It's so cool how they're shedding employees when their game store doesn't even have basic features like product reviews
I really don't understand how people still hang on to defending EGS. It's been shit since release, it's still missing basic features years later, and it's been found doing tons of shady shit.
I'm all for more competition in these spaces, because, you know, competition pushes the companies to one up each other and build compelling features. But EGS is just blatantly missing shit and is explicitly user-hostile by buying exclusivity to their vastly inferior platform. Steam hasn't had to react at all because they're still so far ahead, and Epic is just fucking trolling users by forcing them onto their platform without working cloud saves or even non-buggy installs.
The irony that they flag-wave "user choice" while doing this just totally baffles me.
You don't have to love them but they're still the closest thing to any competition at all. You can complain but they're most likely to improve if they're profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down. I get the "buying exclusivity" complaint, but honestly it's fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
You don't have to love them but they're still the closest thing to any competition at all.
That's arguably true. But as I said above, the only reason competition is good is if it actually is a reasonable alternative and the companies and products they're competing with have to make changes to keep customers, which in turn benefits customers of both platforms. Steam hasn't had to do a thing to deal with EGS. It's brought no benefits so it serves no purpose Because of this, GOG is better competition in many ways.
On the other hand, as I said above, it has brought many disadvantages and actively harmed customers with unclear game ratings, lack of things like cloud save, fragmentation in their game libraries, and legitimately broken games and wastes of money.
You can complain but they're most likely to improve if they're profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down
How would this hurt customers? There wouldn't be EGS exclusives. People would have consolidated purchases. Steam wouldn't change. GOG wouldn't change.
The only argument you could make is the lost purchases on EGS, which wouldn't have existed if EGS hadn't started in the first place. That'd be a loss EGS created. So it only furthers the point. EGS pretty much only harms customers.
I get the "buying exclusivity" complaint, but honestly it's fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
Okay, sure, the company is working in their own best interest. And? It still actively hurts the consumer. There is no value they are providing to the consumer. If there was an exchange in which the company provided some value in exchange for that detrimental action, it would be warranted.
But EGS offers literally nothing but problems to the consumers.
Instead of shelling out millions to shadily buy themselves into exclusivity, maybe they ought to have invested in their platform? I feel the state of the Epic Games Store reflects their view of gamers - mindless moneybags drooling for the latest releases, not as customers using a platform to play games. I don't think we'd be better off with them in the game.
It's not missing features if you want a launcher to launch games and not to accumulate cards and hats.
...if all I wanted was a game launcher, Playnite and pirated .exes are 100% free. Steam at least has features that you are paying for, nobody is forking over $60 for games on Epic just for the privilege of using their shitty launcher unless they are an idiot (or they got a lot of cash to spare I guess).
You might also want to support the devs that bring you those games? But from what you're saying I guess you pay for games just to make sure Valve gets money and you don't care about the people actually making the games 👍
So let me pirate it and then donate to the devs or something. Or let me purchase it directly from them. Why should Epic get 10% for doing literally nothing? People like to focus on Epic vs Valve, but Steam could literally not exist at all and Epic would fail. They don't offer a product that is better than piracy. That's the bare minimum standard they need to achieve and they can't even do that. A pirated .exe + Playnite is an objectively better product than a $60 purchase on Epic, it's just the facts. Anyone that spends money on that store is a fool.
Didn't know pirated games come with auto updates, cloud saving, achievements, working multiplayer (when applicable) 🤔
If the only way your argument makes sense is by being disingenuous maybe you should keep it to yourself...
lmao so features in a store are all of a sudden important now? That's not what you said before, you said all EGS needed to do is launch the game. It's almost like... features in a gaming platform are important. Like I said. Now if only you could take this newfound realization and apply it to Steam vs EGS....
You can set up auto-updates and cloud saves pretty easily, hell there's even some crazy stuff like this for achievements (EGS social features are so barebones, who cares about achievements on there anyway?).
Multiplayer is a given, everyone knows you can't pirate multiplayer games with official servers. But if you were to play a multiplayer game, it sure as fuck wouldn't be on EGS unless there was forced cross platform because you know it will be dead. I notice when I play Risk of Rain 2 that there will be hundred of Steam lobbies while the cross-play Epic lobbies are completely empty. Epic players literally cannot play that game online. Money well spent for the three people that actually bought that game on EGS, I'm sure they are really thankful they could give Epic their 10% cut for doing nothing when they could have just gotten the game for free or on Steam and had a better experience.
Maybe giving away games every Thursday is hurting them /s.
I hope that stays 100% of my library with them is all the free games. My bought games are on Steam.
Oh no! Having to check reviews elsewhere! The agony! How did people live before Steam having reviews on their platform? 😱
Okay, so where do I go to leave a review on steam for a game that I've played on the epic store, smart ass?
fuck whoever originally owned bandcamp for selling it to epic. I have a really bad feeling about them selling it to a music licensing firm. I'm wondering if a lot of musicians are going to find a change in TOS that signs copyright over to songtradr or something.
Seriously, this fucking sucks. So likely to see all the good things about Bandcamp disappear.
whelp, grab those free thursday games while you still can
I am, but there's no need to call me names.
sorry, that probably should have been “wench”, I’ll blame autocorrect
You're a wrench
always
If they fold, will I even be able to access the games at all anymore?
I doubt they’ll fold anytime soon, but they’ll probably cut back spending where they can, and the writing on the wall is already there based on the quality of the free games offered lately. Next week is like “Overcooked: Cannibal Edition”
My husband was a producer at epic for 8 years. He got cut yesterday. We're not even exercising our stock options, imho tim is spiraling and epic isn't going anywhere good. Going to the supreme court isn't cheap and then there's that abandoned mall they bought 🤷♀️
I stopped using Bandcamp when Epic bought them. Looks like they've sold it to Songtradr, who also bought 7digital (another music store that offered DRM-free FLAC files).
I've never heard of Songtradr. Does anyone have info on their history or ethics? I would love to have Bandcamp back as an artist-friendly, customer-friendly, relatively independent source of music, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
https://rocknerd.co.uk/2023/09/28/bandcamp-has-been-sold-to-songtradr/
They're making quite a lot of acquisitions, despite Bandcamp unionising earlier this year. It's one of the biggest licencing companies in the world, so it probably won't be great for the current services of Bandcamp when Songtradr wants to start monetising its users more meaningfully to make back the acquisition cost and break even.
Maybe good growth, maybe an attempt to gauge users as deep as possible before they just shutter the company. Could go either way.
I could honestly care less about the video games, but the Bandcamp news is devastating. Is there anywhere else where you can buy lossless DRM-free music?
Gaming is worth FOUR times of movies. If you for some reason think mobile gaming is not gaming, it is still worth TWICE of Hollywood. You should care more about gaming. Hollywood is dying and AI will make it die faster. Gaming is the future of entertaiment.
Buddy look, I have played video games my entire life, but video games are not going to ever be the only form of entertainment.
Music has always, ALWAYS held the highest rung of entertainment and expression in my life. I could give less a shit about the hole Epic Games is digging for themselves.
Without music, I legitimately have no reason to live. The creation and observation of music has given me motivation and purpose in life in ways that nothing else has ever done.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.