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I'm convinced that steam considers piracy to be its main competition. They design their products with the assumption that the customer is fully capable of getting any game they want for free.
Gabe has literally gone on record saying that piracy primarily occurs when service is terrible. By providing great service piracy decreased substantially. He has given some examples, one I remember was selling games in Russia. Piracy used to be HUGE in Russia. Valve found that buy releasing the game in Russia at the same time as the rest of the world and with Russian localisation day 1 the piracy ceased almost entirely. Because prior to that most game companies wouldn't even do Russian localisation and would only do a small number of sales to Russia, shipped from out of country, and only like a year after the games initial release... no wonder the Russians were pirating... they just wanted to play the games and know what was being said. Something that made piracy necessary because the games weren't being sold and only the pirates were modding in translations. By addressing just those two issues valve made a huge amount of sales and the amount of pirated copies in Russia was negligible.
For someone to play the sims 4 in its current entirety (all expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs, tiny kits with free base and two free dlcs) totals to over $1400 USD (as of Dec 2025). Thats just an abhorrent amount of money to spend on a game that still lacks a lot of content compared to its predecessors and is extremely buggy (Get to Work is nearly impossible to play bc some of the career paths just don’t work and EA refuses to fix it).
I agree with gabe, im fully capable of pirating ALL games i have, but steam is so good, that pirating the game isnt even Fun to do because It Will not have the steam features
It's not even just Gabe saying that, nor is he the first, we just have mountains of data supporting that. It was actually the music industry that learned this first when they fought a legal battle on piracy, failed, and then legal digital music showed up and music piracy as a problem vanished overnight.
Funnily enough it's also why video piracy is coming back even though netflix "killed" it. All the different streaming services created a new service failure.
Would this mean that as long as you were cut off the internet, epic couldn't rip the free games away from you? Or would the exe file have some sort of process that makes sure it can communicate with epic before it runs?
I love collecting free games, but I know one day I could log in and it's all gone
I actually prefer the GoG Galaxy launcher for that.
You can link all your accounts - Steam, GoG, Epic, Ubisoft, EA, Playstation, Xbox... And it will collect all your games from all of them, so you can know instantly what game you have on which account.
They give free games every week but almost all of them are dogshit nobody knows about. All the good ones are only free in holidays especially around Christmas/December. Hogwarts Legacy is free rn.
I took ignorantly following "friends" (not rly but at the time I thought) onto a game or two on there and riot and got punished every time by secret install locations and awful removal processes on each. <_>
I mean ..epic didn't even have a shopping cart for fucks sake till months after, like I am all for competition but epic doesn't feel like it is trying very hard to be a store.
Ive been collecting epic store free games for about 5 years. Got over a 100 and havnt played a single one. Mostly coz when i click on a game to remind mr what its about it shoots me straight to instillation. Hate that. So dont play out of spite
Don't forget to add it took years for them to get basic features like a shopping cart while giving the excuse that they're brand new. Also Sweeny(Epics CEO or whatever he is now) is the biggest douche bag in video gaming and says some of the dumbest stuff imaginable.
Steam also has some free games. If you go to search, set the price to 0 and only show special deals (discounts) you can sometimes finde free games. Got some already. I got a Warhammer 40k game even. One of the RTS ones.
If people wanted free games they would pirate them. Steam has proved what people really want is to be treated fairly, have easy access to their library, quick downloads, and non-nonsense policies like steams refund policy.
I would rather spend a little on steam and have a good experience then get a game on Epic and have a bad experience.
Epic also had a stint of swooping in on almost complete (often kickstarter funded) indie games and offering buckets of money at the devs in return for Epic Game Store exclusive distribution. Phoenix Point was one of the more high profile instances of this. Epic did this to force out a niche with minimal development risk, but it often backfired onto the developers.
I still check the specials every day to see if anyone slapped a 100% discount on their game. Got games such as Black Desert and 2 Warhammer games thanks to frequently checking.
The thing is Valve with Gaben at the helm really cares about steams user-base, it’s always customers first.
They have YEARS of good will whilst epic games tried everything in their power to buy their way to the top, the epic games store is just way worse of an experience over all too and I doubt epic would be even half as good to people when it comes to customer service they would be downright malicious.
TLDR you can’t buy trust.
Steam is a monopoly because they are leagues better of a service than anyone else on the market.
He said he would rather buy a game for full price on Steam, than get it for free on Epic. If 2 restaurants offered you a good meal, would you choose to get it for free or to pay?
I guess a better analogy would be getting a free meal at a restaurant with horrible service vs paying for the same meal at a restaurant with outstanding service
Oh come on. Sure Epic is not as feature complete, and it's not as good for finding new games. But when you have a game, you click install, it installs, you click play it launches it. The comparison with a restaurant with a bad service isn't accurate
Reminds me of the free Hari Krishna Dinner in New Orleans vs Commander's Palace ... world's best service and fantastic free food in the same city. What a town!
It might be the same meal from both places but at one place the waiter is going to spit in your food, let it sit in the back until it's cold, and seat you at an outdoor table while its raining
Its more like you have 2 restaurants one is a large family owned franchise diner that focuses on treating the customer well and while some employees may want more of the diner's profits for themselves the diner has made the food service industry what it is and has kept it healthly while the similar catering industry has gone to complete shit.
The second is a corpo thing that is trying to win over the customers of the family diner in the area by offering free stuff but if it gets a foothold in town it'll proceed to shit up the entire industry.
So even though its a bad decisiom short term the smarter people are willing to back the family diner to keep the shitty corpo from fucking up the industry.
steam did not leak my payment data yet, they got my account back in 6 days, and refunded new world despite having 60+ hours on it after its closure notice.
that is way more I could ask for. call me when epic hits that, and when swiney will talks sense.
So genuine question as somebody who hasn't really touched video games in 4-5 years. Why is epic launcher so bad? I remember people being upset about some privacy related stuff, people thought epic=fortnite=cringe, and it's annoying to deal with two launchers, but like what is the actual issue for a normal person.
If you’re a normal person I don’t think you care that much. My only interaction with steam and epic games is just launching my game and then never really interacting with it so I don’t care much.
