Note: Piracy is not an answer. I understand why, and do agree to a certain extent... But sometimes, the happiness gained by playing something from a legitimate source is far greater 🥹... coming from someone who could never ever afford to purchase games, nor could my parents... Hence I've always played bootleg, or pirated games.

TL;DR

What's wrong?

Their launcher has a terrible UI AND UX.
They make exclusive deals with studios to prevent other platforms from getting games. (Someone mentioned that Steam did the same thing in their infancy. Also, I have another question; why is it ok for Sony and Microsoft to make exclusive games for their consoles but not ok for these PC platforms to do so?)
They have been invested in by a Chinese company, Tencent. (Someone mentioned that it isn't that big of a deal, but idk.)
They are actively anti-linux for some reason.

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[–] mammut@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why are paid exclusives worse, though? I've never understood that. I understand why we hate exclusives, but I've never heard anyone explain why paid exclusives are worse. Steam has tons of exclusives, some of which are exclusive because they targeted Steam APIs that are proprietary and the developers don't have the resources or incentive to port the game to another platform. Why isn't it bad to encourage developers to use proprietary APIs that make it difficult to port games to other platforms?

As a consumer, exclusives are shitty because they restrict where I can buy and play a game. This is true whether they're paid exclusives, technical lock-in exclusives, lazy developer exclusives, etc. All types of exclusives suck. Is it worse that Borderlands 3 was exclusive for 6 months compared to Borderlands 2 being exclusive for ~7 years, just because one was paid? I can't understand why the 6 month exclusivity period is worse for a consumer than the 7 year one.

[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Most of the salt I have for this behaviour from games that were pulled from Steam because Epic threw cash at the developers, or they’re exclusive despite there being no reason to be.

I have no issue with Epic releasing their own games in their store, just like valve do, or EA/Actvision did.

[–] mammut@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

This is the same kinda shit that Valve / publishers pulled when Steam launched, though.

Half-Life and Counterstrike originally didn't require Steam, and then one day Valve told everybody they'd need to start using Steam if they wanted to keep playing the games they'd already bought. That's a Valve game, but it's akin to Epic moving Rocket League to EGS (which also pissed people off).

For more general / non-Valve games, there was a time period where you'd pre-order a physical copy of game and honestly not know if it would require a launcher. Tons of games that launched in early days of Steam didn't bother to tell consumers upfront that Steam was required, and consumers wouldn't find out until the game hit the shelves and there was a little note on the back of the box, "Internet access and Steam account required." In that case, non-Steam pre-orders weren't even given an exception -- every copy required Steam. That seems even worse than the Epic mess IMO. There, the publishers at least made an exception for people who thought they were ordering a Steam game. If you thought you were gonna get a real physical copy of game that didn't require a launcher, and it ended up requiring Steam, the publisher just told you to either use Steam or pound sand.

I don't like the behavior either, but pulling already announced / released games and forcing them onto a different launcher is standard practice when a new launcher comes out. It's happened to paid and non-paid exclusives. It's happened to EGS and Steam (and probably Origin or Uplay or others too). I don't see any reason to be any more upset at publishers over the EGS debacle than the Steam one.

My take is that launcher exclusivity shouldn't exist, because every single launcher has just pissed off / screwed over consumers when there is exclusivity / any requirement to use the launcher.

[–] JamesFire@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is the same kinda shit that Valve / publishers pulled when Steam launched, though.

Irrelevant.

[–] mammut@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes, in the long run it always is. That's my point. EGS will probably be successful, and 15 years from now someone will bring up a story about how EGS really infuriated people "back in the day", and everyone will say it's irrelevant.

Nobody cares how the service got started. They only care where it goes. It doesn't make a bit of difference how pissed off everyone is at Epic. It didn't matter how pissed off everyone was at Steam in the early years. There's a reason these companies start off by pissing everyone off: it works. There's no long term downside, and, in the short term, it gets you users. Users don't show up voluntarily on the early days, and they defend the service once it's established.

As long as Epic lasts long enough for everyone to later forgive them for their anti-consumer beginning, they'll be golden. It's the market standard. The early days will always be viewed as irrelevant. "It was a different time," people always say. "You can't compare it to now."