Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

[poochyena]

Summary

 

Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

 

Quotes

Quote

Today the game maker moved to acquire Bandcamp, an online music-streaming service that revolves around DRM-free purchases of MP3s, FLACs, and other audio files. The news emerged via press releases from both Bandcamp and Epic on Wednesday. As of press time, neither side of the deal has clarified its financial terms.

The move follows increasingly aggressive steps by Epic to become an entirely new kind of digital media company in the near future.

 

My thoughts

This is the most disappointing news I have heard in months in the tech space. I love bandcamp, its one of the few places you can buy high quality music files without paying a premium. Why would Epic want bandcamp?

 

Sources

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/epic-games-begins-to-show-its-more-than-games-acquires-bandcamp/

[AbydosOne]

13 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Why would Epic want bandcamp?

I think the boring answer is "money wants to buy things" (especially profitable or otherwise exploitable things).

 

Guess I should probably snap up those few EPs I'm been procrastinating on buying...

[LAwLz]

I think we should wait and see what Epic does with bandcamp before crying and saying bandcamp is ruined. 

Who knows, maybe the service will stay the same or maybe even get better? 

 

I think Epic has done a ton of great things with their game store and I genuinely don't understand all the resentment people have against them. 

[Fnige]

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I genuinely don't understand all the resentment people have against them. 

Exclusivity deals. Thats generally what people have against them iirc

[poochyena]

12 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think we should wait and see what Epic does with bandcamp before crying and saying bandcamp is ruined. 

Who knows, maybe the service will stay the same or maybe even get better? 

 

I think Epic has done a ton of great things with their game store and I genuinely don't understand all the resentment people have against them. 

Bandcamp is the place for indie musicians as far as I'm aware, so a big corporation buying it up just really ruins much of the appeal to it for me. Its like buying fruit and vegetables at Walmart vs buying them at a farmers market. I'm worried they'll do what Etsy did when they got a new CEO, turn the marketplace from a chill space for small business owners to sell what they made, to being hyper competitive, turning you against other sellers, and trying to maximize profits as much as possible to compete against big players like amazon, and anyone who don't want to aggressively compete gets blacklisted.

[LAwLz]

7 minutes ago, FnigePython said:

Exclusivity deals. Thats generally what people have against them iirc

Yeah exclusivity deals are not exactly great, but is that really it? 

All stores on the PC, including Steam, has that. If that's the worst they have done then they are essentially saints. 

[Avocado Diaboli]

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think Epic has done a ton of great things with their game store and I genuinely don't understand all the negativity surrounding them. 

It's because they're not Valve and because gamers have an irrational hatred for all other launchers that aren't Steam for some reason. Same with Uplay, EA Desktop (formerly Origin) et al. Neither of those ever bothered me to any degree. Is it DRM? Sure. But so is that USB dongle Steinberg forces me to permanently sacrifice a USB port to in addition to having to run their licensing app that makes sure that I'm really allowed to use Cubase. And all of those game launchers are vastly less intrusive and infinitely more useful, even with multiple launchers starting a conga line of DRM checks whenever you start a game, which I guess is another common criticism. One DRM scheme is apparently ok, but as soon as there's a second one, it crosses a line for some people.

 

I'm not ready to proclaim Epic the second coming of Christ at this point, they're as much a corporation as Valve and therefore inherently adversarial to me as a customer. But they're also not Satan incarnate, despite their aggressive exclusivity deals, which hoenstly don't bother me. I got the Tony Hawk 1 + 2 remaster on there because it's exclusive to them, in addition to over 200 free games at this point. That's more than fair. 

 

That being said, without knowing what Epic's actual endgame here is with Bandcamp, it's not worth speculating over it. That goes doubly for that news article from ars technica that really has a gonzo slant to it that is entirely unwarranted.

[Biohazard777]

36 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think Epic has done a ton of great things with their game store and I genuinely don't understand all the resentment people have against them. 

Exclusivity nonsense.
Tier F support.

Store that doesn't have a basket?

Store that doesn't have gifting?

No user reviews.
No game community pages / forums.

No user market.

No Linux support.

Constantly falling behind on their roadmap.

Dozens of other small features missing I won't even bother naming.

 

Great things, you mean lower sale cut and gifting games to users (buying their way into the market)?

