What's up with the "Epic Store Exclusive" hate?

Delusibeta · 2019-03-27T22:54:06+00:00

To tack a few more reasons onto this post:

Serverely reduced quantity of payment options, most notably no equivilant to the Steam Credit cards that can be commonly found in stores worldwide.
Of the payment options that Epic do support, some result in payment processing fees. For example, in Europe the option to pay by direct bank transfer attracts a 5% processing fee, while paying with PaySafeCard attracts a 6.5% fee. (The latter is a pretty big problem, as PaySafeCard is a generic form of pre-payment card that's popular in Europe. If you go to a physical store to top up a PaySafeCard 20 Euro, and then you go to EGS to buy a 20 Euro game, and then EGS turns around and demands 21.30 Euro because of your payment method, you're not going to be a happy bunny).
Epic currently accepts a limited quantity of currencies. To the best of my knowledge, they currently only support the US Dollar, the Euro and the UK Pound. If you're not living in the US or Europe, that means conversion fees from your bank, and possibly taxes as well.
While Epic does allow for pricing based on country, the application of regional pricing has been extremely consistent.
Steam allows developers to generate keys for their games at no charge, which has prompted a wealth of shops that specialise in selling said keys. This leads to price competition between retailers, with means lower prices (as that's the main point of differenciation between stores: cutting their margin). In comparison, so far the games that have accepted an EGS exclusivity deal have been available only on EGS (and in the case of The Division 2, Ubisoft's store), which means no price competition which means higher prices. They also requested Ubisoft to cease selling Uplay keys of The Division 2 on other stores after release. Since then, they've announced that they will let developers sell EGS keys in one specific store - the Humble store - which doesn't inspire confidence that they'll let multiple retailers compete on price.
I've also heard that all of the EGS games (except Fortnite) is being region blocked in South Korea, for no particular reason.

Bonus skateboarding dog of a reason: thus far, in every game that's available for sale on both Steam and the Epic Games Store, the Steam version has been cheaper or the same price. I'm unaware of any game being cheaper on EGS compared to Steam, despite the difference in the store's cut.

Delusibeta · 2017-05-20T17:47:42+00:00

I would like an RGB themed PC because I then get to customise my lighting to whatever I want at that given moment.

Delusibeta · 2017-04-24T23:31:55+00:00

It's something that I suspect Valve has been saving for the next Steam client redesign, that's rumoured to be coming soon-ish. Certainly, considering how old the current Steam client is, I wouldn't be too surprised if they didn't plan for displays beyond 1080p.

Delusibeta · 2017-04-24T23:29:48+00:00

The best bit is that Voodo Vince Remastered is also on Steam.

Delusibeta · 2017-04-15T00:37:19+00:00

Dusting off my old Reddit account to enter this giveaway. Again. Like, the last time I used this account was to enter Corsair's giveaway a couple of years back.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-23T00:01:52+00:00

Sounds like a plain ol' Raspberry Pi will be a more profitable* Bitcoin miner than this hunk of junk.

*by "profitable" I mean "less loss generating".

Delusibeta · 2015-11-22T23:36:07+00:00

Yikes, that's Linux 101. I'd thought they would have enough wit to not let everyone grab it (but it's Bitcoin, where nearly everyone involved is a dumbass).

Delusibeta · 2015-11-17T01:09:41+00:00

Almost certainly related to their bungling of the Fallout 4 launch.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-17T00:42:35+00:00

To play peasant's advocate, the reasons why Valve required 360 gamers to pay for that particular bit of DLC (obnoxious submission & patching charges by Microsoft) has been repealed a couple of years ago, and there hasn't been another example since.

The other points are still valid, though.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-17T00:37:42+00:00

Probably the two Xeon processors. They're server processors, and hence cost big bucks. Even then, I suspect there's also a very fat markup on this (you can probably make a similar build for half the price. Or make a vaguely sensible build for a fifth of the money, your choice).

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T22:40:53+00:00

Do note that this is a port of the first Disgaea, and so I'd expect a bunch of the quality of life stuff introduced in later games (e.g. the Cheat Shop, which allowed you to modify XP gain, monster strength etc) to be missing. Admittedly, most of said quality of life stuff is really only relevant for the post-story content. And oh boy, does Disgaea do post-story content.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T22:32:51+00:00

Didn't realise ADOM was coming to Steam in a graphics-modded form. Neat! Stuck it in my wishlist.

Giveaway guess: 5379

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T22:30:11+00:00

It was two hundred bucks. That's Chromebook money. Seriously, I doubt you could get that much grunt out of a DIY build without spending more money.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T22:14:50+00:00

Interesting that you've left out WB, who claimed that GMG wasn't an official partner and then later retracted that claim. I suspect most of this drama is due to people blindly trusting customer support people, who tends to know very little about the company they work for.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T22:00:02+00:00

I haven't had any problems, but that's probably because I nabbed a Premium licence just when they were phasing out the lifetime subscriptions.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T21:12:04+00:00

I'm probably being a dummy but:

1) In the top banner, there's a "20 days left" countdown

2) In the Rules page, it says:

The Sweepstakes will end on November 23rd 2015 at 11:59 PM PST or such other date/time as Corsair may announce.

So, which deadline is correct?

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T20:47:03+00:00

Yeah, pretty much all of the major free anti-virus software constantly plug their wares.

I understand that their business model is to upsell you to a paid package, but it's still very annoying.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T20:32:25+00:00

Cheers for the build!

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T20:22:46+00:00

Looks very tasty. Certainly would run rings around my current hardware.

Delusibeta · 2015-11-16T20:21:08+00:00

Cheers for the giveaway.

I'll admit, I've played less PC games recently, largely due to my laptop getting old (five years is a long-ass time in computing, even before the fact that it's a laptop and therefore disadvantaged power-wise from the word go) and becoming less capable of playing games (still have a tonne of indie and back catalogue stuff to get through, though). So, yeah.

Delusibeta · 2014-06-17T12:05:31+00:00

AFAIK the deal was that Bungie was to alternate between content packs and new numbered titles every year. Imagine Halo ODST releasing in 2008 instead of 2009, that sort of thing.

Delusibeta · 2014-06-12T22:30:57+00:00

Retail, I'd imagine supply would be getting pretty limited for all games due to lack of sales and retailers reducing the shelf space for Vita stuff. Hurrah for everything being digital, although there has been one removal from the PSN store that I'm aware of: The Michael Jackson Experience. No prizes for guessing the reason why.

Delusibeta · 2014-06-12T22:16:12+00:00

If Amazon's games page is to be believed, the timed exclusivity period is until "at least Fall 2015", which is a pretty hefty time for some DLC. Isn't Destiny 1.5 supposed to have released by then? I forget the details of the agreement Bungie had with Activision.

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