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What's up with Epic Games? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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I can't seem to find that one comment explaining the issue with them...

But for the sake of promoting conversation on Lemmy, what's the issue with Epic, and why should I go for Steam or GoG?

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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[-] ono@lemmy.ca 64 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Epic cons:

Also:

Epic has already been caught scanning and collecting data from files on people's hard drives that are totally unrelated to Epic or its games.
Epic's habit of interfering with game availability, through exclusivity deals.

Ties with Tencent (super anti-consumer chinese state-owned megacorp)

To be more clear about it, Tencent is Epic's largest investor, so they obviously have a great deal of influence over and access to anything they want from Epic (likely including user data) and they directly benefit from Epic's growth.

Steam pros:

Also:

Actively funding and supporting development of linux gaming technologies for more than a few years now, to the point where linux is now very much a viable gaming platform.

Steam cons:
Drm

Given that DRM on Steam is entirely up to each game publisher, I don't think it's appropriate to list under "Steam cons". I'm not even sure that any of my Steam games have DRM.

If you mean that most Steam games expect to find an instance of Steam running, you should know that is not DRM, and it's trivially replaced with the open-source Goldberg Emulator or a similar tool.

Gog
I don’t know anything besides the fact that it has drm-free games

Another plus for GOG is that they let you download games with a web browser. No special app required. (I think Itch.io does this as well.)

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -3 points 11 months ago

Epic was scanning your Steam friends and play history

Valve was scanning your DNS cache

So... Maybe we shouldn't forget to mention the second one if we're going to bring up the first one

[-] ono@lemmy.ca 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Valve was scanning your DNS cache

The story I read was that they didn't collect or report anything, but just flagged a user if the cache contained a known game hack site, and that they stopped doing that years ago.

Not comparable to what Epic was caught doing, IMHO. Still, if there's an article with more detail, I wouldn't mind reading it. (Maybe it was part of their anti-cheat system of the time?)