Steam: Here’s a discount.
Epic: You’re not allowed to buy or play any Unreal Tournament games anymore.
Steam: Here’s a sale on a bunch of catered stuff
Epic Games: Here’s a premium game and you cannot purchase it on any other platform because we paid the the dev to take the money and run.
Steam: here’s a platform. We know some corpos won’t release games without DRM, so here’s our in-house solution that’s non-intrusive, but if you don’t want to put DRM in your game, we won’t force you. Want to include a backup installer? Cool. No worries. Oh you don’t have solid internet? That’s cool, if you get the games installed somehow, you can use offline mode indefinitely with no issues, sorry it took us so long to work out the bugs.
Epic: YOU MUST YSE OUR SHITTY DRM FOR ANY GAME RELEASED ON OUR PLATFORM, AND YOU MUST BE ONLINE AT ALL TIMES OR YOU CANNOT PLAY THE GAMES YOU PURCHASED.
GoG: What’s DRM?
GoG: Linux who?
Lutris / Heroic: got your back bro
Good thing Linux supports Valve’s Proton compatibility layer…
🔥 🔥
Itch.io is also underappreciated in this sense too
Wait, you can’t play Epic-games while offline?
Honestly, you might be able to these days. I haven’t interacted with the Epic app in years though, and you couldn’t last I tried.
Yes you can
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Epic_Games_Store
Maybe you should keep up to date a bit instead of making an opinion years ago and not checking what’s been happening since.
Also, offline play has been available for a long time too.
Right, everytime I decide I’m done with a company I make a point of keeping up on what they’re doing…
If you intent to make general statements about them, it would be good to do so, yes. Else you could look silly if your statement is outdated.
If what you said was true at the time you don’t look silly at all, because people don’t follow companies they decide they are done with.
If it’s outdated the reasonable response is simply informing people it’s out dated. Expecting them to keep up with a latest news of a company they don’t like makes you look silly.
If what you said was true at the time you don’t look silly at all, because people don’t follow companies they decide they are done with.
That’s only true if you actually state it as such. It’s really easy to clarify such a statement with “Back when I last checked …” or “Years ago it was …”
Well, don’t talk about them if you don’t because you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re like an old man saying that a new computer sucks because it doesn’t have a Voodoo card inside.
“I don’t purchase from comapny X ever since they did Y” is a perfectly reasonable thing to say when people are talking about company X. The reasonable response to someone saying that is simply “They don’t do Y anymore, they haven’t done that since [date]”, not “HOW DARE YOU SHARE THE REASON YOU STOPPED USING COMPANY X IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN FOLLOWING EVERYTHING THEY’VE DONE FOR THE PAST COUPLE YEARS!”
❤️ Gaben
but if you don’t want to put DRM in your game, we won’t force you.
Have you used Steam in, well, ever? It’s literally impossible to release a Steam game without DRM and always has been.
Every single one of those requires a connection to your Steam account to install. On GOG I can download the installers for my games and then use them whereever and whenever I want. That’s impossible with Steam.
Many of those allow you to copy the files freely and move them between computers, even to computers that don’t have Steam. Hell, I played Half-Life on my Linux handheld yesterday, and I didn’t install it through steam. Just copied the files onto the SD card, set up a script to bind the controls, and launched the game.
Now, I’ll concede you must initially sign in to get access to the files, just as you must sign in to download installers on gog.
I use both often though. I play a lot on the aforementioned Linux handheld, and you can port pretty much any DRM-free game to it. Most surprisingly work better using the Steam version than they do the GoG version, though that is likely to be down to the handheld and not anything the stores are doing.
Steam: here’s the launcher. It opens in a few minutes
Epic: You better go get yourself a coffee with that money you saved on the free game cause we’re gonna be here a while
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Oh so exactly what Steam did to implant itself and what gamers were complaining about because it would “kill publishers and physical copies” way back when?
The only game I could find that was arguably a third party exclusive for steam was Darwinia in 2005, and they weren’t paid by Valve to do so, which pretty much scuttles the comparison.
If you meant first party exclusivity then sure Valve does that with their own games, as does Epic and others. First party exclusivity isn’t the problem here though, it’s the third party kind instead.
You think Steam doesn’t users tactics to make it so publishers only release games on their service thus driving out competition and bringing in more money? Come on.
Some retailers refused to sell games because they required the installation of Steam to play, that’s what I call exclusivity.
They had to be sued left and right because of their return policy, they’ve forced devs to sell games at the same price on other platforms in order to have their game on Steam.
Had Steam been in another industry they would have been forced to split up their services because of how big they got.
