this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
575 points (96.0% liked)

Games

46240 readers
793 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 280 points 1 week ago (14 children)

If Epic spent half as much money as they are suing organisations and instead funded developing their shop into a gaming community platform like Steam, they’d probably have caught up by now.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 102 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Epic Games Launcher would always end up a pile of shit anyway. Tim Sweeney is a fuckhead and he has lots of investors to please.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)

its not about making better product for epic. its about removing competition so they dont have to.

[–] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Epic approach is the typical venture capitalist run company approach of running at loss then once they get market share start jacking up the prices.

Can't really trust a company until they are actually profitable with a functioning sustainable business model. We've seen it time and time again where even Facebook launched without ads and look at it now.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] M137@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They could remove that competition by making a better product, but that is somehow always the last thing they'd ever think about. It never stops being so fucking weird with all these business people who go to great lengths to do shitty stuff and always end up making it worse for everyone except a quick buck for themselves, even though they could easily make a lot more for a longer time by simply doing a good job. But no, that would require anything other than immediate greed. Absolutely vile people.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Sweeney is legit delulu tbh.

He literally said Epic's launcher/store is ready as is, doesn't need more development. It also runs in Unreal Engine, so you get Chromium (CEF) + Unreal Engine running just for one launcher/store.

At least on Linux you can run Unreal Editor without EGS (because it doesn't exist on Linux) and if you've claimed any free games on Epic, you can use Heroic launcher to manage them easily.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 101 points 1 week ago

Epic is trash, simple as

[–] popcar2@piefed.ca 44 points 1 week ago (23 children)

Because Steam is the world's biggest games store on PC while Epic is statistically insignificant. What's the question?

[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)

epic is irrelevant because nobody wants it, not because steam is trying to crush competition.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (21 replies)
[–] yopp 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because sweeney is greedy lying piece of shit, who’s using “think of poor developers being robbed by app stores” to cut himself bigger market share by suing fuck out of competitors

Like they won over google and guess what? He fucked over “all the poor developers” and cut himself a juicy deal to settle antitrust case

Fuck him, fuck Epic

https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/01/23/epic-hypocrisy----google-gets-800-million-in-fortnite-antitrust-settlement

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 39 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No one gives a flat fuck about epics launcher.

[–] lofuw@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago

Stupid people do.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Aljernon@lemmy.today 33 points 1 week ago (8 children)

I haven't really looked deeply into this issue but what caught my eye was the claim that a 30% fee was excessive. I'm no insider into video game publishing but 30% is the standard retail markup for many things. If you bought a candy bar today, it probably cost the mini mart you bought it from 70% of what they're charging.

[–] Bakkoda@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That's what Apple charges devs in their "ecosystem" correct?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] SirW00talot@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because it's a patent troll who has attempted this a few times before.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago

Because Valve has more money that someone winning a lawsuit can take from.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I'm still bitter at Steam for taking a bunch of my single-player games off me that I'd already paid for when I moved to another country, and refusing to refund me because I'd already played 10 hours. Also the support guy treated me like I was a criminal for even trying.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Marketshare, and you have to remember the difference between platform and store. If Epic made them exclusive to the Epic Machine™ then there would be a problem but moving from Steam to Epic doesn't remove Windows support.

Imagine Target bought Great Value (Walmart brand) and moved it from Walmart to target. Would anyone care?

[–] themusicman@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It does remove easy Linux compatibility. Also you can run any storefront on steam deck, so not sure what your point is about hardware

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Who sued who in the what now?

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

TIL it was removed from steam. I play it on my deck all the time

[–] NannerBanner@literature.cafe 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's no longer for sale. If you bought it before it was delisted, you can still download/play it through steam. What is fucking atrocious is that I had to go and make an account with epic to play. Well, they can spam and sell my 'nannerbanner'sfakeemailforepiccunts@proton.me' all they want. Fucking cunts. .

Yeah, I bought my own domain specifically so I could set up a catch-all email service. Everything sent to my domain hits the same inbox, but I can easily see who has sold my info. If I start getting spam addressed to “walmart@example.com” then I know Walmart sold my info. And I can easily set a rule to automatically mark anything addressed to that burned account as spam.

Lots of websites quickly caught onto the “just add a + after your regular email” trick, and set up an internal rule to remove any of the + tags. So that old trick is largely useless.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

What are they being sued for? I guess I missed this?

Also I guess it could be argued they only removed it from new sales whereas people who already owned those titles on Steam still have them on Steam.

[–] eli@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

They are being accused of price fixing with the whole "can't sell games for cheaper on other store fronts compared to the steam listing" thing

warm@kbin.earth explains it better below:

It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam’s services.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Oh well that's totally fair, honestly.

It locks out real competitive pricing.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 45 points 1 week ago (6 children)

It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam's services.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It only applies to steam keys though. Like if you want to sell on other storefronts (like Epic) for cheaper, it’s perfectly fine. You simply can’t sell steam keys on other storefronts for cheaper. It’s not really “price fixing” as much as it is “Steam ensuring their servers aren’t used to download the game unless the dev has properly paid them for the key”…

Like imagine a company wants to sell more copies of their game. So they set up their own site to sell directly to consumers, and it’s cheaper than buying on Steam. This is totally fine. Consumers can still choose to add the standalone version as a non-Steam game to be able to launch it via Steam.

It’s only a breach of contract if they start offering steam keys for that same (cheaper) price, which allows the game to be downloaded via Steam, includes achievement integrations, includes Steam’s friend list “join game” multiplayer, includes Steam Deck/Steam Machine optimizations, etc… If they want all of those nice Steam integrations, they need an official Steam key. And that Steam key can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam’s official store.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] GuerillaGorillas@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Which isn’t accurate and is more nuanced involving Steam keys like another user said. For instance, Prey is on sale for $6 on the PlayStation store but still $30 on Steam.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›