Maybe that's because, ya'know... Epic has no trust in the consumer space? I'm just putting it out there...
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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For those who don't know why people hate Epic Games, here's a short list:
The Epic Games Store (EGS) regularly pays for indie exclusives that were, at least in part, crowdfunded and were promised to be released on multiple game platforms
EGS has paid for exclusives from games that were listed for pre-sale on Steam only to have it pulled from Steam and upsetting all of the excited fans that wanted to play the game on their chosen platform
The CEO Tim Sweeney has publicly laughed at the idea of supporting Linux, and refuses to consider adding EasyAntiCheat (EAC) support to Fortnite until Linux allows kernel level anti-cheat software
To expand on the previous point, the EGS launcher has been shown to reduce battery life of a laptop by 20% even when the app is minimized. What the hell is it doing in the background? Nobody knows!
And expanding on the two previous points, a lot of people have heavily criticized Epic's $330,000,000 investment from Tencent -- the biggest gaming company in China that has been known to be very anti-consumer and anti-privacy
And although it's not entirely the fault of a new player in the industry, but EGS has way less functionality compared to Steam or even other games storefronts/launchers. Epic doesn't have community features (workshop, guides, etc), Epic doesn't have cloud saves, Epic doesn't have achievement support, Epic doesn't have proper controller support, and the list of features lacking goes on...
Nobody is saying that we don't want more choice of games stores. In fact, competition is good for the consumer! But Epic's practices have been wholly against the best interest of the consumer and providing a fair, competitive alternative.
Personally, I have never and will never buy a game from Epic. I'll take the free game and launch it through Heroic games Launcher which already - as a free and open source project - works way better than EGS with their billions of dollars of investment.
I think the way Epic sees it, young players probably just push Play: they don't browse around the launcher. Now maybe that's because there's nothing worth browsing TO, unlike Steam where you have a community hub, a discussion board, sometimes a Workshop, and then the store link, plus you have the news updates and little discussion pieces.
Epic just like Valve probably track mouse movements and mouse clicks with the app and know what we interact with and for how long. So they probably know that when I'm scrolling FF7R community hub photos/art, my scrolling slows on particularly thirsty images...
Given that then, maybe Epic isn't bothering adding some of Steam's features because they already know what users are interacting with on EGS.
FWIW I would buy games on EGS if: the price was much better than Steam; it incorporated Steam Input or equivalent; it had Big Picture Mode; they had a Linux native app.
The one thing I disagree with the norm on in that list, is the investment from Tencent. Unless that investment bought them some sort of influence in the decision making process, which I admit it may have, it doesn’t actually mean much beyond “omg China.”
Tencent wants to make money, they are going to invest in potential money making endeavors. It would be silly for anyone to turn away investment unless it comes with strings attached.
It's 40% which is sizeable enough to likely be able to have influence.
Also, the fact that tencent has to go through the CCP for approval, which means that anything problematic to the government. If anyone recalls what happened between Blizzard and NetEase, basically China's version of WoW has been put on hiatus indefinitely. It happens with movies annually.
Given that the CCP has attempted, and often times succeeded, to push their impositions on media coming from other countries. It's not that far fetched to have some concerns about the insanely deep tendrils of Tencents reach, especially given how studios often write with censors in mind. - note that I don't agree with the entirety of the discussion I linked, but I do think it has some interesting points regarding the process and lasting effects. For someone to be blacklisted for having a relationship (within reason of course) is wrong and moreover, inhibits the entirety of the creative process for anyone who wants to be involved in it. In the case of the article, Richard Gere was effectively blacklisted for being the wrong kind of Buddhist. Not to mention the litany of erasures the CCP would love to have swept under the rug.
Tencent wants to make money, they are going to invest in potential money making endeavors. It would be silly for anyone to turn away investment unless it comes with strings attached.
Capitalists feel the same way, but the string attached is giving up your creative will for market reach. Is the loss of profits from that market worth undercutting your creative work? Well, if you want it to do well in China then you will, but that requires the CCP's approval...
I think that's the important difference in regards to Tencents involvement with Epic. It's not just that Epic is buying out games and making them exclusive, which just happens to be the exact same tactic Tencent uses with Hollywood with China's market share, but that being the very path that's used to stifle creativity under the proper image the CCP wants to present.
Epic made this deal with all of this knowledge, and frankly I would be extremely surprised if 40% didn't net Tencent influence. I'd be even more surprised if that were even an option on the offer.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not faulting Epic for making money (although I guess officially they aren't...) because even Valve releases a version of Steam with its games for China. I'm faulting them for being more complicit than most with how they've dealt with the whole situation. That in addition to the actually insane takes that Tim Sweeny holds, I just can't see Tencents involvement as a little issue mostly nothing. It seems pretty clear that Epic is trying to get younger gamers on its platform, and rather than serve features and innovation they push exclusivity and incite arguments against competition.
Tl;Dr They do (invest), it does (allow influence), and it will (come with strings attached)
Why is this surprising? They actively give away game titles for free every week, it would be surprising if they were profitable.