I don’t get it. What’s wrong with a free game from Epic?
Comment on Fallout 3: GOTY Edition is free to keep for the next 24 hours on the Epic Games Store
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Or you can get it for less than $7 dollars from a reputable game service, unlike the fucking joke that is Epic Games Store.
otp@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
There really isn’t.
Some of us just have issues with Epic Games. Some others have issues with Valve.
No private company is really “good.”
But the argument with Epic is things like:
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They brought “exclusives” to PC gaming for the first time. Previously, a PC game was a PC game, and it didn’t matter what storefront you bought it from, because it was available at all storefronts. Epic chose to pay companies to restrict their titles just to Epic, in an attempt to move the market towards them.
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In a similar vein, trying to fight Valve’s dominance, they started giving away free games. They have been firing people left and right because their financials are in the toilet, and yet they’re still pissing away money on free games and exclusives to their store.
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People who care about access to music and paying artists hate them because they have effectively put a death warrant on Bandcamp, buying them for two years, doing nothing with the product, and then selling it to Hedge Fund fuckies who already shitcanned half the staff and the site is officially on life support. They basically killed the last place you could buy music and make sure all the proceeds went to the artist and not a middle man (Bandcamp Fridays).
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During all of this, they refused to spend any money on actually improving their fucking game store. Things that have been staples of Steam for a decade now are still on a waiting list of features to be added. The User Experience for Epic Games Store is just bad, bad, bad, bad. There’s no excuse for it, especially when they chose to piss money away on exclusives and free games instead of paying people to produce a better product than Valve has. They refused to even try to release a better product, believing they could buy their way to dominance.
Do you really want to support a company that doesn’t give a flying fuck about your user experience as a customer and has such bad business plans that they’re letting go tons of staff? It’s bad enough that they had a bad business plan, but it also seems like they’re not very good to their employees, either. Compared to Valve’s “flat” management where there are no managers, or where Newell famously paid the writer for Portal to “be sick” for two years while he had a serious disease. “Your job here at Valve is to get better.” This was before he wrote Portal, no less.
One company clearly cares about the user experience that their users experience, and one clearly cares about using every tool at their disposal to be the top of the market, everything from paying for exclusives and free games to suing in court to try to carve out a niche for yourself where you don’t have to pay vendor fees.
cottonmon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
An important detail regarding exclusivity. What made a ton of people pissed off (and justifiably so, in my opinion) is that they bought exclusivity for games that were kickstarted which resulted in the option for Steam keys being removed for these games.
Squid@leminal.space 6 months ago
Heard this had even killed projects
brawleryukon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They brought “exclusives” to PC gaming for the first time.
Please stop with this. Valve and GOG had both done third-party exclusives before EGS was even a thing. Epic absolutely in no way "brought [them] to PC gaming for the first time.
Yes, they did make them a pillar in their strategy to try to enter a marketplace that was dominated by an 800-pound gorilla - which is a perfectly legitimate approach to take - which neither of the other two did, but they 100% categorically did NOT bring the practice to PC first.
Voyajer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Which games did valve pay to be exclusive to steam?
rambaroo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For real, Steam literally took off because they made HL2 exclusive to it. It doesn’t matter that it’s a first party game, the effect and intent was identical. They could’ve made it generally available but chose not to. They forced people to use their proprietary product to install a game.
It’s crazy how many people shill for valve on Reddit and lemmy when they’ve already done most of the shit Epic gets accused of.
otp@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Do you really want to support a company
I don’t think getting freebies from them counts as supporting them
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
You have to create an account to get them.
If you don’t think data harvesting to sell the data isn’t part of that equation, you’re just a little bit naive.
ono@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I don’t think getting freebies from them counts as supporting them
I do. Some examples off the top of my head:
- giving them access to your stored data, both through account creation and by letting their code execute on your computer
- giving them access to your system fingerprints, through the same
- giving them access to your behavioral data, through the same
- giving them legal influence over you, by agreeing to their terms
- giving their legal arguments greater weight by increasing their market share
- giving them greater sway with publishers by bolstering their user count
There are probably other ways in which it supports them. Those are just the first ones to come to mind.
Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I was going to say. This is probably the opposite. Unfortunately once epic goes down. Because of their awful launcher you won’t actually be able to use it
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HKayn@dormi.zone 6 months ago
It’s just terminally online redditors bringing their anti-Epic circlejerk here. There’s nothing wrong with collecting free games from the EGS.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 6 months ago
How dare people continue to boycott shitty companies.
HKayn@dormi.zone 6 months ago
Feel free to boycott it. Just don’t go around telling others which store they should be buying from like you did at r/pcgaming.
blueson@feddit.nu 6 months ago
Issue comes up when people start praising Valve as some godline entity in comparison.
echo64@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I really don’t know what to say about the modern pcgamer, at least the terminally online one like this.
I don’t want to being whataboutism into this, but you likely support many companies that do truly terrible things every day, but this one is a bridge too far? This one? It’s wild.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 6 months ago
Ah , well the Epic part no doubt.
simple@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or you can take it for free and just not spend money on EGS? It’s not like taking it would be supporting them.
bridge_too_close@kbin.social 6 months ago
But it does. You're still giving them your data, which they can use for all manner of things. If that's something you don't care about, then more power to you - enjoy your free game.
HKayn@dormi.zone 6 months ago
Oh no, now they know the one-off email address I used for my Epic account!
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
If you really think you’re less clever than an entire industry that has been built up around tracking people and keeping ghost profiles on them, go ahead and keep patting yourself on the back, bud.
They know who you are, that’s not anywhere near as clever as you think.
You realize IP addresses exist, right?
simple@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Literally the only data they can get is basic hardware info and your e-mail address which is easy to fake. You can even use an alternate launcher like Heroic and give them basically nothing. The point isn’t to “take people’s data”, they give away games to try to generate interest in EGS and get people to download it and spend money on the store. You lose nothing by redeeming the game.
bridge_too_close@kbin.social 6 months ago
They collect and use quite a bit more than that, it's in their privacy policy:
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/privacypolicy
Sure, their primary focus is most likely generating interest and usage of their platform, but they'll also use analytical and statistical information to influence their business decisions.
If that's something you don't care about, then more power to you - enjoy your free game.
On a personal note, I made the decision as a consumer to not interact with them as much as possible. Even when I did have an account to collect free games years ago, the only thing I actually played was a Satisfactory alpha/beta event. I have more than enough games to play, so I am not concerned with collecting their free games.
ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Epic games store is honestly quite decent m8 I’ve been using it since 2020.
kattenluik@feddit.nl 6 months ago
You’re calling out the wrong people, completely missing the point of everything privacy or why the epic store is a bad thing and being an idiot and asshole.
ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Your forgetting one thing I am an idiot and I am an asshole
Snowpix@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
You’re*
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
You can use legendary worth heroic as a user interface (both open source projects) to download and play games you own on epic, no need to install their software.
GlitterInfection@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“For the next 24 hours, pay for Fallout with your dignity!”
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
“The last laugh is on them, I don’t have any!”