Epic fails to compete with Steam because “EGS is a shop, Steam is a community”, says Witchfire lead, as Epic has “nothing to do but to buy” : pcgaming

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 110 points 2 days ago (8 children)

The meme of "Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself" is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.

Remote Play (stream your own game from another PC)
Remote Play Together (can stream a game to friends without a copy of the game and play together)
Linux, Proton
Well designed hardware innovations

Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.

GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.

Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won't think he's trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago

Valve reinvests and does more work then basically every other major studio. It's just a lot of back end stuff they don't market.

Since valve doesn't care about selling anything. Their service sells it self so they don't need to shove it in your face.

They are a hardware and software RnD company more then a game studio too. Which is just boring to most gamers till there is a finished product or someone points out that x y or z was because of a decade of effort by valve in the back ground.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 35 points 2 days ago

Steam multiplayer networking
Steam Input

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Family sharing got a huge upgrade recently too where now only the game you're actually playing is locked instead of your whole library.

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[–] Feyd@programming.dev 23 points 2 days ago

Also all the consumer friendly shop page stuff like labeling anti features

[–] MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Honestly, remote play together has probably sold me more games than all of the summer/winter sales combined. I don't play multiplayer games much, so I don't really invest in them. If my friends are enjoying one we will remote play it together and I can make a decision to purchase after that. Otherwise, I would just never purchase them. Because of that, I'm also now incentivized to purchase any remote play together games that come across my feed and I think would be even a little fun so that I can return the favor. If they enjoy it then I will often just buy them a copy and they will get to share the experience with their go-to multiplayer friends who also go on to purchase the game. That may not be everyone's experience with remote play together, and it's possible that they are missing out on more sales than they are generating, but I doubt it from my personal experience.

Being the go to gaming platform really just means you're a money printer at a certain point. I have quite an extensive friends list on Steam, often adding people from conventions on steam and nowhere else. I have never once met somebody at a con and exchanged epic information with them. But because of my extensive friends list I'm introduced to a bunch of games that I would never have heard of or seen otherwise. It's basically free advertising for all of those titles. I might not personally be interested in any of those games, but if I notice I have friends with a similar gaming history, I will look into whatever other titles they are playing as possible gifts for topics to bring up next time we're chatting about games.

[–] halfsalesman@piefed.social 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.

I think this is partially true, but also I legit think Gabe Newell is ideologically a market anarchist that legitimately loves video games as a medium. He probably could have (more safely) made even more money doing something else considering his early Microsoft connections and ability but he didn't.

Unfortunately as a result, the moment hes dead Valve might be in trouble long term. Depends on who takes over afterward and how they want to direct Valve. Pierre-Loup Griffais or Lawrence Yang seem possible given how successful Steam Deck has been. Its hard to get a read on them. They seem smart and well meaning though.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 116 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

I don't engage with the community at all. I don't buy games on Epic because their launcher is ass. And last I checked they don't even have reviews for games. They don't require disclaimers for anti-consumer measures either like Valve does for 3rd party accounts, Denuvo, etc. and they even had the balls to criticize Valve's requirements for AI disclosure.

The fact that their CEO is openly anti-Linux is another good reason.

They just come off to me like a very anti-consumer company, like most all other corporations.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 52 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The reviews are a part of the community, even if they're not found in the "Community" part of Steam.

But yeah, EGS has many failings, pretty much all of which were pointed out right at the start. They weren't improved upon because Epic don't want to deliver the best possible experience or promote the capability of the PC as a gaming platform. They just want you to buy digital shit, get bored of it, and then buy more digital shit at the lowest possible cost to them. Effort costs money so they won't make any.

[–] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 2 days ago

When they first launched, their whole main message was "it's a cheaper cut for the devs!" Perhaps I'm being selfish, but that's not a message that resonates to me as a buyer.

Hint: most of us don't get hot and bothered about exactly how much margin Walmart lets Tyson take on their chicken nuggets, so trying to apply that message to games is weird.

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[–] glimse@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago

If you look at steam reviews (text or even just ratings), you do kind of engage with the community!

Steam is very "community-focused" in that regard as opposed to the top-down corporate "buy what I'm selling, trust us it's good". Posting two review scores (recent and all-time) is not something most stores, games or not, will do

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[–] popcar2@piefed.ca 124 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Alright I know people rag on Epic all the time... but it's truly incredible how hard they keep dropping the ball. It's been SEVEN YEARS since it was created and it still feels so basic and terrible to use.

The store is drab and uses huge chunks of space just to advertise fortnite and f2p rewards. Discovery is terrible and the store is full of crypto scams and AI spam shovelware, which is ironic because Epic started off being very selective about what's allowed to be published there. The store also feels like adware because it keeps spamming random notifications and ads unless you turn it off.

The best part is that Epic constantly blames users for not wanting to leave Steam instead of admitting their store sucks. They keep spending tens of millions buying exclusives and giving away games for free rather than spending any time improving the store. Seriously, what are they doing over there?

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 88 points 3 days ago (3 children)

It's called shortsighted management.