The obsession and glazing of steam is something I never understood because I’d honestly prefer to skip the step of opening steam wherever possible.
People hated it at first because there were some games that Epic negotiated exclusivity for and players didn't want to have yet another game launcher. That's the main drama I remember from years ago that really started us down the hate train.
Poor UI is the main thing. The marketing is a little more irritating, it takes a bit longer to get from opening the launcher to playing your game, but mostly it's the poor UI.
So a big thing that turned a lot of people against Epic was their attempt to promote it. They offered a lot of money to different developers to sign an exclusivity with Epic and only release their game to that platform (or exclusively for a year).
There's some nuance to this, for a lot of Indie developers, the cash injection from Epic is good for their security and something people can understand and somewhat tolerate, but even bigger companies did the same and they didn't receive the same leniency.
The other issue is that some indie games when seeking crowd funding specifically included steam as a release platform, so some people felt betrayed when they took the exclusivity deal. Other companies during their trailers also advertised they would release on steam to then take the exclusivity deal.
A big issue is also that Epic, according to what I heard and followed, is a lot less feature complete than steam and the launcher itself is slow.
The most recent is also that the CEO, Tim Sweeny, tried to argue against Steam's decision to mark games that used generative AI as such, which in general is not popular with a lot of gamers, so even more dislike for Epic.
My message was different
When your month salary is 500-600 USD, every free game on Epic (especially AAA) is like "OH FUCK FREE CAKE?!"
And then TS drops shit like "ew, i hate receiving 60 USD games for free"
So all i want is to yoink him into situation, where you live for 500-600 USD (also 200-300 already taken away as payment for roof and services)
The debate around other storefronts has gotten ridiculous.
Whatever, I use them all to get the best deals. Although my experience is heavily tilted towards single player games, there is little to no noticable difference between playing on one vs the other outside of GOG not requiring an internet connection to launch most titles due to the lack of drm.
Exactly, those arguments become so ridiculous, these people fanatically hate Epic for giving free games 😆. This really must be the most first-world problem people can have {rich laugh in the background}. We can easily use both platforms, and if we are really anal about some achievements not available in the game we really like, WE CAN buy them on steam as an option ffs. It's like they only operate in black and white. Some particular games have better support on fucking Xbox App on WIndows than on steam, am I supposed to hate steam for this now? I guess I need to if I would follow thier rhetorics 😆.
For me epic doesn't work and I cant figure it out and neither can their people. I open it and i can see the games I own on there but I cant install or open any of them.
Not in a “how are they successful” way. In a “why is nobody copying them?” Way.
Steam has a de-facto near-monopoly on PC gaming and literally all they do to earn it is the bare minimum of “let’s be nice to our customers and give them what they want.”
Because publicly traded companies have to think of short term profits to please shareholders first and foremost, while Valve doesn't. That allowed Steam to focus on building a reliable service and winning over a stable customer base instead of constantly trying to maximize shareholder value in the short term.
Of course, part of it is thanks to Steam having the advantage of being the first online storefront of its kind, giving it a head start. But every possible competitor enshittifying their platform to try and impress shareholders every quarter certainly helped.
Profitable corporations are kind of a thing of the past. You're not trying to make money by selling a product to customers anymore, you're trying to make money by selling the corporation to investors. And investors have zero idea how the economy works.
because they don't have a monopoly, it's that their competition is incompetent. They are at the top, but that's just one of the reqirements to be considered a monopoly.
Steam was copied by Desura, targeted at indie games and having support for macOS and Linux back when Steam was still Windows-only. Steam implemented all the same featues it had in less than half a year and Desura flopped.
These days you can argue https://itch.io is roughly the same.
I just don't like Epic Games because of the developer stuff back in the day.
Like I acknowledge that people like free games
But I don't like screwing over devs because profits.
We get like 2-3 decent games a year, and everything else is recycled garbage from sometime in the last 3-5 years. Namely every single 2K game. Every single CoD. Fighting games are doing the same thing now.
Sooner or later video games are going to become enshittified. The only real studios I trust anymore to make quality games are larian studios, indie companies, riot games, and steam (valve).
Steam takes a 30% fee from every game sale. Although almost every other online store takes this much, it is hard to argue that it is a fair fee for a mostly automated service compared to amount of effort developers put out for their 70% cut. Epic Games store takes nothing from first million sales and 12% from any further sales. I would argue Epic is better for developers at least in this regard.
you still can't remove games from your Epic Games Library. once it's there, it's there, and you can't remove it.
old demos? games you haven't played in years? games you don't want to play anymore? you can only uninstall it, you can't remove it like you can from your Steam Library, you're stuck with it permanently basically.
Steam will waste time and money and their emotional health to support gamers as best they can. Also literally no one else tries to support macos or linux and no one else makes their launcher open source.
The Linux Gaming experience of Steam's co-founder:
Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, frequently gets told to uninstall Dota 2 by other players in-game, a common occurrence he says happens about once a week, but he views it as a sign of the community's passion and enthusiasm, not negativity, and still plays the game daily, loving the community despite the trash talk.
Exactly, it's something these techbros don't seem to realize, if a game developed with AI was just as good as any other game, AI labeling wouldn't be a problem, they are literally admitting that isn't the case by being so uppity about AI labeling.
People hate Epic games because they have done very predatory and anti-consumer practices on entering the market to try and beat steam as the main PC gaming store front. Epic tries to still appear great by handing out free games on a poorly run store front with minimal user features.
Steam just continues to make the user experience better reinforcing customers to stick with it.
First, epic games makes Fortnite, so no need to explain why people don’t like that.
Epic games launcher is also really bloated, for some reason, and seems to want to embed itself into your computer. I think they also got in trouble for harvesting user data without their consent.
Also steam is just objectively the best games store platform. It is super user friendly has access to pretty much everything, offers refunds with no questions asked for any game if played under 2 hours, and is constantly up to date.
Thanks for the reminder. I haven't opened Epic for a long time because the only free games were uninteresting indie games for so long but it's Hogwarts Legacy right now which I wanted to try. I would have missed it.
Steam doesnt control that though. All sales (including 100%) are determined by the publisher (or dev if self-published). Vs the epic launcher free games, which are paid for by Epic.
