Desperate to fight Steam, Epic burns money like firewood – but admits the Epic Games Store kind of sucks and "there's still a ton of work to be done" with "long overdue features"

Amazing how slow development has been for their launcher. I don't know what is holding it back but the UI and lack of features seem like easy fixes for a company with those levels of resources.

Well, they’ve been pushing all their capital toward exclusives and free giveaways.
- It's insanity. They do have all the money in the world so I'm happy to claim free games. Never going to buy there unless the game will never come to steam (Alana Wake 2 being the one exception).
Fortnite making them shit ton of money hand over fist is what’s holding them back probably. Much easier to just throw money at the store and buy exclusives and giveaways than taking away manpower from their money maker into a project that might make them money in the future. New hires that aren’t put on Fortnite or UE5 probably have a high opportunity cost in their business model.
- True, but I would have thought they would be able to see the value in the future investment of the platform.

The Epic store sucks so much that I’ve gotta look the game up on Steam just to tell what I’m supposed to be looking at on Epic.

Seriously, look up any game on the EGS right now and you’ve gotta scroll past a mountain of bullshit just to get a description of the game. It kinda reminds me of those really shitty cooking sites with all the fluff.

Hah you can report a game before you even get a description or a screenshot from the game

Even with the free games you don’t always get a picture of video of actual gameplay. Just marketing bs.
Like, I have no idea what this game is about.
- This is the experience of every game in every store. I don't know how anyone chooses a game from the store.
It's better on desktop. The thing they show first on mobile is the sidebar there.
- I mean even if we ignore the idiotic choice to put the sidebar in the content at smaller widths, you’re still left with a terrible site.
  Generic, meaningless tags along with no user reviews make the site useless.

Imagine how successful their store could have been if they had put all that money into improving the launcher and not antagonizing large parts of their customer base instead.

Their active hostility toward Linux users has put me off them pretty much permanently. If they made a big push toward Linux support, I might look at them more favourably.

They clearly don't want me as a customer: fuck 'em.

Even with all the support steam gives to linux, linux isn't even 3% of steam.
- 3% of steam would be a huge boost for the epic games store though.

They skipped step one of enshittification. You've got to GET the customers before you can leverage them against your suppliers.

Just povide an API and let the nerds create your launcher for free, you're obviously bad at it.

havent tried it, but lutris has epic support: https://lutris.net/games/epic-games-store/
now... is it an improvement? again no idea because I don't use epic
- As long as it doesn't take a full minute to load any page and have 2 search bars that do different things in the game library, yes!
Heroic
- Heroic is good for handling install/playing Epic games, but it still farms out to a web browser frame for accessing the store itself.
  I'm thinking OP has something like the GOG Galaxy in mind (which afaik will never come to Linux and I'm still pissed about it).

Better not miss if you're gonna come swing at the great. As a former Rocket League enjoyer who had Epic games shit up the game I bought BEFORE they got the rights; I say it's physically impossible for Epic to fuck far enough off, but they can fuck themselves all the way to the event horizon of off and stare whistfully at the off that cannot be fucked. Forever.

Forcing me to agree to have my data used for training AI was the final straw for me. Almost 10 years since i bought the game and they pull that shit, imagine that with any other product, you go to start your car one morning and get a popup that says that you can't drive it anymore untill you agree to be spied on. Insane.
- Completely agree with this, and also fully expecting to see that with cars too. I've heard of some models with onboard computers and displays showing people ads at traffic stops, it's wild as is. But I'm certain all those CEOs and owners fully believe we should just own nothing and be happy. Everything should be rentals or subscriptions to fully cement their parasitism. And then they act surprised when people feel crushed and desperate. I my humble opinion they should fuck all the way off.
Neat, another former RL player.

Well it's okay it's a new se-

Wait, 7 years you say?

I like the idea of competition, but there is no excuse for the Epic Game Store being so awful. It could have been rebuilt from the ground up many times over in the years since it launched. It’s abundantly clear that Sweeney has no intention of improving it or giving consumers the features they actually want.

How hard is it to simply show a rough estimate of how much storage space a game will need before downloading? I'm not talking groundbreaking stuff here...
- Clearly you ask for too much.
Can you imagine if the CEO actually cared? Like if they opened up the store and went
SWEET JESUS FUCKING MONKEYCUNTING CHRIST THIS IS HOT GARBAGE WHO DID THIS
They'd fix it in a week.
But, likely, since it's been, like... What... 6.5 years ago? Yeah. The CEO either likes it or doesn't realize how bad it is that the only thing most people interact with is so bad that it's insulting. And that isn't even hyperbole, it is actually disrespectful that they expect consumers AND PROFESSIONALS to be okay with that.
Edit: steam competes with free and wins - epic competes with free and loses.

