Why do people avoid Epic?

[RonnieOP]

3 hours ago, Bramimond said:

 

Yes, it's fundamentally impossible to have competition if you can't buy the same product from different vendors. If you can get a product only from one vendor, that vendor has a monopoly. Your choice is to either buy from this vendor or not buy this product at all, hence no competition for him if he wants to sell the product.  As a consumer you can't switch vendors for the product, so the vendor doesn't have to compete with other vendors on things like service or price.

If your talking about a monopoly on just a sole game then yea thats a monopoly.

 

But we are more talking about pc gaming as a whole. 

[JZStudios]

On 3/20/2020 at 9:31 PM, valdyrgramr said:

Personally, I hate installing all these levels of DRM.   Steam annoys the shit out of me due to how buggy it is, and I never understood the praise of it.   The thing is known to freeze up for a few seconds then act like it never fucking happened.   I've seen this in multiple machines.   I'm not a huge fan of Valve, CDProjectRed, or any of these companies putting out  these DRM store front launchers of bs.   But, the one thing that pissed me off about Epic is the fact that they cancelled the next Unreal.   You can play the current state of it on their launcher, but I'm not going to install a fuck ton of launchers at once.   As for the China thing man are people paranoid as fuck.

The main selling point of CDPR's GOG.com is that it's entirely 100% DRM free. And a lot of games on Epic are DRM free as well.

 

22 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Both.  I don't own the game, I have to go back to their sw or site to get my game, and that is what DRM is.   Forced to go back to them digitally in order to get the installers in some way is basically DRM.  They're not selling me a physical copy of the games, and they're forcing me to be dependent on them to get the installers.   The only difference with GOG is that you're not forced to use their application, but you still have to go to their website to get the installers.   It's not like you're getting physical media.   That's controlling how I get the SW in a way that's not much different than how the others do it, thus DRM.

That's not what DRM is. You want their games as a physical? Then download the installer files and burn them to a disc. Boom, you have physical.

You have no understanding of what DRM is if that's you're definition. You can take that GOG copy, and A. It will last forever because the DRM server won't just die off, and B. You can move it anywhere you want, duplicate it, burn it to physical, whatever.

You can take a Steam copy and only play it exactly how Steam and the DRM server says is appropriate.

[Bramimond]

3 hours ago, RonnieOP said:

If your talking about a monopoly on just a sole game then yea thats a monopoly.

 

But we are more talking about pc gaming as a whole. 

PC gaming as a whole is the sum of all games. Earlier I was making the point that exclusives are cancer, because they destroy competition, since there is no competition with a monopoly.

 

In the end, Steam and Epic do not compete with each other, since gamers have to get both if they so happen to want exclusive games from each shop. Steam and Epic would be in competition if gamers could choose either and still get all the games they want. Like I can either buy physical copies of console games on amazon or some other shop. There is actual competition going on.

 

 

[JZStudios]

22 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

No, you cannot legally allow your friend to borrow a copy.   DRM is there to lock that down and restrict that.   Even Steam has gotten more restrictive with that due to people abusing it.

 

And, backups aren't a perfect solution nor do they have resell value if you're a collector.   Cloud storage can go down, and NASes fail all the time.  I can't really put it on punch cards either.   Which leaves me to drives that can fail due to wear and tear, DVDs aren't really that great in the long run due to how prone they are to scratching, and BR burning might be a solution yet that's only for me.   Can't allow my friend to play it thanks to good ol' DRM!  Ironically, they started DRM on physical media I just hate it in all forms and it needs to die.   Some forms of it even impact gaming performance, like Denuvo.  I heard some developers remove it due to crap like that and it just being broken shortly after launch by pirates.

Again, most of those are flawed minus maybe BR.

That's not DRM that's Digital copyright law, you dingus. And technically, yeah, you own that software, so legally as long as you uninstall it from your PC while he has it (effectively mirroring a physical copy) it's legal. Probably. Works that way with licensed software.

