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Epic Games Store Users Have Grown by 173% in Six Years, But Revenue Only by 1.6%
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I always felt there was promise to a new store with a big backing to challenge Steam. I think Steam is great and it's my primary PC games store, but I see the concern of only having one real player in the market. But EGS simply hasn't done it. It feels like they recognized the reasons Steam is such a huge player in the space; it's not just the library and the sales, but the level of consumer-focused support and features the platform offers. And that's the key, Steam is a _platform_, not just a store. EGS has never become a platform. It's missing features, it's social features are anemic, it's like they put some effort in to get it off the ground and not broken, and then have just hoped giving away free games will somehow magically convince people to spend money there. I think there's reasons to be concerned about Steam, but you cannot ignore how broadly consumer friendly the platform is. Their hardware initiatives only highlight what a complete package their ecosystem is and they're loaded with some of the most consumer-friendly choices in the industry. EGS is stuck in no-man's land. Steam is a better platform, GoG is more consumer-friendly. Humble has Choice which can be a good deal. Fanatical does a better job with sales and credit from purchase. EGS just kind of sits in a no-mans land with no compelling features other than you don't need to spend money to get games, which is great for us but a terrible business strategy for Epic.The problem is these stores (Epic but also the Microsoft Store and Amazon's PC game store) only come along because some executive says "hey what if instead of Valve taking a cut from most PC games, we took a cut from most PC games", there's 0 interest or intent for them to be competition (as seen by the exclusives) for Steam or improve the developer/user experience. Any time these massive companies offer a cheaper subsidised alternative to any existing product it's to push out the smaller players with less resources and build their own monopoly.
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The problem is these stores (Epic but also the Microsoft Store and Amazon's PC game store) only come along because some executive says "hey what if instead of Valve taking a cut from most PC games, we took a cut from most PC games", there's 0 interest or intent for them to be competition (as seen by the exclusives) for Steam or improve the developer/user experience. Any time these massive companies offer a cheaper subsidised alternative to any existing product it's to push out the smaller players with less resources and build their own monopoly.Absolutely. It's also an immense amount of work to get a platform up to a competitive standard with Steam; I'm not sure a small company will ever be able to catch up in any short term time frame. But stores like Fanatical, GreenManGaming, GameBillet, etc. have the better idea of just being stores that focus on getting customers better deals. They don't even attempt to edge onto Steam's turf because a storefront can't compete with Steam, nor can a half-baked launcher. Reality is that Valve has functionally a 20 year head start on any company that wants to try and edge in on their turf. So it can't be done just to get a cut of sales because you're not going to have the follow-through to build the user base if that's your reason.
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I have (*checks Heroic Games Launcher*) 460 games on Epic. I have purchased two (Journey, 40% off, and Mortal Shell, 60% off with an extra coupon, paid like $5 for it). Steam is better in every way, GOG more so. If I want to spend money, I spend it there, I only use my Epic account to collect free games.
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I got Outer Worlds with all dlcs included, that's the only game I've installed and played from my EGS collection. I think I got Control there too, which I've been curious about.
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I dont even login to get the free games anymore. Fuck 'em they aren't interested in making a good experience.
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Right? The epic store is so slow and sluggish and awful. How fucking hard can it be today to make a good app for a single OS.
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Right? The epic store is so slow and sluggish and awful. How fucking hard can it be today to make a good app for a single OS.So you know how everyone uses Electron because it's makes it easy to make a cross platform app using web tech? Well apparently Epic doesn't even use Electron. Apparently they embed Chromium in an UE4 application. That's right, they're running a browser AND a game engine for their fucking launcher/store. Even just plain Electron (so just Chromium) would be an improvement.
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I caved and bought Alan Wake 2 and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memories because I lost hope of them ever coming to Steam. The few exclusives they have explains the minimal growth pretty succinctly. I hope nobody involved is surprised
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So you know how everyone uses Electron because it's makes it easy to make a cross platform app using web tech? Well apparently Epic doesn't even use Electron. Apparently they embed Chromium in an UE4 application. That's right, they're running a browser AND a game engine for their fucking launcher/store. Even just plain Electron (so just Chromium) would be an improvement.
