Is this an apology for the bad performance issues of UE5?

Yeah. And that's a fantastic showcase of the bar you need to hit to not be effectively toiling in the Steam mines. Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam. It takes being *significantly bigger than the entire Epic store* to even consider not doing Steam on PC. And none of those is even close to having a viable platform for third party releases outside of Epic, which is perhaps the last one standing on that front and currently not managing to get a foothold. And judging by the rabid fanboy backlash anytime they try to do something nice to attract devs, not even finding a path towards one at any point in the future, either. That's a bad look for competition on the PC market. There aren't that many Fortnites or Minecrafts coming in the future. Gaming investment is drying up and gaming is becoming a cash business, rather than an investment business. And the cash flows to Valve.

For generic SteamWorks integration, there already exists a open source DLL called Goldberg Emulator. If publishers opt for real DRM, the games are not available on GOG anyway. Also, downloading and backing up the games have to be done by yourself before the storefront goes bust. Distributing GOG games outside of GOG is a copyright violation, unless the copyright holders explicitly allow it. So, to sum up: You can backup DRM-free Steam games and make them work with little effort.

I mean, they don't need to support Linux, you can get an offline installer right from their web app. Even if Heroic didn't solve that problem entirely (which it kinda does) you could still work around it. And I hear this "DRM on Steam is optional" a lot of the time, but it's... kinda not? Even Valve admits their Steamworks integration is a soft form of DRM. Plus the point of GoG is not that you *can* have games with no DRM in it, it's that you *have* to. You buy a game, it's yours to keep. That's a massive paradigm shift. Steam exists *specifically* to avoid that.

Valve is the only one in PC gaming to push an alternative operating system to Windows. EGS, GOG,... all enforce a Windows hegemony. GOG Galaxy isn't even available on Linux, despite the fact that it's built on cross platform frameworks that make porting easy. Proton by Valve is open source and GOG Galaxy would be free to integrate it. Heroic Launcher is a community effort that shows that it would be possible without massive investments. Epic and GOG/CD Project just chose not to.

> Even if Heroic didn't solve that problem entirely (which it kinda does) It actually doesn't. Half the apps I install through Heroic don't work. Meanwhile Steam games work 100% of the time. That's the problem. > Plus the point of GoG is not that you can have games with no DRM in it, it's that you have to. Don't really see the practical difference except that it has like 1% of Steam's library for that reason.

Totally made up, I don't know what % of Epic Games users would play on Linux if given the chance. I'm editing my original message, sorry about that!

Yeah, well, I've had better luck with Heroic than Steam proper, even if Heroic is using Proton and Gamescope as well. I guess that's the nature of Linux gaming (still) despite what people like to say. As for the practical difference, it boils down to my GoG library being safely backed up in storage media and preserved safely. If that doesn't matter to you... well, I can't help you, but you're wrong. Either way, if the market broke a different way and GoG had a bigger share (or if Steam matched its policies) that library would not be impacted nearly as much.

Sure. They also chose not to have their own layer of controller translation or their own game recording backend. Linux is 2% of the market even on Steam with official support. DRM-free means DRM-free for everybody. I would like more official Linux support, but I'll take good unofficial support in the meantime. There's no workaround for monpolistic positions or mandatory DRM-free policies.

> Yeah, well, I've had better luck with Heroic than Steam proper I don't believe you. > it boils down to my GoG library being safely backed up in storage media and preserved safely You can do the same with DRM-free Steam games. If you don't understand that, I can't help you but you're wrong.

They will continue doing it if they need to compete. Capitalism working as intended. Who would've thought

TBH what matter more is revenue. Apple users always pay more

Do they even have one? I thought it's rare situation when the product speaks for itself.

Sure, I'm just saying Epic is not any better than Valve in that regard. They're just in a different position.

Of course. They're both just companies

EGS has reviews as far as I can tell. I still think Steam is better, but this is a welcome move out of them. Competition is a good thing

Right?! Nobody ever talks about all the kids they got addicted to gambling. Bang up job, there.

Steam keeps getting slammed from both sides. They keep getting accused of being a monopoly, , while also getting accused of their rates. But if they drop their rates they get accused of being anticompetitive and monopolistic. So if they do something similar like Epic, they'll go back to using their monopoly over the market to keep competitors down.

The way Epics reviews work are awful, though. They are trying to be really attractive to developers but they aren’t attractive enough to USERS. For example, you have to be INVITED to review games on Epic. The system is automated and will occasionally ask for a review after you close a game, assuming you’ve been playing long enough. They claim it’s to avoid things like “review bombing”, but that’s a cop-out to shield bad developers/publishers from the repercussions of their actions (like when Denuvo was non-consensually added to Ghostwire Tokyo a year after release).

Cool, still fuck em though