 

Hardware failures are entirely on you. Your PC or console could also just straight die. What kind of DRM bullshit is that? But... let's get this straight, you're pissing and moaning about it not being physical, but then start complaining about physical formats? Quite seriously, just what in the fuck do you actually want? Because it seems like you hate digital and physical. And Blu-Ray isn't good either, since they're still expensive because they never really took off like the older physical formats like CD and DVD. Quite literally your best bet is a solid state device like thumb drives, flash cards, or SSDs. And I don't know why you're talking about resale values.

22 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

It's not a strawman.  I said that I hate DRM as a whole, and digital copies are not there as a convenience thing for us.   They're there for the sake of DRM.   And, I argued all the flaws of digital copies/DRM.   Even if I had some love for GOG/CDPR they still can't get certain games thanks to licensing/DRM purposes.   And no, digital copies aren't the same thing just because resell.   They're far more in your face with the DRM factor, and again, that's why they exist!  And, the only argument I made against the physical copies was that they attempted to do DRM on them originally, gave up, and then they got more in your face about it by creating digital media that is heavily controlled by DRM.   But, I'm fine with not arguing further.

Digital still isn't DRM. By your logic anything that is digital or physical designed for one platform over another, free or paid, is DRM. Which is retarded.

Question, is VLC Player loaded with DRM? How about Blender? Both are free and open source, but only available digitally. So, oh shit, those evil, free, non-profit DRMers!

 

 

22 hours ago, Yeroh said:

I just hate the fact that every single company nowadays is making me install additional bloatware I neither want nor need.

 

I mean, I get it. Companies don't want to pay Valve a substantial amount of money for merely distributing their game, especially when we're talking about big AAA titles that are likely to make a lot of money. I just want to have the option to simply go to a publisher's website, pay for the game I want and install only that. I don't want to customize my Origin profile, manage my Uplay gold access subscription or do whatever in the Epic Games Store community. All of this is needlessly added bloat they're adding to justify the existence of their garbage software. And every single publisher that jumps onto this deserves to be shunned for it, until someone manages to justify the existence of their store by actually providing genuine value.

Genuinely, if we could just straight download games without launchers from the company websites, even with their DRM I'd be happy. That's what GOG does, minus the DRM, and I never felt the need to use their optional launcher thing, until Galaxy 2.0 came out and made a universal launcher for your launchers.

 

21 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Now, I am restricted to buying from where the publisher decides, I usually have to install their bloatware, and now the games come with heavy performance impacting bloatware themselves which pirates get around!   Heck, if I do the steam family and friends thing I can't even play a Doom Eternal or Borderlands 3 without kicking my roommate out of Doom 3 BFG because "library in use"!  This is why I hate the digital bs more.

False. Pirates are still using the bloatware, they're just feeding the bloatware lies to convince the DRM that it's a legitimate copy. Except for that one Assassins Creed game where they literally went through all the code manually and stripped out every line of Denuvo.

I think that's more of a Steam issue, which is exceptionally annoying, otherwise I'd share my library with my brother, but using Wallpaper Engine locks him out of doing anything.

[RonnieOP]

34 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

PC gaming as a whole is the sum of all games. Earlier I was making the point that exclusives are cancer, because they destroy competition, since there is no competition with a monopoly.

 

In the end, Steam and Epic do not compete with each other, since gamers have to get both if they so happen to want exclusive games from each shop. Steam and Epic would be in competition if gamers could choose either and still get all the games they want. Like I can either buy physical copies of console games on amazon or some other shop. There is actual competition going on.

 

 

They do compete with one another.

 

One of the ways they compete with eachother is what games are exclusive to whichever platform.

 

Competition isnt just on the consumer side. Its on the side of the devs/publishers as well. 

[Bramimond]

@RonnieOP The product they are selling is games and when nobody else is allowed to sell one of these games, they have a monopoly on this game and are not in competition. They are in competition on games that are not exclusive to their platform, yes.

 

From a consumer point of view I'm not going to support vendors who want to force consumers with bought monopolies to use their shop. Monopolies are cancer.

 

The only way I see as a consumer to resist this is to not buy from shops engaging in these practices.

[RonnieOP]

4 hours ago, Bramimond said:

@RonnieOP The product they are selling is games and when nobody else is allowed to sell one of these games, they have a monopoly on this game and are not in competition. They are in competition on games that are not exclusive to their platform, yes.

