The Epic Games Store has seen a strong increase in user numbers over the past six years, reaching an impressive total of 295 million users. However, third-party revenue has not grown at the same pace.
  • Linktank@lemmy.todayEnglish
    121·
    3 hours ago

    I’ve never even claimed a “free game” from those assholes. Fuck 'em.

  • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    342·
    6 hours ago

    I dont even login to get the free games anymore. Fuck 'em they aren’t interested in making a good experience.

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        1·
        40 seconds ago

        Whats the point? I’ve got to wrestle the client to play them and my speeds are capped ridiculously low. Steam at least doesnt seem to have a tiny cap on update and game downloads. Though sometimes whatever is hosting workshop can be slow.

    • Pechente@feddit.orgEnglish
      151·
      5 hours ago

      Right? The epic store is so slow and sluggish and awful. How fucking hard can it be today to make a good app for a single OS.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        11·
        4 hours ago

        So you know how everyone uses Electron because it’s makes it easy to make a cross platform app using web tech?

        Well apparently Epic doesn’t even use Electron. They embed Chromium in an UE4 application. That’s right, they’re running a browser AND a game engine for their fucking launcher/store. Even just plain Electron (so just Chromium) would be an improvement.

        • filcuk@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          My first thought is that they’re eatingtheir own dog food, which is good.
          But the store still wasn’t good last I checked, and it’s the end-user experience that matters.

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        5·
        5 hours ago

        How about using that infinite Fortnite money to actually make your business good instead of praying your 1 game’s popularity never runs out

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        4·
        35 minutes ago

        Epic pays some amount of the price of the game to the devs for every free game claimed, so it costs Epic money and makes money for game devs in exchange for a bit of your time. Sometimes you end up trying a game you never would’ve purchased and end up loving it. For example, I snagged Sable a few months ago for free through Epic and was absolutely blown away by how good that game was. It wasn’t even on my radar but I saw it come up as the weekly free game and thought it looked neat so I downloaded it and booted it up

  • buffaloseven@piefed.caEnglish
    35·
    8 hours ago

    I always felt there was promise to a new store with a big backing to challenge Steam. I think Steam is great and it’s my primary PC games store, but I see the concern of only having one real player in the market. But EGS simply hasn’t done it. It feels like they recognized the reasons Steam is such a huge player in the space; it’s not just the library and the sales, but the level of consumer-focused support and features the platform offers. And that’s the key, Steam is a platform, not just a store.

    EGS has never become a platform. It’s missing features, it’s social features are anemic, it’s like they put some effort in to get it off the ground and not broken, and then have just hoped giving away free games will somehow magically convince people to spend money there.

    I think there’s reasons to be concerned about Steam, but you cannot ignore how broadly consumer friendly the platform is. Their hardware initiatives only highlight what a complete package their ecosystem is and they’re loaded with some of the most consumer-friendly choices in the industry.

    EGS is stuck in no-man’s land. Steam is a better platform, GoG is more consumer-friendly. Humble has Choice which can be a good deal. Fanatical does a better job with sales and credit from purchase. EGS just kind of sits in a no-mans land with no compelling features other than you don’t need to spend money to get games, which is great for us but a terrible business strategy for Epic.

    • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      22 minutes ago

      One of the reasons EGS fails is Fortnite in my opinion. In Fortnite they have done all these things: they created a platform with social abilities and all that. Fortnite still brings them lots and lots of money, but this shouldn’t be in Fortnite it should be in their launcher. It could be even more integrated than Steam does. Why not let games grant you skins you can use in other games as a character model (given the game supports it)?

    • Cyberspark@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      By going the route exclusives they deliberately avoided being competition and cemented themselves as the early access platform with no features.

      Hades was as good as it was because it had a year to be mediocre on EGS first

    • doublah@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      19·
      7 hours ago

      The problem is these stores (Epic but also the Microsoft Store and Amazon’s PC game store) only come along because some executive says “hey what if instead of Valve taking a cut from most PC games, we took a cut from most PC games”, there’s 0 interest or intent for them to be competition (as seen by the exclusives) for Steam or improve the developer/user experience.