[Lightwreather]

Well, so long as it doesn't get turned into a storming subscription service or introduce changes that hurt producers, I'm fine. But having a tech giant breathing down your back is a tad going to be annoying

[mr moose]

57 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Well, so long as it doesn't get turned into a storming subscription service or introduce changes that hurt producers, I'm fine. But having a tech giant breathing down your back is a tad going to be annoying

If the tech based companies start to buy up and change all the music services like bandcamp, distrokid etc,  then new musicians will be back in that awkward spot just after naptser where you can't make money on the internet and the big boys won't let you into the spot light for a chance.  

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Exclusivity nonsense.
Tier F support.

Store that doesn't have a basket?

Store that doesn't have gifting?

No user reviews.
No game community pages / forums.

No user market.

No Linux support.

Constantly falling behind on their roadmap.

Dozens of other small features missing I won't even bother naming.

 

Great things, you mean lower sale cut and gifting games to users (buying their way into the market)?

So do I understand you correctly. You think that:

A product missing features = the company behind the product is cartoonisly evil and should be mistrusted? 

[Fnige]

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

A product missing features = the company behind the product is cartoonisly evil and should be mistrusted? 

Im not too sure how you made that connection with what they said at all

[Brooksie359]

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So do I understand you correctly. You think that:

A product missing features = the company behind the product is cartoonisly evil and should be mistrusted? 

I think some people are resentful that epic is choosing to compete by trying to force people onto their platform in the way of exclusives which tbh sorta makes sense by human nature. Nobody wants to feel like they are being forced to use a certain service. On top of that they aren't adding features that would make the platform better and rather doing exclusives and free games to try and buy people into using their platform. 

[Blademaster91]

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So do I understand you correctly. You think that:

A product missing features = the company behind the product is cartoonisly evil and should be mistrusted? 

You're completely ignoring their first point of Epic doing exclusivity deals, which IMO is terrible for the market, and I think such a company shouldn't be trusted with buying up other companies since they bribe game publishers into only putting titles on EGS, a game launcher that lacks features most other game launchers have like a shopping basket, or even basic features like being able to pause a download.

[Avocado Diaboli]

8 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Exclusivity nonsense.
Tier F support.

Store that doesn't have a basket?

Store that doesn't have gifting?

No user reviews.
No game community pages / forums.

No user market.

No Linux support.

Constantly falling behind on their roadmap.

Dozens of other small features missing I won't even bother naming.

They have a cart now, for one. Also, remember when Steam came out with Half-Life 2? It was godawful. It took years for Steam to become decent in the first place and even more years for it to become useful in many other areas and have many of the features you tout. So let's cut someone new entering the market some slack.

 

And a user market? You know that trading cards and in-game items are basically gen 0 of NFTs, worthless crap for you to buy that Valve gets a cut from every time they get sold, right? Because once the money is in your Steam wallet, it stays there, no way to withdraw it. So any money you do earn on it still eventually goes to Valve. It also caused a massive flood of cheap shitty asset flip games to be put onto Steam because some enterprising people found away to make money by offering up enough trading cards that even if they only sold them for a few pennies, the sheer volume would make it worthwhile. Being on Steam used to be a privilege for good games until Greenlight came along and Valve later dropped the requirements down to a payment of $100. Try looking through new releases these days and find something worthwhile that isn't a perpetual best-seller or a game with a big marketing push behind it. Discoverability is shit on Steam.

 

And don't forget the godawful partnership they entered Bethesda to provide paid mods, trying to strong-arm themselves into a hitherto free market to try and make a profit for themselves under the guise of "rewarding mod creators". At least Epic don't actively hurt the people making content by trying to strong-arm themselves into the storefront market with exclusives. 

[cretsiah]

8 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Exclusivity nonsense.
Tier F support.

Store that doesn't have a basket?

Store that doesn't have gifting?

No user reviews.
No game community pages / forums.

No user market.

No Linux support.

Constantly falling behind on their roadmap.

Dozens of other small features missing I won't even bother naming.

 

Great things, you mean lower sale cut and gifting games to users (buying their way into the market)?

ok some of those are a problem........

 

but

- giving away free games, i wont complain, helps my bank balance when i cant afford a game.

