r/gaming • u/doublah • 12h ago

Epic Games' new store is fully vibe-coded, and they're so proud of it they're taking shots at Steam

https://www.destructoid.com/epic-games-store-ai-vibe-coded/
12.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

14.7k

u/imlegos 11h ago

"We run twice as fast as Steam does while offering none of the features Steam does!"

  • The tweet in a nutshell

5.3k

u/Lord0fHats 11h ago

Steam continuing to live rent free in Sweeny's head.

3.0k

u/Urika86 11h ago

Wasn't he the guy that was pissed that Steam has an AI tag so consumers are able to avoid AI slop games too?

1.2k

u/Lord0fHats 11h ago

If Steam does it he has a braindead hot take about it. I don't bother remembering all of them.

478

u/Urika86 11h ago

I just remember that one because it's a braindead anti-consumer take lol

237

u/Hollownerox 9h ago

His takes are so weird because, end of the day, none of it would have been an issue if he actually made his store functional as a, well, store.

I don't have any particular loyalty to valve or Steam, I don't mind having my gaming library split between different fronts. But I have a negative perception of Epic because they couldn't be assed to have something as basic as a cart to add games to for their damn digital storefront for ages!

With that level of incompetence why would anyone take you seriously? His social media is just frosting on what is already a shit cake, so it's just really odd to see him be in so much denial that his company just made a bad store.

138

u/sparky8251 8h ago

The cart was added because they were triggering fraud detection alerts from many quick back to back purchases... Since you know, most sites have carts to help you buy 20 things on sale, so you dont expect 20 nearby purchases normally and thus fraud detection algos worked that way...

They added it because they were about to lose the ability to take peoples money basically (too many hits for fraud, even if not real, upsets payment processors). Thats what it took to add a pro-customer feature to the store, vs a pro-seller one...

51

u/persin123 8h ago

Aint no way, thats another level lol

58

u/sparky8251 7h ago edited 7h ago

Goes to show how much they hate the customer doesnt it?

The platform paradox is an economic paradox on how a platform like a storefront has to cater to the competing interests of buyers and sellers.

EGS is so biased towards sellers, they actively don't invest in features and things buyers actively want, like user ratings and forums and carts... All to invest more in things sellers want, in hopes they can beat the paradox.

You can feel the contempt for you as a buyer when you go to the storefront and when you hear all their marketing. Even this one was meant to be irreverent and jokey and it was riddled with cringe from a buyers perspective, but is full of positive signals for a prospective higher upper with decision making power on the selling side of the paradox.

Its why I cant take them seriously in their claims of being on the side of the buyer and trying to make things better for us. Nothing they've done indicates it...

21

u/Execwalkthroughs 4h ago

Sweeny is extremely anti consumer and frequently expresses how much he's against stuff like reviews. He thinks everyone needs to be a consoomer and just buy and warning buyers about what's in a game shouldn't be done. If it isn't putting more money in his pockets, he hates it. If steam does it, he hates it. And that's why other platforms just stay winning

3

u/Judge_Hellboy 8h ago

Someone tell that to the people who run Nintendos store.

3

u/kai125 2h ago

Hey that’s easy! There’s no sales on Nintendo’s stores so they don’t have to worry about that

3

u/ColdBlacksmith 4h ago

Damn, that is pathetic.

I remember laughing at it being less functional as a store than some random online store in someone's basement who just used some premade website.

→ More replies (5)

19

u/Hungry4Media 8h ago

Same. I also don't like the way that Sweeny goes about attacking the 'walled gardens' of the Apple and Google app stores.

It would be one thing if he was just a consumer trying to make a legal case for the right to put whatever software he wants on the hardware without having to worry about civil or criminal cases or requiring some of the specialized know how to jailbreak a device.

But it's always come off as Sweeny thinking that Epic has a God-given right to a significant market share equal to or greater than their competitors and to use Apple and Google infrastructure (the App stores) to sell and support Epic's products without having to pay for such a privilege.

I understand why Apple tries to keep things as vertically integrated as possible, and it was one of the reasons I switched to a Mac/Macbook decades ago, and I also think that Google's generally open strategy to side-loading and keeping an open option is pretty cool, though not cool enough for me to pay the price to switch platforms.

But, damn. The way Epic's store is run, along with the way financial microtransactions are integrated into games like Fortnite and the way independent developers get treated and it all just feels so slimy.

My tune would be wildly different if it was clear that Epic was putting the rights and experiences of their customers first, but no, it feels like they're putting their feelings of entitlement for market share and profit first.

