RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[213374U]

You're either using Windows or are concerned about your privacy when using software. Yes, the two are mutually exclusive.

Yes, this is very much in line with your previous argument that you should consider any money put towards crowdfunding as lost from the get-go, and thus any broken, bloatware-ridden product you get is a bonus that you should be thankful for, because "projects are hard". And if one voices their disapproval of what is perceived as scummy tactics, then they "don't understand crowdfunding" and should GTFO.

 

By essentially adopting the stance that businesses of any size are literally satan and one should expect them to eat babies, and so one asked for it unless they cut all ties and go live off the grid, you probably can get sore from patting yourself on the back for your cleverness and foresight, but I fail to see exactly what point you are making.

 

Yes, you can use Windows and be concerned about your privacy. It's certainly not black-and-white, and if one's willing to do a little bit of research, you can make your browsing habits reasonably untraceable and reduce data collection to a minimum. You can probably not become a complete digital ghost, a legend spoken of softly in the deepest corners of the dark web, but the average user doesn't need that, and businesses don't brute force their way past privacy safeguards to collect data.

 

Likewise, for many people, using Steam is already a concession and there's pushback against any **** they try to pull, with varying and debatable results. It is ridiculous to defend Epic because "you already use Steam" as if there were no differences, unless you are playing the contrarian for the sake of it.

 

And LOL @ Android phones. With root access and sensible use of the device's connection to the internet, you can very much control what and when Google or whoever knows about it. Of course that may mean spending money on a phone that isn't locked by your carrier, and not simply leaving the device's connection on 24/7, but it's certainly possible and a far cry from "lol, you have a phone, game over".

Edited March 21, 2019 by 213374U

[Saito Hikari]

I think the thing that rubs me the wrong way the most about this whole Epic thing is that one of the biggest arguments in defense of it is that it's supposedly 'good for the developers'. But in some cases, it seems that it was more of the choice of the publishers rather than the developers, which leads me to question how much of the money is actually going to them.

 

Some of the games had the developers literally put up achievements on Steam mere days before they were informed that their games would suddenly be timed exclusives on the Epic Launcher. There's a screenshot floating around of Obsidian developers working on the Outer Worlds not even being aware of the decision until after it already happened, which would be another tally for those keeping score of Obsidian's history of being screwed over by publishers. Same kind of thing happened with the Metro Exodus devs too, in that the decision wasn't even theirs to begin with and happened behind their backs with their publisher/upper management, IIRC.

 

Some of the games targeted were mere weeks from release on Steam, which seems fairly deliberate and particularly devious considering part of the decisions might be fueled by the theory that they (either developers that willingly went with this or the publishers) want hype generated from having two different release windows on the PC. The other thing is that a lot of the games were advertised quite a bit on Steam before the whole Epic Games exclusivity thing popped up.

 

It's going to be interesting to see if Epic ever acquires newly announced games that make it clear from the very beginning to be timed exclusives on their store front, or if they'll continue to go after games that are halfway in development that have already appeared on the Steam storefront.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Saito Hikari

[ShadySands]

I just installed a game from the MS store for the first time just to test it. Easy peasy, nothing extra to DL, and pretty fast too.

 

I'm not really all that interested in TOW though because even though Fallout is probably my favorite video game series of all time, see my username, I could never get into the newer ones. Not even New Vegas.

[LittleRose]

 

Imho they don't have the features because they figured they could get away without having them and now they're just doing what every video game dev has been doing for a while: well, it's broken, and there was backlash, so, errr, we commit to fixing it, later, here's how we plan to do it. See? We're good guys?

That's nonsense, given speed in which they're releasing fairly major features, it's quite obvious that Epic never really intended to release all client features at once - I'm willing to bet most of these features are baked into the client in various stages of development already, it's just a QA nightmare to release software with all of its bells and whistles enabled from the get go. It makes much more sense to spread features out into a bigger time period to ensure that the basis on which said features are built upon is fleshed out.

 

I'd also like to point out that the client is not in any way broken - feature incomplete and broken are two very different things.

 

Edit: Not offering refunds is BS and, again, violation of European law, but - y'know, they'll sort that out, they don't really have much of a choice in the matter

 

And excuse me for supporting small indie projects that not even GoG wanted, because they were too small for them.

itch.io - those small devs get a much bigger cut and more freedom in how they want to price their product over there as well. Itch.io also strongly discourages sale of Steam key and instead semi-forces developers to upload standalone installers

 

I don't want another platform that gathers even more information than Steam, Origin, Windows, and who knows what other big programs do without telling the users. I'm drawing the line right where they start reading each other's data. That's what I really dislike. I don't trust anyone, but I trust Epic even less.