- no linux support ?? well true but you can use heroic launcher and that can be used on linux with either your wine build or proton as simple as looking in settings for the game (pretty sure one of my video's shows me swapping between wine version 5 and proton 6.3.8 to get the game to launch )

- I DO however have to log-in via web browser to acquire the games and go to check out ..... but then i just have to re-fresh heroic launcher to start installing

[Rauten]

10 hours ago, poochyena said:

Why would Epic want bandcamp?

I was also scratching my head, and then a thought popped into my head...

 

Music/sound packs in the UE developer store?
Could be pretty cool for small devs using UE, as well as small musicians that could do with a bit of extra income & exposure.

[Vishera]

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

It's because they're not Valve and because gamers have an irrational hatred for all other launchers that aren't Steam for some reason. Same with Uplay, EA Desktop (formerly Origin) et al. Neither of those ever bothered me to any degree. Is it DRM? Sure. But so is that USB dongle Steinberg forces me to permanently sacrifice a USB port to in addition to having to run their licensing app that makes sure that I'm really allowed to use Cubase. And all of those game launchers are vastly less intrusive and infinitely more useful, even with multiple launchers starting a conga line of DRM checks whenever you start a game, which I guess is another common criticism. One DRM scheme is apparently ok, but as soon as there's a second one, it crosses a line for some people.

 

I'm not ready to proclaim Epic the second coming of Christ at this point, they're as much a corporation as Valve and therefore inherently adversarial to me as a customer. But they're also not Satan incarnate, despite their aggressive exclusivity deals, which hoenstly don't bother me. I got the Tony Hawk 1 + 2 remaster on there because it's exclusive to them, in addition to over 200 free games at this point. That's more than fair. 

 

That being said, without knowing what Epic's actual endgame here is with Bandcamp, it's not worth speculating over it. That goes doubly for that news article from ars technica that really has a gonzo slant to it that is entirely unwarranted.

????????????

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

It's because they're not Valve and because gamers have an irrational hatred for all other launchers that aren't Steam for some reason.

It's not for "some reason",when you have dozens of launchers that publishers force you to install even if you bought through steam or because their games are exclusive to their launcher is extremely annoying.

I don't want to install the dreaded Rockstar launcher (which is awfully bad) just to Max Payne 3 which i bought on Steam,

I don't want to install Battle .Net just for playing Call of Duty Warzone.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Same with Uplay

It's Ubisoft Connect,Uplay is no more.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

EA Desktop (formerly Origin) et al.

EA Desktop and Origin are different things...

They co-exist with Origin being the main product.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Neither of those ever bothered me to any degree.

Origin and Ubisoft Connect are OK,

I don't have an issue with them either as long as i am not forced to use their launcher on top of Steam. (For example a lot of EA Games on steam do just that)

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Is it DRM? Sure. But so is that USB dongle Steinberg forces me to permanently sacrifice a USB port to in addition to having to run their licensing app that makes sure that I'm really allowed to use Cubase.

That's not the issue,On Steam they already Steam's DRM (which is applied to any Steam game out there with no exceptions).

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

And all of those game launchers are vastly less intrusive and infinitely more useful,

I don't want to install a different launcher for every game i play...

Grand Theft Auto V - Rockstar Launcher

Skyrim Special Edition - Bethesda Launcher

Battlefield 4 - Origin

Call of Duty Warzone - Battle.net

Fortnite - Epic Games Store

Counter Strike Global Offensive - Steam

 

It's freaking frustrating!

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

One DRM scheme is apparently ok, but as soon as there's a second one, it crosses a line for some people.

As long as it's not an inconvenience it's OK,

Having to launch two launchers just to play a game is annyoing.

 

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

I'm not ready to proclaim Epic the second coming of Christ at this point, they're as much a corporation as Valve and therefore inherently adversarial to me as a customer.

No,Valve is different,they genuinely care about the customer and one of the most pro consumer corporations on earth.

That's why people call Valve's CEO Lord GabeN!

He really cares and it shows!

The people in the community really like him and that includes me as well!

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

But they're also not Satan incarnate, despite their aggressive exclusivity deals, which hoenstly don't bother me. I got the Tony Hawk 1 + 2 remaster on there because it's exclusive to them, in addition to over 200 free games at this point. That's more than fair. 

