Epic Games' new exclusive deal gives devs 100% for 6 months

Yeah, no, thanks.

Dev's need to decide whether a slow start in sales due to lower exposure and smaller player base on EGS is worth it. It might look good to the bean counters in some companies but game release hype is a huge factor. you'd probably have to fork out more $ upfront for additional advertising of the game then hope it convinces players to use EGS. risky business. Are people going to be flocking to Alan Wake 2 on the EGS probably not - Control also released on EGS first not sure if it was 6 months or longer.

I mean, that's a pretty good deal. I still don't buy from Epic, but I can see why some devs would want to try this.

I just claim them using the website.

It's the website I find to be a chore! Coming from Australia, the website takes a minute to load up and redirect. Once I get to the sign in screen, I need to fill out two screens of "Which of these is a dolphin?" hcaptcha to prove I'm a human. Then I go back to the incredibly slow website to claim the game, which is another 4 screens. Usually about 20 seconds or more between them. Oh, and now I need to click on the dog before I can claim it, twice.

This was my experience claiming the current free game on EGS 10 minutes ago. Heroic Launcher isn't any better, but at least the client is less heavy than the official client when you're trying to launch the game and has more useful features.

Additionally, I've looked and looked but I can't seem to find any way to view my library on the website. I see lots of poor design choices. Steam isn't great either but at least you can find what you're looking for fairly quickly and the website isn't glacial.

Most of the freebies I have been interested in have been free of DRM and doesn't require the client. I just exfiltrate them using legendary and run them with Wine/Proton as I see fit.

Oh, right! I didn't know that. I assumed they were encumbered by DRM as they don't give you an obvious way to extract the game files. That's a good thing!

I still have not purchased any former Epic exclusive releases that are now on Steam. Outer Worlds looked good, yet no respect. None of their current exclusives are inciting. With their current state, chances of me using their service is 0. Those developers will get a full 100% of that 0.

Honestly I would almost say I prefer Epic Games over Steam, because I can use the Legendary CLI program to install and launch my games. Once my games are installed, I can just make shortcuts that launch them through Legendary; quick, and directly to the game, no waiting on sign-ins, no heavy background clients making a billion cloud sync operations, other file verifications, and update checks, just launch and the game pops up.

This is in contrast to installing the entire [bleeping] Steam client and having to run it every time I want to play the one single game I need Steam to play. I tried ditching Steam long ago, but there's always some exclusive that forces you into Valve's ecosystem.

Ultimately, a Steam exclusive sucks as much as an Epic exclusive, because Epic's stance on Linux is abysmal and I don't like supporting them because of it; on the other hand, I hate feeding Valve's monopoly machine. Both of them means I won't be able to get it on GOG or directly from the developer (DRM free or not), at least for quite a while, or even ever. A sigh from me.


Last edited by ridge on 24 Aug 2023 at 3:23 pm UTC

It's the website I find to be a chore! Coming from Australia, the website takes a minute to load up and redirect. Once I get to the sign in screen, I need to fill out two screens of "Which of these is a dolphin?" hcaptcha to prove I'm a human. Then I go back to the incredibly slow website to claim the game, which is another 4 screens. Usually about 20 seconds or more between them. Oh, and now I need to click on the dog before I can claim it, twice.

Ouch! Sound like your experience with the site is on par with my experience with the client. I can only assume they are now running Denuvo with Emscripten on the storefront.

Oh, right! I didn't know that. I assumed they were encumbered by DRM as they don't give you an obvious way to extract the game files. That's a good thing!

There's sometimes some magic launch parameters needed. Usually involving -EpicPortal It does differ between games, but is documented on pcgamingwiki.

I struggle to find a single positive thing to say about EGS

It seems that Sweeney isn't a murderer although he is named like one. There's your positive thing.

The EPIC API works fine from what I can see under Linux with apps that utilized it, BUT it would be very nice if EGS released their store app launcher for Linux and offered actual Linux branches for developers to use, and perhaps a inhouse baked proton like running, or just detect whatever the user dumps into a runner folder or something for the windows games.

I don't believe its hard to do considering several open-source projects have done these things already and often its work done by tiny teams on casual basis!

They should also bring community features including a modding support in their app.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 25 Aug 2023 at 5:14 am UTC

Ultimately, a Steam exclusive sucks as much as an Epic exclusive.

I never heard about Steam doing exclusives, it's on developer/distributor to decide where they want to sell. In case of Epic they are forcing the developers/distributors to not sell anywhere else.

I never heard about Steam doing exclusives, it's on developer/distributor to decide where they want to sell. In case of Epic they are forcing the developers/distributors to not sell anywhere else.

Exactly. I've never head that Valve payed anyone for exclusive releases – they all seem to be entirely voluntary. Although I wouldn't call if forcing either.

So I don't think there is any reasonable basis to compare Steam and EGS exclusive releases.

I never heard about Steam doing exclusives, it's on developer/distributor to decide where they want to sell. In case of Epic they are forcing the developers/distributors to not sell anywhere else.

Exactly. I've never head that Valve payed anyone for exclusive releases – they all seem to be entirely voluntary. Although I wouldn't call if forcing either.

So I don't think there is any reasonable basis to compare Steam and EGS exclusive releases.

