Current Events > What's the neutrally explained issue with the Epic Games Store?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Let's assume, with complete accuracy, that I am the most casual of PC gamers these days and don't really follow the scene much at all.

What's the controversy over the store? Are people just unhappy at the splintering of the digital marketplace that Steam established, and don't want the inconvenience of having to deal with multiple services on their computer, or are there more sinister things going on?

Gives China your info
Invades and steals info from your other launchers
Largely tepid game line up
Forced exclusivity hurts indie games
Lack of features compared to other launchers
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They're about as anti-american as it gets
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They let China spy on you
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I prefer the Epic Store's aesthetics and functionality, if a game is cheaper or exclusive there, I get it.
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If you dig past all the nonsensical bullshit like "china is stealing your identity" and "epic is evil and anti-consumer" you get this:

The PC gaming community has for a long time been accustomed to not having to worry about the idea of exclusivity like consoles have. A lot of people grew up with, as strange as it sounds if you're older, steam being the only gig in town. There have been occasional exceptions along the way, but they were usually for niche titles (GOG) or very small scale (GFWL). Epic is the first thing in a long time that has honestly created a real split in platforms.

Everyone's using steam atm and they have retained a surprisingly decent public image in an age where people are perpetually looking for a reason to fight and tear everyone apart, so EGS is the "other". And unfortunately, Steam has for a long time had a model of business that makes it really hard for smaller studios to actually make money on their platform, so those developers don't have much qualms about taking Epic' deal, which is quite lucrative but otherwise honestly isn't extraordinary in any medium at all except for the extremely specific example of PC video gaming.

That unfamiliarity and tribalism of a real honest to god new player entering into the situation is what's really driving the blowback. Everything else is tangential features people are digging up as justification that range from understandable (Lack of features on launch, games being advertised on steam first then pulled) to nonsensical (bogus spyware stuff, crying about devs hating their user base just because they want to actually turn a profit and not be starving artists)
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All exclusivity does is hurt consumers, but when its hardware based or first-party it is at least understandable. Software based exclusivity on PC is as dumb as it gets. People are going to use the launcher with the most/best features, so paying publishers to make games exclusive on a launcher and store with almost zero features is just spitting in the face of consumers. Doubly so when they poach games that were advertised on Steam. And Tim Sweeney spouts this nonsense about Steam being an evil monopoly and Epic doing this to save gamers from the evil overlord Gaben, which is all just bullshit.
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can someone explain the china thing?

There's no proof at all that Epic provides any info to the Chinese government lol
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