Epicgames Freebies

[680fc047c3bc0Roarkes]

Galactic Civilizations 3 is free on epicgames until 6 PM today.
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/free-games

[680fc047c3ef0sarge945]

>free
>on Epic

I guess all it costs is your dignity

[680fc047c403dicemann]

Huh?

[680fc047c4188Kolya]

HE SAID ALL IT COSTS IS YOUR DIGNITY.

I dunno my dignity doesn't rely on the kind of game shop I use. Might be inconvenient though.

[680fc047c42b4voodoo47]

Epic is fairly unpopular, to put it politely.

[680fc047c457cicemann]

HE SAID ALL IT COSTS IS YOUR DIGNITY.

I dunno my dignity doesn't rely on the kind of game shop I use. Might be inconvenient though.

Exactly. That was the bit I was confused on. I don't see how using the Epic Store costs your dignity. I've only used it for Phoenix Point and getting the free games so far. It's fine enough. Nowhere close to the level (functionality wise) of Steam or even GOG Galaxy.

[680fc047c4718sarge945]

The reason I say dignity is by using it (even without giving them any money), you're helping to contribute to a bunch of really bad practices that are helping to damage PC gaming and which will make your own experience worse over time.

I get that some people just don't care, but these were the same people saying "who cares, it's just cosmetic, don't like it don't buy them" while loot boxes were allowed to completely dominate the industry unchallenged, abd we are still recovering from the damage of that still.

Obviously Steam and Gog aren't perfect. But nobody should support Epic, Origin, Bethesda or Oculus if they care about the health of the videogame industry at all. Exclusives are utter cancer to the console industry and they are really really not something we want damaging the PC games industry.

But this topic probably isn't the right place for this. I get that it's not your fault - you're just trying to tell everyone about some cool free games.

[680fc047c4a21Hardkern]

You are 100% wrong and bought into the "exclusives bad" hype.

1. Exclusives are everywhere
Supermarkets, Video streaming services, Music streaming services, Steam, GoG, YouTube, really any buisness you can think of they ALL have exclusive products you can only buy from them. Its a common practice and its all around you. But when Epic does it, its bad right??


2. Steam has exclusives too
Lots a of em. But that doesn't matter right?? Steam is good guy!! Steam even allowed to sell Half Live on Epic Games right?!

3. Epic exclusives aren't that "exclusive"
It takes 10min to download epic and play any "exclusive". There is no gate keeping, no hardware, no costs.

4. Epic helps devs
Epic has a lower platform fee then steam. Devs get more money for selling on Epic. Competion in the digital platform market helps the devs, while consumers pay the same price.

5. Exclusives are the best way to drive traffic to a platform
Epic has no real choice here if they want to capture some of Steams market share. Think about why people chose Netflix over hulu, amazon prime, disney+ its because of their exclusives. Certainly not because they like Netflix's interface better than disney's. Epic needs exclusives to succeed. They certainly would not win a price war against Steam and no one cares if epic had a better chat functionallity then Steam.

So why is the internet so against Epic?
1. Its new. Steam has been around for a long time. People have grown attached to it (and Valve as a company) and don't want to use something else.
2. Its not as feature rich as Steam. Fair point. But I'd argue that there is no difference in experience when playing any single player game.
3. Fortnite bad

You should support Epic or Gog or what ever to create a Steam competitor. Its not a good thing that Steam was the only major game selling platform for so long. Competition drives inovation and benefits the consumer in the long run. Even in the short run Epic is giving a way FREEEE games to attract consumers. Do you really think they would do that if Steam didn't exist? In what world are free games a bad thing that ruin the industry for the consumer??

Think sheeple

[680fc047c4c30Nameless Voice]

Exactly that.

Console exclusives are bad because you need to buy and keep hugely expensive hardware just in order to play a game.
Streaming exclusives are bad because you have to pay a continuous subscription fee to each service you want to use each month.

Epic has none of those problems.  It's just another shop to buy from.

You don't see this from any other market.  You don't see people saying you should boycott Ikea because you can't buy their furniture on Amazon.  Of course you don't, because that would be ridiculous.


