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Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable (kotaku.com)

submitted 1 year ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] WinterBear@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

How exactly does paying for unreal games make the epic games store profitable? Epic would still be getting that money even if the store didn't exist.

[-] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's the point... They said they never bought anything from epic games. I was wondering if they really never bought an unreal game. Why are people butthurt about that question?!

[-] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

When you buy from Taco Bell, you're also buying a product made by a farming company, but you're not buying from that farm.

Same with EGS/UE. People are happy to buy an Epic Games product, but they won't buy it from EG, because their store is shit.

There aren't that many comparable situations where a company both makes a product and has a storefront, without that product being exclusive to that storefront. Perhaps buying Honda, but only used, never from a dealership?

[-] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But when someone says they don't buy Honda shit but than buy a used Honda, wouldn't you say that's weird?

The Epic Game Store was in part trying to get money in when the Unreal Engine was falling behind with Unity's popularity. The hatred many people show for Epic Games is irrational, in my opinion. Especially when you consider that all the "arguments" against Epic Games are the same people had against Steam when it was new. It doesn't really make sense and just seems like hate for the sake of hating.

It just seems so much like hypocrisy. Everytime Steam brought a new feature, like achievements, cards, communities, etc. people were falling all over themselves hating Steam for it.

And know they hate Epic for not offering these features?

The same with exclusive titles. People regularly hated on Steam for having a monopoly on the market and that they therefore could take increasingly bigger cuts from developers. Epic takes less money in exchange for timed exclusivity and many developers like that they get more money for their games. Why do gamers dislike that?

[-] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

If you dislike Honda as a company (for subscription key fobs, or crappy warranty practices, say), you can still like the cars without giving the company a single dollar, by buying used cars. I suppose this doesn't quite work, because EG is still getting money for UE.

Perhaps an inversion: Amazon Basics are usually trash, and many consider giving Amazon money distasteful, yet the storefront is definitely quite effective and the shipping fast. Denigrating one while using the other is common.

As for the different treatment, the people behind UE seem to make decent decisions (especially in the light of Unity's recent decisions), while the people behind EGS have done nothing but aweful anti-consumer crap. They're both owned by the same company, but behave differently, so different treatment seems reasonable.

That being said, there's lots of people in gaming communities who whinge just to whinge. No changing that. I don't get much of the hate for Steam, but I do agree that having a monopoly is bad, no matter how benevolent Valve is right now. EGS should have been the silver bullet to that situation, but the silver was arsenic, the bullet was hollow point, and they tried to shoot us instead of Steam.

When Epic stops trying to kill user fteedoms and divide the market, and instead make a competitive service, they'll get far less hate. They'll still get hate, that's gamers, but winning by damaging the market is always bad.