      Any time these massive companies offer a cheaper subsidised alternative to any existing product it’s to push out the smaller players with less resources and build their own monopoly.

      • buffaloseven@piefed.caEnglish
        10·
        6 hours ago

        Absolutely. It’s also an immense amount of work to get a platform up to a competitive standard with Steam; I’m not sure a small company will ever be able to catch up in any short term time frame.

        But stores like Fanatical, GreenManGaming, GameBillet, etc. have the better idea of just being stores that focus on getting customers better deals. They don’t even attempt to edge onto Steam’s turf because a storefront can’t compete with Steam, nor can a half-baked launcher.

        Reality is that Valve has functionally a 20 year head start on any company that wants to try and edge in on their turf. So it can’t be done just to get a cut of sales because you’re not going to have the follow-through to build the user base if that’s your reason.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
      51·
      9 hours ago

      By redeeming Epic giveaways and never buying anything you are sending profits to the developer while simultaneously costing Epic money. Win/Win.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        1·
        29 minutes ago

        There’s some really good ones mixed in with intensely not-me games that get given away. Touch Type Tale, Strange Horticulture, Sunless Skies, Turmoil, Two Point Hospital, Sable, Lego 2k Drive, LOTR Return to Moria, Farm Simulator 2022, Bus Simulator 2021, The Bridge, etc.

      • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        6·
        5 hours ago

        I got Outer Worlds with all dlcs included, that’s the only game I’ve installed and played from my EGS collection. I think I got Control there too, which I’ve been curious about.

  • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    211·
    8 hours ago

    Their entire plan is giving away AAA games for free to lure people in and then make all that money back later by raising prices or subscription models. Its been quite obvious but people just use their shitty store anyways.

    • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Honestly it doesn’t sound like it. To get that many new users and that little revenue pretty much implies that most of their “new users” are people who come in to get the free game, and won’t put a dime into using it.

      If I ran a bookstore and did a promo where I gave a book away to everyone once a month. I went from 1000 customers a month, to 2,700 customers a month. but only sold 10 more books each month. That would pretty strongly demonstrate that people don’t want to buy my books, and almost all of the increased traffic is people just taking free books and leaving.

  • sneakyninjapants@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    28·
    9 hours ago

    Waiting for them to cut their losses within the next couple years. Sunset the money-losing platform and revoke all the free game licences

  • Auster@thebrainbin.org
    11·
    8 hours ago

    Who’d have thought making things free while making a big noise out of it, taking over what people liked and expected elsewhere, not offering tangible improvement and showing spite towards competition would cause them to not show healthy growth. Also makes me wonder who finances them.

  • you_are_dust@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    9 hours ago

    I have hundreds of games on epic. I get the free game every time it changes. Never paid for a single thing from them.

  • Arcane2077@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    211·
    9 hours ago

    I caved and bought Alan Wake 2 and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memories because I lost hope of them ever coming to Steam. The few exclusives they have explains the minimal growth pretty succinctly. I hope nobody involved is surprised

    • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 hours ago

      It’s the best game I’ve played in years, but I’d rather but physical or in any other manner than giving money to epic. Still waiting for any other chance.

    • warmaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      151·
      8 hours ago

      I wouldn’t give them a dime even if it meant playing my favorite series’ sequel. I don’t like the people behind it, I don’t like how they think, I don’t like what they envision for the industry, and I don’t want to contribute in any measure to any of that ever happening.

    • T4V0@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      9 hours ago

      And that’s why I would never purchase any games there lol

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
      4·
      9 hours ago

      Alan Wake 2 is the only title I ever bought on Epic too. Do not regret it, despite my dislike of Epic and EGS. My desire to support Remedy was magnitudes larger than any desire to protest Tim Sweeny.