Controversial post that last one 😬😅 Didn't think it would be quite that triggering. People are so passionate about this topic, I've learned.
Is there some summary of why people hate Epic with such a strong passion, to the point of calling them evil and "bad for the industry"? Is it the "we send data to China" thing? Is it really just the lack of features? Lack of features in a product that you don't use seems like a super weird thing to get passionately angry about. Is it that they pay developers a larger cut of revenue? Is that bad? Is it the money hatting of exclusives?
Googling this topic does not enlighten me…it's just people complaining about random features not being in the app, as if Epic is obligated to have certain features.
There's two big issues: lack of features and paid exclusives. The combination of the two sucks.
The best analogy I can think of is what if Epic started making a console and so to attract people they started paying money for timed exclusivity, often for games that people had been told were coming to other platforms.
But Epic doesn't really care that much about making a good console experience in this hypothetical. Take all the features you like from your favorite console and remove them, and that's basically what it's like playing an EGS game. It is usually functional, and that's basically the most that can be said of it. The problem is that Steam basically *is* PC gaming, so its feature set is synonymous. Exhaustive controller reminding? Extensive review systems? Family sharing? Game streaming? Seamless Proton integration and Steam OS? One-click language setting changes? One click mod support? Community hubs for discussion and guides? A metric fuckton of metadata? Betas/branches? Steamdb? There's a crazy number of features and this is only scratching the surface. The console equivalent would be like if all the games you were excited for were exclusive to the 3ds. Sometimes everything around the literal game can drag down the experience significantly. Because it's such a worse overall experience it makes people sour on even Epic published games because they'll be tied to an inferior launcher.
So maybe you say "well those sound like extraneous features, you don't see those on console". Well yeah, that's often why people are playing on PC and not console. The chance that people use any one of Steam's numerous features is pretty damn high.
The whole other part of this is that Epic just feels extremely hypocritical and actively detrimental to the overall PC ecosystem. They complain about Steam's 30% cut while ignoring that it's actually far less than that once you factor in all the cd keys sold that allow savings to be passed on to the consumer (you can usually get a PC game before launch outside of steam for up to $20 off list price). Epic said that their larger cut for devs would mean more savings for players but that never really happened. They show no actual interest in making PC a good place to play, meanwhile Valve launches a handheld, overhauls Proton and Steam OS and fronts a mass testing effort to allow you to play thousands of games in a console-like plug-and-play experience. Heck while Elden Ring was a shitshow on regular PC at launch Valve was out there fixing it for Steam Deck.
Like look, EGS is basically middling to a flop as far as the usage statistics go. There's a reason there's so little adoption and conversion to active paying customers outside of fortnite even as Epic was throwing absurd numbers of free games to try and sway people. Kingdom Hearts is technically on PC, but it may as well not exist in the zeitgeist. That's how bad it is. When taken on their own merits as stewards of the platform, Steam basically made PC a viable platform, and Epic for the longest time wanted nothing to do with it, and still puts in the bare minimum amount of effort into creating its PC experience.
People aren't just out to shit on other launchers mind you. Like GOG differentiates itself with a focus on old titles and DRM free software, while offering cross-account integration, and a lot of people like it. If Epic felt like it had an actual goal with the consumer in mind and weren't trying to make things worse for everyone in the process (bar a handful of indie devs in the past) people probably wouldn't be as irate.