Steam is the preferable game store of most people including me,

I just want to play my games on my preferable store and exclusivity deals like that just hamper it - That's the issue.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

That being said, without knowing what Epic's actual endgame here is with Bandcamp, it's not worth speculating over it. That goes doubly for that news article from ars technica that really has a gonzo slant to it that is entirely unwarranted.

People are afraid that Epic will mess Bandcamp up and it won't be the Bandcamp they knew and loved anymore.

[Biohazard777]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

So do I understand you correctly. You think that:

A product missing features = the company behind the product is cartoonisly evil and should be mistrusted? 

You didn't understand correctly.

First of all, why are you putting words in my mouth: "cartoonishly evil"? I didn't call them that. I replied to this:

10 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think Epic has done a ton of great things with their game store and I genuinely don't understand all the resentment people have against them. 

Please don't do that. I am not ridiculing you, don't ridicule me.

They've already shown their true colors with exclusivity / timed exclusivity BS. 

Smaller cut (12% EGS) compared to (30% Steam) is all great on paper for the consumer, competition is good.
But as things are it ain't a competition, EGS dumping prices while offering sh** tier support and  poor software solution isn't competition.

I don't want that kind of competition, I don't want sh** services for less money... Also funny thing about that, at the end of the day that price cut difference usually isn't paid by the end user but by some high position executives not getting hefty bonuses (Randy Pitchford comes to mind). But even if it did mean that I would be the one paying the the difference between 12% and 30%, I will gladly pay it and get all that Steam has to offer.
Here are few things I didn't list but I'll include now:
- Remote Play Together
- Game stats and APIs that are actually useful for the consumer, like info about daily player count for a game... because if I am buying a 3yo MP only game I would like to know if there are people actually playing it or not.

 

I've provided dozens of arguments with which you can agree / disagree / disprove, that is fine... but please no more childish "Valve fanboy" / "Epic hater" nonsense.

Now, if you could please answer my question: What great things has Epic done?

 

-------------------------------------

 

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

They have a cart now, for one.

Good. Should have been there from day one, but better late than never.
 

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Also, remember when Steam came out with Half-Life 2? It was godawful. It took years for Steam to become decent in the first place and even more years for it to become useful in many other areas and have many of the features you tout. So let's cut someone new entering the market some slack.

It was a shit show, I agree, but also let us not forget they pretty much pioneered the whole store / launcher thing. Software and tools on top of which Steam and EGS are built on top of are a lot different, lots has changed for the better for software devs since 2003.
As for cutting EGS slack, sorry no can do, partly because it is objectively easier to develop software in 2018, partly because they surely aren't lacking budget to make a decent product but instead are prioritizing on stuff like exclusives and free games to buy into the market.

 

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

And a user market? You know that trading cards and in-game items are basically gen 0 of NFTs, worthless crap for you to buy that Valve gets a cut from every time they get sold, right? 

Was market abused by some, for sure, but at the same time I had fun buying and selling my CS:GO skins. I am well aware Valve got a cut from each sale, if you don't like that system then don't use it, it wasn't a requirement in order to play the games that supported the steam market.

 

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Because once the money is in your Steam wallet, it stays there, no way to withdraw it.

Yeah, again, well aware of that. Can you cash out VBucks / Fortnite skins?

I didn't call out Epic over VBucks or microtransactions... but as it is now, you can't trade or buy / sell skins with other people in Fortnite (if I am not mistaken). That feature simply ain't there. If you dislike the feature fine don't use it, but for some of us it is a good feature.

 

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Being on Steam used to be a privilege for good games until Greenlight came along and Valve later dropped the requirements down to a payment of $100. Try looking through new releases these days and find something worthwhile that isn't a perpetual best-seller or a game with a big marketing push behind it. Discoverability is shit on Steam.

Agreed, Steam is starting to look more and more like Google Play when it comes to discoverability and shameless asset flips. They could and should do better on that front.
That being said, I don't see how Epic is "doing great" things in that regard... I can't even glance over user reviews to quickly filter out at least some of the trash quickly.

Here, let's take a look at "Wife Quest":

Spoiler

No Reviews (should be between Follow Us and Specification)... because OpenCritic draws a blank on this game.
Meanwhile on Steam:

Spoiler

Oh and I don't play retro platformers... nor am into these anime tidies, so great discovery over at Epic for me.

