Whats wrong with EPIC?

[Angilion]

Wasn't it the Epic launcher than was caught scraping every user's drives for personal information even after they'd opted out of the most intrusive spyware parts (you can't opt out of all of them, only the worst parts)?

But hey, give people "free" games and many of them will pay any price for that. Spyware, exclusives, any price at all.

GOG is my main source of games. Steam is my secondary source and I use it in offline mode almost all the time.

hyprocrtics honestly. The moment a game goes exclusively on epic that you want your be chomping at the bit to install it. [..]

Wrong. Borderlands 3 is the most obvious example in my case. I find the Borderlands games to be a lot of fun and will cheerfully pay full price for them. But I haven't bought Borderlands 3 and I won't be doing so. I do have sympathy for people who do, though. These companies don't give a rat's arse about their customers or their products (which includes their customers. who are also a product - that's what spyware is for). Not buying a game won't do anything at all to change anything. All it means is that you can't play that game. So I can understand why some people go against their own principles. It's akin to people not voting because they think (often correctly) that their vote is worthless.

 

[james.miller]

Yeah strange comment tbh, iamtheoneneo.

I conceed that my wording was incorrect.

You said Epic stated multiple times that Tencent had no influence over decisions made even though Epic has two tencent directors on the board and Sweeney himself said they have influence. You didnt just word it wrong, it was completely wrong!

Tencent can make suggestions to influence the Epic board,

They ARE part of the board. Anyway, that's enough trying to pick my posts apart. I did say that although the tencent connection was an issue for me, buying exclusives is worse. For me. Not that I should be justifying my own opinion when I dont give a stuff what you think about the company.

 

[stooeh]

I don't have really have anything against installing multiple launchers or publishers distributing their own games exclusively on their own platforms to maximise profit. Rockstar's is a bit pants though

I'm not a fan of paid exclusives of third party games though.

 

[Tombstone]

They turned me into a newt !

 

[agnes]

Epic brought upon the none dedicated studio exclusives which is utter ****.

Don't give them a penny.

 

[Malevolence]

For everyone complaining about having to use yet another launcher, check out Playnite. This pulls all your games from Steam, Epic, and others into one easy to use launcher. It also has a big screen mode you navigate with a control pad. I’m not keen on Epic either but Playnite eases the pain of having to mess about with more than one launcher.

Rubbish! All it does is add yet another launcher to the growing collection, just like the GOG Galaxy one does. Say I download it and add my current games from multiple launchers to it, if I then launch The Division 2, for example, it still has to launch the UPlay launcher for the game to run. So instead of just having the one launcher running you now have two.

 

[Angilion]

Rubbish! All it does is add yet another launcher to the growing collection, just like the GOG Galaxy one does. Say I download it and add my current games from multiple launchers to it, if I then launch The Division 2, for example, it still has to launch the UPlay launcher for the game to run. So instead of just having the one launcher running you now have two.

Those launcher-launchers do have one advantage from a user's perspective - they pull all your games together into one library. Still all the launchers, but only one library.

 

[Kainz]

Got no issues with Epic launcher. I use it daily for my Satisfactory gaming and it works just fine. In addition I’m hardly going to complain about all the free games.

 

[iv-tecman]

Epic brought upon the none dedicated studio exclusives which is utter ****.

Don't give them a penny.

There was that one indie Dev that was approached by Epic, they offered to put his game on their store, but he had to sign an exclusive deal for 12 months, he declined as he preferred his game across many stores, it was a bit of a PR stunt I felt by the Dev (DarQ) as he published everything he was told by Epic - however when EA had a desire to publush their latest Star Wars game on both Epic and Steam, Epic said nothing, so in my mind, Epic are using bully tactics with the little indie guys , and the bigger publishers they either try to get an exclusive and the publishers are greedy and take the cash, or they don't take the cash and are allowed across many stores if published on Epic if the publisher is big enough.

I don't like Epic business practices, I therefore regardless of the spyware theories WILL not buy a single PC game on the store. It could be the last remaining PC game store , I'd just find another hobby lol

actually I dunno, a lot of this could be false, you know what the internet can be like, but I am not keen to use Epic store, and I'm just holding out for MS Store, GOG, Steam or Origin release - which eventually does happen.

 

[Bluecube]

Rubbish! All it does is add yet another launcher to the growing collection, just like the GOG Galaxy one does. Say I download it and add my current games from multiple launchers to it, if I then launch The Division 2, for example, it still has to launch the UPlay launcher for the game to run. So instead of just having the one launcher running you now have two.

