Disney Invests 1.5 Billion in Epic Games to create Disney branded titles

[SimplyChunk]

The other day I learned that it was Steve Jobs that sold Pixar to Disney after first buying it from George Lucas

[Kisai]

On 2/9/2024 at 8:48 AM, LAwLz said:

 

I don't think there really is anything they could do to "make the app good and worth using", because at the end of the day it's just a store and launcher.

They have already tried the few things they could do, like lowering their fees to entice developers. They are giving away free games. And yet, because of the massive barrier to entry created by Steam's dominance they can't succeed.

 

Do you have any suggestion on how they could make their store better, in a way that you think would meaningfully shift users away from Steam? Because I don't think they can.

 

 

The EGS store / Launcher has a long ways to go to be usable and appealing. Let's start with the number one gripe. Why does it take 15+ seconds to open the library? Why do I have to re-download everything? 

 

This is about as user-unfriendly as it comes to people who aren't on unmetered Gbit fiber.

 

Next, duplication. Why can't the Epic store look at what I've purchased on Steam and go "you already own it!" So I don't end up buying it a second or third time? GoG's launcher at least lets you do this.

 

But exclusivity is ultimately the problem. Because if I want to play X game that is on EGS but might come to steam in 12 months, either I have to sit out, or buy it on EGS and then hope I don't accidently buy it a second or third time later when it ends up on Steam.

 

It would be preferable is there was a way to either go "you already have this" or "add to EGS store games I already own" , like you would with Steam and iTunes with music.

 

This duplication issue becomes an even more annoying problem with games that save to paths that aren't the games install directory. Because now an install of a game that saves to appdata on steam stomps on a install from EGS that also does.

 

The simplest way to avoid all the annoying things is to just not use the epic store if the game is on GOG or Steam, and not to buy the game a second time which is only able to be done with the GOG launcher.

 

 

As for Disney's investments. Honestly this feels like they want to make a Star Wars Fortnite crossover a more permanent feature. Sure it's pretty fun when it was in fortnite, but what was in fortnite was more of a "here's a few characters from Star Wars, and some wink*wink* inspired locations"

 

Getting other Disney properties into Fortnite might not be as easy, as the princess movies don't really have much latitude to put them in since the movies themselves are targeted at children. Though there are a few (eg Treasure Planet, 20000 leagues under the sea ( or Atlantis), Flight of the Navigator, Toy Story) which are arguably just a setting and really just need Disney to sign off on the use of the creatures/aliens.

 

 

 

 

[Godlygamer23]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The EGS store / Launcher has a long ways to go to be usable and appealing. Let's start with the number one gripe. Why does it take 15+ seconds to open the library? Why do I have to re-download everything? 

While I totally agree with what you're saying, there are ways around having to redownload games. You just have to be a bit creative when re-adding games that you've already installed.

[Kisai]

3 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

While I totally agree with what you're saying, there are ways around having to redownload games. You just have to be a bit creative when re-adding games that you've already installed.

Which is not a good user experience, especially when you can just move things in steam and not have to do that.

[Godlygamer23]

7 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Which is not a good user experience, especially when you can just move things in steam and not have to do that.

Totally agree. Just saying it's not impossible, and Epic does allow some games to be simply re-added using the existing folder structure, without having to do anything goofy, which as you mentioned...the goofiness is unacceptable, especially if Epic is trying to compete with Steam.

 

On a side note, I purchased Ratchet and Clank Rifts Apart when it first came out, and I wanted to install it to my SSD...That's an easy task, EXCEPT Epic gave the folder an absolutely stupid name.

32c5bc05670d455fb601c8d97a35297c

That above is the folder name currently. That's what Epic Launcher chose, and if I tried to change the folder location, it would complain that the name wasn't the proper format...It's literally what the program itself chose!

 

I had to make the respective SSD the default storage location in order to be able to install it there. Talk about nonsense.

 

I had to interact with Epic's customer service during that ordeal, and that was a problem too.