You're either using Windows or are concerned about your privacy when using software. Yes, the two are mutually exclusive.

 

I hope you don't have an Android phone/iPhone as well as drawing a line at Epic store would be line drawn so far nobody'll see it - "Corporations can have all my telemetry on PC and phone usage, my precise location at any point in time and details like that, but damn them if they'll ever get my gaming habits down! ... I mean, outside of Steam. Steam can have those of course."

 

You won't change my mind. You can love epic as much as you want, you can even date sweeney, if you like, but mark my words: As soon as they've defeated Steam, with my dear GoG being colleteral damage, they'll cut the percentage for the developer and stop caring about the customer at all. They're not the good guys. There are no good guys with the big players, and I consider Steam the much lesser evil for me.

I have bought games on Steam when Itch.io wasn't even a thing. Which doesn't mean that I hadn't checked out Itch.io before. And no, I don't have such a phone. I don't have Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter, or Whatsapp, or whatever you want. I have a certain degree of privacy left. You, obviously, don't.

I'd rather stop gaming entirely than install Epic, unless they change their data policy to my liking. Then, and only then, I might buy there. Maybe you don't mind being the willing consumer puppet of shady companies like that, but I do.

And with Windows, I can at least pretend that my data isn't willingly handed over to a repressive government that doesn't give a dog's mess on human rights.

 

You're not changing my mind, because I'm too stubborn for you, so stop waisting your time trying. I'm done with this discussion, and now I might just as well read a good old fashioned book. Printed on paper, without illegal data mining and totally unplugged.

Edited March 21, 2019 by LittleRose

[Zoraptor]

 

 

 

Well, realistically the EGS is just a rebranded Fortnite launcher, so it's not exactly as "new" as they want you to believe. They just changed the name and threw it out there without putting in the effort to add even the most basic of features. That they are now adding those at a rapid pace might be nice, but until the features are out there they don't exist.

If anything it only shows how low effort the entire thing was (putting in the effort ahead of time wouldn't exactly have bankrupted them) and how contemptuously they view their customers.

Granted, that's not just Epic, but customers are getting tired of the "we will fix it later, promise" attitude, and yes "incomplete" is, imho, a form of "broken" and also something that needs "fixing". No Man's Sky and Anthem both released technically OK(-ish), but they still needed a "roadmap" to get to a usable, or at least desirable, state, and so does the EGS. Finish your product before releasing it, it's not hard, especially not when you sit on such stupidly high piles of money that they would make Smaug drool.

 

tl;dr can be summed up by a quote from the most tactful developer ever: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." (or the product, in this instance)

 

 

Uh, that's also a pretty much 100% accurate description of Steam's product history too.

 

Hopefully another insomnia type deal where they force people to buy awful games for the greater good

 

the greater g...

 

[redacted]

 

 

Cursed post. People should be paying +75% to bask in the glory of Elex.

[Vitalis]

 

 

Imho they don't have the features because they figured they could get away without having them and now they're just doing what every video game dev has been doing for a while: well, it's broken, and there was backlash, so, errr, we commit to fixing it, later, here's how we plan to do it. See? We're good guys?

That's nonsense, given speed in which they're releasing fairly major features, it's quite obvious that Epic never really intended to release all client features at once - I'm willing to bet most of these features are baked into the client in various stages of development already, it's just a QA nightmare to release software with all of its bells and whistles enabled from the get go. It makes much more sense to spread features out into a bigger time period to ensure that the basis on which said features are built upon is fleshed out.

 

I'd also like to point out that the client is not in any way broken - feature incomplete and broken are two very different things.

 

Edit: Not offering refunds is BS and, again, violation of European law, but - y'know, they'll sort that out, they don't really have much of a choice in the matter

 

And excuse me for supporting small indie projects that not even GoG wanted, because they were too small for them.

itch.io - those small devs get a much bigger cut and more freedom in how they want to price their product over there as well. Itch.io also strongly discourages sale of Steam key and instead semi-forces developers to upload standalone installers

 

I don't want another platform that gathers even more information than Steam, Origin, Windows, and who knows what other big programs do without telling the users. I'm drawing the line right where they start reading each other's data. That's what I really dislike. I don't trust anyone, but I trust Epic even less.

You're either using Windows or are concerned about your privacy when using software. Yes, the two are mutually exclusive.

 

I hope you don't have an Android phone/iPhone as well as drawing a line at Epic store would be line drawn so far nobody'll see it - "Corporations can have all my telemetry on PC and phone usage, my precise location at any point in time and details like that, but damn them if they'll ever get my gaming habits down! ... I mean, outside of Steam. Steam can have those of course."