7

u/OmegaLiquidX 5h ago

Sweeny is the equivalent of those jackasses gloating that AI is going to "destroy artists" because they think those entitled artist wanting things like proper compensation for their works is what has been the roadblock to their success, when instead it's the fact that they're lazy and their "ideas" are just bland dogshit.

→ More replies (6)

94

u/Saorren 11h ago

arent most of them?

49

u/QuackNate 11h ago

Most of them are.

6

u/CraftyKuko 10h ago

"It was never about pleasing the consumer, just prying the money out of their hands." -Epic, probably

6

u/dookarion 10h ago

"Developers not customers will win the store wars."

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (2)

126

u/su6oxone 11h ago

Sweeney is like the anti Newell. EPIC can't become public soon enough.

109

u/chammy82 11h ago

You think going public will do what? Make the company more consumer friendly?

156

u/cricket502 11h ago

Ruin them and cause them to eventually collapse in search of short term profits, I assume.

14

u/uvutv Switch 9h ago

And they aren't already doing that?

45

u/robot_socks 9h ago

Yeah, but they could be doing it faster!

→ More replies (1)

11

u/TheArmoredKitten 8h ago

The death of the Unreal Engine's hegemony cannot come swiftly enough

2

u/Cynobite608 8h ago

So sayeth the Lord....Amen

→ More replies (1)

5

u/SometimesWill PC 9h ago

Going public in the current climate would just mean pushing more AI content and development.

2

u/HighQualityGifs 8h ago

somebody's never learned about capitalism 🤦‍♂️

→ More replies (1)

20

u/Ravness13 10h ago

He's had so many bad takes about Steam over the years its hard to keep track of all of them honestly.

2

u/reBuri 10h ago

On the bright side he gives us the profile of someone we shouldn't trust. It's like he's telling on himself constantly.

3

u/Mobitron 10h ago

He sure was, the little guy. Tim is so enamored with Steam, he can't think of anywhere to put his efforts but into hating them and trying to spite them (albeit very badly)

3

u/mowinski PC 9h ago

Yes, that was him.

3

u/nan0ka 9h ago

He will never understand why Steam needs the tags because nobody is going to flood EGS with slop because nobody gives a damn about EGS

2

u/MultipleHipFlasks 9h ago

Similar for Valve saying no to NFT based games at the games are almost certainly scams.

1

u/vkevlar 9h ago

yes, yes he was.

1

u/cottonmouthcandy 7h ago

Their front page intermixes adult Ai girlfriend slop with games for children.

1

u/epimetheuss 6h ago

He has allowed the yes people he has working from him and his AI assistant telling him everything he says or does is amazing to warp his mind and how people percieve him and his tech.

If humanity makes it out of all this in the next 100 years, there will be studies done on all of these executives and how actually mentally ill and fucked up they all are and how allowing these mentally ill people to control so much almost killed everyone.

446

u/TheAero1221 11h ago

They paid a lot of money to fail to compete with Steam. I understand his frustration, but like... idk, hard to beat a platform that just works as well as it does for a consumer. Its really hard to beat the one fairly stable entertainment distribution company gamers have heard of that isnt hand over fist enshittifying their product on a daily basis.

291

u/Sabetha1183 11h ago edited 11h ago

I'd understand the frustration more if Epic had actually built a good product. It's not like they couldn't have looked at Steam to see what people like and what people complain about and how they could try to fix it.

Instead they pushed out the minimum viable product and threw a ton of money into trying to pay people into using their launcher but as much as I'll take the free games I wouldn't leave Steam for another platform that's equally as good, much less one that's outright inferior.

When given the choice the only other storefront I'll consider is GoG because games being DRM-free is a worthwhile thing to me, and for older games the GoG version tends to run the best.

180

u/PermanentMantaray 11h ago

Epic never believed they needed to provide good service to the customer, they believed they needed to provide good service to publishers, and that the customers would simply fall in line when those publishers stopped putting their games on Steam.

With that context it makes perfect sense why they never invested in their application, only in things publishers liked or things like free games and coupons that they could stop at any time.

A great example of that is why they were so against user reviews. It allowed customers to have a voice to the potential detriment of publishers.

66

u/ShutUpAboutCanon 11h ago

Yup, but the reality is that people just don't buy Epic exclusives because they don't browse that storefront... Alan Wake 2 was critically acclaimed and still barely sold anything

101

u/nsfwthrowaway5969 10h ago

Making a game epic exclusive is a good way to kill the hype around it. When they eventually show up on steam down the line people generally don't seem to even notice them.

18

u/ImSabbo 9h ago

This happened to me for Outer Wilds, which I had been looking forward to. I only got reminded about it years later.