Steam and Epic Games Store are video game marketplaces for PC.
Steam has a reputation of being a highly competent service that is in most aspects, transparent, reliable and fair. They also build in other related services such as social media features and chats. They also do discounts quite frequently, much steeper than the 10% here. Most PC gamers have a story of picking up a genuinely good 70% or more off deal on Steam.
Whereas Epic... They don't really have much of that. Instead they've tried to compete by buying exclusives and occasionally giving a free game away.
Steam regularly does 75-85% off games. I haven't paid more than 20 bucks for a giant title in 10 years. You add the games to your wishlist and get an email saying the game has gine from 60 to 15
They've given me plenty of free games, and ill download the games and add them to my library. May even play em, depends on the games.
But when a steam sale comes by and the games are on sale I will buy them just to avoid having to use epic. I did that with the bioshock collection a bit ago.
I'll never understand the rabid Steam fan base that will always look down on other platforms. I like Steam and use it regularly, but competition is always beneficial for the consumer.
I'm team epic all the way, not only do they give away free games but they also have better regional pricing compared to steam, and since I live in a country with a pretty much dysfunctional economy the only way I can afford to play games is via Epic. I barely play video games anymore but the ones I do play, I got from Epic because I literally couldn't afford them on Steam
Family sharing makes a lot of bought games feel like multiple free games... Cloud saving and community features for mods and other stuff also feel great...
Epic games gives free games away in an attempt to gain market share. But alot of people still hate epic games.
I haven’t used it myself but there is aggressive Pro-Steam attitude for pc gamers. Not just because of frequent sales, but because (in my personal experience) steam is far more reliable than its competition. It’s also easy to use & has a bunch of other features, & it has a massive library.
Basically people see the free games on epic as a shallow attempt to bribe people to use an inferior platform. If you have enough games on epic, maybe you’ll just switch to it completely (you probably won’t)
My friend told me they were giving away hogwarts this week. He had to beg me to get a 70$ game for free. I whined the entire time i open the app and clicked the button. As soon as he was gone I closed epic games to play more counter strike
A 10% discount from a platform who treats their users well, or a free game from a platform that even my anti virus tries to warn me is malware. No brainer.
Considering I only want one launcher, I never play any of the free games epic gives in the first place, and I like just about everything surrounding steam. Yeah, I'll consider myself a hypocrite lol
Short version: despite giving away free games people prefer Steam over the Epic Games Store
Steam is a platform that is very consumer friendly with reviews and community hubs, so people prefer them over the Epic Games store which has a mixed reputation, especially recently with their CEO on X saying how a tag stating the use of A.I on a product is useless which is a pretty bad take considering that it’s information for the consumer.
sure, but the free game from epic has only hit a game that interested me once and it didn't even interest me that much so I've barely played it.
Meanwhile the 50% discounts or even 75% ones have hit games I really like and have spent quite the hours on it a few times. I mean gosh, terria being ungodly cheap when in discount, celeste with a 75% discount leaving it at a fairly quite cheap price for a blessing
Next I'm waiting for to get hit again is Noita, I don't quite remember the discounts amount, but it was decent too.
Epic got some really bad karma buying up some great games and locking them behind the launcher, along with fortnight.. Then Rocket league, a genuinely great game that now sucks worse then a 1 year owned dyson.
Some people find it fun to log onto Epic games and get the free game, cause it costs them money. Though usually it's a 1500 gem bonus to freeplay6 including 10 summons.
And Steam works, Epic Games Launcher is basicaly a bad running website inside of a worse browser.
early in the epic game launcher's history there was a scandal where it was sniffing around the file system in places it decidedly shouldn't when the user had no input around that.
steam does offer some pretty sweet discounts a few times a year that are opt-in for publishers/developers, but epic got in hot water for putting items on sale that the publishers weren't notified about.
Epic games store is a really bad digital store, and is missing loads of features steam has had for years.
Also, when the epic games store puts a multiplayer game up for free (that normally has a price) users can create hundreds or even thousands of accounts to pick the game up for free. That lets them freely hack multiplayer games without fear of being permanently banned as they can just use a different account. So, in the long run even a single free weekend on Epic Game Store often means endless hackers for the entire life of a game.
The Free Games is literally the only thing Epic Games Store has going for it…
Meanwhile Steam has:
Tons of goodwill built.
Larger library.
User Friendly UI.
Functional messaging.
User profiles beyond achievements.
Rating system that provides player reviews and not just Critic (which has been known to lie before) AND Epic doesn’t even Rate the game off of the Critics either! (Saints Row, the 2022 release, has a “37% Of Critics Recommend” yet Epic still gives it a 4/5 Rating. It’s literally impossible to get below a 4/5 Rating on Epic) They just pull a number out their ass and go “this will trick people into buying this crap!”
epic games is dogshit, despite them handing out free games out like if it was candy, as their launcher is still abysmal, and their only affort to get ahead were timed exclusives and free games.
Reminder that if you hate Epic the best way to express it is to claim all of the free games, download them as many times as possible and never buy anything.
I have an entire library of free games on Epic and I don't even have the launcher installed.
In fact when games that I got for free on Epic go on discount on Steam I still buy them.
It's not for any ideological reason, or because I worship Gaben (catch me idolizing billionaires fucking never), or even because I don't want the Chinese to spy on me (I own a Chinese smartphone, they're already doing that).
It's because the launcher is legitimately just dogshit. I keep Ubisoft Connect installed despite hating Ubisoft and I honestly think that launcher works better than Epic's. I would more readily buy a game off there or off EA's launcher than I would from Epic's.
EA's launcher gave me download speeds I can't even get from Steam. Epic sometimes dips to less than half my top speed, and that top speed is already slow. On top of that, the launcher is glitchy, crash happy, lags for no reason, poorly designed, slow, ugly, unintuitive, refuses to find and link existing game installs, and is honestly just a pain in my rear end.
I appreciate getting games for free, but I've been waiting for years for the launcher to be usable enough for me to play those games without hassle, and it still hasn't happened yet.
The team they have working on that launcher needs to be blacklisted from the entire IT industry.
Epic launcher is the single most ass game launcher ever conceived. I whould rather pay double and have to download jt from some shady Russian website than spend one more waking second trying to run a game on epic launcher.
