Fabricant451 — Roleplayer Guild

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I just have to wonder, considering the best responses to these things are measured ones that try to take the full case into account, and you made zero effort to even look beyond 'whe whe shopping cart', which anyone with two pennies of wit should realize is hardly everyone's complaint or even the persistent source of primary complaints. I went for the least insulting reason for that to be the case. But yes, I took that to needless sniping, and I'll attempt to avoid that.@Spambot

Oh I've made tons of effort, but you'll understand that asking people on various forums and comments section of articles doesn't tend to produce much in the way of enlightenment other than colorful ways of calling me a shill or a variety of insults sprinkled with mentions of shopping cart as some kind of catch-all. There's a reason the ones shouting make the whole thing look bad. 

On the other hand, when views are taken like this, maybe I won't.

Well I mean you could try and not just gloss over the large amount of hypocritical views people have when they bring up Chinese companies as a reason enough to avoid using it. 

1. This one is a primary reason for me dismissing the store on principle. A platform that encourages developers to break off from expected and perfectly decent platforms that were kickstarter/preorder funded on the expectation of releasing on those platforms (going beyond Steam alone) effectively results in the developer breaking promises. Several games have done this and you are shoehorning into a single one. Notably, Shenmue 3 had a horrible response and a series I particularly enjoy, Mechwarrior, has had the latest entry pull this shitty stunt. In that case it's just the last straw in a stream of shoddy developer behavior, but I digress.

Shenmue 3 was never slated to be on Steam when the Kickstarter for it launched, it was subsequent surveys that mentioned Steam. This also goes back to Deep Silver following the option that gets its people better profits. What, should Epic have not put forth a more beneficial deal and Deep Silver not take it? By all means, get angry at YS Net and Deep Silver for suggesting one thing and taking a better deal, but you can't reasonably level all the hate onto Epic for it. Epic isn't 'stealing' games, publishers are opting for a better deal with Epic footing the bill and the bad press. You have to wait a year to play Shenmue 3 or Metro Exodus on Steam or six months for Borderlands 3, it's not exactly a huge deal. It's unfortunate, and in the case of Metro specifically it was a clusterfuck, but what's happening is publishers choosing a paycheck today instead of tomorrow. 

You said it yourself: shoddy developer behavior. Or publisher. 

2. Generally in agreement despite finding it unproven that Epic actively does anything with personal data. That strikes me as a wee bit paranoid, even as someone who makes a habit of being paranoid on the internet. Despite that, their privacy controls are poor and the reach they have in your system before even logging in is dubious.

The worst thing about EGS is it defaults to starting when turning the computer on but that's a simple click away from not happening. The 'issue' of it looking at a Steam file is due to importing friends from Steam and the rushjob therein. But they aren't selling info. 

3. Again, a point of principle, elaborating on 1.

Again, Epic isn't waiting 'weeks or a month' before a game launches to suddenly say 'lol EGS only', Metro being the sole example. 

5. What stands out for me is the brute-force nature of how Epic is accessing the file in question when there are perfectly decent alternatives to doing so.

This has been addressed by Vogel and Sweeney. 

6. I haven't observed this, but it doesn't sound very good to me either.

Considering people who bought The Division 2 on Uplay can play with people who bought it on EGS and that Rocket League isn't being pulled from Steam (though it remains to be seen if there's cross platform play there) it's a matter of who knows.

It's not that they lack a shopping cart all by itself. They lack a shopping cart (which is pretty goddamn basic for platforms to use),

You know what also doesn't have a shopping cart? The Nintendo Switch Eshop. It doesn't even remove things from your wishlist once you buy them either. 

have falsely banned more than a single moderately popular youtuber automatically for being too enthusiastic when running through games one at a time to buy

What are the numbers on that? Because every article about it that I've read uses the vague phrase 'some users' or 'many users' while all of them only ever use Pat's tweet as a solitary source. 

 entirely lack forum integration and any form of reviews,

Oh yeah, because Steam user reviews are so helpful and those are what people use when determining what game to buy. 

 and just about any integration for some of the lesser bling (groups, per-region pricing, screenshots, achievements, cloud saving, mod workshop, multi device/account support, profiles, two factor authentication, gifting, and other things too minor to make a case for.

