Technology

Tim.. suing everyone else wont make epic store a great place to buy games

Look to GOG for inspiration…

Has epic games developed anything like Proton? Valve isn't just a store.

Isn't Tim the guy that advocates for pedophelia through AI generation?

Edit: yep https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-games-ceo-tim-sweeney-argues-banning-twitter-over-its-ability-to-ai-generate-pornographic-images-of-minors-is-just-gatekeepers-attempting-to-censor-all-of-their-political-opponents/

I was almost forgetting Tim's whole deal seems to be antagonizing more successful companies than his.

“They charge developers too much!”

“Ok, Tim, so how exactly do you make money for your company, then? Because giving away all the free stuff seems like awfully bad business.”

Never thought I’d be defending a company charging a lot of money but since Steam actually does provide an excellent, stable service with bonuses like Linux development and the Steam Deck I mean, I really ain’t that mad, especially they still offer really good sales.

is that Valve's policies and position as the leading distribution service in PC gaming means publishers are effectively blocked from selling games and add-ons at lower prices on competing stores

I still don't get this. As far as I can find, Steam doesn't allow steam keys to be sold cheaper elsewhere, but they don't bother with prices of games in other stores.

And doesn't Epic have a bunch of games exclusive to their store?

Reminder: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has defended child pornography, saying that stopping it is "gatekeeping".

Steam is the last company that has held out against enshittification.

DRM free, launcher free games or fuck off.

I'm really tired of seeing this idiot quoted.

No instead epic charges 12%, and if you use unreal engine but don't sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales. Sure those number are lower but egs isn't out here "empowering" devs

Well... duh. The guy runs a competing storefront who's only claims to fame are:

1. Spending a bunch of money for timed exclusivity and free giveaways, rather than building out core features.
2. They give devs a better cut than Steam to claim moral high ground.

... that's it, that's all the reasons to use Epic, unless you want to play Fortnite or participate in an Early Access period where they chose Epic to reduce the overwhelming amount of feedback like Hades.

Shoddy article buries the lede: Epic isn't suing Valve. UK residents are. Epic is just rooting for them because Epic makes a product (Epic Game Store) that competes with a product by Valve (Steam). Epic is not behind the lawsuit. They are just cheering for their competitor to be taken down a peg.

Literally nothing whatsoever stops Epic from releasing their Epic Game Store app on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android as these are open platforms that allow anybody to release an app (or app store) and offer it to their customers. However, Epic Game Store only actually exists on Windows, and it's on iOS in the EU. Everywhere else, they're keeping it from consumers out of pure spite in order to leverage the courts in their favour.

All of this started because Epic chose to defy Apple and the rules they agreed to in order to get Fortnite onto the iPhone's App Store, in that they could not use an alternative payment provider to sell "V-bucks," the in-game currency Fortnite uses. V-bucks cost Epic nothing to make as a virtual currency. Fortnite itself has expenses, but Fortnite is also a tech demo for the Unreal Engine. It exists, on a business level, to sell the capabilities of Epic's in-house physics engine, the Unreal Engine. A bit hypocritically, Epic takes a cut of games sold that use the Unreal Engine. It is not free. Fortnite players use the V-bucks to buy skins and other cosmetic experiences in the game. And Epic, tired of giving Apple a 30% cut of something that costs them nothing to produce, thereby giving each company 100% profit, added an option to pay Epic directly, either less money to get the same amount of V-bucks, or the same amount of money to get more V-bucks (I don't recall and it's not what matters). Apple suspended the Fortnite game until Epic fixed it. Epic refused to, so the app was de-listed, and the developer account was banned.

Epic then pulled out of the Mac ecosystem as well, which had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. Macs do have an App Store that looks like the one on iPhone, but just like the Windows Store in Windows, it's not required to install apps on a Mac. Most Mac users get their apps from the web, same as Windows users do. Like the Windows Store, the Mac App Store is just a convenience (both of them handle updates very well, for example). Not offering Fortnite and/or the Epic Game Store on the Mac has always been a choice Epic made, not any limitation imposed by Apple.

Epic is not just Fortnite, though. They made the Gears of War games for Xbox back in the day. Fortnite itself is actually a mashup of several games. The original Fortnite was a paid survival crafting game. I'm not sure it exists anymore, or if the freemium multiplayer Fortnite swallowed it up entirely. Like in Fortnite's main mode, you could build, but you could build freely (safely) during the day, and mobs would attack at night. Fortnite also contains elements of Unreal Tournament, Epic's prior multiplayer online shooter that last received a release in 2004; Rockband, the music game developed by Harmonix (which also created Guitar Hero), which is now called Fortnite Festival), and other acquisitions. Epic also made Unreal, a single-player game that Unreal Tournament was based on. They likely released a few other games I can't recall. But since Unreal and Unreal Tournament, they've also licensed the Unreal Engine to other developers, and it's been used in numerous games, including the original Deus Ex.

Tim Sweeney can gargle my ballsack

Out of all the digital stores Steam arguably offers by far the most actual functionality and features for its cut. It’s still too high, but it’s possibly the least egregious example vs Apple, Google etc

The only reason I had an epic account was for their free giveaway. And now that I’ve switched to bazzite, and considering their poor Linux support, I’m inclined to just cut bait on them.