Epic is just leagues worse than steam, yeah you get a free game every week. But it's a game you'd never buy anyway unless it's Christmas or through Amazon Prime, but even then some of the free games are like 15 bucks. They also release the same games for free often. Out of the 265 free games the best would be Bioshock 1-Infinite, GOTG, Bloons TD6, Alien Isolation, fallout 1-Vegas, and dishonored. Steam on the other hand has constant sales, everything is almost always 25% off or more so games are practically always a steal, steams ui is actually fucking amazing and is leagues more customizable and user friendly.
I'm weird, but when I claim a free game from Epic, play it a bit and really like it, I still buy it on Steam when it's on sale to have it in my library.
Epic is a bad launcher. Not to mention it is directed by some real fucky people. Steam is a great launcher. And is directed by Gabe. Only thing Epic has a foot over Steam on is having those free games.
Because Epic is trying to pull an Amazon move by giving free games to people, like any big company nowadays. And Steam is the only defense we have against it, because of its competition to shitty gaming companies and launchers.
Ain't no coincidence that Steam is being targeted as a monopoly to destroy its legitimacy. Mind you I hate videogame companies, all, even Steam, the only one I'm happy for existing is GoG, but even I have to admit that Steam is necessary to keep the boat floating.
The second Gabe dies and Steam becomes a publicly traded company, shit is going down, bye bye anti-AI options, anti-in-game-ads positioning, bye steam support, hello gaming pass, hello AI companion, hello paid cloud saving (I hate Sony), until it becomes what Xbox is turning into nowadays.
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People hate the epic game launcher despite them giving out a free game every week yet love Steam who does not give out a free game every week.
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I take both. Free games from epic where I have to only sometimes open the launcher, meanwhile just using steam regularly
Don't forget, you can find the exe of the games you got on epic and use steam to add them to your steam library
I'm convinced that steam considers piracy to be its main competition. They design their products with the assumption that the customer is fully capable of getting any game they want for free.
Gabe has literally gone on record saying that piracy primarily occurs when service is terrible. By providing great service piracy decreased substantially. He has given some examples, one I remember was selling games in Russia. Piracy used to be HUGE in Russia. Valve found that buy releasing the game in Russia at the same time as the rest of the world and with Russian localisation day 1 the piracy ceased almost entirely. Because prior to that most game companies wouldn't even do Russian localisation and would only do a small number of sales to Russia, shipped from out of country, and only like a year after the games initial release... no wonder the Russians were pirating... they just wanted to play the games and know what was being said. Something that made piracy necessary because the games weren't being sold and only the pirates were modding in translations. By addressing just those two issues valve made a huge amount of sales and the amount of pirated copies in Russia was negligible.
I've seen that interview, it's part of why I have my opinion. 😁
Despite the sims 4 being free it is pirated quite a bit because the EA launcher is a POS and does not work easily on Linux.
sims 4 is pirated because the dlc is 3k USD+
i heard that even buying all the current dlcs is not at the same level of the sims 2 and 3, is that true?
4 does have A LOT of dlc. I have never looked at it compared to the other games. I set up 4 on my old windows laptop for my wife to play.
For someone to play the sims 4 in its current entirety (all expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs, tiny kits with free base and two free dlcs) totals to over $1400 USD (as of Dec 2025). Thats just an abhorrent amount of money to spend on a game that still lacks a lot of content compared to its predecessors and is extremely buggy (Get to Work is nearly impossible to play bc some of the career paths just don’t work and EA refuses to fix it).
I agree with gabe, im fully capable of pirating ALL games i have, but steam is so good, that pirating the game isnt even Fun to do because It Will not have the steam features
It's not even just Gabe saying that, nor is he the first, we just have mountains of data supporting that. It was actually the music industry that learned this first when they fought a legal battle on piracy, failed, and then legal digital music showed up and music piracy as a problem vanished overnight.
Funnily enough it's also why video piracy is coming back even though netflix "killed" it. All the different streaming services created a new service failure.
Also valve pulling a nuclear option if they find you cheating is part of why they have such good PR AFAIK
yeah that aswell. And if you really care you can even decorate it
I couldn't really get that to work but you can use Steam Rom Manager to do it and get all the library art too
wait you can do that? that's actually goated!
Or use GoG and it natively has the capacity to ingest all libraries and gives you more free games.
Meanwhile prime gaming also gives you free games for Epic
Well, natively "so long the relevant plug-ins are maintained".
is this allowed?
Would this mean that as long as you were cut off the internet, epic couldn't rip the free games away from you? Or would the exe file have some sort of process that makes sure it can communicate with epic before it runs?
I love collecting free games, but I know one day I could log in and it's all gone
Where do I go to find how to do that?
All I have managed to do is put epic game launcher itself into steam
I actually prefer the GoG Galaxy launcher for that.
You can link all your accounts - Steam, GoG, Epic, Ubisoft, EA, Playstation, Xbox... And it will collect all your games from all of them, so you can know instantly what game you have on which account.
I dont even open the launcher lmao i just use browser to claim the games and forget about them lol.
What kind of games do they gift?
They give free games every week but almost all of them are dogshit nobody knows about. All the good ones are only free in holidays especially around Christmas/December. Hogwarts Legacy is free rn.
yeah, and a list was leaked showing that we are getting rdr2, rerraria, slime rancher 2 and other good ones this year
I took ignorantly following "friends" (not rly but at the time I thought) onto a game or two on there and riot and got punished every time by secret install locations and awful removal processes on each. <_>
When your store front doesn't have a shopping cart, don't be surprised that you can't compete
What? Epic does have a shopping cart... It's been there for a long time.
Don't post outdated info please.
The fact that it took years to get a fucking shopping cart is insane.
I mean ..epic didn't even have a shopping cart for fucks sake till months after, like I am all for competition but epic doesn't feel like it is trying very hard to be a store.
