> “I used to think EGS was a Marketing Black Hole,” the New Blood CEO said, “but turns out having your game be free on Epic is great advertising for Steam sales!” Alongside the boost in Steam sales, Blood West also saw a jump in console sales as well while it was free on Epic. That's incredible. > Oshry is far from the only developer to point out issues with the Epic Games Store. Just recently, in an interview with FRVR, Painkiller and Witchfire creator Adrian Chmielarz explained that Epic doesn’t feel like “home” to players, and that causes many to simply clock out, saying “EGS is a shop, and Steam is a community.” I have a lot of free games on Epic. But when I want to play with my gaming group, we're using Steam. It's just where everybody is.

Steam is a self perpetuating monopoly because people love having all of their toys in a single place. Just one more confirmation that it’s pointless to try to compete until regulators take a look at this situation.

Every other platform is simply worse. The only one who even tries to be better is GOG, of which they do a good job for DRM free which gets sales from me. My question to you is: why would anybody buy something other than on those two platforms? There is not a single advantage to Epic's or Amazon's game store.

I wouldn't mind using other services if any of them were competent. Steam gives me one-click Linux support for Windows titles, massive control reconfiguration capabilities, and a full suite of the normal expected features: achievements, cloud saves, forums, etc. Name me any competitor who even comes close. They dominate because they put in the work. Everyone else wants their slice of the pie but won't bother to develop features worth using.

Valve is a private company. Are they going around buying out competition like an end game capitalist? They are where they are at is because they do what they do well and people have voted with their wallets.

The current free game are the two Styx games. I grabbed them on Steam when I saw they went 90% off so I'd have an easier time running them on my legion go and my Android phone https://store.steampowered.com/app/242640/Styx_Master_of_Shadows/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/355790/Styx_Shards_of_Darkness/

GOG. If you’re a solo player, this is the place, for no other reason than their highly principled mission to do DRM free games. No, it’s not all the games, but even so. That and supporting CDProjekt appeals, to me anyway.

They don’t have to. You don’t need to abuse your monopoly to be a monopoly (although Valve does in different way). In the end customers and developers lose. Valve enforces same pricing on all stores a game is available on so EGS can’t compete on price despite having lower cut.

It's true for me at least. If I like a freebie from Epic, I'm more likely to buy it on Steam also just so that I can use it easily with the Steam Deck without additional configuration.

I wonder what the regulator will make steam do. "no, you can't have community page! You have to stop doing sales and deny more game from being sold in your platform and be generally shitty to your customer just so Epic Gamestore can catch up!"

GOG has recently been sold to one of its original founders so it no longer has any ties with CDProjekt. Purchasing games on it now means you're supporting GOG itself, which is nice.

Yeah it totally has nothing to do with proton, steam input, steamvr, mods, remote play / together, family library sharing, flexible refund policies, or the multitude of other things that other stores don't do.

There's also the question of what happens when Gabe dies or retires. Unless he's a secret communist and has plans in place to make it into an employee coop it'll be sold by his estate to private equity.

One of the few times capitalism has “worked” and all because it’s not a publicly traded company. I really wonder where we would be if most big companies were not on the stock market as opposed to being on it.

I epic hasn't done anything but the bare minimum plus trying to buy their way into the market. Additionally, I don't trust them a single bit. If they actually managed to get market share they should enshittify before you could blink. I have even less nice things to say about all the other publisher run marketplaces. GoG is cool because of their DRM policy and preservation. Steam provides labels for anticonsumer practices so consumers can be informed and does the cool stuff for Linux compatibility. What exactly are you wanting regulators to do that you think will make people want to use EGS?

I had no idea this existed(I never even look at EGS), thanks. Now I can live out my WoW Goblin Rogue fantasies.

Makes sense. By the time a game shows up on a giveaway it has been out long enough that there's lot of discounts for it. So small budget price that might be less than the price of buying lunch is worth it for some to not deal with Epic. And the giveaway is good promotion, since even people like me who don't have epic launcher installed will still be aware of it and claim it through a browser. Ends up being free marketing among those who subscribe to gamedeals type communities or visit sites like isthereanydeals. Gives games an opportunity to get a second wind.

> flexible refund policies That thing they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to enact under threat by the EU?

About the linux support, not only its bad, they seem to actively hate it. Some games after getting bought by epic(like rocket league) lose their Linux support