You won't change my mind. You can love epic as much as you want, you can even date sweeney, if you like, but mark my words: As soon as they've defeated Steam, with my dear GoG being colleteral damage, they'll cut the percentage for the developer and stop caring about the customer at all. They're not the good guys. There are no good guys with the big players, and I consider Steam the much lesser evil for me.

I have bought games on Steam when Itch.io wasn't even a thing. Which doesn't mean that I hadn't checked out Itch.io before. And no, I don't have such a phone. I don't have Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter, or Whatsapp, or whatever you want. I have a certain degree of privacy left. You, obviously, don't.

I'd rather stop gaming entirely than install Epic, unless they change their data policy to my liking. Then, and only then, I might buy there. Maybe you don't mind being the willing consumer puppet of shady companies like that, but I do.

And with Windows, I can at least pretend that my data isn't willingly handed over to a repressive government that doesn't give a dog's mess on human rights.

 

You're not changing my mind, because I'm too stubborn for you, so stop waisting your time trying. I'm done with this discussion, and now I might just as well read a good old fashioned book. Printed on paper, without illegal data mining and totally unplugged.

Of course they will change, they're just trying to actually compete with Steam. The end result is hopefully that Steam will actually change some of their anti-consumer practices.

 

GoG going under is unfortunate, but GoG doesn't really have a way to really compete with Steam either.

[LadyCrimson]

I just installed a game from the MS store for the first time just to test it. Easy peasy, nothing extra to DL, and pretty fast too.

I haven't used them yet because I had Win7. And I still won't use them because ... I don't want to give them any more support than I already do via their  O/S. It's not rational perhaps but yeah.

 

 

Of course they will change, they're just trying to actually compete with Steam. The end result is hopefully that Steam will actually change some of their anti-consumer practices.

I can sort of understand a perspective that extreme measures might be needed in order to get consumers to move away from what are current clients. People are often resistant to change of course. But I'd prefer/like if they could offer something  more concrete to the consumer - like, different services/abilities Steam does not, or something along those lines - then "buying" exclusivity.

 

Even something like a longer refund policy, like extending it to 3 or 4 hours played instead of just 2. Or how about being able to play Offline mode without having to login to Online to tell it to go Offline, first. Or a "revert to last version" patch ability in case the most recent patch makes you unable to play for some reason. Stuff like that.

Edited March 21, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[Gfted1]

Bartimaeus mentioned that too. Does Win7 not have access to the MS store? Serious question.

[Vitalis]

 

I just installed a game from the MS store for the first time just to test it. Easy peasy, nothing extra to DL, and pretty fast too.

I haven't used them yet because I had Win7. And I still won't use them because ... I don't want to give them any more support than I already do via their O/S. It's not rational perhaps but yeah.

 

Of course they will change, they're just trying to actually compete with Steam. The end result is hopefully that Steam will actually change some of their anti-consumer practices.

I can sort of understand a perspective that extreme measures might be needed in order to get consumers to move away from what are current clients. People are often resistant to change of course. But I'd prefer/like if they could offer something more concrete to the consumer - like, different services/abilities Steam does not, or something along those lines - then "buying" exclusivity.

 

Even something like a longer refund policy, like extending it to 3 or 4 hours played instead of just 2. Or how about being able to play Offline mode without having to login to Online to tell it to go Offline, first. Or a "revert to last version" patch ability in case the most recent patch makes you unable to play for some reason. Stuff like that.

If you buy a game from the EGS you own it, the same as buying from GoG. The game can not be taken away from you if you get banned from your account, or removed from your Library by either GoG or EGS. Unlike with Steam where none of that is true.

 

That right there is an improvement.

 

I started using Steam under protest when it seemed that all of the series I liked at the time required Steam. I bought a physical copy of Empire Total War and Shogun 2 and was immediately forced to use Steam. The only thing the disc was good for was for running the Steam installer!

Edited March 21, 2019 by Vitalis

[Mamoulian War]

Afaik EGS is not DRM free by default, so I can’t imagine how that would work.

[Starwars]

 

 

I just installed a game from the MS store for the first time just to test it. Easy peasy, nothing extra to DL, and pretty fast too.

I haven't used them yet because I had Win7. And I still won't use them because ... I don't want to give them any more support than I already do via their O/S. It's not rational perhaps but yeah.

 

Of course they will change, they're just trying to actually compete with Steam. The end result is hopefully that Steam will actually change some of their anti-consumer practices.

I can sort of understand a perspective that extreme measures might be needed in order to get consumers to move away from what are current clients. People are often resistant to change of course. But I'd prefer/like if they could offer something more concrete to the consumer - like, different services/abilities Steam does not, or something along those lines - then "buying" exclusivity.