Ive been collecting epic store free games for about 5 years. Got over a 100 and havnt played a single one. Mostly coz when i click on a game to remind mr what its about it shoots me straight to instillation. Hate that. So dont play out of spite
Most of the time its obscure games nobody knows but occasionally they give away famous games. Right now, for example, Hogwarts Legacy is free
Don't forget to add it took years for them to get basic features like a shopping cart while giving the excuse that they're brand new. Also Sweeny(Epics CEO or whatever he is now) is the biggest douche bag in video gaming and says some of the dumbest stuff imaginable.
I've gotten multiple free games including warhammer vermintide 2 that went on sale for 100% for a few days
but it definitely isn't a weekly thing and not determined by steam
Steam also has some free games. If you go to search, set the price to 0 and only show special deals (discounts) you can sometimes finde free games. Got some already. I got a Warhammer 40k game even. One of the RTS ones.
If people wanted free games they would pirate them. Steam has proved what people really want is to be treated fairly, have easy access to their library, quick downloads, and non-nonsense policies like steams refund policy.
I would rather spend a little on steam and have a good experience then get a game on Epic and have a bad experience.
And it's weird, because the Epic one isn't *that* bad. It's not good, but it's not terrible.
If it was the Ubisoft launcher that requires you to install and run it after you bought their games on other platforms, I could see hating on it.
Epic also had a stint of swooping in on almost complete (often kickstarter funded) indie games and offering buckets of money at the devs in return for Epic Game Store exclusive distribution. Phoenix Point was one of the more high profile instances of this. Epic did this to force out a niche with minimal development risk, but it often backfired onto the developers.
Pretty straightforward yeah
I still check the specials every day to see if anyone slapped a 100% discount on their game. Got games such as Black Desert and 2 Warhammer games thanks to frequently checking.
The thing is Valve with Gaben at the helm really cares about steams user-base, it’s always customers first.
They have YEARS of good will whilst epic games tried everything in their power to buy their way to the top, the epic games store is just way worse of an experience over all too and I doubt epic would be even half as good to people when it comes to customer service they would be downright malicious.
TLDR you can’t buy trust. Steam is a monopoly because they are leagues better of a service than anyone else on the market.
Origin used to give out free games...
TIL. Using Heroic Games Launcher, I had no idea EGS was this terrible with their launcher.
You’re right. I claim MULTIPLE free games weekly on Steam.
Someone literally told me today that once the free game discount on epic games ends, they just remove the game from your library.
If that's true, then I can see why people would hate the epic game launcher.
Well I love Epic and Amazon Games as now I have over 400 free titles lol
Epic Games launcher goes as slow as Cyberpunk 2077 when it was released.
I would rather buy a game at full price on steam than get it for free on Epic.
So you hate money?
If I can buy a good meal for 5 bucks or eat pig slop for free Im probably gonna go with the good meal
He said he would rather buy a game for full price on Steam, than get it for free on Epic. If 2 restaurants offered you a good meal, would you choose to get it for free or to pay?
I guess a better analogy would be getting a free meal at a restaurant with horrible service vs paying for the same meal at a restaurant with outstanding service
This is the correct analogy, if u lack money: "hey, free meal and I can endure the service".… But if u don't, why bother?
Oh come on. Sure Epic is not as feature complete, and it's not as good for finding new games. But when you have a game, you click install, it installs, you click play it launches it. The comparison with a restaurant with a bad service isn't accurate
If the meal is the same quality I will go with it even with a bit of a horrible service
No. The free game is demonstrably better service in this case. You lose nothing by taking it free.
Reminds me of the free Hari Krishna Dinner in New Orleans vs Commander's Palace ... world's best service and fantastic free food in the same city. What a town!
In the case of steam its a nice restaurant, maybe even a valet.
The same meal at Epic is gonna have two crackheads waiting to ambush me in the parking lot afterwards.
It might be the same meal from both places but at one place the waiter is going to spit in your food, let it sit in the back until it's cold, and seat you at an outdoor table while its raining
And the only reason the meal is free is due to copious amounts of backlash
Its more like you have 2 restaurants one is a large family owned franchise diner that focuses on treating the customer well and while some employees may want more of the diner's profits for themselves the diner has made the food service industry what it is and has kept it healthly while the similar catering industry has gone to complete shit.
The second is a corpo thing that is trying to win over the customers of the family diner in the area by offering free stuff but if it gets a foothold in town it'll proceed to shit up the entire industry.
So even though its a bad decisiom short term the smarter people are willing to back the family diner to keep the shitty corpo from fucking up the industry.
steam did not leak my payment data yet, they got my account back in 6 days, and refunded new world despite having 60+ hours on it after its closure notice.
that is way more I could ask for. call me when epic hits that, and when swiney will talks sense.
dude its the same game
Bad analogy ... the food is the same, but one store sells it in a brown paper bag while the other is a full service restaurant.
So genuine question as somebody who hasn't really touched video games in 4-5 years. Why is epic launcher so bad? I remember people being upset about some privacy related stuff, people thought epic=fortnite=cringe, and it's annoying to deal with two launchers, but like what is the actual issue for a normal person.
If you’re a normal person I don’t think you care that much. My only interaction with steam and epic games is just launching my game and then never really interacting with it so I don’t care much.
The obsession and glazing of steam is something I never understood because I’d honestly prefer to skip the step of opening steam wherever possible.
People hated it at first because there were some games that Epic negotiated exclusivity for and players didn't want to have yet another game launcher. That's the main drama I remember from years ago that really started us down the hate train.
Poor UI is the main thing. The marketing is a little more irritating, it takes a bit longer to get from opening the launcher to playing your game, but mostly it's the poor UI.
I just put the icon on the desktop and avoid the whole thing for both Steam and Epic, so I never really cared about that personally.
So a big thing that turned a lot of people against Epic was their attempt to promote it. They offered a lot of money to different developers to sign an exclusivity with Epic and only release their game to that platform (or exclusively for a year).
There's some nuance to this, for a lot of Indie developers, the cash injection from Epic is good for their security and something people can understand and somewhat tolerate, but even bigger companies did the same and they didn't receive the same leniency.
The other issue is that some indie games when seeking crowd funding specifically included steam as a release platform, so some people felt betrayed when they took the exclusivity deal. Other companies during their trailers also advertised they would release on steam to then take the exclusivity deal.
A big issue is also that Epic, according to what I heard and followed, is a lot less feature complete than steam and the launcher itself is slow.