Also, a lot of the hatred for Epic comes from the common talking-point that one of their largest (but non-majority) shareholders is China-based company Tencent.  While, yes, that company is very dodgy, most large financial companies are no better.
No, this particular avenue of attack is based on racism, plain and simple.  And also on the USA's extreme phobia of so-called "communism" (even though China isn't actually communist anyway, it's more of a capitalism dictatorship, which shares many of the worst aspects of the USA.)

[680fc047c50f6Gawain]

4. Epic helps devs
Epic has a lower platform fee then steam. Devs get more money for selling on Epic. Competion in the digital platform market helps the devs, while consumers pay the same price.

Epic: 12%
Steam: 30%

Don't lose your dignity by supporting Steam: Popular Gaming Platform Accused of Abusing Market Power Through Contracts

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1090663312814157824

[680fc047c54e0Kolya]

Think sheeple

  I mean I appreciate your viewpoint about the advantages of diverse game stores. But it's fine to just say that, without the ideological rhetoric.

[680fc047c55e3voodoo47]

I don't need another platform to buy games, I already own SS2 on both steam and GOG.

[680fc047c574cChandlermaki]

It's definitely annoying having to use more than one launcher.

...but if your dignity is tied to which store you use to buy videogames, you really ought to examine your priorities.

[680fc047c58a7voodoo47]

I actually only really care about GOG, because of their "no drm, once you buy it, it's yours forever" policy. steam I've got because I had to find a way to contact Cyberblutch a few years ago, and that was the only place where his account still seemed active. so I can't really say I'm using it as a platform to buy games - the entire account actually is worth only about 20-30 bucks or so (I did pick a few free/extremely cheap games eventually, but yeah, not Gabe's best customer/fan by any stretch of imagination). it's not about dignity or whatever as far as I'm concerned, just about supporting the business model I prefer/putting my money where my mouth is.

I'm thinking the only game that could force me to get it wherever is SS3. maybe.

[680fc047c597fKolya]

Isn't Humble Bundle the same in regards to DRM? And probably a few others.

[680fc047c8790sarge945]

You are 100% wrong and bought into the "exclusives bad" hype.

1. Exclusives are everywhere
Supermarkets, Video streaming services, Music streaming services, Steam, GoG, YouTube, really any buisness you can think of they ALL have exclusive products you can only buy from them. Its a common practice and its all around you. But when Epic does it, its bad right??

It's bad when they do it too. You seem to think it's acceptable just because everyone does it.

2. Steam has exclusives too
Lots a of em. But that doesn't matter right?? Steam is good guy!! Steam even allowed to sell Half Live on Epic Games right?!

The vast majority of games on Steam are not required to be exclusives. Valve has never signed a deal with any developer to publish exclusively on their platform. There is no requirement to publish any game on Steam. In fact, Valve has gone out of their way to allow other platforms.
the SteamVR toolkit for Unity, for instance, is built in a way as to run standalone and without Steam, and is purposely compatible with Unitys XR toolkit, so you can use alternative (competing) VR systems if you prefer. At no point am I required to publish my game on Steam. Valve has poured big money into Linux and other open source projects specifically to increase consumer choice. I get that Steam has built-in DRM (not that anyone uses it) and that there are games on there that you can't get elsewhere. To say that's the same as what Epic is doing is disingenuous at best, outright deceptive at worst.

3. Epic exclusives aren't that "exclusive"
It takes 10min to download epic and play any "exclusive". There is no gate keeping, no hardware, no costs.

Gatekeeping:
Epic doesn't run on mac or Linux

Costs:
Games on epic frequently cost more and there's no such thing as regional pricing. Have fun paying the American price everywhere even if your currency is worth significantly less!

There are plenty of significant, genuine reasons to dislike the Epic Store. No reviews means I can't have any confidence in what I'm buying. The concerns about tencent and spying are legitimate. If the only reason I'm using a store is because they have signed a deal preventing me from buying elsewhere, that's gatekeeping by definition.

People pretend it's just oh so easy to use Epic or that it's comparable to using Steam. It's not.

4. Epic helps devs
Epic has a lower platform fee then steam. Devs get more money for selling on Epic. Competion in the digital platform market helps the devs, while consumers pay the same price.

The fact that Epic refuses to release sales numbers makes me extremely skeptical of their actual usefulness to devs. Because 88% of nothing is still nothing.

