Growing pains. People are mad for two reasons, I think: the first being the obvious "The store sucks." It does. I use it every day to play games I bought on EGS (well, not every day, but plenty) and for Fortnite when I get around to it. Finding games is hard since it's a big-ass scroll wheel and page with no delineation of what's out and what's not, new, old, etc. I mean, I could go on about how it sucks, not least of which because I am a customer of Epic. I've bought into their platform, and my use informs the "it sucks" opinion. But, just like people don't have to smoke cigarettes themselves to learn that smoking is bad, so too do people not have to be an EGS customer like myself to know this.
The second reason is a bit stranger: I think most people know that what Epic is doing works, and it's strong-arming them. It's working more-or-less just like Epic said it would; they toss around their giant E-dick pinata stuffed with Fortnite monies, little indy children smack it a couple times, and out the front blows enough cash to get people to sign on any dotted line in front of them. Eventually they'll hit that one game you were *really* invested in, emotionally, and you'll probably (though not always, you principled few) bend and break. It's scary to realize that EGS isn't trying to "break" in anymore, they've already more-or-less done it, and all it took was shitting on consumers faces and preying on the fear of developers to get there. 'murica!
Okay, so why am I using it if I think it's shit and feel all sorta ways about it? One, I'm not, like, a super principled person. Hell, I broke the second I saw a Supergiant game, duders. That was, like, day 1, or something. The other reason is their free-game stuff; I have this library composed, now, primarily of free games. And not, like, $2 games. Say what you will, but on a consumer front, the free games thing has been kinda awesome, even if it's just another tactic as far as Epic's concerned. Also, the knowledge that exclusives are going this way means that I get to play them without waiting a year so they can sit in my other game library. I have a finite life-span, so I'm not willing to wait a year to tell Epic to fuck themselves.
BUT. Fuck telling other people what to do with their money and their time. If they don't want to give Epic a cent, I'm not going to try to make them feel differently about what Epic is doing. I mean, you know, they're mostly right about it. It is information collection, it is -- right now -- mostly anti-consumer, it is making games unavailable to many, it is run by near as I can tell a manchild. Steam is a way better store. We need to be able to acknowledge why people are making decisions for themselves as consumers, and not like totally lose our shit about that. So, yeah, I agree with the broader criticism of, we're losing a bit of our soul in this discussion. But I also know for a fact that the passion people have about how badly the Epic store sucks isn't made out of thin air. Look, I hate the term "both sides" for reasons anyone in Off-topic would understand, but maybe it applies here: maybe I'll learn from you, you'll learn from me, and we'll meet somewhere in a middle that says "Epic store sucks" but that's ok. It's ok.