The most recent is also that the CEO, Tim Sweeny, tried to argue against Steam's decision to mark games that used generative AI as such, which in general is not popular with a lot of gamers, so even more dislike for Epic.
bro needs to taste 3rd world living i suppose
Epic is far from 3rd word. It's as 1st world thing as I can imagine. If you want stuff for free, just pirate it
My message was different
When your month salary is 500-600 USD, every free game on Epic (especially AAA) is like "OH FUCK FREE CAKE?!"
And then TS drops shit like "ew, i hate receiving 60 USD games for free"
So all i want is to yoink him into situation, where you live for 500-600 USD (also 200-300 already taken away as payment for roof and services)
Trust me buddy that is not what third world country makes that's the salaries in eastern Europe
People in third world country make like 250-300 dollars
I know this because I am in one
Not to enter a third world competition but I’d say to half that salary lol
I know people who make less than 200 usd, if you were making 500-600 usd in my country you’d be doing very well for yourself lol
https://preview.redd.it/h0ho394xn27g1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1cad0d5c8f9fd96c6f168c1612fa10bbc344276
It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message
It also might be the case of wanting to support the developers you know
brand allegiance is a sign of cognitive decay.
The debate around other storefronts has gotten ridiculous.
Whatever, I use them all to get the best deals. Although my experience is heavily tilted towards single player games, there is little to no noticable difference between playing on one vs the other outside of GOG not requiring an internet connection to launch most titles due to the lack of drm.
Exactly, those arguments become so ridiculous, these people fanatically hate Epic for giving free games 😆. This really must be the most first-world problem people can have {rich laugh in the background}. We can easily use both platforms, and if we are really anal about some achievements not available in the game we really like, WE CAN buy them on steam as an option ffs. It's like they only operate in black and white. Some particular games have better support on fucking Xbox App on WIndows than on steam, am I supposed to hate steam for this now? I guess I need to if I would follow thier rhetorics 😆.
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Don't be a dick. Rule 1.
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Proudly letting the world know you’re an idiot who’s terrible with money lol
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Don't be a dick. Rule 1.
LMAO
“I hate Jerry, so I’d rather cut off my hands instead of using them to open this present he gave me!”
For me epic doesn't work and I cant figure it out and neither can their people. I open it and i can see the games I own on there but I cant install or open any of them.
Basically Epic trying to win players good will be giving free will.
Steam easily earn players good will being own by person not corporations.
AAA release shitty game full of bugs? You can immediately take your money back while others find excuses to not give your money back.
AAA want to add ads in their game? All corporations agree.
Basically they usually choses players side over large corporations side
Steam is such a weird enigma to me.
Not in a “how are they successful” way. In a “why is nobody copying them?” Way.
Steam has a de-facto near-monopoly on PC gaming and literally all they do to earn it is the bare minimum of “let’s be nice to our customers and give them what they want.”
Because its doesn't maximize profits and makes the broader audience happy, they dont copy it.
Because publicly traded companies have to think of short term profits to please shareholders first and foremost, while Valve doesn't. That allowed Steam to focus on building a reliable service and winning over a stable customer base instead of constantly trying to maximize shareholder value in the short term.
Of course, part of it is thanks to Steam having the advantage of being the first online storefront of its kind, giving it a head start. But every possible competitor enshittifying their platform to try and impress shareholders every quarter certainly helped.
Valve is privately owned, so that makes a huge difference. Not being beholden to shareholders matters a lot in decision making.
Profitable corporations are kind of a thing of the past. You're not trying to make money by selling a product to customers anymore, you're trying to make money by selling the corporation to investors. And investors have zero idea how the economy works.
because they don't have a monopoly, it's that their competition is incompetent. They are at the top, but that's just one of the reqirements to be considered a monopoly.
Because Steam is a private company not beholden to investors who only care about profits.
Steam was copied by Desura, targeted at indie games and having support for macOS and Linux back when Steam was still Windows-only. Steam implemented all the same featues it had in less than half a year and Desura flopped.
These days you can argue https://itch.io is roughly the same.
Steam doesn't do the bare minimum, the created the bare minimum
It's monopoly in the technical sense.
Everyone else is too busy trying to win the 'hacking your feet off contest'.
Epic games is TikTok of video game companies.
They are hated by every other company.
Epic Games is a very weird company.
They have everything. Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, Fortnite with lots of intellectual property in it.
But for some reason steam is cooler?
I just don't like Epic Games because of the developer stuff back in the day.
Like I acknowledge that people like free games
But I don't like screwing over devs because profits.
We get like 2-3 decent games a year, and everything else is recycled garbage from sometime in the last 3-5 years. Namely every single 2K game. Every single CoD. Fighting games are doing the same thing now.
Sooner or later video games are going to become enshittified. The only real studios I trust anymore to make quality games are larian studios, indie companies, riot games, and steam (valve).
Riot games? The company when they sell you overpriced pixels? That’s quality?
Steam takes a 30% fee from every game sale. Although almost every other online store takes this much, it is hard to argue that it is a fair fee for a mostly automated service compared to amount of effort developers put out for their 70% cut. Epic Games store takes nothing from first million sales and 12% from any further sales. I would argue Epic is better for developers at least in this regard.
Steam is just better advertised. Much more likely to sell games makes the 30% worth it.
you still can't remove games from your Epic Games Library. once it's there, it's there, and you can't remove it.
old demos? games you haven't played in years? games you don't want to play anymore? you can only uninstall it, you can't remove it like you can from your Steam Library, you're stuck with it permanently basically.
Steam cooler cause epic trying too hard
Because if I have a problem, and steam is in any way involved even two or three steps removed.
Steam is going to fix it.
You say they have everything, then list nothing.
Steam will waste time and money and their emotional health to support gamers as best they can. Also literally no one else tries to support macos or linux and no one else makes their launcher open source.
The Linux Gaming experience of Steam's co-founder:
Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, frequently gets told to uninstall Dota 2 by other players in-game, a common occurrence he says happens about once a week, but he views it as a sign of the community's passion and enthusiasm, not negativity, and still plays the game daily, loving the community despite the trash talk.
The Epic Games Launcher is like the suspicious looking parked van on the sidewalk.
and the free games are "free candy" inside the van?