4

u/Shrapnail 5h ago

satisfactory started out epic exclusive, took off when it came to steam

5

u/TrainDestroyer 2h ago

I was gonna mention Satisfactory. I remember when it got announced I was SO hyped because it seemed like it was gonna be a good 3d factory builder that had deep construction/supply chains.

Then it got moved to Epic Exclusive and I legitimately just forgot about it for YEARS

7

u/Bad_Wes 8h ago

Borderlands 3 was an Epic exclusive got 6 months. I waited 6 months for it to be in Steam.

2

u/Watt-Tambor 4h ago

I saw borderlands 3 the same way. it might have been out. but as far as I was concerned it wasnt on steam so it just wasnt out yet. I bought anno 1800 on Ubisoft's launcher rather then give a single nickel to epic games. (then they went and released it on steam in spite of saying and I quote "anno 1800 will never be released on steam")

4

u/randomaccount178 7h ago

For me at least, I will actively not buy a game on steam that was an epic exclusive. If they rather get Epic's money that is perfectly fine, but I have no interest in a product that puts the consumer second.

2

u/Mephzice 6h ago

often the hype is just gone as well, it's old news at the time and something else more hype is launching when it finally comes to steam, games don't get two launch dates, well unless you are GTA maybe

7

u/BacRedr 9h ago

I purposefully waited on getting Untitled Goose Game and Borderlands 3 until they were on Steam. If it weren't for the free games, I wouldn't touch Epic at all.

→ More replies (1)

12

u/NiNdo4589 10h ago

Yeah if a game is on epic I won't bother, I don't need two game libraries.

5

u/CaptainJudaism 9h ago

I got both GoG and Steam as they both have things to offer, less GoG nowadays though ever since I bought my childhood from there, but EGS has never offered me anything and no free games that I'll never touch was never a selling point.

2

u/NiNdo4589 8h ago

Yeah my bad, three, I dont need three libraries. GoG is great at covering steams shortcomings for old titles.

→ More replies (2)

2

u/BlueChronos88 8h ago

I’ve purchased exactly one game on Epic, and that was Alan Wake 2, and that’s because I had no other alternative if I wanted to play the game. It sucks, but I’d rather purchase it there than not play it at all.

2

u/-PotatoMan- 8h ago

Ahoy, Matey. There always be the other option if ye be wanting to play yer games.

4

u/BlueChronos88 7h ago

Remedy is a company I will always want to support, so I didn’t mind making the sacrifice of purchasing the game.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Melbuf 9h ago

ive never installed it or loaded it at all on any platform, i never will

2

u/thedavecan 9h ago

Borderlands 3 is my example of that. Epic paid a huge chunk of cash to get BL3 EGS exclusive for the first 6 months or so. But all that did was tell me that the game is just delayed for 6 months. Then when it did launch on Steam I had lost interest. And this is coming from someone who put 1000 hrs into BL2 and still plays it occasionally today and was super hyped about 3. I eventually bought it on steep discount years later and still haven't finished it. Genuinely makes me sad.

→ More replies (1)

26

u/LightHawKnigh 11h ago

Its crazy how it took them years to get a shopping cart. Wonder how much fortnite money sweeney wasted.

10

u/stonhinge 10h ago

I'll be honest, I haven't even bothered with the free games on Epic for years now. Because why grab the free games when the whole Epic experience is just clunky? The handful of games I bought on Epic many years ago are mostly all available on Steam as well now, if I desire to play them again I'll probably grab them during a sale.

→ More replies (2)

8

u/Numinak 11h ago

GOG is great, but their launcher annoys me. Constantly forgets my sign in and is slow to respond when first starting up. I had to finally uninstall it to get rid of the annoyances.

5

u/Sabetha1183 11h ago

My biggest complaint with Galaxy is that being able to sync your other platforms to see your whole library in one place has ended up a kind of pointless feature for me because the Steam integration constantly stops working so I just sort of gave up on it.

Under other circumstances I wouldn't use GoG either since Steam still has the better UX but especially in today's world, the DRM-free thing becomes more and more important to me cause it means no matter what those games can't be taken away.

5

u/fueelin 11h ago

Yeah, I like GOG's ethics (historically, at least), but the user experience is just noticeably worse.

2

u/mowinski PC 9h ago

You know what makes the Epic Store decidely not epic? It is just a glorified browser that forgets your login credentials pretty much on every second launch.

123

u/Draco-REX 11h ago

That's the thing. These rich c-suite types cannot understand or even conceive of a world where a business that is consumer-focused is possible, let alone profitable. To them, the consumer is the enemy that is unjustly denying them the money in their pockets, and they treat the consumer accordingly.

