1y ago

Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable

kotaku.com

Games @sh.itjust.works

nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works

1y ago

Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable

kotaku.com /epic-games-store-pc-profitable-google-court-case-apple-1850996972

Games @lemmy.world

ylai @lemmy.ml

1y ago

Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable

kotaku.com /epic-games-store-pc-profitable-google-court-case-apple-1850996972

74 comments

If you're competing against steam, you need to make your experience as good or better than steam.
From what people tell me, because I don't have it myself, the epic game store is really rough around the edges not a fun experience.
- Oh yeah they have bad actor vibes all over. The fact that they're pushing exclusive titles... That demonstrates that they're willing to make the gaming landscape worse for people to increase their own profits.
  They can compete on revenue share, they don't have to compete on exclusivity. That's console level bullshit.
- It still has no review system.
  They still have no Linux version.
  They still have many bugs in the store.
  It... its a mess
  
  Jesus, how can you run a digital storefront in this day and age and not let people post reviews? I read a bunch of those on steam before I buy most of my games.
- Steam runs on Chromium too. I haven't used Epic so I can't compare the two, but it's one of the reasons that Steam can be clunky sometimes too.
- I don't really get that sentiment. You buy a game -> You download the game -> You press the icon on the desktop/start menu/wherever -> you play the game.
  What does it matter what store the game was bought on? The buying experience is a typical store experience on each platform. On my fiber connection the download speeds between epic and steam are both maxing out, and both synchronize saves across my PC and Ally. What else is there that makes one store so much better than the other, other than fanboyism and nostalgia?
  
  Oh but there are many steps missing.
  You start the launcher -> it forgot your device and password, so wait for the confirmation code via mail, enter your info again, then solve three capchas
  Browse the store -> except there's no functioning tag search and the shop sucks, so you need to know exactly what to buy and how it's called to even find it
  Chose a game -> but there's no tabs or secondary windows, so every time you inspect a shop page and try to get back your search gets reset; please enter all your search criteria again and scroll back to the point you've been before
  Start the game -> but your own library is a hot mess; click through 13 pages of huge icons representing an alphabetical order until you find the picture representing what you want to play
  And then you play.
  As long as you don't notice Epic all is smooth sailing. Every step of actually using the launcher is a pain though. Sometimes I forget how annoying it all is and try again. Aaaaaand it forgot my device and password again. Then I curse at my PC and open steam.
  
  What does it matter what store the game was bought on?
  Marginally worse UI/UX (could be improved a bit by now, I haven't used it for over a year)
  Way harsher build in DRM
  No proper offline mode. Its an opt-in feature you better have enabled while your connection worked and even then you have to reconnect every other day
  No controller support. I start the Epic launcher over Steam so Epic games get the Steam controller support
  No mod support
  No forums and communities (I know a lot of people don't need these, but still a missing feature for others)
  no community reviews, you better belive what the paid critics tell you
  
  Epic games made their store UI so bad that buying games on it initially was actually frustrating and difficult. It might be better now, but at the time you had no shopping cart and had to go through about 10 menus to purchase anything.
  Steam lets me add many games to my cart, and then 2 pages later I'm installing them.
  
  It's important for the same reason that UX research is a pretty important field nowadays: you wanna make your software/platform/whatever as easy and pleasant to use as possible.
  Alternatively, Epic lacks a value proposition. Having games spread across multiple platforms is inconvenient. Most consumers value convenience, so they're going to stick with the most convenient (read: the most dominant) option unless they have some reason not to. For example, as messy and crappy as GOG's storefront is, they've managed to differentiate themselves from Steam first by focusing on making old games playable and then focusing on a DRM-free and more curated catalog. What does Epic offer other than doing the same things Steam does but less well and in a different app?
  
  The only feature I miss in the Epic client is a way to make yourself appear as offline. Other than that, Steam has a bunch of social features that I couldn't care less about.
  
  It matters quite a bit if you're gaming on Linux.

This is very common among big tech companies and we should start treating it as what it is, a scam.
- A scam for whom? My epic library is full of games that they literally gave away for free. I didn't pay for any of them. Hard to see how I'm being scammed. I'm not surprised that it's a shitty business model though, and I suppose their investors could argue they're being scammed.
  
  They subsidizing in hopes they can gain monopolistic marketshare.
  
  The scam is that they undermine the actually viable platforms by offering something that is literally too good to be true. Then when all their competitors are dead their store will go to shit and you won't have an alternative. When the time comes, you will wish you'd spent some money on a real store rather than play for free on theirs. See enshittification.

I don't know why. I own about 80 games from Epic. I didn't pay a dime tough.
- Oh wow I thought I was the only one.

Good reason to shut it down then. No one needs their crap anyway.

That's what you get for bringing platform game exclusivity to the PC, trash!

Wait..they sell games, too?
- Is it "selling" if nobody's buying?

I just bought the only game I'll likely ever buy on EGS. It was Alan Wake 2. Being published by Epic, it will unlikely ever be anywhere else until EGS shuts down.
My justifications are as follows: I love the developer and want to support them.
That's it. The experience was.. fine, but far from streamlined. The Epic achievement system is terrible. Imagine walking around in a horror game, immersed in the atmosphere, then a loud cheery mobile app chime blaps through your headphones and a giant banner splatters across the top of your screen announcing your achievement totally jarring you out of the atmosphere.
Then, imagine you find out you can turn on a 'do not disturb' mode by pressing shift+f3, then imagine you need to turn it on every time you launch the game. That's the Epic Games Store experience in a nutshell.
- Lol, this is something they could have done before the layoff.(no seriously, how hard it is to just disable any notification with a preference?)