Games

I rather gladly take my free games from them.

My dislike of epic is that they seem to be buying their way into competing, instead of actually competing on features.

Free games sounds good now, but what happens when the fortnite gravy train runs out, and epic needs to start making a profit? They'll likely have to enshittify fast.

Steam at least has a solid history of being generally good. But who knows what will happen if Gaben ever ascends.

Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.

They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you're playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.

Chat is... better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It's actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.

One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I'm not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I've heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren't afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.

We don't own our games anymore, so I need to know my library's going to stick around if I'm going to invest in it. Last I heard, EGS hasn't made a profit, so that doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me that it'll still be around in five years.

I think competition is the answer to a lot of problems consumers face, but unfortunately the "are you going to be there tomorrow?" problem is going to be a major disadvantage for any storefront that competes with Steam. It's why my most preferred shop is GOG, because I still have all my games with them if they close up.

ITT: Epic is awful, Steam is great!

Me: Is GOG a joke to you people???

I bought a couple games on epic when they were cheaper. I don't think I'd do so again.

• the client isn't as good. It's slower, the way it paginates your games (I got a lot of free ones) is annoying. It really wants to show you store stuff
• less (zero?) Linux support
• don't think it does the game recording steam does
• I don't think it has the remote play together steam does

There's probably other stuff I'm not thinking of. It's just not as good a service.

Here's another win for Steam:

Subnautica has a multiplayer mod, but it only works with an older version of the game. Steam lets you downgrade the version, Epic games does not.

There are a few layers to it. I'll start with the legit reasons and hope the jackasses don't read too deep in:

1. EGS was built around the idea of providing what people need/want rather than EVERYTHING. Some of that was truly asinine (no shopping cart for like 2 years?) and some was a conscious choice based on everyone saying they don't want their video game store to be a social media network. Unfortunately... people apparently DO want their video game store to be social media.
2. Every store handles regional pricing and distribution differently and, allegedly, EGS had worse coverage in a few of the countries The Internet actually knows exists.
3. Tim Sweney is a complete and utter dipshit and always has been and it is REALLY hard to not hate everything he touches.
4. EGS rapidly entwined itself with Fortnite because Fortnite makes more than the GDP of some small nations. But we are hardcore gamers so we all hate Fortnite.
5. Sweeney/Epic actually accidentally argued for consumer rights against Apple which, in turn, led to the full force of Apple running smear campaigns against Epic to make sure that we all realized how much we love walled gardens
6. Sweeney/Epic ALSO kind of picked a fight with Steam by pointing out how little developers get from any given sale. Which... because we all love Valve means that Epic are assholes and developers all actively want to strive to get the negotiating power of a Call of Duty or Rockstar.
7. Speaking of. EGS isn't Valve and any alternative is inherently evil because we all love Valve.

So what was a mediocre store with a lot of free games and a tendency to give developers a giant sack of money for one year of exclusivity became The Devil.

As others said, EGS is just a fucking cancer, not a competition. A good competition to Steam is actually Microsoft App Store. It's a very streamlined mobile-like experience.

Console gamer here as well, though with a PC and redeeming my weekly Epic Games since a few years back. I sometimes play on my PC, but mostly games I don't have on my console.

Most of what I hear I believe it's mostly due to the Epic Launcher being quite a bit behind standard, and the store not having great costumer service policies. I think Epic's games with timed exclusivity don't garner a lot of respect from the gaming community either, as they rather have freedom of choice to purchase their games on their main storefront.

Now, I think it'll be obvious, but all of what I mentioned is further impacted by the comparison between Epic (or most other launchers, really) and Steam. Steam might as well be called the "default launcher" at this point, and naturally not everyone can compete (or they don't want to) with the numerous and consistently good business decisions Steam tends to have, which keeps it in the top.

Not only that, and even though I still benefit from it, I'd say Epic's strategy of offering weekly free games might feel like a sort of 'obvious bribe' to some, a cheap way to try and vainly make gamers turn on their main competitor. Which isn't really moving the needle that much, because gamers preference for Steam isn't due to free games, but good and consumer-oriented business practices.

I'm sure from gamer to gamer there's more depth to this, but I'd say that's the gist of it.