Some of those I agree with, some I give the hand wank motion towards as being unnecessary fluff that doesn't make a storefront better or worse. 

 In truth, I use very few of these, and yet I know and have seen many players who do. By no means does EGS need match point-by-point or be a clone of how Steam operates. However, some of these are quite basic, and the excuse of 'well it's new' and 'steam started off bad too' no longer applies. Steam lacked any sort of precedence. That precedence is now established and practically expected, especially when a platform forcibly injects itself alongside the top platform in features by making a mission of forcing any game on its platform and nowhere else when it would otherwise be in multiple places, all at prodigious expense to EGS (which is a good source for people's concern about Tencent, as I'm skeptical Fortnite alone allows them to blow money the way they do). All that money, and yet, no will to invest a good portion of it into making something serviceable at release, let alone months down the line. Sure, some of these things are on the roadmap.

Soon™.

How, exactly, is Epic forcing games on its platform and nowhere else? I can buy more games on Steam than I can on EGS, and several games I can buy on EGS I can also buy on Steam. It's no surprise that the games that get the big 'controversy' are big name releases. The number of true exclusives on EGS is quite low.  

It would be one thing if it launched buggy including efforts for several of these things, but that would imply a level of effort that simply didn't take place. Despite all this on the features end, I and probably many others who dislike the platform (note that I do not automatically default to 'hate hate hate no chance anything else' and neither do many, just the ones picked out of the crowd) would give it a fair shot if their behavior hasn't been developer priority over all else (it strikes me that they have zero interest in appealing to the customer and simply take that audience for granted, which, after fortnite, I suspect is the attitude) and point 1 from above, where there is not even a semblence of tact in their wheedling and dealing.

So your problem is a company with money offering incentives for other companies to make their money in a more upfront way? It almost sounds like the problem is capitalism doing its thing. Despite what people might think, at the end of the day developers and publishers largely care about profits before they care about pleasing the customer. Yes, some developers have a good track record and as such have that trust, but all it takes is one fuck up, slight or otherwise, and that trust is lost in a snap. I guess now the way to lose trust isn't to put micro transactions or have unreasonably crunch or shitty employee treatment but to follow the money and release a game on a store for a year first. Video games are expensive, and while I can fault publishers for going with the path of least resistance I'm not going to slag on Epic for offering it in the first place. 

Companies are not your friends. 

You can bet a good portion of the outrage would be reduced if they had a policy of doing this on undecided games that have made no platform commitments. They do not, and the examples take the headlights. 

Again, this isn't a single street with Epic being the one solely at fault. 

Despite the above, I do not entirely rule out playing on that platform, aside from the (completely subjective) fact that I have no interest in the offerings presented. The few that were interesting, blew it, and others just aren't needed enough to forsake my desire to be rid of something I frankly don't like at fundamental levels.

 I only ever intended to buy one game on there and I will do so next month. And I'll probably buy it again on Steam anyway. I don't blame Epic for the decisions of the developers/publishers. 

It is the way the money is being thrown at lifting games from promised release details at the apparent expense of improving their own platform that gets on my nerves twofold.

The two situations aren't exclusive. 

Epic (perhaps not anymore, but else) has considerable room to brand build by the expression 'be the better man'; by making a platform that is less of a monolithic greyscale entity as Steam, giving priority to developers, but also customers and improving on basic concepts that Steam has floundered to understand. Steam is practically a monopoly. Something equally decent in its offerings one way or another could break it up. It would have plenty of 'brand build' exposure without that exposure being constant controversy and a platform that by itself wouldn't get a fraction of the distance.