 

From a consumer point of view I'm not going to support vendors who want to force consumers with bought monopolies to use their shop. Monopolies are cancer.

 

The only way I see as a consumer to resist this is to not buy from shops engaging in these practices.

These practices will never ever stop. Never.

 

If you went by your mindset the vast majority of games you would not play.

 

Epic, steam, ea, blizzard all have exclusives and then epics unreal engine is used everywhere.

 

But again having exclusive titles doesnt mean there isnt competition. 

[TechyBen]

I just found out... it also has a Cachpa to login to my own games. GAH! Horrid (If I give correct login details, don't ask for a cachpa, but *do* if I fail...).

[Bramimond]

17 hours ago, RonnieOP said:

But again having exclusive titles doesnt mean there isnt competition. 

It means exactly that for the consumer. Going back to the Fortnite example, you can buy it from Epic or not at all. No competition.

 

And that is the kind of competition that matters. If you can't choose between either Steam or Epic, but have to get both, they aren't competing with each other. If you have to get Netflix, Prime and Disney, they aren't competing with each other. If there are competing products, consumers only need one. Take a smartphone. You don't have to buy three smartphones just to call all your friends because they get locked into their vendors. That's stupid. Yet for some reason it's acceptable that you need to buy three streaming services just to watch your three favorite shows, if they happen to be spread across the services evenly.

[Yoinkerman]

I've already got enough fatigue using the steam launcher I don't need more 

[AthruNe]

Here's my opinion based on what I think and what others have posted.

I don't like how they are doing this small monopoly thing with their exclusivity deals..

On 3/26/2020 at 8:39 AM, RonnieOP said:

These practices will never ever stop. Never.,(.......), But again having exclusive titles doesnt mean there isnt competition. 

Maybe they won't ever stop trying to some extent to do this kind of stuff, but that doesn't make me just want to accept it and have exlusive deals like this become a regular thing. It only takes a little bit of the gaming community to accept or be okay with something before it can start spreading like wildfire. Just look at lootboxes and paid DLC. It started out with just a few games, and just some cosmetic stuff, but then went crazy. If people just wouldn't have bought games that did this stuff, it wouldn't have become what it has today.  In case you haven't already seen one of the first comments on this post, the Epic Game Store is seriously lacking in features compared to steam and other platforms. I actually agree a bit that steam needs to do better, I think they take probably a bigger cut than they should, so they could really use some good competition to help them improve. However, that's not what epic is doing, nobody is choosing to use their platform because its better or they like the way they do things. Most people who use it only use it because they have to. I'll repeat, if the Epic Games Store had most of the features steam has and didn't do these exclusive deals, I would love to support them. At least so long as they don't start leaking things to China or start using China's backing to have unreasonably low prices and force everyone out of the market to have a monopoly or something. 

[RonnieOP]

7 minutes ago, AthruNe said:

Here's my opinion based on what I think and what others have posted.

I don't like how they are doing this small monopoly thing with their exclusivity deals..

Maybe they won't ever stop trying to some extent to do this kind of stuff, but that doesn't make me just want to accept it and have exlusive deals like this become a regular thing. It only takes a little bit of the gaming community to accept or be okay with something before it can start spreading like wildfire. Just look at lootboxes and paid DLC. It started out with just a few games, and just some cosmetic stuff, but then went crazy. If people just wouldn't have bought games that did this stuff, it wouldn't have become what it has today.  In case you haven't already seen one of the first comments on this post, the Epic Game Store is seriously lacking in features compared to steam and other platforms. I actually agree a bit that steam needs to do better, I think they take probably a bigger cut than they should, so they could really use some good competition to help them improve. However, that's not what epic is doing, nobody is choosing to use their platform because its better or they like the way they do things. Most people who use it only use it because they have to. I'll repeat, if the Epic Games Store had most of the features steam has and didn't do these exclusive deals, I would love to support them. At least so long as they don't start leaking things to China or start using China's backing to have unreasonably low prices and force everyone out of the market to have a monopoly or something. 

You act like exclusive are a new thing we need to accept. This has been the norm for over a decade.

 

Nothing has changed except for a new player in the game