"I don't hate Epic Games Store" = fanboyism. Okay.
I just have to wonder, considering the best responses to these things are measured ones that try to take the full case into account, and you made zero effort to even look beyond 'whe whe shopping cart', which anyone with two pennies of wit should realize is hardly everyone's complaint or even the persistent source of primary complaints. I went for the least insulting reason for that to be the case. But yes, I took that to needless sniping, and I'll attempt to avoid that.
I'm not even a fanboy of it. Everyone screams and shouts about how it's the worst thing ever, how it's killing games (hahahahahaahah), how it shot their dog and pissed on its corpse but no one ever has any reason why other than "lol no shopping cart, lol a moderately popular former youtube lets player bought games and had his account tagged, tencent is the worst now let me go play League of Legends while listening to Spotify hop in our Discord server to coordinate, also Fortnite sucks".
On the other hand, when views are taken like this, maybe I won't.
Let's look at some actual arguments. I'm going to post a link put my own views on it.
Yes, ink just posted it, I'll go into detail.
old.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments…
1. This one is a primary reason for me dismissing the store on principle. A platform that encourages developers to break off from expected and perfectly decent platforms that were kickstarter/preorder funded on the expectation of releasing on those platforms (going beyond Steam alone) effectively results in the developer breaking promises. Several games have done this and you are shoehorning into a single one. Notably, Shenmue 3 had a horrible response and a series I particularly enjoy, Mechwarrior, has had the latest entry pull this shitty stunt. In that case it's just the last straw in a stream of shoddy developer behavior, but I digress.
2. Generally in agreement despite finding it unproven that Epic actively does anything with personal data. That strikes me as a wee bit paranoid, even as someone who makes a habit of being paranoid on the internet. Despite that, their privacy controls are poor and the reach they have in your system before even logging in is dubious.
3. Again, a point of principle, elaborating on 1.
4. Dead wrong and an uncommon argument, although a later poster makes a good point regarding later sales potentially chopping the split well below how Epic handles it.
5. What stands out for me is the brute-force nature of how Epic is accessing the file in question when there are perfectly decent alternatives to doing so.
6. I haven't observed this, but it doesn't sound very good to me either.
Now for mine, largely on the platform just on what it has as features.
It's not that they lack a shopping cart all by itself. They lack a shopping cart (which is pretty goddamn basic for platforms to use), have falsely banned more than a single moderately popular youtuber automatically for being too enthusiastic when running through games one at a time to buy, entirely lack forum integration and any form of reviews, and just about any integration for some of the lesser bling (groups, per-region pricing, screenshots, achievements, cloud saving, mod workshop, multi device/account support, profiles, two factor authentication, gifting, and other things too minor to make a case for. In truth, I use very few of these, and yet I know and have seen many players who do. By no means does EGS need match point-by-point or be a clone of how Steam operates. However, some of these are quite basic, and the excuse of 'well it's new' and 'steam started off bad too' no longer applies. Steam lacked any sort of precedence. That precedence is now established and practically expected, especially when a platform forcibly injects itself alongside the top platform in features by making a mission of forcing any game on its platform and nowhere else when it would otherwise be in multiple places, all at prodigious expense to EGS (which is a good source for people's concern about Tencent, as I'm skeptical Fortnite alone allows them to blow money the way they do). All that money, and yet, no will to invest a good portion of it into making something serviceable at release, let alone months down the line. Sure, some of these things are on the roadmap.
Soon™.
It would be one thing if it launched buggy including efforts for several of these things, but that would imply a level of effort that simply didn't take place. Despite all this on the features end, I and probably many others who dislike the platform (note that I do not automatically default to 'hate hate hate no chance anything else' and neither do many, just the ones picked out of the crowd) would give it a fair shot if their behavior hasn't been developer priority over all else (it strikes me that they have zero interest in appealing to the customer and simply take that audience for granted, which, after fortnite, I suspect is the attitude) and point 1 from above, where there is not even a semblence of tact in their wheedling and dealing.
You can bet a good portion of the outrage would be reduced if they had a policy of doing this on undecided games that have made no platform commitments. They do not, and the examples take the headlights.
Despite the above, I do not entirely rule out playing on that platform, aside from the (completely subjective) fact that I have no interest in the offerings presented. The few that were interesting, blew it, and others just aren't needed enough to forsake my desire to be rid of something I frankly don't like at fundamental levels.
I believe I addressed most of the following blurb by proxy, but one section in particular,
Is EGS as 'feature rich' as Steam? No. Is Epic offering incentives for publishers for timed exclusivity? Yes, but what's the problem there? That it's a company throwing money around while Good Guy Gabe's crew don't?
It is the way the money is being thrown at lifting games from promised release details at the apparent expense of improving their own platform that gets on my nerves twofold.
Epic is using 'timed exclusives' to brand build, they aren't holding devs at gunpoint and forcing them to do so at the expense of gamers and Steam.
Epic (perhaps not anymore, but else) has considerable room to brand build by the expression 'be the better man'; by making a platform that is less of a monolithic greyscale entity as Steam, giving priority to developers, but also customers and improving on basic concepts that Steam has floundered to understand. Steam is practically a monopoly. Something equally decent in its offerings one way or another could break it up. It would have plenty of 'brand build' exposure without that exposure being constant controversy and a platform that by itself wouldn't get a fraction of the distance.
Obviously it's not a lack of a shopping cart.Good of you to notice.
What's wrong with its practices other than the fact that it's capitalism doing its thing to the PC market that its been doing to the consoles for years? What makes it anti-consumer? The fact that you might have to wait a bit longer to play it on a *preferred* platform? What makes it so egregiously awful?
PC and consoles have developed differently; I hope I don't have to articulate exactly why something is wrong with applying one field's business strategies to another abruptly. For my part, I dislike consoles for their hardware, their operating systems, their selections and business (which is slightly more fitting on them than on desktops anyways, if you want me to articulate why, I shall) and the very way games are played on them, so I am not one who is at all appetized by console practices on desktop systems. But I digress. The primary issue is with Epic's apparent priorities and their extremely mediocre platform despite obviously having the resources to make it better. The rest is fairly marginal in comparison, but to speak for myself and probably a good portion who would agree, those are fundamental reasons. All is capped off by a disinterest in their offerings, privacy concerns and extreme disappointment - I was rooting for them in the very beginning purely on the basis that they were going to bust Steam's balls. Unfortunately, it went quite unlike what I had wished for. Kuro's post pretty much boils down my core issues.
My goal is not to convince you, or indeed, anyone to share these views, as they are situationally applicable and I can't imagine a great many guild members at all would see eye to eye. My only intent is to indicate that people do have viable reasons, and as such, are not worthy of the dismissive mockery they've been approached with save in cases where they are clearly not expressing their own opinions or doing so very poorly.
The latest example I've heard is Shenmue 3 which was never actually confirmed for just Steam but just 'PC'.
store.steampowered.com/app/878670/She…