• MJBrune@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    Epic really hasn’t done anything bad. If their worse thing is exclusive deals that make indie studios lots of money, that’s not them being bad. The worst thing you can really pin against epic is Sweeney doesn’t like Linux. Which it’s not really an os for everyone.

    • ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      My biggest concern with Epic is their insistence on kernel level anti-cheat which is just ridiculous overkill and probably being used as spyware let’s be honest. They have many ties to China’s Tencent which has a 40% stake in the company and is known to basically just be an extension of the Chinese government.

      There’s also the very odd fact that just having the Epic Games Store open in the background will deplete your laptops battery life by up to 20%. Is it just horribly optimized and uses all that battery even when idling, or is it doing something nefarious in the background? We don’t know.

      As for exclusives, they have bought exclusives that were mostly crowd funded from the start which is quite the kick in the teeth to the early investors that helped get the project off the ground. And there were even some exclusives that were already listed for pre-order through Steam, forcing everyone to need to get a refund.

      Plus, any good will that they’ve purchased so far is just in service of making a good name for themselves. They’ve been losing around $400 million per year since 2019 just to bring in new users. They’re going to suddenly turn around and start being cut-throat as soon as they think they can.

      They are not consumer friendly, they want to dictate trends in gaming. Valve is already the king of that throne and they’re fairly benevolent and have pushed trends that are good for gaming and consumers overall. I have serious doubt that Epic would be anywhere near as good for gaming as Valve has been if they should actually become profitable, and an industry leader. Especially when it’s projected that they won’t be profitable until 2027, which means they’ll need to recoup their investment of nearly $3.2 billion since 2019.

    • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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      2 years ago

      Epic really hasn’t done anything bad.

      You don’t consider bribing game publishers to only release on their platform instead of actually competing bad?

      I don’t mind if they fund development and then release only on their platform. I do mind of they snatch up games that could have seen a broader release, if they weren’t so lazy and actually developed a store worth using.

    • vintageballs@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      Yeah sure, exclusive deals excluding even those who pre-ordered games on other platforms are “not bad”.

      Taking games (looking at you, Fall Guys) which were available on other platforms for years off those platforms to make them exclusive after the fact is “not bad”.

      Adding restrictive anti cheat measures to games which worked perfectly on Linux before is “not bad”.