Really enjoying my free games on EGS and my two single purchases (Borderlands 3 and Untitled Goose Game).
If Epic wants to continue paying devs and giving away games, I'm all for it. It has certainly improved PC gaming for me and the only one who has been "hurt" is whoever gamer remains exclusive to a single storefront, which is really silly.
No one has a problem with the positive aspects of the Epic Games Store. If EGS has purely been good for you, then that's good for you.
To an extent it's ok to be ignorant about something, but a year later coming into a thread about something you don't seem to care about, and clearly haven't cared to inform yourself about, just to dismiss and mock people who are negatively impacted by it, is incomprehensible to me.
The "I don't know/care about the negative aspects, fuck the people impacted by them, I got mine" argument is an extremely bad and tired argument.
EGS exclusive games have a tendency to become more expensive, is one thing that people continue to ignore so they can for some reason shit on us who have a problem with EGS. Like, if you don't think losing money matters then please send me some.
I will say that EGS has gotten better in regards to pricing. But whether driven by Epic or publishers, EGS feels much more in control of pricing. EGS is more restrictive in regards to where EGS keys can be distributed, and I have no idea what their various exclusivity contracts dictate. Control isn't available on GMG for instance. Is that a 505 or Epic decision? Who knows? But it doesn't really matter, the end result does.
It's more or less on a case by case basis, and I can only speak for my own region, but if a full priced game is EGS exclusive, it could be €60 until there's a sale, up to 30% more than I'd might otherwise be asked to pay for a non-EGS key. Availability in one of the like three third party stores EGS works with, is not certain, and if it is, the discount you typically get in a store like GMG might not exist, or it might be lower than it would've been for a non-EGS key, which seems likely due to the profit margin for stores being significantly lower for EGS keys. 30% is generally the standard revenue share, it's 12% with EGS.
GMG has to be losing money on EGS keys if their discount cuts too deep. Don't know how that's working out for them. Third party stores getting pushed out of business or becoming unable to offer savings to customers is of some concern, and something I care about because that's how I can afford games. If that stops being an option, I'll either buy less games or I'll go to keyshops. Doesn't seem like a great thing for developers.
But I suppose we're to trust that Epic knows what they're doing. It's good for us and developers, they say. Why wouldn't you trust a company with the expertise and foresight to launch a store without a cart and that triggered fraud detection if people made too many purchases during a sale? That made a roadmap public only to have multiple features pushed back until they eventually took the roadmap down? And whatever else I may have forgotten.
Like I said, I sense that things have improved. I'm not exactly keeping track of all the EGS games, but I know Control was at a decent price during the recent sale, granted it reached that level much later than it probably would've otherwise. EGS is still new, we don't really know exactly how things will unfold, and I'm not investing anything in this platform until I feel I can trust I won't get screwed.
One thing I might relent on though is my decision to not register an account at all. I might perhaps do that if there's a free game I think I'd care to play.