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Tim Sweeney doesn't hold back: if you think the Epic Games launcher is bad, it's because it is
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> Start selling games without DRM that only use the launcher to update and it’s better than steam. So... GOG?
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> Despite these inconveniences, Sweeney remains optimistic and predicts that, over time, his strategy will better connect players across different platforms, thus surpassing Steam in the long run. And what's that strategy? Bribe users to come to Epic and but exclusive rights to games to force users to come to Epic to play them? Really? How has that been working so far?Especially since Epic doesn't really have much to offer over Steam, other than its games and exclusives. It wasn't all that long that where Epic Games had the infamous issue with the store. Since their store didn't have a shopping cart, if you wanted to buy multiple games at once, you had to buy them all in separate transactions, but the store flagged that as suspicious purchases/fraud, so more often than not, if you found a bunch of games you liked, and bought them all, [your account would get locked](https://kotaku.com/epic-games-store-will-block-your-account-if-you-buy-too-1834905266).
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> Despite these inconveniences, Sweeney remains optimistic and predicts that, over time, his strategy will better connect players across different platforms, thus surpassing Steam in the long run. And what's that strategy? Bribe users to come to Epic and but exclusive rights to games to force users to come to Epic to play them? Really? How has that been working so far?Allow third party launchers and drm free games
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Bit barebones reporting. Here's an article that at least quotes portions of the interview: https://wccftech.com/epic-games-launcher-is-indeed-clunky-admits-epics-tim-sweeney/ I can only partially empathize with the argument that Steam is better because of 15 years of refinement. Yes, they have a big featureset, amazing APIs, developer kit, the workshop, the list goes on. There are a lot of technical challenges here. However, what cannot be excused with this argument is the Epic Launcher UX being this clunky, lmao. Yes, making a bunch of UI is nontrivial and takes work, but its also not rocket science. The layered and staggered loading of different UI elements and overal slowness of the whole thing cannot be explained by the lifespan of Epic Launcher. Steam was just as responsive on my old Windows XP back in the day as it is now. Throw something like Dear ImGui at a bunch of juniors and they could make something that is snappier than what the Epic Launcher is now. Google made a bunch of useful metrics called [Core Web Vitals](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals) that represent responsiveness pretty well. I'm sure they would score awfully on all of them.There is no chance you can make a consumer-facing product using imgui. The closest to that I've seen is imhex, which admittedly is way better looking than I thought was possible with imgui. But it is a tool for mainly developers, not a consumer-facing product.
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This post did not contain any content.I know it’s popular to hate on Epic because of the whole exclusives thing and… well, that’s fair. But people don’t talk enough about how awful the whole package is. They need to burn it to the ground and start over. From scratch. Building the EGS software in UE was their first mistake. And it’s a big, ugly “using a hammer on screws” tier mistake. You want people to not hate you and use your stuff? First, make sure your stuff isn’t terrible. Make sure it’s good. Make sure it does valuable things your competitors don’t. Second, don’t be jerks and try to force people into your awful ecosystem using coercive strategies like exclusivity. Fix it, Sweeny. Until you fix it, nobody wants to hear what you have to say about it. We don’t want talk, we want results.
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Yeah, sure. Epic recieved 5% of basically 90% of games being released from about 2003 to fuck knows when.
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Because EGS is literally built in Unreal Engine. Instead of a normal desktop app, they built it in Unreal Engine. Yeah. Seriously.
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There is no chance you can make a consumer-facing product using imgui. The closest to that I've seen is imhex, which admittedly is way better looking than I thought was possible with imgui. But it is a tool for mainly developers, not a consumer-facing product.
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Yeah, for building most of those games. Valve has recieved 30% for doing fuck all. Why are you so adamantly defending them?> for building most of those games providing an engine does not build the game. >Valve has recieved 30% for doing fuck all. Why are you so adamantly defending them? I'm not defending valve, I'm attacking epic
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This post did not contain any content.Not a fan of exclusives and every company having a launcher, but I could work with it if they didn’t require the launcher to confirm the licensing. So they’ve broken it in a way that forces you to use their shitty launcher, which just highlights how bad it is. People can forgive a degree of shittiness, until they’re forced to use your shitty product.
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And Steam. You just have to be picky. Even GOG sometimes lets a game with it's own DRM slip. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_SteamThis seems a bit like missing the forest for the trees. Steam does not really let you know if the game is DRM-free, does not guarantee it will stay that way, and does not provide a reliable way to back these games up in a way where they could be used without the launcher.