But hey, Epic bad.
You think Steam doesn’t users tactics to make it so publishers only release games on their service thus driving out competition and bringing in more money? Come on.
Yes
Some retailers refused to sell games because they required the installation of Steam to play, that’s what I call exclusivity.
Some retailers refuse to offer birth control to their employees. Also, you can’t get an Epic key like you can a Steam key so all retailers refuse to offer epic games?
They had to be sued left and right because of their return policy, they’ve forced devs to sell games at the same price on other platforms in order to have their game on Steam.
It’s PC, you can sell off Steam. Blizzard has been popping out some of the biggest PC games since before steam existed without Steam. Even Blizzard is going to Steam now. It is simply the largest collection of users and the highest chance of sales. This might be such a foreign concept to you but video games have a very low cost to sell in bulk but a really high cost to sell in limited numbers. Steam is literally the force that made games like Stardew Valley and Terraria become what they are.
Had Steam been in another industry they would have been forced to split up their services because of how big they got.
What other industry? Online services aren’t brick and mortar stores where you’re limited, you can go to any other store. GoG, Bnet, Ubisoft, EA, RockStar… there’s so many fucking stores. Hell, Greenmangaming and Humble bundle often times give Steam keys because Epic doesn’t. People choose Steam and nothing else competes for the end user.
Yes, Epic is bad. It literally offers a worse service than Steam and cries. As an end user why the fuck would I use Epic unless I absolutely had to? They don’t even offer mod support.
It’s funny because there’s this function on Epic where you can enter a code and it claims a game on it… Oh and will you look at that, they have something called Mod Interface… It’s as if you didn’t know what you’re talking about…
Heck, I give you an example of Steam manipulating prices, which goes against consumer interests, and you just skip right over that, funny how that works, right? How about developers interests then? 30% cut vs 17%? No guaranteed income for devs vs exclusivity contracts that guarantees an income to small devs thus making sure they actually stay in business?
What’s funny is that you’re exactly the same as all the people who were complaining about Steam when it came out and that vowed to boycott it forever.
Your loss bud, I’ve got thousands worth of free games (the vast majority DRM free) while you’re in your corner bitching and wanting the industry centralized in Valve’s hands.
I’ve got thousands worth of free games
So what’s the developer’s cut on a game you got for free? Or are you not nearly as concerned about developers as you pretend to be for the sake of your argument?
It’s funny because there’s this function on Epic where you can enter a code and it claims a game on it… Oh and will you look at that, they have something called Mod Interface… It’s as if you didn’t know what you’re talking about…
How many games support those mods and how many mod makers publish their mods to Epic over steam?
Heck, I give you an example of Steam manipulating prices, which goes against consumer interests, and you just skip right over that, funny how that works, right? How about developers interests then? 30% cut vs 17%? No guaranteed income for devs vs exclusivity contracts that guarantees an income to small devs thus making sure they actually stay in business?
They don’t have to sell on Steam. PC is an open game platform where you can install software from any source and run it. If I was a store I wouldn’t want stuff being sold elsewhere for less, sell it there then, I don’t wanna have to sell it for more, you sell it for more. I love the switch from publishers to developers here as if there is any trickle down. Fuck the publishers that never share any of the money with the developers anyway. Next you’ll tell me Epic doesn’t treat their devs like shit making them work loads of mandatory crunch.
I hope so, you seem to know some funny people.
It sure is, maybe you should go play those free games instead of simping for a multi-billion dollar company that treats the poor devs you just want to get paid like shit.
Ich will Unreal Tournament spielen!!1!
Oh my god what a throwback. At first I was like why do I understand German.
Classic, right in the feels! ❤️
Welcher Hurensohn schießt auf mich?
What? Why no unreal tournament?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=5PtU2stZK0M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I’m not watching 10 minutes of an hour+ long video. TL;DW
You already got the tldr. Epic delisted and shutdown the master servers for Unreal and Unreal Tournament.
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More like Costco selling hotdogs at a loss to get people to leave the store with a television.
Just get the hotdogs and leave.
But the hotdogs are right next to their hvac guy, and tubes of meat and regrettable decisions tend to go hand in hand for me.
Now that’s relatable.
Then you’re still driving to Costco just to get hotdogs, which means you’re putting more resources into using their deal than would be needed to just buy and make your own hotdogs.
Are we still in the analogy or are we strictly talking about Costco now? 🤔
Yep. This would be installing and dedicating space to the Epic launcher, and maintaining an account and its credentials.