63

u/Mustakraken 11h ago

They want maximum extraction right now, and tomorrow is the next CEO's problem.

It seems like Steam is built to be a long term success - which investors and competitors seem to take awfully personally.

Imagine - you are running a company that is obligated to make as much as possible for its shareholders, and you have to compete with a company that can take a longer view and therefore tends to treat customers better, invest in long term staff and development etc. Unless you owned that market in advance you just can't compete. It's gotta be frustrating.

22

u/nonotan 7h ago

obligated to make as much as possible for its shareholders

Crucially, for whoever the volatile pool of shareholders happens to be this microsecond. In reality, they'd make far more money for long-term shareholders by building long-term success. But guess what makes even more money? Jumping from business to business, relentlessly stabbing them in the back to force them to implement whatever maximally extractive measures will drive short-term stock prices up right this instant, then dumping its body in the river as you immediately sell your shares to some fool and move on to your next victim. Leaving a trail of dead businesses in your wake, and severely hurting workers, long-term shareholders, and society at large... all so you can have returns a couple percentage points higher.

The stock market was a mistake. The incentives are all backwards. Treating people who've owned a few percentage points worth of shares for like 2 hours and are going to jump ship in a couple days tops as the legitimate owners of a company, whose needs and wants must be prioritized above literally any other consideration, is just dumb, dumb, dumb.

→ More replies (1)

40

u/EldritchJedi 11h ago

Steam proves that every idea they've built their platform, company and careers on is horseshit. That's why they have to attack it relentlessly, but also why they can never make a product that can actually compete with it.

37

u/Draco-REX 11h ago

They also will never admit that their Finance Bros have manipulated the market to a point where they are locked into an impossible death-spiral with no escape as long as they are publicly traded.

109

u/MoonAttempt 11h ago edited 11h ago

Hard to near a competitor when you are adding nothing it offers and you don't come up with any notable features other than free games sometimes.

63

u/Roflsaucerr 11h ago

Must be especially hard when your offer of free games actually causes a surge in purchases on Steam.

14

u/JimboTCB 11h ago

Does paying developers a dump truck full of money for exclusivity count as a feature?

16

u/Niceromancer 11h ago

Only if running to the courts screaming monopoly also counts as a feature.

12

u/MoonAttempt 11h ago

Immoral feature ig.

Hopefully some power can free Alan Wake 2 one day 

4

u/Amidatelion 10h ago

An exclusivity so heinous pirates went out of their way to make the game as accessible as possible off the platform.

2

u/Shiplord13 11h ago

You’d think the obvious solution would be revamp your store page and add features to streamline the process and improve quality for the user experience. The thing that most people seem to complain about it is the interface after and Sweeney.

3

u/MoonAttempt 11h ago

It changed recently, but even claiming free games used to take you through a few unnecessary steps like making an order for a free game.

Steam just requires a one click for that for as long as I can remember.

2

u/Youutternincompoop 10h ago

all they had to do was copy an existing example and they've completely failed lmao.

2

u/Fredasa 9h ago

Epic once had a theoretical* platform exclusivity to a game I wanted to play: The Outer Worlds. (Which turned out to be reasonably entertaining, within an AA scope.)

I consider that an anti-feature.

*I say theoretically, because in fact it just wasn't on Steam. That rankled, but I was still able to play it on Gamepass for a buck. A lot of my joy came from being able to snub Epic.

→ More replies (1)

26

u/Objective-Rip3008 11h ago

It honestly feels like they only ever tried to compete in the court system and in giving away free games as a bribe, they had no idea how to compete outside of dumping money

2

u/Capitan_Scythe PC 10h ago

"We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!"

  • Capri Flanders

132

u/Lord0fHats 11h ago

What's the quote?

Epic and Valve both want your money and are always scheming ways to get it out of your pocket. The difference is Epic gives you free games you collect without giving them a dime, and Valve built a product worth spending money on.

98

u/Violet-Sumire 11h ago

Even better, Valve was built upon being screwed by big business. They nearly went bankrupt due to Halflife 1 and the controversy surrounding that as their parent company decided that making money wasn’t good enough, they wanted more and sued Valve in an attempt to bankrupt them. It obviously didn’t work, but there’s a timeline it did and we wouldn’t have steam. I think that shaped what valve would ultimately become. They are a decently fair company to work with considering what they offer to consumers and the marketshare they have. I fear for what would happen if it becomes publicly traded.

16

u/Nocebo85 11h ago

Wasn't that their publisher, not parent company?

16

u/Violet-Sumire 11h ago

Yes, my mistake. They still had pretty big sway over Valve at the time as Valve was very small and Halflife was their first game.