Epic's problem is because they want to please to the devs only. They put as little efforts as possible to please the paying customers and try to force them on their crappy service with exclusives. Having worked in a big brand store, there was this moto: "The customer is king".

On the other hand, "Just on the other side of the Street", there is Valve that offers the best customer experience you can get and keeps on innovating and developing new services. As long as Epic won't try to mimic that and even do better, they are doomed to fail, just like EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard (they all came back to Steam, at some point). Thing is, if they ever decide to do someting similar, the 88/12 figure is not going to be sustainable anymore. Oups!


Last edited by Mohandevir on 25 Aug 2023 at 2:16 pm UTC

I still have not purchased any former Epic exclusive releases that are now on Steam. Outer Worlds looked good, yet no respect. None of their current exclusives are inciting. With their current state, chances of me using their service is 0. Those developers will get a full 100% of that 0.

I bought Metro: Exodus since the dev came through with a linux port. I think that's the only one for me.

Ultimately, a Steam exclusive sucks as much as an Epic exclusive.

I never heard about Steam doing exclusives, it's on developer/distributor to decide where they want to sell. In case of Epic they are forcing the developers/distributors to not sell anywhere else.

You're right, this is true. In my eyes it didn't really matter whether the devs accepted an exclusivity deal or not, if it's exclusive on Epic for a limited time or only on Steam because the developer isn't willing to publish somewhere else, they're both exclusives in my eyes. One is just more restrictive (and enticing to the developer) than the other.

If I was developing a game, I would think about it honestly. No cut for early launch period, and then smaller cut than Steam takes after that.

As a general gamer, competition is a good thing. Valve is king, but let's not let it get stale. I think of Audible and their terrible anti-competitive practices (and gouging authors' profits). Valve is not doing that, thank God, but they have the market power to. We don't want that, so there needs to be other industry players running after them.

As a Linux gamer, Epic store pretty much doesn't exist. I don't even bother collecting free game keys anymore. I stopped that a couple years ago once I realized I was completely wasting my time adding virtual items to an account I never use.

If I was developing a game, I would think about it honestly. No cut for early launch period, and then smaller cut than Steam takes after that.

Yes, but a smaller cut of what? How much visibility and how many sales would you give up on by limiting yourself to a single storefront? Would you sell >30% more copies on Steam in the first year?

Hard to say, but we can't simplify the problem by assuming that all the stores are equal and interchangeable. You might just end up with a bigger piece of a significantly smaller pie.

As a general gamer, competition is a good thing.

What competition are you talking about? The EGS isn’t competing against the Steam store at all. Purple Library Guy is right when he writes - and I quote

The person or zeitgeist in charge of Epic, Sweeney or whatever cabal of suits, does not think about profit-making as something that's related to satisfying customers. Rather, they seem to think in terms of cunning tricks and shortcuts.

To serve up a crappy analogy: If the EGS and the Steam Store would participate in the Summer Olympics and it would come to the discipline of 100 meter sprint, instead of actually running the EGS would stand on the sideline and shoot all the other athletes in trying to win a medal. Competition doesn’t work that way.

instead of actually running the EGS would stand on the sideline and shoot all the other athletes in trying to win a medal.

Or pay them to not participate.

If I was developing a game, I would think about it honestly. No cut for early launch period, and then smaller cut than Steam takes after that.

Yes, but a smaller cut of what? How much visibility and how many sales would you give up on by limiting yourself to a single storefront? Would you sell >30% more copies on Steam in the first year?

Hard to say, but we can't simplify the problem by assuming that all the stores are equal and interchangeable. You might just end up with a bigger piece of a significantly smaller pie.

I get that. But I also get that some content creators may want Steam to have less grip on the market so that Epic's terms are more attractive in the short-term as well as strategically.

I will again point out Audible. I buy audio books on Libro.fm for DRM-free but also for matter of principle against Audible's author profits terms. What if zero authors were willing to sell on Libro.fm? There would be no threat to Audible. I would be a hypocrite to say game developers should only go for maximum profits (Steam) but authors should avoid Audible.

Even though Steam treats me better than Epic store, I understand how difficult it is for other companies to take bites out of the monopoly. That is my main point, and it applies to any company that has an iron market grip, whether I like them (Valve) or not (Audible).

As a general gamer, competition is a good thing.

What competition are you talking about? The EGS isn’t competing against the Steam store at all. Purple Library Guy is right when he writes - and I quote

The person or zeitgeist in charge of Epic, Sweeney or whatever cabal of suits, does not think about profit-making as something that's related to satisfying customers. Rather, they seem to think in terms of cunning tricks and shortcuts.

To serve up a crappy analogy: If the EGS and the Steam Store would participate in the Summer Olympics and it would come to the discipline of 100 meter sprint, instead of actually running the EGS would stand on the sideline and shoot all the other athletes in trying to win a medal. Competition doesn’t work that way.

I interpret your statement to actually mean: EGS can't win due to their poor tactics, maybe so poorly that it's laughable to you. But that's still competing. Are they in their own market? No. It's the same one, and they specifically compare themselves to Steam terms. They are very much competing. You can't say they aren't just because they're so far behind.

I'm not defending EGS. I'm defending basic logic and communication.