And free RAM
yay free ram :)
Tbh, i might actually fall for "free ram down this alley"
the CEO is not a good man.
And it is really fucking hilarious that the CEO got mad at Steam for labeling games using AI with the AI label.
"People don't care if ai was used to make the majority of a ga-" "then why are you so desperately wanting it removed?"
Exactly, it's something these techbros don't seem to realize, if a game developed with AI was just as good as any other game, AI labeling wouldn't be a problem, they are literally admitting that isn't the case by being so uppity about AI labeling.
People hate Epic games because they have done very predatory and anti-consumer practices on entering the market to try and beat steam as the main PC gaming store front. Epic tries to still appear great by handing out free games on a poorly run store front with minimal user features.
Steam just continues to make the user experience better reinforcing customers to stick with it.
People just hate epic games and love steam.
First, epic games makes Fortnite, so no need to explain why people don’t like that.
Epic games launcher is also really bloated, for some reason, and seems to want to embed itself into your computer. I think they also got in trouble for harvesting user data without their consent.
Also steam is just objectively the best games store platform. It is super user friendly has access to pretty much everything, offers refunds with no questions asked for any game if played under 2 hours, and is constantly up to date.
Not to mention that nothing beats steam support
Thanks for the reminder. I haven't opened Epic for a long time because the only free games were uninteresting indie games for so long but it's Hogwarts Legacy right now which I wanted to try. I would have missed it.
you are welcome
https://preview.redd.it/vd97rnhs437g1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ba14f67d953f1e6d999420b72fd90792ddb4718
RDR2 at the end of the month
The joke is the epic games store.
Humans being humans
Epic games is not bad they just have bad pr
and being objectively worse then steams user experience
I love steam even though they don't give games for free
Well, some games do go free on steam but they're usually kinda meh?
https://steamdb.info/upcoming/free/
Steam doesnt control that though. All sales (including 100%) are determined by the publisher (or dev if self-published). Vs the epic launcher free games, which are paid for by Epic.
Lol, this comment section crazy! It's not even that big a hassle to get the free games on their browser. Free games!
Hell yeah I'll take a free game, shits expensive these days
Steam and Epic Games Store are video game marketplaces for PC.
Steam has a reputation of being a highly competent service that is in most aspects, transparent, reliable and fair. They also build in other related services such as social media features and chats. They also do discounts quite frequently, much steeper than the 10% here. Most PC gamers have a story of picking up a genuinely good 70% or more off deal on Steam.
Whereas Epic... They don't really have much of that. Instead they've tried to compete by buying exclusives and occasionally giving a free game away.
Epic steals your data.
You're online. Everyone steals your date, even Steam.
Hogwarts legacy is free this week. Pretty cool
Steam regularly does 75-85% off games. I haven't paid more than 20 bucks for a giant title in 10 years. You add the games to your wishlist and get an email saying the game has gine from 60 to 15
Steam has great discounts and amazing service.
EPIC gives 1+ free game every week, most are indie game (but a few are big titles), but the issue is their service, that is quite bad.
Currently, Hogwarts Legacy is for free btw
Not to mention Steam refusing to remove the AI content tag vs the owner of Epic being very pro AI
Epic just sucks.
They've given me plenty of free games, and ill download the games and add them to my library. May even play em, depends on the games.
But when a steam sale comes by and the games are on sale I will buy them just to avoid having to use epic. I did that with the bioshock collection a bit ago.
https://preview.redd.it/tmqdoko0l37g1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8447df67c5bdb01f058f097452100b778fcd0755
No freaking way
https://i.redd.it/9qirpwfd447g1.gif
I'll never understand the rabid Steam fan base that will always look down on other platforms. I like Steam and use it regularly, but competition is always beneficial for the consumer.
I just use playnite and all my games are now in one place, free games are awesome.
I'm team epic all the way, not only do they give away free games but they also have better regional pricing compared to steam, and since I live in a country with a pretty much dysfunctional economy the only way I can afford to play games is via Epic. I barely play video games anymore but the ones I do play, I got from Epic because I literally couldn't afford them on Steam
Go look at the original meme.
Then do some research into public opinion of both steam and epic games as gaming platforms.
After that, you'll understand.
Although to be honest, it's an unfair deceptive meme as it ignores all the bullshit that epic games does and say
Family sharing makes a lot of bought games feel like multiple free games... Cloud saving and community features for mods and other stuff also feel great...
AI learning type post
Plain and simple, the Epic Games Launcher is fucking dogshit
Epic games gives free games away in an attempt to gain market share. But alot of people still hate epic games.
I haven’t used it myself but there is aggressive Pro-Steam attitude for pc gamers. Not just because of frequent sales, but because (in my personal experience) steam is far more reliable than its competition. It’s also easy to use & has a bunch of other features, & it has a massive library.
Basically people see the free games on epic as a shallow attempt to bribe people to use an inferior platform. If you have enough games on epic, maybe you’ll just switch to it completely (you probably won’t)
I get really tired of everything being posted here
My friend told me they were giving away hogwarts this week. He had to beg me to get a 70$ game for free. I whined the entire time i open the app and clicked the button. As soon as he was gone I closed epic games to play more counter strike
A 10% discount from a platform who treats their users well, or a free game from a platform that even my anti virus tries to warn me is malware. No brainer.
I'd say that a lot of the free games on epic games aren't really worth playing
Redditors froth at the mouth any time epic games is mentioned, especially when it comes to their launcher.
Epic gets a lot of hate, but I've never had a problem.
Gog and epic are fine for single player games, steam for online games or games where you want super easy modded access (zomboid, for example).
I was never into console wars and I don't really have a favorite vendor for PC games, either.
Considering I only want one launcher, I never play any of the free games epic gives in the first place, and I like just about everything surrounding steam. Yeah, I'll consider myself a hypocrite lol
Short version: despite giving away free games people prefer Steam over the Epic Games Store
Steam is a platform that is very consumer friendly with reviews and community hubs, so people prefer them over the Epic Games store which has a mixed reputation, especially recently with their CEO on X saying how a tag stating the use of A.I on a product is useless which is a pretty bad take considering that it’s information for the consumer.
i like to work for it, its no fun if they give it out for free.
