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Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says his hopes on Epic Store were 'overly optimistic or misplaced' (www.tweaktown.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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I'm genuinely shocked how much Epic poured into the store and it still lacks so much basic features. Sorting games is still extremely barebones, store is filled with NFT/crypto garbage, the store still looks like a college student's first front-end project, and last time I used the launcher to pick up free games (last year), it was still slow as hell. What were they doing in the past 5 years aside from dropping millions on exclusivity deals?

Epic is going to have to prioritize the store and try some new initiatives while also doubling down on earning pivotal exclusives if it is going to have a chance. I also hope other viable competitors arrive.

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[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 months ago

Epic store not being profitable and despite the backing of Fortnite and Unreal Engine surplas being at the state that it is shows that it is probably much more expensive than expected to make a feature rich launcher. What epic has is more a glorified storefront like humble bundle or Fanatical but worse because it isn't even selling keys for the platform of your choice, and they have to handle server costs of storing all the games too.

[-] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 53 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They didn't invest in features.

They "invested" in paying out the ass for exclusivity and loss leaders thinking that buying users would result in users ignoring how terrible their store was and buying more games there.

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 months ago

In a way it like trying to enter the smartphone market and paying for app exclusives then ignoring the part about polishing the OS experience as much as possible and putting out something that is from the flip phone era.

[-] doingthestuff@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I own a handful of games on Epic that I actually play. But whenever I see one of those games under $5 on steam sale I buy it. I think I'm down to two games left. Playing Fallout London on GOG gives me the same heebie jeebies