Valve has had success with Steam because they ask themselves "What do gamers want, and how can we turn a profit by giving it to them?" For example, many of us want to mod our games. Enter the Steam Workshop. It's free, convenient and exclusive so it fidelizes (is that a word in English?) customers and indirectly makes them money while improving their image in the market.

Epic's management instead asks themselves "How can we make money off of gamers?" without trying to understand the market. They see that there are many free games on Steam, and many console exclusives, and their tiny MBA brains decide that the only way forward is with free games to lock us to their platform (that's what Valve did, right?) and exclusives so we have no choice. And they have no idea why Valve waste their time with Workshop, Community forums for each game, Proton (Linux and Mac are such a tiny share of the market!) or any of that not-obviously-profitable filler that is in fact what sets Steam apart as a service rather than just a storefront.

[–] Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

The concise explanation is that Steam has built a successful thing and everyone else is running a cargo cult.

[–] teft@piefed.social 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Builds customer loyalty = se fideliza

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you! Yes, that's what I meant.

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[–] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 33 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I think Epic was very arrogant in their approach assuming consumers have no self control over buying things, so assumed they'd get them no matter what if they made things exclusive to their store. That pissed off vocal people would still not be able to resist not buying games.

Which actually is not a bad bet to make, but turned out to surprisingly not work as well as they hoped it would. And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.

And they still seem lost when it comes to trying to figure out how to win consumers over. It's like they got advice from Randy Pitchford from 2K telling them the way to win consumers over is to berate them and attack the competition.

[–] LwL@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago

And even when people do buy the exclusives on their store, what reason do they have to buy anything else there?

Just like the free games, it would work as advertising, to initially attract people that then decide their product is worth using. But it will never work for making people use their store for anything else as long as it's as terrible as it is.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago

It's also not 2009: Netflix streaming isn't new. The consumer cost, time, administration and inevitable enshittification of a platform walled garden is not lost on gamers. No one wants 4 streaming services or have to open up a separate launcher depending on what game company created it.

[–] Tonava@sopuli.xyz 13 points 2 days ago

And led to lingering animosity towards them that is still around years later.

Yeah I've been boycotting them from the start and still am, because fuck 'em

[–] Taldan@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

To be fair to Epic, I don't want to leave Steam. It's great having most of my games in one place. Steam has had very pro-customer policies. Even when I got some free games on Epic, if I ended up playing them a lot, I would just buy the game on Steam when it next went on sale just to keep my collection in one place

As long as Steam keeps favoring the users, I'll keep using it

[–] Krauerking@lemy.lol 31 points 2 days ago

Just as a reminder you still can not see the games in your library for Epic without getting the desktop app or looking at your past purchases.

Absolutely dense how bad and how little you can do with their game store.

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 days ago

They don't even do the shop or library right or well. Come on, their whole app is a joke. I'm glad their (epic's) anti-competitiveness hasn't worked so well.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

But a shop is all I want Steam to be.

[–] MoonRaven@feddit.nl 30 points 2 days ago

Steam is easy to use. Egs always feels slow and bloated even though it doesn't have things to load.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

Epic also has a shitty UI. Steam's isn't great, but at least it's mostly intuitive.

[–] Donebrach@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago

I mean, I got a bunch of free games off epic, and have never touched any of them.

[–] D06M4@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

EGS a shop? The closest thing to "Tim & Co." is an old man in a van parked near elementary schools promising children tons of candy if they go with him.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 33 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Tim Swiney said on the game product page there should be no disclosure of Ai usage in the games, in response to Steam "forcing" the disclosure of what is being used Ai for. Just shows how I will avoid Epic Games Store even more than before. There are plenty other reasons. Epic will not buy me as a "user" by giving me free games (however I do not blame anyone else doing so, free is a great deal to be honest).

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[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 days ago

I mean isn't replacing community with consumerism one of the main goals of modern capitalism?

[–] Stupendous@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's a moving target. Everything I care about video game stores now I did not care when it was new. Steam itself in 2003, need it to update to latest counter strike. By 2014 years later, I'm done managing updates for individual games by looking on websites online for downlads. I want a store client like Steam to handle that. Didn't care for the first half of Steams life. I was still buying physical PC games when I could up to 2014. That's why I said 2014

Didn't care about linux Steam because it sucked until Proton. Since Proton I care. Didn't care about big picture mode because steam machines bombed the first time and I didn't use remote play. Now I use remote play and regularly use big picture mode because I buy big phones with OLEDs and remote play is great now because of that. Phones are why I care about 21:9 support as much as I do now.

Didn't care about Steam Input because I was kb/m all day type of person. I play with gamepads more now. Steam Input is major. Indie games were less common in 2008 and a lot less complex than they are today. Easy to get the good ones because everyone talked about them. Now most good indie games have no reviews on open/metacritic. Steam reviews and curators point me to the majority of my purchased indie games. Also even the studio/publisher pages that Steam has now showing what they have released. That's the other way I find games. Steam has brand pages for a while now. I actually use those like here for koei tecmo

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/KOEITECMO

Or smaller game XD. Played Icey and ended up trying a couple games under them through the publisher Steam page

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/XD

Library organization. Did not care about the collections feature until this year. Same with the user submitted store page tags. The collections feature can create from those tags and I make custom collections too to organize my big library. I just recently learned you can drag and drop rather than right click add to collection.