It's upside down.
I am, at thirty, veritably too fucking old to deal with Epics excuse of launcher and user interface.
sure, but the free game from epic has only hit a game that interested me once and it didn't even interest me that much so I've barely played it.
Meanwhile the 50% discounts or even 75% ones have hit games I really like and have spent quite the hours on it a few times. I mean gosh, terria being ungodly cheap when in discount, celeste with a 75% discount leaving it at a fairly quite cheap price for a blessing
Next I'm waiting for to get hit again is Noita, I don't quite remember the discounts amount, but it was decent too.
I must admit I have bought games on steam that I already had for free on epic. I’m such a chud
Epic got some really bad karma buying up some great games and locking them behind the launcher, along with fortnight.. Then Rocket league, a genuinely great game that now sucks worse then a 1 year owned dyson.
Some people find it fun to log onto Epic games and get the free game, cause it costs them money. Though usually it's a 1500 gem bonus to freeplay6 including 10 summons.
And Steam works, Epic Games Launcher is basicaly a bad running website inside of a worse browser.
Why people hate epic games?
https://preview.redd.it/y488fsab247g1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cce424dd736f8ac0449eea3f838e41e9f703bd6e
This sub fucking sucks now.
early in the epic game launcher's history there was a scandal where it was sniffing around the file system in places it decidedly shouldn't when the user had no input around that.
steam does offer some pretty sweet discounts a few times a year that are opt-in for publishers/developers, but epic got in hot water for putting items on sale that the publishers weren't notified about.
Epic games, you cant buy peoples respect, you have to earn it
Epic games store is a really bad digital store, and is missing loads of features steam has had for years.
Also, when the epic games store puts a multiplayer game up for free (that normally has a price) users can create hundreds or even thousands of accounts to pick the game up for free. That lets them freely hack multiplayer games without fear of being permanently banned as they can just use a different account. So, in the long run even a single free weekend on Epic Game Store often means endless hackers for the entire life of a game.
The Free Games is literally the only thing Epic Games Store has going for it…
Meanwhile Steam has:
Tons of goodwill built.
Larger library.
User Friendly UI.
Functional messaging.
User profiles beyond achievements.
Rating system that provides player reviews and not just Critic (which has been known to lie before) AND Epic doesn’t even Rate the game off of the Critics either! (Saints Row, the 2022 release, has a “37% Of Critics Recommend” yet Epic still gives it a 4/5 Rating. It’s literally impossible to get below a 4/5 Rating on Epic) They just pull a number out their ass and go “this will trick people into buying this crap!”
The joke is that EGS just added gifting. As in like, just now. How many years has it been?
got like 5 seasons of the walking dead for like 90 cents no joke on steam.
epic games is dogshit, despite them handing out free games out like if it was candy, as their launcher is still abysmal, and their only affort to get ahead were timed exclusives and free games.
Reminder that if you hate Epic the best way to express it is to claim all of the free games, download them as many times as possible and never buy anything.
No, just stop, yes you do, you understand the joke.
Epic are paying for people to have the transphobe game. Avoid the transphobe game.
I have an entire library of free games on Epic and I don't even have the launcher installed.
In fact when games that I got for free on Epic go on discount on Steam I still buy them.
It's not for any ideological reason, or because I worship Gaben (catch me idolizing billionaires fucking never), or even because I don't want the Chinese to spy on me (I own a Chinese smartphone, they're already doing that).
It's because the launcher is legitimately just dogshit. I keep Ubisoft Connect installed despite hating Ubisoft and I honestly think that launcher works better than Epic's. I would more readily buy a game off there or off EA's launcher than I would from Epic's.
EA's launcher gave me download speeds I can't even get from Steam. Epic sometimes dips to less than half my top speed, and that top speed is already slow. On top of that, the launcher is glitchy, crash happy, lags for no reason, poorly designed, slow, ugly, unintuitive, refuses to find and link existing game installs, and is honestly just a pain in my rear end.
I appreciate getting games for free, but I've been waiting for years for the launcher to be usable enough for me to play those games without hassle, and it still hasn't happened yet.
The team they have working on that launcher needs to be blacklisted from the entire IT industry.
Epic launcher is the single most ass game launcher ever conceived. I whould rather pay double and have to download jt from some shady Russian website than spend one more waking second trying to run a game on epic launcher.
speaking of free, Epic games just released Dead cells on mobile for free in their app
Epic is just leagues worse than steam, yeah you get a free game every week. But it's a game you'd never buy anyway unless it's Christmas or through Amazon Prime, but even then some of the free games are like 15 bucks. They also release the same games for free often. Out of the 265 free games the best would be Bioshock 1-Infinite, GOTG, Bloons TD6, Alien Isolation, fallout 1-Vegas, and dishonored. Steam on the other hand has constant sales, everything is almost always 25% off or more so games are practically always a steal, steams ui is actually fucking amazing and is leagues more customizable and user friendly.
Thank you for this. I was like 'it's right and let's check the epic store'. Free Hogwarts legacy. Thanks op.
Hogwarts legacy was free a couple of days ago. Epic is getting no hate from me!
I'm weird, but when I claim a free game from Epic, play it a bit and really like it, I still buy it on Steam when it's on sale to have it in my library.
Shit games is so bad even free games won't bring players to them.
Epic is a bad launcher. Not to mention it is directed by some real fucky people. Steam is a great launcher. And is directed by Gabe. Only thing Epic has a foot over Steam on is having those free games.
Because Epic is trying to pull an Amazon move by giving free games to people, like any big company nowadays. And Steam is the only defense we have against it, because of its competition to shitty gaming companies and launchers.
Ain't no coincidence that Steam is being targeted as a monopoly to destroy its legitimacy. Mind you I hate videogame companies, all, even Steam, the only one I'm happy for existing is GoG, but even I have to admit that Steam is necessary to keep the boat floating.
The second Gabe dies and Steam becomes a publicly traded company, shit is going down, bye bye anti-AI options, anti-in-game-ads positioning, bye steam support, hello gaming pass, hello AI companion, hello paid cloud saving (I hate Sony), until it becomes what Xbox is turning into nowadays.