You people are nuts lol. I don’t like Epic either, but if you think buying a $60 game is somehow less work than just claiming a free game, you’re delusional. $60 is at least several hours worth of literally working for the vast majority of us, whereas a miniscule amount of hard drive space and a one-time affair of setting up an account is a non-issue. Especially if you use a password manager (as you should), then you don’t even need to remember the password.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Epic, stop making up bad ones.
C’mon now. 🤨
Wow, so much work for thousands of dollars worth of games!
Man, if only there was another way to get free games…
I know what he wants. I also know that I want candy.
Steam: supports all PC platforms
Epic Game: supports only cringe
Compared to stuff like GoG, where multiple open source launchers exist. Those launchers work with steam too, but you are required to have the proprietary Steam launcher installed.
I’m still gonna take it though. Free is free.
And for that price I’ll jump through some minor hoops to get them onto my Steam Deck.
It’s surprisingly easy. Just install Lutris and than Epic via Lutris with Proton as runner and you’re good to go. I wouldn’t have thought it works just like that.
Never going to be able to play more than a small percentage of my library anyway, might as well add another game to the pile.
I’ve got so many free games at this point that when a favorite YouTuber like Oboeshoegames does a video on an old game and it looks good, quite often I already have it.
Please install my innocent game launcher, yes of course it needs to be root to install games and prevent cheating. I’ll give you a free game if you install it !
I treat my PC like a console at this point. Don’t use it for anything but gaming because of all the insane stuff games are doing with essentially making you install spyware. Figure I’d give them as little data as I can. I even have it on a separate network that can only communicate with the internet, not the rest of my LAN.
You could probably just use linux with VM in that case. Haven’t tried it myself but that’s should isolate everything you don’t want on your personal system.
It probably wouldn’t work out for the spyware that doesn’t want you running a VM for “anti-cheating” purposes.
For epicgames it should be good enough but for those annoying games, ig dual boot is the only way. Windows can’t read linux partitions anyway so that should be fine but idk too much abt the capabilities of kernel level stuff so not too sure about that.
I know there are some configurations that manage to disguise themselves as a real machine. I would like to look into that as it could be very useful. At the same time, I also wonder how deep the kernel level whatever go into my personal device.
What access toes it actually have? Or is this a flippant comment?
And does steam have the same level of access?
It does need root access to perform the task of a game launcher and installer
As to what it does and what access it has or what it actually does. We can’t tell since it’s closed source.
All we know is that it can read /write any file and receive /send from the internet
You don’t actually need to have Epic installed to take advantage of the free games: https://github.com/derrod/legendary
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Remember folks, if the product or service is free to use, it’s likely the actual product is you and your data.
In this case I think it’s mostly to get people to use the App regularely and so expose more people to the store.
That’s not mutually exclusive to datamining though*. Yes they have a product in their stores, but the customers are unwitting products (to another customer-group) themselves (tbf this happens a lot, which does NOT make it ok however)
*not saying this happens, I don’t know if the EPIC store datamines, I have never used it as I am on linux so I may as well not exist to EPIC
It’s usually both. It’s like cable TV; pay money for the service and still watch ads.
Honestly though, peoples priorities are wierd. Refuse to use Epic while handing over waaayy more sensitive data to Google.
If you’re concerned about data collection, start with changing your search engine. Then maybe your browser. Then your email provider…
(Written from GrapheneOS)
First-class Linux support from Steam means they’ll get my support every time over Epic.
Even worse, Epic’s been dropping linux support from games they buy and then they prevent others from implementing it by not supporting it in their launcher and EAC
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Redeem all free games from Epic. Never install their launcher. You get a free library to use with Geforce Now.
Wait question - can you actually do this? I’m trying but it seems like you can only sign into games with epic, not actually play your games there?
Get Heroic Games Launcher
Got 347 games on there atm. I paid for four of them (Outer Wilds + DLC, Journey to the Savage Planet, Untitled Goose Game and Tetris Effect).
Duuuuude this is the way
GeForce
cries in Radeon
Still i will take it even if the small % of game(s) will be paid by Epic (essentially it will be paid by parents of all fortnite kids/teens). Btw I’m not sure if the money offered for being an exclusive is enough to compensate the sale that it would make on steam. Even blizzard is moving to steam at this point.
Hasn’t Epic mostly stopped the exclusivity program? I think a couple publishers like Deep Silver still do timed Epic exclusivity, but I don’t remember them making any new deals in a long time
I think they’re funding games now so that there’s less backlash to exclusivity.
Star Trek Resurgence is a recent Epic exclusive but you’re right they’re not too common thankfully.