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> for building most of those games providing an engine does not build the game. >Valve has recieved 30% for doing fuck all. Why are you so adamantly defending them? I'm not defending valve, I'm attacking epic>for building most of those games >>providing an engine does not build the game. Well good thing I said "most" of a game. Go ahead and write your game logic and then tell me how you get it to render graphics on a screen without any engine code. >Valve has recieved 30% for doing fuck all. Why are you so adamantly defending them? >>I'm not defending valve, I'm attacking epic Yeah, in the context of a discussion about whether or not Valve is overcharging customers. Jesus Christ, keep up.
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Eh, I have repurchased some games on Steam after getting them free from Epic. I rarely play them, but sometimes it's fun to dig through and find something I claimed. It takes like 30 sec on the web, so I do it when I'm in a meeting or something. > I have to re-login every time Really? I don't. Maybe that's why I've bothered claiming them nearly every week. I just open the web page, click the free game, then check out. New games drop every Thursday at 9AM PST, so it's easy to remember. I WFH Thursday and Friday, so it's easy to remember to claim it in the morning. But honestly, any day of the week works since it's one drop per week. It's more frequent during their Christmas sale, and I always forget when it starts, and I don't care enough to figure it out. So around Christmas, I check the next drop date and when it says the next day, I go on every day.Yeah, the session token expiry time seems to be something really short. In comparison, Steam has asked me to re-login like 3 times over the last 7 or 8 years I've used it (I used to be an active hater and only had it for HL2 and claiming the free games like Portal).
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This seems a bit like missing the forest for the trees. Steam does not really let you know if the game is DRM-free, does not guarantee it will stay that way, and does not provide a reliable way to back these games up in a way where they could be used without the launcher.Supporting DRM-free games is key either way, but being fair there's A LOT of work to be done to make it more accessible. GOG's installers for instance are not better than compressing a game's files yourself. Certainly hope they're working on better installers. If it was in my hand I'd have them employ someone who makes game repacks. Anyway, I'll take a peek and push for Steam to tag games as DRM-free when they are.
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Yeah, for building most of those games. Valve has recieved 30% for doing fuck all. Why are you so adamantly defending them?Valve literally hosts petabytes of game data and allows any user to download them at any time. That's not nothing, data storage is very expensive, and users are charged nothing for it. They provide a service to not only the customers, but also the developers. Steam has so many backend features that allow devs to skip so many networking steps that can otherwise be a huge nightmare. Not sure why you think they are literally just a webpage that has a purchase button next to a game.
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Valve literally hosts petabytes of game data and allows any user to download them at any time. That's not nothing, data storage is very expensive, and users are charged nothing for it. They provide a service to not only the customers, but also the developers. Steam has so many backend features that allow devs to skip so many networking steps that can otherwise be a huge nightmare. Not sure why you think they are literally just a webpage that has a purchase button next to a game.>Valve literally hosts petabytes of game data and allows any user to download them at any time. That's not nothing, data storage is No, it's really not. Azure and AWS storage is dirt cheap, especially if it's cold storage and you can have a second or two delay when retrieving the file. If it was expensive, they wouldn't be the most profitable tech company per employee. >Steam has so many backend features that allow devs to skip so many networking steps that can otherwise be a huge nightmare. No, it doesn't. It provides a small handful of APIs around friends and matchmaking, which Xbox and Epic also provide for half the fees, in addition to the generic Azure and AWS versions. >Not sure why you think they are literally just a webpage that has a purchase button next to a game. I'm a software engineer whos built an app store before and has built 3d rendering engines. I know exactly how little work it took Valve to build Steam and how much work it took Epic to build Unreal. They are not remotely comparable.
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Maybe it's just me but I can't recall any occasion where Valve said "hey devs, here's a pile of money but you're not allowed to sell your game outside Steam", have any examples in mind?Valve purchased the rights to Counter-Strike in 2000, transitioning it from a community-made mod to a retail product. Similarly, Day of Defeat, initially a third-party Half-Life modification, was acquired by Valve, leading to a standalone retail release in 2003. In the case of Dota, Valve hired the mod’s lead developer and secured the intellectual property rights, culminating in the release of Dota 2 in 2013. These games remain exclusive to Steam.