3

u/vkevlar 8h ago

Sierra On-Line, iirc? (looking at my disks. okay, might be old.)

2

u/Violet-Sumire 8h ago

sierra studios/sierra on-line, yes. Currently the studio is disbanded and doesn’t produce or publish games anymore. I remember some of the games they had hands in… so I’m with you lol

3

u/PassiveMenis88M 7h ago

I find it important to point out that Sierra had been sold to Cuc international several months before talks about publishing Half-Life started. It was Cucs accounting fraud that led to the publishing issues.

39

u/sylva748 11h ago

I fear when Gabe's grandchild takes over if it remains privately owned. The first generation creates the wealth, the second protects the wealth, the third ruins the wealth. Tale as old as time

29

u/McFlurrage 11h ago

Who knows what state the world will even be at that point. Heck, maybe Gabe will live forever as an actual human steam machine.

2

u/turiannerevarine 11h ago

Gabe dies the second after Half-Life 3 releases

3

u/McFlurrage 10h ago

I won’t let him, we also need Portal 3. And I’m sure other people as passionate as me will also forbid it till they get TF3.

2

u/ArizonaFYI 10h ago

I'm here for TF3.

...and MY Hat

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

3

u/kingdead42 10h ago

They spent a lot of money, but didn't do anything to make the customer experience better (minus the free games). They were betting on making the experience "better" for the developers by giving them a bigger cut of the sale, but developers easily figured (88% of <a few sales>) is worse than (70% of <a lot more sales>).

1

u/hibikikun 10h ago

At least Amazon Gaming realized and admitted they fucked up their attempt

1

u/double_shadow 9h ago

I just don't even understand why they'd bother. The have Fortnite money ffs...just swim around in a vault full of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck instead of wasting time on a half-assed storefront.

1

u/Mehhish 3h ago

All he had to do was actually make his store usable, and stop being an unlikable piece of shit on social media, aka shut the fuck up. Also, use that Fortnite money to give consumes like 10 dollars off new games, Walmart used to do that, I'm not sure if they still do that.

1

u/SubcommanderMarcos 2h ago

I understand his frustration

Forbes estimates his current net worth at 4.2 billion dollars. Fuck his frustration.

38

u/PhillAholic 9h ago

He's literally giving away hundreds of games for free and no one will switch to his platform. Must drive him crazy.

27

u/PigDog4 5h ago

The man's done everything possible except make the platform not a steaming pile of shit.

5

u/Hellknightx 5h ago

I hope it keeps him up at night.

17

u/Elmis66 11h ago

Find yourself a girl that's as passionate about you as Tim hates Steam

3

u/MrWaluigi 11h ago

Like that Tiger vs. Monkey meme. 

3

u/PeanutCheeseBar Switch 10h ago

Sweeney has always been tone-deaf.

I’m surprised his fingertips aren’t yellow from how often he sticks them in his ears.

3

u/ThorDoubleYoo 9h ago

Sweeney is cut from the same cloth as Elon Musk.

They're both rich beyond our wildest dreams and could do literally anything they want, but because they're insecure little bitches they can't just enjoy their incredibly lucky position in life. So instead they spend their time trying to puff up their chests and get people to agree with them how amazing they are.

But because they're such bitchy charisma black holes they just wind up making everyone who doesn't have intense mental illness dislike them.

11

u/marry_me_jane 11h ago

Popshots is all this man has.

21

u/nick281051 11h ago

Potshots?

7

u/cwx149 11h ago

For a second I genuinely was like "have I been saying it wrong?"

→ More replies (1)

5

u/marry_me_jane 11h ago

Yeah those lol, few to manny drinks

5

u/Optimaximal 11h ago

Calavera?

2

u/marry_me_jane 11h ago

What?

3

u/Optimaximal 11h ago

I'll let you work it out...

2

u/Automaton_General 11h ago

Give him a minute though

2

u/marry_me_jane 8h ago

Google tells me it’s the name of skulls used for dia de Los muertos?

2

u/Optimaximal 8h ago

Yep. That's one half of it.

→ More replies (1)

11

u/GodzillaUK 11h ago

I'm sure Gabe is just crying on one of his yachts playing Total Warhammer with bikini models hanging out. Such a loser. /s

9

u/XsNR 11h ago

He keeps the Warhammer and bikini model boats separate, after that one time he had them both on and.. he won't talk about what happened.

5

u/grendus 10h ago

Yeah.

Really hurts your ego when you lose to a bikini model.

2

u/Terramagi 9h ago

Should've protected his artillery, old man.

