Maybe, but its on fitgirl now if they don't want your money

Epic profittability is on Fortnite; there will be lot of skin based on Alan Wake franchise and, also, Fortnite ads everytime you launch AW2 form their launcher etc.

...as for Alan Wake franchise itself, well it goes in the epic games store marketing black hole

Yup, any “never” decision under modern capitalism should be treated at “within this quarter.” All that matters is quarterly growth, and all company decisions will change every quarter

I dislike Epic as much as the next guy, but he's not the only one waging it, lol. Try to find any of Valve's games on the Epic marketplace.

It'll eventually be included in a giveaway anyways like Control was. So if I haven't bought it by now I'm fine waiting for the giveaway.

How does it hurt you? Look, I get that people dislike using multiple launchers, but it's not like you have to buy a console to play the god damn game. The melodrama is crazy, all you have to do to play it besides buying the game is download epic's launcher. If you're in Linux, it's a bit more of a pain, but hardly.

As much as I hate Epic, I actually bought AW2 based on that logic but ended up refunding it because, and I can not stress this enough, FUCK ALWAYS ONLINE REQUIREMENTS ON PURELY OFFLINE GAMES. I refuse to pay for an offline game that locks me out when my internet isn't working...doubly so when the pirated version works perfectly fine without internet.

P.S. I also refuse to pay for single player games with arbitrary online "features" made to force a DRM check, or games published by cunts that do layoffs and shutter studios while posting record profits but that's a different conversation.

Option #4 sounds most realistic.

Because Steam's DRM is entirely unobtrusive, it doesn't require online-only gameplay and the customer experience is excellent.

When Epic tries to compete with Steam they don't look to make a better user experience, instead they bribe developers for exclusivity deals to force people on their platform if they want to play a game on release.

Valve made it super convinient for their customers and they also took steps to encourage content creation with SFM, Source Engine, sharing their own assets. They created working cloud saving and mod sharing solutions, greenlighting a bunch of indies based on votes and being on the side of the customer in disputes over refunds with 2hr rule becomingthe new norm. For years, they provided and improved their service, so it's rare to see anyone complaining about that.

Ah, and Epic killed UT4 in beta when they found their initial zombie game mode that became Fortnite gave them that much cash they could start their own marketplace with regular giveaways and exclusives going on for years. I'm fucking pissed at them for that even now. It is irrational and personal, but Valve didn't kill my favorite game series, it's the opposite, since they kept slowly releasing and constantly updating Dota, CS, create Alyx, keep TF2 alive, and I'm only sad Alien Swarm would never see new content. In game studios and game marketplaces, Valve are golden.

But coming back to your initial displeasment with them, the funny thing is a lot of Steam games don't need Steam to launch. Unless devs implement some hooks and DRMs themselves, you can just launch their EXE file. Nobody really checks that, but that's the truth, and I've seen some lists of games that don't do that. On top of that, 99% offline games can be launched without internet with Steam only, you can even backup and then install some game on your PC offline if your client knows you own it. And don't forget family sharing - although they promised to rework it, I, my partner and our friends used it a lot, and although you can't use a game from a shared library when you are offline, if the owner plays it offline you can play it too at the same time without messing with each others' gameplay. This lazy implementation of DRM with many workarounds and general respect to even the sleakiest, cheating customer is why I still buy games there.

sweeney is that you?

[...] the devs got a bigger cut than they'd get on steam

Inconsequential, considering the game is still not profitable, even after a year. The devs lost money on this game. If it came to Steam, they'd be swimming in cash right now. The cut they get from the store doesn't matter if the game releases on a single store that most people refuse to use.

If Epic Games would be an actual competitor to Steam instead of trying to lock their content behind a paywall and force users to use them over the competition, then people might consider using their service. But as long as they continue to use shitty practices, most people are going to avoid them and use their competition's service.