Maybe if they spent more money making it a good experience that respects customers and developers alike and less on bribing platform exclusives they would be better?

My personal favorite platform is GOG simply because it offers actual ownership instead of a crippling dependency on their ecosystem. My second favorite is Steam because it has games GOG doesn't. I'm not sure why I would want EGS beyond the free games, which are frequently not of interest to me anyway.
I'm probably in the minority but platform exclusives actually make me AVOID your platform. I hate this type of bullshit.
It really sucks, I have the second Alan Wake game on there but I can't really get into it.

I just don't see a place for it in the market. Steam is the big daddy DRM store. GOG is the old school DRM-free store. Itch is the small time indie dev store. Epic will never be a general storefront like one of the above. The only reason to use Epic is to play one of their exclusive games, and in that case they're no different from any company that refuses to multiplat their games. Blizzard selling their games on the Blizzard store or Nintendo selling their games on the Nintendo store. It just comes down to wanting a larger cut of the sales, instead of paying someone else to use their storefront.

It just comes down to wanting a larger cut of the sales
I think it's more about advertising. The launcher for these companies could be super simple but instead it's a fuckin billboard with rampant pop-up notifications.
- Also even if you install these launchers for the one game that forces it and never touch them again, they’re still sitting quietly in the background uploading and selling all your usage information and browser history and gaming history.
The only reason to use Epic is to play one of their exclusive games
Don't forget we also kindly accept the embers of the cash burnt through free weekly giveaways.

First, make it load way faster. Your app is second to everything I want to do.

Second, if I click on a game in my library, I don't expect it to install in one single click. Even Steam has the decency to ask what I want to do. Maybe I want to remember what the game is about first.

Third, I expect you to update your client automatically instead of badgering me with restarting the app manually.

There, you made it 80% better for me with that.

They could also just say "screw this" and invest in the excellent Heroic Games Launcher (just like CDPR/GOG did to some extent).

If they're so desperate, have they tried making a competitive product?

They released EGS Android game store without a library view, still none. They're really bad at making a good first impression. PC it's been 7 years. 7 years of bad impressions

They released EGS Android game store without a library view, still none.
WTF, you're right. I'm actually in shock. Just, how? How do you not have a way to view purchased content? That's App Store 101.

That all-important eighth mover advantage that they teach in business school

Make small admission to hide a bit trick.

They never care about having a good video game store, they want a good frontend for Fortnite.

Epic is eyeing Roblox: any good game made, no matter where it is sold, will become endlessly cloned in Roblox... almost all the money spend in Roblox, remain in Roblox.

A good game in Epic Game Store? Soon or later it will go on Steam, and Epic will lose some potential money, will go on PSN, and Epic will lose some potential money, will go on Xbox Store and, you guessed, Epic will lose some potential money.

They are pushing hard for artist and coder to get stuck in the Fortnite "Roblox Wannabe" metaverse; that's their only true goal. Lure developer, trap developers (I would say "Roblox lure child, trap child", but it sound excessively weird)

It doesn't sound weird when it's true
Roblox: finally a place where kids too can experience sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, pay disputes and make risky investments in an unregulated commodities market
At least when RuneScape did it it was entirely limited to within the game and didn't yet have a first party currency conversion system

Surely with the money they burn they could have fixed up the store by now?

Nonono.... It must take.... At least five more years. Mhm yes.

I'm not fundamentally AGAINST the EGS but Epic is not a good company and saying that they have a ton of work to do is the understatement of the century.

I use Epic for the free games, any games I want to buy either on Steam or independent website. I don't buy games on Epic.
- I use to buy games from Epic, but they decided to disown the Unreal franchise.

Well they released a crappy store to compete in a market with well made products and services. Oh well ¯(ツ)/¯

Only person in my circle who used EGS for anything, had their card cancelled by their bank the next day for suspicious activity

Sucks to suck.

"We're also putting great focus on ongoing launcher improvements that will make the store feel great to use," Allison added (my hottest tip: remember my freakin' login!).

Oh I thought I had this issue because of some layer of lutris/proton but everyone gets regularly disconnected? Hahahha (Never bought a game on Epic. And obviously not playing Rocket League anymore. :'( )

It’s a store, I don’t get it

have epic tried using thier assets as fuel for the fire? besides epic, ubisoft is another bad one they got so desperate at one point they had to use a apple tv show to promote thier propaganda(mythic quest) a totally unfunny show, and it just rubbed people the wrong way, despite being made by one of the ISAIP founders, who was using that show for personal motives.