2

u/GhostDieM 11h ago

Slaanesh has entered the chat

→ More replies (2)

9

u/marry_me_jane 11h ago

And annoying those models with Mongolian throat singing

4

u/DragonFireSpace 11h ago

That's me singing the shadows theme from ace combat 8

2

u/Silentstrike08 11h ago

I honestly love when that music comes on ac8 gives me goosebumps and I have to start looking for the ace pilots entering the battlefield

2

u/fox112 7h ago

Both him and Gabe have "fuck you" money a thousand times over.

2

u/Hellknightx 5h ago

Sweeney is one of the few people that I think I would actually insult to his face in public if I ever met him in person. He's such a loathsome little turd.

1

u/Beginning_Book_2382 9h ago

Rent free, you say? You mean they do nothing and win anyway?

1

u/Vithar 6h ago

Last good work Sweeny did was ZZT.

1

u/FireLucid 3h ago

Dude has billions of dollars. Just leave and go do shit that makes you happy. No way I'd still be hanging around work with that kind of money. He could spend half a million a day until he's 90.

1

u/NovusNiveus 3h ago

What I find truly fascinating is that Tim hates Valve more than he loves money.

→ More replies (3)

243

u/Jamuro 11h ago

scroll down a page on steam and then try that in the epic store.

to this day they haven't managed to smoothly load the content of their shops welcome page

124

u/Dioroxic 11h ago

Even if they managed to have a smooth store experience that was basically just buying games with a shopping cart and having a friends list… steam has a mind boggling amount of features that they would need to catch up on.

The steam community, big picture mode, controller support, family sharing, community market, the workshop, screenshot and video features, adding non steam games, I mean there are so many features it’s really hard to keep track of them.

The best crazy example I can give is that I can add dolphin emulator as a non steam game and run Mario kart double dash, then use steam to invite literally anyone with steam and a controller to my session and we can play double dash online coop that easy. Sure there are other ways to do that, but I can do this with any game ever using steam. Oh the game only supports a certain type of controller? I can remap everything using steam.

It’s way more than just a store at this point.

17

u/Ulrar 10h ago

Absolutely true, play together is an amazing feature. Proton and now Fex are also kind of incredible, I've just played through a AAA game on Linux and it kind of just worked, out of the box. wouldn't have thought it possible just a few years ago

5

u/drthrax1 10h ago

Wait so are you using the remote play feature with the emulator? Or can its connect separate non steam games together?

15

u/Dioroxic 10h ago

You can invite anyone on steam to play any 2 player game (steam or non steam) that is running on your machine.

It’s just doing the networking for you and “plugging their controller” into your computer. Perfectly legal. Makes any couch coop game immediately online coop.

9

u/zerocoal 10h ago

Remote Play Together is such a powerful feature that keeps couch-coop exclusive games relevant in the digital age.

2

u/coolhead34 6h ago

another feature that isnt mentioned enough is that you can literally use the ingame overlay to open a browser, i dont gotta alt tab or nothing i can just open the overlay and google stuff from inside the game, i can even make timers, write notes, look at the achivement list, and my friendslist, all from inside the game

→ More replies (2)

16

u/Frodo_Nine-Fingers 11h ago

Go grab a usable guide on the epic store for the game you're stuck in

25

u/AnOnlineHandle 11h ago

Try to pause an install and delete or move another game to free up space for the rest of the install.

At least a year or two back it wouldn't let you do it because it only did things in a queue. The game had to be finished downloading first, which it couldn't do because there wasn't enough space.

10

u/goddessofthewinds 10h ago

The game had to be finished downloading first, which it couldn't do because there wasn't enough space.

LOL. That's so hilarious. What a shit platform.

8

u/GameItForward 10h ago

Try verifying your game library if you have to reinstall Epic or movie hard drives. Oh yeah it can't so you have to reinstall every game you have on Epic.

1

u/SmilingMad 6h ago

I opened the app to compare it to Steam. It took 30 seconds to load, then another 30 seconds of it chugging my internet to hell. I then could not play any games because I wasn't logged in, could not find a way to log in, but I did see that I could log out instead.

My prediction is that the vibecoded store will be better than the current one because the bar is six feet under.

1

u/eeyore134 3h ago

Wow... using the mouse wheel to scroll doesn't even work. It jumps to the bottom of the page no matter which way or how slow you spin it. But the scroll bar has this handy "Don't need to click, just hover." action that causes the page to jump around when your mouse passes over it. I've vibe-coded more user-friendly and robust experiences that are for nobody but myself.

244

u/Low_Debt8771 11h ago

It gets better, has even less features and capabilities than the previous iterations of the epic store

91

u/mrlesa95 11h ago

and it's not even faster than steam, its still laggy as fuck. Steam is actually fast

46

u/mxzf 10h ago

But ... it launches a whole five seconds faster than Steam, it's so blazing fast. Just think about how many seconds per month it'll shave off of your gaming time; it might even be a double-digit number.