Sounds simple but it sucks on pretty much every PC store platform software besides steam. Managing multiple drives. Moving game folders between drives and the store client handling it well

numerous other things that come in handy from time to time. Like user created guides. SteamOS is more featureful than the OS's on a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series before even exiting out to the desktop mode. Remember Mixer on Xbox. Steam has broadcasts and has had it for a long time now and it's never been popular but they never killed it and now I occasionally use it to check out how a new game looks. MS would have killed broadcasts like they killed Mixer when it didn't become a mega hit. Steam keeps it's niche features ongoing and generally improves over time even if at a snails pace. MS and other companies, they just kill the feature

Latest thing that is just as much Valve as it is community. PC gaming on Android. Valve initiated funding for Fex emu and it's paying dividends now that you can run a lot of Steam games on Android now. Same with recent versions of Proton/Wine that now have ARM builds for them. Major boon to Android PC game emulation. Eventually going to be a major plus for Steam in user friendliness compared to the storefronts not putting resources towards easy x86 to ARM translation support

[–] Nighed@feddit.uk 34 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Does EGS have reviews yet? It didn't last time I visited for a free game.

I'm (probably) not going to buy a game from a platform that doesn't have reviews.

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 32 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The only written reviews it shows are industry ones from OpenCritic.

It shows a user rating out of 5 stars but no idea how that is derived.

It's just perfectly anti-customer.

[–] TrousersMcPants@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Yeah it felt like they literally marketed themselves as exclusively pro developers while having nothing for the consumer, which I've always thought was a really fuckin weird stance to take if you want to compete with Steam.

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[–] SailorFuzz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

The Steam "Community"

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Sweeney is overly opinionated and will dictate to you how you will use your products. Valve largely short of the app's drm just gives me the games and the app just sits in the background, this is why GOG is the true contender to Steam as they have a similar approach.

We don't want to be told how to play our games, give us services to help do so by all means, but otherwise it's a take money and leave situation.

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago

Fuck even steams drm is optional, even when it's on by default is frequently opt out.

There's like less then a few hundred games on steam that require its drm AND don't let you just delete or turn it off.

You don't get much better then that. Companies that really want can have it and customers win in literally every other case.

[–] Agrivar@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

GOG is actually losing ground, in my opinion. I still use it, as that's where I bought the Witcher games (and some old classic collections), but the launcher is SO persistently annoying. If Steam is running and minimized to the tray, I never see it unless I want to. GOG Galaxy pops to the front and demands input WAY too often.

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[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

EGS is a laggy mess and I can't even play Fortnite, one of the top 5 most popular games, on Linux, because Epic Games decided they don't like Linux. Other games have Easy Anticheat that works on Linux, but Epic intentionally chose to exclude those users, this is an encapsulation of why they suck ass compared to Steam.

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't use EGS because it they actually locked in significant market share they would enshittify so fast your head would spin.

[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

They’re innovating, then. They chose to enshittify before getting significant market share.

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 9 points 2 days ago

News flash: epic was never anyones friend or any type of "good guy".

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 22 points 3 days ago

From what I remember back when EGS started appearing in the headlines, its main intention was to replace Steam. Besides barely delivering anything relevant other than freebies, and I could argue what people would want/expect after being fed so many "treats", but something born only to destroy is fated to destroy itself. Perhaps due to being stores from other times, but even places like GOG and Itchio understood engagement is important (even if execution is not always pristine).

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Almost a decade ago I was playing a game called paragon in development by epic games. The game was amazing, and then epic forced the devs away from what the game was, a MOBA, and forced the devs to make it more like a brawler with smaller and smaller maps. Epic ignored the community playing the game and acted shocked when the community left. While all this was going down, they were alpha testing fortnight, which was a plants, zombies clone with base building. When PubG took off, they killed Paragon, rolled the assets into fornite, and abandoned what fortnite was to turn it into a PubG copycat. (Highly recommend predecessor, a fan made remake from the released paragon assets with og heros, it's on steam.)

Epic doesn't have an original thought rattling around in the heads of their MBAs and C-suite. They copy what others are doing, and pray that some of the shit they fling against the wall will stick. They don't want to take chances or innovate. Plenty of other options out there besides their game engine too. I'm looking forward to the fall of epic and EGS.

[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago

At the end of your first paragraph I thought that if Epic are taking other ideas and implementing in their own games would work well in the long game. Just do what competition does, but better.

By the time my eyes flew to the first word of a second paragraph my mind acknowledged that Epic would never actually do something good for industry cause all they know is how to leech.

It only took maybe 0.04 seconds or so.

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[–] karashta@piefed.social 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The launcher is still just awful. Its only purpose is to give me free games. It has never felt polished or finished at all.

Why would I want to use a worse product?

[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I use their website to get the free games then use Heroic Launcher to download and run them.

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