 

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

And don't forget the godawful partnership they entered Bethesda to provide paid mods, trying to strong-arm themselves into a hitherto free market to try and make a profit for themselves under the guise of "rewarding mod creators". At least Epic don't actively hurt the people making content by trying to strong-arm themselves into the storefront market with exclusives. 

Would Valve profit from a cut of sold mods, for sure... Would it have led to better user generated content given enough time to mature, we will never know. What rolled out was piss poor and backlash was well deserved.

[mecarry30]

50 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I don't want to install a different launcher for every game i play...

Grand Theft Auto V - Rockstar Launcher

Skyrim Special Edition - Bethesda Launcher

Battlefield 4 - Origin

Call of Duty Warzone - Battle.net

Fortnite - Epic Games Store

Counter Strike Global Offensive - Steam

 

It's freaking frustrating!

As long as it's not an inconvenience it's OK,

Having to launch two launchers just to play a game is annyoing.

So basically just a single launcher for all games would be preferable? Like a single app store?

[FliP0x]

3 minutes ago, mecarry30 said:

So basically just a single launcher for all games would be preferable? Like a single app store?

It would be the most user friendly, but same as in the hardware space, competition is always a good thing and especially needed in the digital distribution market.

 

Everyone has exclusives, they make those deals to gain relevance over their competitors. I read people complain about the free (paid) games that Epic provides. Well, I don't complain about free games, especially when we get really good (and costly) title once in a while. I haven't ever gotten anything from Valve.

 

The Epic Games Store is lacking features, there's no denying, but comparing it against Steam, which has a 15-year advantage, is unrealistic.

 

As for bandcamp, I don't think too much (or anything) will change with the platform.

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

It's not for "some reason",when you have dozens of launchers that publishers force you to install even if you bought through steam or because their games are exclusive to their launcher is extremely annoying.

First world problem if I've ever heard of one. Did you know that there are games you can't get on any of the launchers and have to manually track down, install and even update? This is just whining on an elevated level.

 

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

That's not the issue,On Steam they already Steam's DRM (which is applied to any Steam game out there with no exceptions).

Which is very easily broken. Hence the additional layers. And no, this isn't to excuse DRM. This is an explanation.

 

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

I don't want to install a different launcher for every game i play...

Grand Theft Auto V - Rockstar Launcher

Skyrim Special Edition - Bethesda Launcher

Battlefield 4 - Origin

Call of Duty Warzone - Battle.net

Fortnite - Epic Games Store

Counter Strike Global Offensive - Steam

 

It's freaking frustrating!

 

As long as it's not an inconvenience it's OK,

Having to launch two launchers just to play a game is annyoing.

Oh woe is me, for I have to launch two applications to play a game. Cry me a river.

 

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

No,Valve is different,they genuinely care about the customer and one of the most pro consumer corporations on earth.

That's why people call Valve's CEO Lord GabeN!

He really cares and it shows!

The people in the community really like him and that includes me as well!

No they fucking don't. They care about money and it just so happens that this objective currently aligns with what customers want from them. I hope this is a failed attempt at sarcasm that I'm not getting, because if it isn't, this is just sad.

 

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

Steam is the preferable game store of most people including me,

I just want to play my games on my preferable store and exclusivity deals like that just hamper it - That's the issue.

And I would love to be able to do all my shopping at a single store but unfortunately not every store carries every item in the world for me to buy it at one single convenient location. Why can't I buy Target's inventory at Walmart? Never mind that this wish for a single unified place to get everything is basically a tacit push for monopolization. And you certainly wouldn't want that.

 

45 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

As for cutting EGS slack, sorry no can do, partly because it is objectively easier to develop software in 2018, partly because they surely aren't lacking budget to make a decent product but instead are prioritizing on stuff like exclusives and free games to buy into the market.

That's just petty.

[Biohazard777]

2 hours ago, cretsiah said:

- no linux support ?? well true but you can use heroic launcher and that can be used on linux with either your wine build or proton as simple as looking in settings for the game (pretty sure one of my video's shows me swapping between wine version 5 and proton 6.3.8 to get the game to launch )

- I DO however have to log-in via web browser to acquire the games and go to check out ..... but then i just have to re-fresh heroic launcher to start installing

Yeah I know about open source projects like Heroic and Legendary, I was talking about EGS specifically and Epic... they don't officially support it. Heroic and Legendary are not made by Epic, it is made by regular people like you and me, volunteering their time and effort.
 