Can’t hear anything over the exclusives
Epic Games murdered Fall Guys
Each and every one
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I’m old and out-of-the-loop. What are they giving away? I dont see it on their website. But again, I’m old. And kind of stupid.
don’t be so hard on yourself. over time, we all just stop paying so much attention to every single internet drama, it’s tiring and we have better stuff to do.
and the point is that epic games has been really liberal with the freebies for their users ever since they set up shop as a competitor to steam. they give away a game every couple of weeks and even more on certain special seasons, including triple a games. someone following them since the begging must have a library well over a hundred games now, completely for free. despite that, they are finding very hard to find sympathy and market share among certain sectors of the gaming community, because their store is just not at the level of steam and some other questionable practices, even so far as to still be operating at a loss even now years later. you can see the giveaway games just below the current discounts at the home page or in the free games page almost at the top https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games and of you use telegram there’s a channel that notify you every time there’s something new for free https://t.me/epicfreegames
Key statement here - “operating at a loss”. Interest rates are climbing and cheap capital is a thing of the past now. They need to become profitable. If they don’t, the Epic Store and all those libraries of free games might just disappear.
Any one company is at risk of this as well, but Valve has been doing this for a long time, so they’ve built trust.
I remember a comment on reddit years ago where someone was saying they’d rather buy a game on stadia than geforce now, because hey, it’s not like google is going anywhere, right?
I tried to warn them.
Thanks for taking the time to explain, that was very informative. I’m not hard on myself, btw. Im a 45 year old white guy who thinks he’s hot shit. Thanks for the encouragement, though.
“every couple of weeks”
As in…a new game ever Thursday for years with a couple of repeats here and there?
They also don’t operate at a loss, it’s the marketing budget that they redirected.
There’s lists online of all the titles if you are curious. You might be lucky and see some of them again, it happened a few times that they brought back previously given games, too :)
This is great information, thanks for sharing. Could you elaborate on “questionable practices”? I’m aware of locking certain games out of steam for some time (borderlands 3 for example). Is there more I didn’t know about?
I think that I forgot to say it at the time, but thanks for your response. You helped to clarify the issue for me.
Epic gets respect from me for fucking with Apple but that’s about it.
On the Epic Games Store they always have one or two games that users can claim for free (and keep forever). They change the games they offer for free every few weeks or so (or on some holidays even daily). Sometimes these are really awesome ones and sometimes they suck :) Currently you can get The Elder Scrolls Online for free. They are doing this for some years now and now I have a huge selection of games that I haven’t payed a single dollar for.
Every week
Thanks, man. Shit, I had no idea. I need to get in on that
It’s been going literally since it launched. It’s given away some truly excellent games
I am not a smart man and I rarely adopt new things, so I want you to know that I am not trying to be ironic or shitty when I say that I aoreciate your help.
Currently: Murder by Numbers and Elder Scrolls Online
Tomorrow: Home World Remastered Collection and Severed SteelThey give away two games every week https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games
You have to install their launcher afaik.
They periodically give away games in the store there.
Right now it looks like Elder Scrolls Online.
But they occasionally give away halfway-decent games like in the past I’ve seen The Witcher 3, Civ 6, Death Stranding, StarWars Battlefront II, etc.You don’t need to install the launcher anymore. Heroic launcher can run most of your epic store games. (both on Windows and Linux!)
So enjoy the games without the major privacy concerns
New one every two weeks. Some good games too, never buying anything from them but I’ll keep the games.
Every week
Pretty invasive company. Im with you though. Take what you can get. Makese curious what they do with personal data, though.
I don’t think personal data has much to do with it, if anything at all. This is just their marketing budget meant to get you on the store, so once you grab a couple of free games, you might start buying games from them, too.
It’a a no-brainer when they’re legit buy-to-pay games and not games-as-service. My only problem is that they keep giving away games that I already paid for on Steam, like Witcher 3, Civ 6, Mordhau. I missed out on death stranding, apparently.
Someone make a fuckepic community lol
I have a Epic acciunt and claim all the free games. No play time. The intention is just to do what I can to hurt them economically. Hopefully the creators of the games akao get something.
They either get a cut per game, which is unlikely, or they get a flat rate regardless. Either way, it won’t hurt the developers. Also even if it isn’t actually hurting epic, these corporate ghouls will still look at each game as a loss and get butthurt. So it’s really a win win.
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I disagree. The amount of support Valve gives to Linux is not something you can ignore. They ultimately do it to sell Steam decks but Linux users still benefit from the work Valve does. If you want to believe they both suck then feel free to believe that, but don’t forget that one of them (Valve) sucks significantly less than any other online store.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