Being locked to a small, unpopular platform is not good for business, even if they promise you a larger share.

Just look what happened to Ooblets.

5. Exclusives are the best way to drive traffic to a platform
Epic has no real choice here if they want to capture some of Steams market share. Think about why people chose Netflix over hulu, amazon prime, disney+ its because of their exclusives. Certainly not because they like Netflix's interface better than disney's. Epic needs exclusives to succeed. They certainly would not win a price war against Steam and no one cares if epic had a better chat functionallity then Steam.

I agree, but none of this says anything about how this is good for consumers. People use what they have to use. People already have 3-5 game launchers installed and they hate it.

I can understand reluctantly using Epic, even if I personally would never do it because it encourages bad practices. But to defend it is another level of insanity.

So why is the internet so against Epic?
1. Its new. Steam has been around for a long time. People have grown attached to it (and Valve as a company) and don't want to use something else.

Yes. It's not like Valve has a history of doing mostly the right thing while Epic in its recent history has done the opposite.

You seem to think people love Valve because they are old and were there first. This is incorrect.

But again, "Steam bad so therefore Epic good" is not a valid argument.

2. Its not as feature rich as Steam. Fair point. But I'd argue that there is no difference in experience when playing any single player game.

Read back this argument to yourself and you'll realise how ridiculous it sounds.

"It's just as good for one specific thing". Cool! It still sucks as a launcher. Even if it was the best launcher ever created, it's still anti consumer simply by virtue of enforcing exclusives.

I'm not arguing features here. We can compare features all day. I'm arguing business strategy.

3. Fortnite bad

Yes. Fortnite is reason enough to never give Epic a dollar. Especially with their predatory marketing and frivolous, greedy lawsuits.

You should support Epic or Gog or what ever to create a Steam competitor.

I already use Gog, humble and itch frequently. You seem to think the choices are either good guy Epic or the evil monopoly Steam. Steam being a monopoly doesn't suddenly make Epic a viable choice. Just like the Ubisoft and Bethesda stores.

Other competitors like GoG are gaining traction by being good stores. Not by buying it exclusivity arrangements with developers. See the difference?

Its not a good thing that Steam was the only major game selling platform for so long. Competition drives inovation and benefits the consumer in the long run.

Even as a monopoly I can think of far worse things for the consumer than Steam.

Even in the short run Epic is giving a way FREEEE games to attract consumers. Do you really think they would do that if Steam didn't exist? In what world are free games a bad thing that ruin the industry for the consumer??

Origin used to give away free games. I think you'll be pretty hard pressed to find anyone who thinks it's a genuinely good service or uses it for any reason other than because they are forced to.

You seem to think that the mere existence of competition is in itself a justifiable reason to use Epic. That argument is fundamentally flawed. Even if Epic was the only competitor to Steam (it's not), forcing people onto your platform through exclusives, rather than genuinely out-competing is not good for consumers. They are not getting a better service. They are not being "freed from the clutches of an evil company". The reality is most of them will begrudgingly install it, run it when they are forced to to play one specific game, then quit it. That's hardly serving the consumer.

Just because the launcher itself is free doesn't magically justify installing it. The free games are incentives to install a bad platform, and most people don't fall for it.

This is literally equivalent to a bank making an exclusive 50% off deal with a bunch of restaurants if you are a card holder with them. Their service can be significantly worse than your local credit union and yet people will still defend them as being "pro consumer" because they made an exclusivity deal.

Exclusives are bad for consumers in 100% of cases. This is so obvious I'm genuinely curious how anyone can defend it in good faith.

Think sheeple

Indeed

[680fc047c8b5cicemann]

Console exclusives are bad because you need to buy and keep hugely expensive hardware just in order to play a game.

Having grown up with the Sega / Atari / Nintendo wars, I'm of the opposite opinion. Console exclusives are great as they create a unique experience with that system, and give you an actual reason to buy it.

To compare with present day, there is zero reason to buy a system just for a game that's already on everything else. I stopped buying new consoles as the games were on everything else and far cheaper on Steam (via the summer sales etc). Where as a kid back when the Sega Megadrive/Genesis vs Super Nintendo wars were great as both systems had very distinct libraries of specific game types. Want RPGs? You need to go with the Super Nintendo. Want arcade conversions and the best sport games? Go with the Megadrive/Genesis.

