While the Epic Games Store doesn't support Linux or Steam Deck officially, this industry news is something we should all know about with Epic now opening up self-publishing along with some new rules for their store.
Just like Steam, developers will be able to put their games up on the Epic Store for $100 per-game. However, they have a rather interesting rule when it comes to multiplayer games. In their announcement, they mention how multiplayer titles "must support crossplay across all PC stores" so that "any store can easily connect with other players, regardless of where the game was purchased".
Their reasoning is sound, as there's no good reason to lock online play per-store, and on Linux in the past the problem was even worse, with certain ports from Aspyr Media and Feral Interactive having multiplayer locked to Linux or Linux and macOS with Windows being by itself. I have absolutely no problem with Epic's online play rule at all, as it's actually great for us players.
Developers publishing on the Epic Store are free to use whatever method they wish for this, which is obviously good but rolling your own cross-play can be expensive and difficult. So, this will be another way for Epic Games to push their Epic Online Services which supports Linux, macOS, Windows, consoles and mobiles and provides the likes of voice chat, achievements, matchmaking and more. Compare that to Steamworks from Valve which, while feature-filled, is for Steam directly.
So for developers publishing on multiple stores for online games we're likely to see a lot more of Epic Online Services, or various other launchers and services being used even on Steam directly. We've already begun to see more of that and it will only continue to be a bigger thing now.
In a chat with PC Gamer, Epic's Tim Sweeney noted: "They have a classic lock-in strategy where they build these services that only work with their store, and they use the fact that they have the majority market share in order to encourage everybody to ship games that have a broken experience in other stores," Sweeney said. "And we were bitten by this early on with a number of multiplayer games coming to the Epic Games Store. Steamworks didn't work on our store, so they had either a reduced set of multiplayer features or none, or they were just limited to a much smaller audience back in the launch days of the Epic Games Store, so you had a lot of multiplayer games that really felt like they were broken. And remember, Call of Duty went through a debacle launching on the Windows Store a while back in which you could only matchmake with other Windows Store players, and that is not how PC should work.".
Not just an issue for Epic, it's a problem GOG have too and they're much smaller so this rule Epic have is likely to benefit GOG releases as well (as long as their Galaxy API plays nicely with others…).
It will be interesting to see if Valve have any plans to expand Steamworks to be more cross-platform. I've reached out to Valve press to see what they have to say, if anything. Will update if I get a reply on that.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Last edited by sudoer on 9 March 2023 at 9:22 pm UTC
StoneColdSpider Mar 9, 2023
God I hate this dude. If that statement came from someone from GOG or any other storefront there would be absolutely no issue in my opinion with saying that, but as it stands with the way things are now it comes off as undeservedly smarmy and hypocritical. It's like he's completely oblivious to why people dislike Epic, or is intentionally ignoring it. Didn't he say at one point that Epic would be more curated too during one of this moments where he throws stones at steam from his glass house? Guess he's walking that back too with the $100 entry.
As for the decision itself, I'm all for cross platform play, it's why I'm one of the seemingly few people who actually welcomes mod.io in place of Steam Workshop, but Epic doing it with one of their services really comes off as sketchy to me, since they have built anything but a positive consumer reputation so far.
Last edited by WMan22 on 10 March 2023 at 12:05 am UTC
Quoting: lectrodeAs an avid RL player, I can tell you that the windows version through proton (or wine if you're playing it through the epic store) is not limited in any way.
FYI: RL at this point does not use Easy Anti-cheat, which is something I'm very happy about. One less thing to worry about potentially breaking the game for us Linux users.
To the first point, it's limited in the sense that they now require an epic account and to link that account to your steam account (though it can be a half-account, but that's a whole other mess)
To the second point, the writing is on the wall after all the uproar on reddit about bots and cheat-clients, though they are really slow to respond to such things in actual code, so you probably have at least 2 more months of playing before anything is implemented (if it is, but I think that seems likely at this point).
benstor214 Mar 10, 2023
Quoting: WMan22I'm one of the seemingly few people who actually welcomes mod.iomod.io is tencent
Quoting: benstor214And?Quoting: WMan22I'm one of the seemingly few people who actually welcomes mod.iomod.io is tencent
If all of the PR babbling reffering to their motivation were true, than they could easily make it free, as in free software and not as in free of royalty, hand it over to a foundation and ensure that their shop is compliant to this neutral instance. As it is right now it's only a white painted attempt to funnel Steam purchases to their own store with the addition that they can change the terms of use as they wish at any time, for developers and costumers alike.
Liam, please be careful about what EG means as multi-platform crossplay and what you think it should mean.
Because I see that for Sweeney & Co. the term "platform" defines the content delivery environment (EGS, Steam, GOG, Windows Store, individual launchers, etc.) used to purchase/get titles from and identify the owner in multiplayers, and how the middleware tied with that specific environment plays nice with other authentication/identification methods or launchers. Basically, who "owns" the login credentials.
While for you the term "platform" means Windows, MacOS, Linux-based OS'es, consoles, etc. so if I'm on Ubuntu while my buddy uses Win11 we can still play together (your example of Borderlands 2 having different, incompatible versions for Lin and Win).
The way "crossplay" is interpreted and intended varies a lot between the two meanings. In particular, Epic Games never ever cared adding Linux in the crossplay pool as much as cares about grafting Steam market share by fair or foul means.
Quoting: syylkMy thoughts?I’m not entirely sure what exactly you’re getting at here? EOS has full Linux support. It’s entirely separate to the Epic Store, which yes does not support Linux.
Liam, please be careful about what EG means as multi-platform crossplay and what you think it should mean.
Because I see that for Sweeney & Co. the term "platform" defines the content delivery environment (EGS, Steam, GOG, Windows Store, individual launchers, etc.) used to purchase/get titles from and identify the owner in multiplayers, and how the middleware tied with that specific environment plays nice with other authentication/identification methods or launchers. Basically, who "owns" the login credentials.
While for you the term "platform" means Windows, MacOS, Linux-based OS'es, consoles, etc. so if I'm on Ubuntu while my buddy uses Win11 we can still play together (your example of Borderlands 2 having different, incompatible versions for Lin and Win).
The way "crossplay" is interpreted and intended varies a lot between the two meanings. In particular, Epic Games never ever cared adding Linux in the crossplay pool as much as cares about grafting Steam market share by fair or foul means.
Especially since their games are cross platform in the first place so their are a virtuos developer and setting the good example for the others. What else should they do? Coerce everyone like he do? If Steam was 5% market share probably they could get away with it. But since Steam is so huge that would be a death sentence for all devs that don't have the resources to do that.
Last edited by Mal on 10 March 2023 at 10:33 am UTC
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