2 hours ago, cretsiah said:

but

- giving away free games, i wont complain, helps my bank balance when i cant afford a game.

Frankly, vast majority of games they hand out aren't that good. Those that are good are usually old, I've had most of them already or could have bought them elsewhere heavily discounted, very few of them were new good titles... and even with those few new good titles usualy had are some problems, like timed exclusive nonsense (like WWZ) or base game only and to get the full story buy some DLCs (from Epic, like Remnant or Control) which don't get me wrong isn't as bad, but still something to consider.
Anyhow yeah, I can't argue that for the consumers giving out free stuff is always good hah. EGS is a very interesting entry point for new PC gamers, especially if they procure said accounts with all the previous games from certain places for cheap. But for older gamers, like me... honestly the value I've received from free games isn't that big or important.

 

34 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

That's just petty.

I believe it is objective. As someone who has developed software for a long time I said that developing software in early 2000s was harder than it was in late 2010s. You are also a developer if I am not mistaken, you disagree with my observation?
Also they had 3+ years to fix their stuff. Seriously they could have made new EGS from scratch in those 3+ years with more features than it has now, even with Covid slowing them down. Which begs the question, are some of those user oriented features not implemented on purpose? Or is the team working on EGS understaffed / underfunded or  incompetent?

[AlTech]

18 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think we should wait and see what Epic does with bandcamp before crying and saying bandcamp is ruined. 

Who knows, maybe the service will stay the same or maybe even get better? 

 

I think Epic has done a ton of great things with their game store and I genuinely don't understand all the resentment people have against them. 

They turned a perfectly playable game on Steam into an unplayable game if you don't have an Epic Games account (Fallguys) and pulled a game from Steam after it was already released (Rocket League). They're backsliding on the support of the products they bought (also Rocket League) by effectively dropping Linux and Mac support.

 

And overall they're just a really shitty company. I hate Epic's timed exclusives and I hate timed exclusives in general. I hate what they did with Fall Guys and I tried to have Valve refund my copy, they refused. I hate what they did with Rocket League and Valve at that time did refund me for Rocket League.

[Vishera]

49 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

First world problem if I've ever heard of one.

That doesn't make it less of an issue.

But more importantly - What is the logic behind this comment of yours?

You can use that sentence to try invalidating many issues,

But it's unreasonable to use,i could use it against your argument.

There are hungry people in Africa and you argue with me about such trivial matters? - First world problems...

Do you see how unreasonable it is to use that sentence?

49 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Which is very easily broken. Hence the additional layers. And no, this isn't to excuse DRM. This is an explanation.

The Epic Games,Origin,Ubisoft Connect,etc DRMs are as easily broken as Steam's.

A lot of publishers use third party DRMs because the DRM of the launchers don't give much protection, Denuvo,VMProtect are examples for that.

49 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Oh woe is me, for I have to launch two applications to play a game. Cry me a river.

You are just being disrespectful at this point,completely disregarding the issue and then ridiculing me.

49 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

No they fucking don't. They care about money and it just so happens that this objective currently aligns with what customers want from them. I hope this is a failed attempt at sarcasm that I'm not getting, because if it isn't, this is just sad.

With such stubbornness there is no point in continuing this argument.

49 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

And I would love to be able to do all my shopping at a single store but unfortunately not every store carries every item in the world for me to buy it at one single convenient location. Why can't I buy Target's inventory at Walmart?

Third party and first party products are different things.

Just like you can't get Counter Strike Global Offensive on the Epic Game Store,you can't get Fortnite on Steam even though those stores do offer third party titles.

But third party titles are a different matter,they can be released everywhere.

Imagine Cheetos or Coca Cola announcing an exclusivity deal with Walmart for an entire year but you prefer to buy your Cheetos at target...

49 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Never mind that this wish for a single unified place to get everything is basically a tacit push for monopolization. And you certainly wouldn't want that.

Competition is a good thing,but exclusivity deals are just dirty.