The only company still going big on the exclusives is Nintendo with the Switch, and that was the first new system I'd bought in over 10 years. If a system does not have great exclusives + enough of them then I have zero interest in it personally.

[680fc047c8d47Nameless Voice]

Why is being forced to buy multiple systems a good thing?

Surely it's better to only need to buy one, and be able to play everything equally?

Otherwise you need to spend money to buy hardware that you shouldn't need, you need to consume the excess resources to create that hardware, and you need to have the space to keep it.  Plus, deal with juggling the peripherals for it (multiple screens, connectors, etc.)

Meanwhile, the exact same purpose could be served with a combination of a decent PC and possibly appropriate controllers.

There's a huge overhead of ownership for a console, and the only person who really benefits from that is the console manufacturers.

That's why it's a terrible example to compare to a digital game store, because there's almost no overhead to having the Epic Launcher.  It uses up a few megs of disk space, some RAM if you have it running, and many of the games are DRM-free and don't need the launcher anyway.



I find it depressing that there are a lot of legitimate problems in the world that people could be upset about, but they're far more upset about game launchers than they are about anything important.

[680fc047c90b6icemann]

Why is being forced to buy multiple systems a good thing?

Surely it's better to only need to buy one, and be able to play everything equally?

Otherwise you need to spend money to buy hardware that you shouldn't need, you need to consume the excess resources to create that hardware, and you need to have the space to keep it.  Plus, deal with juggling the peripherals for it (multiple screens, connectors, etc.)

Well there's nothing from stopping you from going the emulation route. And your not forced to buy the system, but if you want to play it then that's what's required. Such is the case with any exclusives. Different systems bring with them different feels from different operating systems, control schemes etc etc. I quite liked the OS of the PS3 and PSP, and the gamecube controller is one of the best controllers ever.

Of course some kind of super platform that plays every game ever released (the PC using emulation) would be nice, but with legally legit avenues, no such thing exists, nor will there likely ever be.

[680fc047c9925Gawain]

sarge945
Steam got Mac OS X support 7 years after launch. Linux support 10 years after.
Epic is on Windows and Mac already. However most of the game developers don't even release games on Mac and Linux, so why bother?

Steam doesn't release sales numbers either? They actually limited features in their API to hinder calculating approximate sales.

Developers take exclusives because they usually get predetermined amount of sales beforehand (even if the game doesn't sell). This makes running business a lot easier and in some cases may be the only way to secure future development of next game (or finish current game). I don't know why Steam doesn't do that, maybe because they are greedy and don't like to take chances?

[680fc047c9b71Nameless Voice]

It's also pretty easy to come up with cases of Epic doing very good things, which are of course conveniently ignored.

Epic are working on their cross-platform Epic Online Service system, which will be freely available for any game, not just ones sold on Epic.
Their previous (gamedev) store, the Unreal Marketplace, originally took a 30% cut, like all other digital platforms.  Tim Sweeney said he thought 30% was too much, and a few months later they not only dropped the cut to 12%, but retroactively refunded the difference to the sellers for all previous Marketplace sales.
They've donated lots of money to support free software like Blender and Krita.
They bought Quixel, and while they only made all Megascans content free for use with Unreal Engine, they also reduced the prices for all other platforms, and made Quixel's tools (such as Quixel Mixer) free for everyone to use.
They got rid of the royalties for using their engine for games that earn less than $1m.

I could come up with more.

Yes, a lot of those things are good deeds which will also potentially bring more money Epic's way, but that can be said of every company.

Valve and Epic are actually very similar in some ways - both were founded and are controlled by a veteran game developer who isn't purely motivated by money and wants to improve the situation for game developers in general.

[680fc047c9ca2icemann]

Obviously Steam had the biggest impact. I remember back to how things were like before Steam and the PC was in major decline. Now very different.

[680fc047c9dd8icemann]

Dandara is the next free game on Epic. If your a lover of Metroidvanias (like me) then be sure to grab it:
Link

[680fc047c9ee7icemann]

Not a free game, but Steam has XCOM2 currently at 92% off. That is a damn good deal for an excellent game. If you've not played this one already then I'd HIGHLY recommend jumping on it.