 

Even something like a longer refund policy, like extending it to 3 or 4 hours played instead of just 2. Or how about being able to play Offline mode without having to login to Online to tell it to go Offline, first. Or a "revert to last version" patch ability in case the most recent patch makes you unable to play for some reason. Stuff like that.

If you buy a game from the EGS you own it, the same as buying from GoG. The game can not be taken away from you if you get banned from your account, or removed from your Library by either GoG or EGS. Unlike with Steam where none of that is true.

 

That right there is an improvement.

 

I started using Steam under protest when it seemed that all of the series I liked at the time required Steam. I bought a physical copy of Empire Total War and Shogun 2 and was immediately forced to use Steam. The only thing the disc was good for was for running the Steam installer!

 

 

Does it work like gog? Like you download an exe installer or?

[ShadySands]

Bartimaeus mentioned that too. Does Win7 not have access to the MS store? Serious question.

Not sure exactly as all I have is Win 10 but I'd guess it's not built into the OS. Not sure if they can't just use the web store https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/windows

[Blarghagh]

 

 

I just installed a game from the MS store for the first time just to test it. Easy peasy, nothing extra to DL, and pretty fast too.

I haven't used them yet because I had Win7. And I still won't use them because ... I don't want to give them any more support than I already do via their O/S. It's not rational perhaps but yeah.

 

Of course they will change, they're just trying to actually compete with Steam. The end result is hopefully that Steam will actually change some of their anti-consumer practices.

I can sort of understand a perspective that extreme measures might be needed in order to get consumers to move away from what are current clients. People are often resistant to change of course. But I'd prefer/like if they could offer something more concrete to the consumer - like, different services/abilities Steam does not, or something along those lines - then "buying" exclusivity.

 

Even something like a longer refund policy, like extending it to 3 or 4 hours played instead of just 2. Or how about being able to play Offline mode without having to login to Online to tell it to go Offline, first. Or a "revert to last version" patch ability in case the most recent patch makes you unable to play for some reason. Stuff like that.

If you buy a game from the EGS you own it, the same as buying from GoG. The game can not be taken away from you if you get banned from your account, or removed from your Library by either GoG or EGS. Unlike with Steam where none of that is true.

 

That right there is an improvement.

 

I started using Steam under protest when it seemed that all of the series I liked at the time required Steam. I bought a physical copy of Empire Total War and Shogun 2 and was immediately forced to use Steam. The only thing the disc was good for was for running the Steam installer!

I forgot what game this was, but bought a physical copy of something at some point, and when I opened the case it had a disc shaped paper cutout with a Steam code in it.

[Mamoulian War]

 

Bartimaeus mentioned that too. Does Win7 not have access to the MS store? Serious question.

 

Not sure exactly as all I have is Win 10 but I'd guess it's not built into the OS. Not sure if they can't just use the web store https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/windows

Afaik, it is Win10 exclusive, because apps are using .uwp extension and not .exe

 

Someone Correct me please if I am wrong.

[LadyCrimson]

 

Bartimaeus mentioned that too. Does Win7 not have access to the MS store? Serious question.

Not sure exactly as all I have is Win 10 but I'd guess it's not built into the OS. Not sure if they can't just use the web store https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/windows

 

Windows Store games/apps, last I knew, are not built like normal/regular desktop apps most of us are used to. They use an API currently called Universal Windows Platform (UWP). At the moment such needs Win10 to even run. When it all began, it was Win8 required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Windows_Platform

 

I have not researched it recently (i'm guessing they've at least made improvements...) but when I asked people on forums if Win7 could run FFXV's mobile animated version when it "came to PC" via Windows Store, everyone said "no." I took it at face value and didn't try.

Edited March 21, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[ShadySands]

Thanks for that, LC.

 

Today was the first day I ever opened it on purpose and all I did was install a free game and play it for all of 2 minutes.

[Hawke64]

Does EGS allow to run games offline (from its *.exe), like Steam? Or it's "online only"?

[LadyCrimson]

If you buy a game from the EGS you own it, the same as buying from GoG. The game can not be taken away from you if you get banned from your account, or removed from your Library by either GoG or EGS. Unlike with Steam where none of that is true.

So are you saying if one buys a game through Epic, installs it, then completely uninstalls Epic's client, the game will still run/play?

[Zoraptor]

Like most I've not used EGS, but from observation some when it comes to DRM it's very much a steam clone. Some titles can be run without the launcher at all (once the initial download/ install drm stuff is done) while others effectively require always online and the launcher to be present- it's on a title by title basis. No offline installs or separate installer files.

 

(Unofficially, uwp support may come to win7 as DX12 did, but don't hold me to it. It's only a rumour albeit one that makes sense given HaloMCC)

[ShadySands]

[Malcador]

Hopefully Epic exclusive

[Gorth]

New thread here