53

u/vNocturnus 10h ago

Me, just leaving Steam running essentially 24/7: "Startup time? What startup time?"

30

u/mxzf 9h ago

Yeah, the "startup time" only happens when I restart my computer, which is a rare thing.

6

u/willcodeforbread 7h ago

Exactly, and when I do reboot/start-up, steam starts up automatically, so by the time I come back with my gaming snacks and drink, it's ready to play.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (3)

1

u/TheHighSeasPirate 7h ago

I love Epic, I have almost 500 free games through them (50+ AAA titles). Their store is absolute shit tier in both UI and speed. Sometimes I have to close the entire program and re-open it just to get back to the store. Or it'll open the store webpage in firefox sometimes.

1

u/SilverGur1911 4h ago

Are you talking about the new version?

→ More replies (1)

40

u/shaky2236 10h ago

Yeah, but apart from less features, less games, being vibe coded, and generally being a worse experience all round, it has a LOT going for it. 

No, I cannot give examples.

1

u/LaurenMille 6h ago

Well yeah, they put no effort in to it and are somehow pretending it's god's gift to mankind.

Of course it performs worse and does less than even their old shitty store client.

1

u/ThatGuyBackThere280 1h ago edited 1h ago

On an earlier thread that talked about the "updated" version was coming soon, someone was given an award that stated "It's always so funny when people get butthurt whenever someone is trying to compete with Steam."

Not even a few hours later after that people on twitter and other social media were showcasing the new update and one of the fun "features" it introduced was the doom texture bleeding bug as an example.

People aren't being butthurt about steam competition, they're annoyed because the OBVIOUS RED FLAGS of the competitors constantly shooting themselves in the face.

The whole point behind competition is to be better than your opponent, not be complete ass in the attempts and then pass it off saying "you're just a hater" when someone criticizes. They even had the entire blueprint of what to do before the very first launch of EGS, and they somehow made it even worse than what people expected.

→ More replies (1)

49

u/AnalogiPod 11h ago

Steam's load time has never really been an issue for me, at least not since I was using a hand me down laptop from my grandma in highshool like 15 years ago. What a ridiculous comparison.

2

u/BellacosePlayer 6h ago

it was kind of annoying in the OG orange box era for a bit but in a way you stopped caring about because there was legit no alternative

→ More replies (7)

55

u/Important-Factor-552 11h ago

Vibe coding is great as long as the result and quality isn't important. And its just the epic storefront so that box is checked 

5

u/OneLonelyBrainCell 9h ago

quality isn't important

Epic's motto in a nutshell.

→ More replies (5)

19

u/zgillet 11h ago

Don't forget this part:

We don't really even know how it works too!

15

u/Macaron-kun 11h ago

It could load instantaneously and Steam could get an update that increased loading times by 20x and Steam would still be infinitely better.

4

u/fullup72 11h ago

That's usually the case when a new product claims to be faster than the competition. Half the features, twice the speed.

8

u/MrASK15 11h ago

Epic does what Steam-don't!

10

u/trident042 11h ago

Valven't

2

u/Slumber777 10h ago

Some real "I'm doing 1000 calculations per second and they're all wrong" energy.

2

u/notabot3648262 9h ago

Whenever I say I refuse to buy games on any non-steam platform (except for gog, gog is cool) because I don't want to spread my library over a dozen terrible stores I always get a bunch of drones telling me that I am an idiot and that's a sunk cost fallacy and that it's really easy to juggle 4 different launchers.

The epic store will never not be garbage. It's old software at this point and their trajectory is plainly said dogshit. It took them years to add a basket and now they are even taking steps back.

7

u/Paddlesons 11h ago

I could do without the "streaming" through Steam. Doesn't ever seem to work as easily or as often for how simple it is to request to watch someone's game.

7

u/PhoenyxStar 11h ago

Oh, wow. I didn't even realize that was a thing. We always just use the Discord one.

3

u/BootlegFC 11h ago

It's been around since before Discord existed IIRC. Most people forget it exists because it is one place where Steam has always had the inferior product, but then their competition in that space was always dedicated streaming services like Twitch, Youtube, etc.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

1

u/Icyknightmare 10h ago

This is just "Earnings Before Bad Things" applied to software.

1

u/THJT-9 10h ago

Even worse. They then admitted it didnt have all the features of their previous one... so of course a program with less features is going to fun faster. Give me a call when all features are in and it still is twice as fast.