I'd say Epic handing out games for free (well other than the eternal price of your soul for having EGS on your machine I guess) is at least something that should be taken as a positive; whether or not it outweighs the negatives is up for individual dispute. The biggest crime of the Epic Games Store, then, is a lack of comparable or better offerings. Or rather, Steam is seen as being for the customer while Epic Games Store is seen as being for the corporation. The controversy, as with many controversies on the internet, are frequently overblown or else missing the larger point entirely. 

But then what else is new.

Good of you to notice.

What happened to not being snippy. 

My goal is not to convince you, or indeed, anyone to share these views, as they are situationally applicable and I can't imagine a great many guild members at all would see eye to eye. My only intent is to indicate that people do have viable reasons, and as such, are not worthy of the dismissive mockery they've been approached with save in cases where they are clearly not expressing their own opinions or doing so very poorly.

I'm sure people do have viable reasons, as you've demonstrated. But I'm still allowed to punch down at the people who review bomb and fling shit at the walls as soon as someone mentions the words 'Epic Games Store' while refusing to air their grievances or otherwise reduce it down to the simple, a la "no shopping cart omegalul" 

But again, the loudest voices carry the furthest and the ones being the loudest are the ones flinging said shit.

store.steampowered.com/app/878670/She…

I worded incorrectly, but the clarification has been made elsewhere. In the initial Kickstarter for Shenmue 3 it didn't mention Steam. That came later.

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There's considerably more than that that makes me weary of it just as a platform, let alone its practices that lead me to dismissing its usage on principle. To narrow it down to this is disingenuous fanboyism of the platform.@Spambot

"I don't hate Epic Games Store" = fanboyism. Okay. 

I'm not even a fanboy of it. Everyone screams and shouts about how it's the worst thing ever, how it's killing games (hahahahahaahah), how it shot their dog and pissed on its corpse but no one ever has any reason why other than "lol no shopping cart, lol a moderately popular former youtube lets player bought games and had his account tagged, tencent is the worst now let me go play League of Legends while listening to Spotify hop in our Discord server to coordinate, also Fortnite sucks". The only other thing they say is it's 'anticonsumer' and 'unfair' because of shit like Metro Exodus which prompted review bombs and the gamer hate machine to do its thing and make themselves look like shithogs when it isn't even the first example of a PC game forgoing Steam to use its own, different program for purchasing and launching. Not to mention Epic admitted the mistake, but it's also not solely their doing, Deep Silver had its share of the 'blame', but considering the incentives for Deep Silver in terms of revenue are you going to blame them for following the path that would get them more revenue? Because if we're gonna start shitting on capitalism I'm all for it. 

Is EGS as 'feature rich' as Steam? No. Is Epic offering incentives for publishers for timed exclusivity? Yes, but what's the problem there? That it's a company throwing money around while Good Guy Gabe's crew don't? Epic is using 'timed exclusives' to brand build, they aren't holding devs at gunpoint and forcing them to do so at the expense of gamers and Steam.  There's incentive for publishers to sign an exclusivity deal but it's not like Tim Sweeney is demanding all games that use Unreal to release on EGS only. EGS isn't a great storefront but it's functional. The horror stories about unsecured accounts or hacking or terrible customer service (let's not act like Steam is a shining example of customer service done right) are often anecdotal and hyperbolic. Does it happen? Maybe to some people, sure, but I've been locked out of my Steam account because I signed in on a different computer and they never sent a code to my email and I was refused a refund because a game I purchased on Steam had a bullshit program that ran in the background and didn't shut down properly which ran me over the two hour limit. I have other user unfriendly experiences with it. I still use Steam. 

Now I'm asking you, and specifically you but anyone feel free to answer as well, why you're so against the platform? Obviously it's not a lack of a shopping cart. What's wrong with its practices other than the fact that it's capitalism doing its thing to the PC market that its been doing to the consoles for years? What makes it anti-consumer? The fact that you might have to wait a bit longer to play it on a *preferred* platform? What makes it so egregiously awful?

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