Recently Epic Games wanted to challenge Valve's almost-monopoly on the PC digital video game store market, by releasing their own digital distribution system. Their main incentive for game developers is that they will take a much smaller cut from the sales than Valve does (if I remember correctly, Epic Games takes 5%, while Valve takes 30%).
Healthy competition is certainly good for the consumers, and monopolies are bad for the consumers. Thus a competitor to Steam ought to be welcome. However, is the Epic Games Store better than, or even as good as Steam?
Many gamers don't think so, and they have good reasons. For example:
- It makes all games online-only. No internet connection? No game. Sorry. Can't play without an active internet connection. (We all know how well that feature was received with Microsoft announced it with the Xbox One.)
- No regional pricing. The store does not support pricing games according to your region. (One of the countries that this affects the most is Australia, making games much more expensive for them.)
- No cloud saves. Steam supports automatically uploading and maintaining game savedata in the cloud provided by Valve, which means that if you lose all your local data, or you simply switch PCs, you can continue the game wherever you left it, no matter where you play. No such thing in the Epic Games Store. Instead, everything is saved locally only.
- No user reviews of games. No way of knowing what other users think of the game. (Epic Games recently announced that they are developing a user reviewing system... which will be opt-in for the game developers. Which means that if game developers don't like the reviews, they can simply disable them.)
- No forums, nor other ways for people to communicate with other users.
- No wishlists or watchlists, or any other way to mark games one might be interested in the future, or to watch for sales.
- No game controller support of any kind. (In contrast, Steam's own support for game controllers is extraordinary. Not only does it support remapping controller buttons and other settings that will be usable in games even if they don't have direct Steam support, but moreover, Steam allows using controllers of other systems even with games that likewise don't have direct support, such as the DualShock 4 controller and the Nintendo Switch Pro controller.)
- No screenshots. No sharing screenshots. No user profiles. No achievements.
- No Linux support.
Healthy competition is certainly good for the consumers, and monopolies are bad for the consumers. Thus a competitor to Steam ought to be welcome. However, is the Epic Games Store better than, or even as good as Steam?
Many gamers don't think so, and they have good reasons. For example:
- It makes all games online-only. No internet connection? No game. Sorry. Can't play without an active internet connection. (We all know how well that feature was received with Microsoft announced it with the Xbox One.)
- No regional pricing. The store does not support pricing games according to your region. (One of the countries that this affects the most is Australia, making games much more expensive for them.)
- No cloud saves. Steam supports automatically uploading and maintaining game savedata in the cloud provided by Valve, which means that if you lose all your local data, or you simply switch PCs, you can continue the game wherever you left it, no matter where you play. No such thing in the Epic Games Store. Instead, everything is saved locally only.
- No user reviews of games. No way of knowing what other users think of the game. (Epic Games recently announced that they are developing a user reviewing system... which will be opt-in for the game developers. Which means that if game developers don't like the reviews, they can simply disable them.)
- No forums, nor other ways for people to communicate with other users.
- No wishlists or watchlists, or any other way to mark games one might be interested in the future, or to watch for sales.
- No game controller support of any kind. (In contrast, Steam's own support for game controllers is extraordinary. Not only does it support remapping controller buttons and other settings that will be usable in games even if they don't have direct Steam support, but moreover, Steam allows using controllers of other systems even with games that likewise don't have direct support, such as the DualShock 4 controller and the Nintendo Switch Pro controller.)
- No screenshots. No sharing screenshots. No user profiles. No achievements.
- No Linux support.
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