you see Valve as on "your side".
That, and I also know that most of this rage stems from the Metro Exodus situation and every new exclusive announced pokes at that wound further. Had it not been for the indeed sleazy way that particular game was handed, half of everyone angry about this would be on their merry way and not even cared about the whole Tencent thing. Everyone right now is just looking at further reasons to be angry at Epic because they're already angry and that's what gamers do, they look for reasons to seethe. If Observation were to only release on Steam instead, no one would've batted an eye, because that's where it's supposed to be apparently.
If there's one thing this whole EGS fiasco has done, it's ripped the band-aid off on all those nastier little biases that if this were just some bog-standard console vs. console argument, people would be careful to disguise under a boatload of justifications and posturing so as to skirt around the stigma against fanboyism and act as if they're above all that. But this here is a relatively new topic that hasn't had the time to build up that association in people's minds, and so I've seen for the first time in a long while people outright frothing at the mouth at each new game announced as exclusive. The pretenses have been dropped and all this fury is so honest in its nature that it's genuinely refreshing. We're just as immature as we've always been.
Why is this even considered a goal? This should be an after-thought, a by-product of being a better service.
No, you just said
There might literally not be another way of doing it than what they're doing.
Which would include scraping user info as "what they're doing".
Awfully presumptive, aren't you?
I HOPE that you are wrong about how effective their strategy is and the bad press is enough to stop them, but I FEAR that you might be right and in the end their anti-consumer crap becomes the norm on the PC industry.
"If they hadn't done something wrong, no one would care or be mad that they did something wrong! But people are just mad to be mad and not mad because of the laundry list of reasons they provide in every thread on the matter!"
I don't know, why would you? I certainly didn't mention anything about celebrations.
Large game studios/publishers like Epic are businesses first and foremost. If this seems like an effective way to wedge yourself into a hugely lucrative market, I'm sure they're willing to jump through the many ethical and legal hoops required to get there.
Okay, why would I be okay with that?
Or are you going to ignore the actual point of my post in favor of focusing on literally one word that you know is not crucial to the point of my post.
You're playing dumb. I hope.
I think it's possible for Steam to get replaced at some point, it's just that the way Epic is doing is the most dumbest and short-sighted way to grab people into the storefront
Like do you expect people to stay on a bare bones and feature lacking storefront/launcher once they stop buying out exclusives or when they get released on all other platforms?
No, most people wouldn't have batted an eye because its just another instance of developer/publisher laziness. Its not like most games on Steam literally have to be on Steam alone. Very few are dependent on Steam-specific services. And the ones that are by and large can make their games modular enough or agnostic enough that other system could be slotted in.
Why the fuck do you view this as justification?
Epic doing what's best for Epic doesn't justify Epic being shit
You knock this shit off right now. No one is calling valve good guys, stop telling others what they believe.
If it was up to me every game would be on every platform and the users would decide where they want to get it. I want Cyberpunk on steam, I won't buy it there I'll buy it on GoG but I want others to have the option. I want Half-Life on Origin. I want Battlefield on uPlay. I even want all these on the Epic store.
I just want Epic to stop being anti-consumer cunts. They've legitimately outmatched every other publisher with a store front right out of the gate, EA and Ubisoft were never shit shitty. If Epic offered a good service I would completely be down for them to succeed, but they're not providing a good service.
How about a store that matches Steam in features, but then has a lower cut taken from developers, uses that to lower the cost of games for customers, gives free games on a regular basis and is genuinely competes with Steam in a consumer and developer friendly manner, and in general not trying to force their way to the top while also insulting users with stuff about how they're already "the best" store before it's even feature-compete? So i guess just the Epic store without the exclusivity and other scummy tactics would have been a good start.
Call it what you will. I'd actually offer "generalizing" as a better term, and I generalize because I have little reason to believe otherwise.
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