I was wondering when it would get to Epic, but the article being from 2018 explains it.
But didn’t epic kinda subvert this?
Epic spent ludicrous amounts (I assume) of money on exclusivity deals and giving players freebies. But their store itself sucks. Maybe the dev tools are low friction, the store was far worse than Steam for a long time, and still is.
I just started the client: 30 seconds of loading (okay, that was a lot longer than usual… did new free games arrive?)
Click library: "We know we are slow, so look at this skeleton loader". It’s my fucking library? How can this take seconds to load?
Click a game to find out more: It launches the game. Why do you have a launch button below the game if everything is a launch button? (replace launch with install for uninstalled games) Information is "right click" -> "go to store page". Wow.
Back/forward: It’s a fucking Electron app, you get back/forward for free. No, wait, if you use some dumb JS Framework you don’t, and they don’t. Half the time, back/forward on the mouse does not work properly because they didn’t manually implement the hooks for whatever framework they are using.
Okay, rant over. Anyway, this clearly shows that you can have a high-friction crap-client and still get people by just throwing enough money at devs and players for long enough.
Well Epic does have the "super powers" mentioned towards the end of the article. They have Unreal Engine and Fortnite. The former brings developers, the latter brings players.
They also have unlimited money to bribe developers and players, with paid exclusivity and frequent giveaways.
So maybe they didn't score 100 on the test, but they definitely got a passing grade at least.
Epic is also just cheaper than steam for developers. Yes, they pay for exclusivity deals, but the developers don't mind much because they're getting an extra 10% of revenue. They'd prefer users migrate to the epic store. I wouldn't say that having a better revenue share is "bribing", but maybe their plan was to go up to the 30% rate once they became popular.
>Epic spent ludicrous amounts (I assume) of money on exclusivity deals and giving players freebies. But their store itself sucks.
It's baffling to me that they took this angle. Hardware exclusivity I think in general is regarded as a negative (aside from weird tribalism/fanboyism among the more hardcore crowd) - but seeing that and thinking you can do the same thing with a software platform is just ludicrous.
Yes, you can buy exclusivity deals and force users onto your platform - but only for those games. It's trivial for players to bounce back and forth between different platforms when it's just software - you can't trap them just because they had to use it for one game they wanted. I'd be more forgiving if they were using exclusivity as a marketing tool alongside an actual attempt at a competitive platform - but as you've outlined and from what I've seen for myself, the experience is hot garbage.
I'm guessing for most users, the Epic store is just a glorified launcher for a bunch of games they got for free, and one or two exclusive games they couldn't get elsewhere.
1. Steam won't live forever (or I may get banned) and I'd like some games there just in case.
2. Some games aren't available on Steam, e.g. Sifu.
3. Better handling of multiple devices. I can play a game on my MacBook while my daughter plays another game on the home computer on her account. One of the things I don't like about Steam is that one account can lock another out, even when it's different games being played on different computers.
My "Steam won't live forever" solution is simple: i only buy games on Steam if they are not available in DRM-free stores (GOG, Zoom Platform, etc) after some time (a year or two - as a bonus they tend to be released both at a reduced price and with many bugs fixed). I always download the installers and keep my own offline copies.
Even then, i try to use Goldberg's Steam Emulator (really a drop-in replacement for Steam's DLL) and Steamless (a tool that removes Steam's DRM, though in more recent games this is rarely needed and indie games pretty much never seem to use it) to make a "Steam independent" version. Both are open source (kinda, Steamless is not strictly FLOSS but the code is there) and available on GitHub.
This doesn't always work though and Steam provides no indication if a game has DRM or not (the Augmented Steam extension does tell if there is Denuvo but that's about it and i don't think it is 100% accurate), which is why i tend to buy games at dirt-cheap prices on Steam so that if i end up with a copy i can't separate from Steam i'd only have spent very little money for it (and i am able to play the game in the short term anyway).
To solve your problem with Epic games, all you need to do is to find the installation directory of the said game, create a shortcut for it, and voila! A DRM free game!
Remember, do not use Epic's own game shortcuts that the client created for you, since the shortcut path has the Epic client's COM object bound to it.
As a note, this also works for games that's installed from GoG galaxy that requires the client to be up before the game runs.
But didn’t epic kinda subvert this?
Epic spent ludicrous amounts (I assume) of money on exclusivity deals and giving players freebies. But their store itself sucks. Maybe the dev tools are low friction, the store was far worse than Steam for a long time, and still is.
I just started the client: 30 seconds of loading (okay, that was a lot longer than usual… did new free games arrive?)
Click library: "We know we are slow, so look at this skeleton loader". It’s my fucking library? How can this take seconds to load?
Click a game to find out more: It launches the game. Why do you have a launch button below the game if everything is a launch button? (replace launch with install for uninstalled games) Information is "right click" -> "go to store page". Wow.
Back/forward: It’s a fucking Electron app, you get back/forward for free. No, wait, if you use some dumb JS Framework you don’t, and they don’t. Half the time, back/forward on the mouse does not work properly because they didn’t manually implement the hooks for whatever framework they are using.
Okay, rant over. Anyway, this clearly shows that you can have a high-friction crap-client and still get people by just throwing enough money at devs and players for long enough.