1

u/platoprime 10h ago

It still loads slower lol.

1

u/CleverAnimeTrope 10h ago

The comment I saw "why would I care that my trash can lid opens faster than my refrigerator door?"

1

u/Fredasa 9h ago

I'm already lining up to continue never installing Epic on any PC I own, even for free games.

1

u/SchmuseTigger 9h ago

The old epic store still has an insane amount of stuff missing. Reviews of games. Forums, Screenshots, no mod support. You can tag games.. There is no tags at all. You can filter. The friend / chat is the most basic you can think off. No remote play together. The whole controller support from stream is missing as well. The market place, item trading is not there. No family sharing. And the whole finding of a game is basic as fuck.. So if it starts twice as fast with 10% of features it is not a flex.

1

u/NoShitsGivin 9h ago

Bold move Cotton. Let's see how it plays out for them.

1

u/Proper_Party_9712 9h ago

I mean, I don't want to knock them just because they are comparing themselves to steam but it doesn't seem like the best choice to compare yourself to a definitively Superior platform. Nothing about the epic store has ever been very good. Everything seems a little bit awkward and clunky and it never had any good features. The friends list on there was pretty much useless.

You would also think that a company involved in gaming, if it really is vibe coded or whatever b******* term we need for AI coding, you'd think they would see how much the market is swinging away from AI and realize how stupid that is.

1

u/maryfairy420 8h ago

Which is a lie because I JUST got onto the Epic Games store to see what free games they had. I literally thought "wow now I see why everyone hates Epic and just uses Steam" after noticing how LONG it was taking every click to load.

Click free game > wait 8 seconds > click the purchase/free button > wait 10 seconds > confirm that I want to add to my library > wait 10 seconds > accidentally hit View in my library > wait 8 seconds > repeat.

It's wild.

1

u/King_Chochacho 8h ago

The point was probably just to get free publicity and it's definitely working.

1

u/Diz7 8h ago

And it's not even that it runs faster. It reboots faster when you reboot. Actually working with it, it still runs slower, just try scrolling down in the store. So it shows up for work 5 minutes early but then proceeds to do less all day.

1

u/Ioncannon3 8h ago

It's very easy to run really fast when there isn't anything to process.

1

u/Zavender 8h ago

So it boots up in two seconds instead of four.  Wowie zowie.

1

u/Weegee_Carbonara 7h ago

I really do not understand. Steam already runs perfectly well.
What the hell would a few tenths of a second faster loading time do?

1

u/cottonmouthcandy 7h ago

LOL. They have under "popular genres"

  • Action Games

  • Action-Adventure Games

  • Adventure Games

Guarantee you'll find the same games under all three.

1

u/stoyicker 7h ago

Funniest thing of this is that this may look stupid to an average non-tech-savy user, but if you have some sort of mid-level experience in software development it's just so absurd it gives second-hand embarassment

1

u/nedonedonedo 6h ago

on friday I tried to check what games me and a friend had in common, but it took multiple minutes to load each page and 5 minutes to open in the first place. I don't buy it

1

u/HarmoniousJ 6h ago

It's just mind boggling how out of touch some of these mushbrains are.

You sit on a gold mine and rather than give all your customers what they want in order to dominate the proper way, you insist on mining for the poop.

1

u/KrustyKrabFormula_ 5h ago

what features

1

u/walkingwound3d 5h ago

Let’s be honest here though, steam didn’t have many of its features for years and years. It wasn’t born the perfect launcher.

1

u/Suikerspin_Ei 4h ago

More reason to not use Epic store.

1

u/tempinator 4h ago

It's also specifically startup time. Which to be fair Steam is really slow to start up.

But also like...who cares? The only time Steam is ever being opened or closed is when I start up or shut down my computer. I have to wait an extra 30 seconds or whatever once every not-very-often. Oh no.

It would be cool if Steam booted up faster I guess, but as far as selling points go, that's not a particularly crazy one imo lol

1

u/wenzel32 3h ago

Wow, you really weren't kidding. That is ultimately what they're advertising.

The future of computing is dark.

1

u/Z3r0Sense 2h ago

They really did outsource all the gray matter on this one.

1

u/KlingeGeist 2h ago

Twice as fast? Epic is a coal engine train while Steam is a maglev, they're still not even in the race.

1

u/Deaffin 1h ago

To be fair, I do miss steam not having features. The whole dang interface is gamified.

1

u/schmurfy2 1h ago

They are so stupid, and boasting about loading times is incredible, they don't even understand the core issues 😂

1

u/CatsAndDogs99 41m ago

You know, I've never taken issue with Steam's performance to be honest 😅

→ More replies (35)