Calm down dear. Playnite certainly does start up the necessary launchers to run the game which is no big deal as far as I’m concerned. All my games across multiple launchers are presented in one library, and run with the necessary launcher minimised providing a nice clean game playing experience.

Multiple launchers are an inconvenience but they can be worked around. Playnite provides a good workaround.

 

[iv-tecman]

Calm down dear. Playnite certainly does start up the necessary launchers to run the game which is no big deal as far as I’m concerned. All my games across multiple launchers are presented in one library, and run with the necessary launcher minimised providing a nice clean game playing experience.

Multiple launchers are an inconvenience but they can be worked around. Playnite provides a good workaround.

Didnt even know playnite existed, just looked at it, its like GOG 2.0 - I've installed GOG 2.0 but its near on useless for MS game pass games, as it doesn't seem to detect them, but all other launchers it handles perfectly fine.

 

[malachi]

So much hate for Epic "Dont give them a penny" Yet they happily buy games powered by their engine

 

[Bluecube]

Seems to be a very low key launcher supported by Patreon payments.

I don’t know about Game Pass games but Playnite certainly picks up games from the Windows Store. It’s also great for running emulated games.

 

[TNA]

So much hate for Epic "Dont give them a penny" Yet they happily buy games powered by their engine

For me I have no issues about buying a game using their engine. I just don't have any interest in their launcher, same goes for Origin and Uplay.

 

[suenstar]

I'm not too bothered about them paying developers & publishers to get to release games on their platform first, if the extra money helps the developers to do their jobs and keep people employed then all is good... where I get issue with them paying for exclusives is when they've paid for games that had previously listed their launches to happen on another platform.

So far I've not had a need to purchase any games on their store, I got Borderlands 3 with them but that was due to a code that came with a computer component... most of my games are purchased from Humble or GMG, so I'll use whatever client their codes are for.

 

[Jay85]

EPIC is funded by Tencent, who just happen to be big/massive on censorship back home in China, Heaven knows what you are installing with them bad boys behind it, Same goes for any other launcher i guess but i would sooner have a western value spy overlord looking after me than a Chinese one

Exactly this, i'm chinese myself and i know many friends who live in china speak about big corporate giants like tencent who are government funded/backed. The general consensus is that if you live in china, don't speak bad about them or you risk being spied on or worse... it's crazy. Wasn't there some hidden code embedded in the epic launcher that was actively scanning your files without permission not too long ago?

 

[Jay85]

You disected that like a true pro. Correct ill actively wait for a title to hit steam or just let it pass me by unless its something like tarkov which is stand alone and that i want to support.

Epic could give me their entire library for free and it still wouldnt be welcome.

Or just torrent the badboy haha

P.s. i do not condone such actions

 

[Vince]

Or just torrent the badboy haha

P.s. i do not condone such actions

I work at a firm that protects IP, an intellectual property law firm and one of the oldest in the uk. That is what pays my bills and for that reason I do not download any illegal torrents etc. If I didnt do what I do then who knows but as it stands Id rather pay the money and reward the devs/publisher.

There are a few titles I probably would have already bought including borderlands 3, rdr2, outer worlds and a few others which I absolutley would have got day one on steam but I still dont own any of those games and will now likely wait until they are basically giving them away.

 

[TNA]

Or just torrent the badboy haha

P.s. i do not condone such actions

Hahahahaha

 

[Angilion]

Exactly this, i'm chinese myself and i know many friends who live in china speak about big corporate giants like tencent who are government funded/backed. The general consensus is that if you live in china, don't speak bad about them or you risk being spied on or worse... it's crazy. Wasn't there some hidden code embedded in the epic launcher that was actively scanning your files without permission not too long ago?

Yes. And it still is doing so. The famous example of them getting caught doing it isn't the only example of them doing it. In that case, the launcher was scraping users' drives to find their friends list on Steam, gathering what data it could about those friends and accessing Steam cloud services to see what you have there. Without your knowledge, let alone your permission.

https://metacouncil.com/threads/epic-game-store-spyware-tracking-and-you.766/

In general, Epic does a good job of hiding what information its launcher is scraping from users' drives. It's definitely doing that, but exactly what it's doing is usually very well hidden. It is undoubtably spyware, but what information it acquires from users isn't wholly known.

What I particularly like about GOG Galaxy is that it's a launcher. Just a launcher. Not spyware with a launcher added to it.