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/
12.9k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

449

u/TheAero1221 12h 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.

300

u/Sabetha1183 12h ago edited 12h 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.

190

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.

74

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

106

u/nsfwthrowaway5969 11h 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.

20

u/ImSabbo 10h ago

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

5

u/Shrapnail 6h ago

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

6

u/TrainDestroyer 3h 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

10

u/Bad_Wes 9h ago

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

3

u/Watt-Tambor 5h 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")

3

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.

4

u/Mephzice 7h 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

11

u/BacRedr 10h 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.

2

u/TrainDestroyer 3h ago

Ironically I got an Epic Account for free games, and just eventually abandoned the account cause even with the free games I just never bothered using it

14

u/NiNdo4589 10h ago

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

4

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 9h ago

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

1

u/Repulsive-Durian4800 8h ago

I have 4. Steam because obviously, Epic for the sole purpose of their free games, GoG because of the old stuff Steam doesn't have, and Itch.io for the weird niche shit that can't make it onto other stores.

1

u/NiNdo4589 8h ago

This made me give itch.io a look, any suggestions? This reminds me of growing up on newgrounds.

2

u/BlueChronos88 9h 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.

3

u/-PotatoMan- 9h ago

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

1

u/BlueChronos88 8h ago

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

1

u/-PotatoMan- 8h ago

Counterpoint: Remedy screwed over their players for an instant payday by signing an exclusivity deal with Epic.

Also, you could always have pirated it and then purchased the game later down the line when it inevitably dropped out of its exclusivity period.

3

u/BlueChronos88 8h ago

There’s no guarantee the game will ever be released on other platforms, and then there’s the fact that the game wouldn’t even have been made were it not for Epic’s funding. So it is what it is.

2

u/Melbuf 10h ago

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

2

u/thedavecan 10h 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.

1

u/dalledeverre 1h ago

nd that the customers would simply fall in line when those publishers stopped putting their games on Steam.

You'd think they would have learned something from all the other publisher exclusivity platforms that tried this strategy for like a decade before they came crawling back to Steam...

24

u/LightHawKnigh 12h 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.

1

u/NovusNiveus 4h ago

Considering Steam was built quite specifically on the principle that you can compete with free, they should have known that free isn't good enough.

8

u/Numinak 12h 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 12h 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.

3

u/fueelin 12h ago

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

2

u/mowinski PC 10h 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.

128

u/Draco-REX 12h 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.

69

u/Mustakraken 12h 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.

24

u/nonotan 8h 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.

1

u/Thagyr 1h ago

Very personally. Think there is someone constantly sending lawsuits at Valve for some reason or another over Steam alone.

42

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.

36

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.

107

u/MoonAttempt 12h ago edited 12h 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.

65

u/Roflsaucerr 12h ago

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

13

u/JimboTCB 12h ago

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

15

u/Niceromancer 12h ago

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

12

u/MoonAttempt 12h ago

Immoral feature ig.

Hopefully some power can free Alan Wake 2 one day 

4

u/Amidatelion 11h 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.

5

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 11h ago

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

2

u/Fredasa 10h 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.

1

u/mOdQuArK 8h ago

Networking economics is also hard to beat. Even if they had a Steam clone w/all the same features & capacity, they'd still have to compete the large selection of games are using Steam for distribution.

26

u/Objective-Rip3008 12h 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 11h ago

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

  • Capri Flanders

134

u/Lord0fHats 12h 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.

103

u/Violet-Sumire 12h 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.

17

u/Nocebo85 12h ago

Wasn't that their publisher, not parent company?

16

u/Violet-Sumire 12h 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.

4

u/vkevlar 9h ago

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

2

u/Violet-Sumire 9h 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 8h 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.

44

u/sylva748 12h 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

30

u/McFlurrage 12h 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.

3

u/turiannerevarine 11h ago

Gabe dies the second after Half-Life 3 releases

3

u/McFlurrage 11h 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 11h ago

I'm here for TF3.

...and MY Hat

1

u/Dragoncat_3_4 11h ago

We'll probably die in the resource wars way before that comes up as a problem

1

u/zestymanny 12h ago

Being publicly traded would be a better fate for steam than falling into the hands of something like private equity.

(I would prefer gaben to be immortal)

6

u/steakanabake 11h ago

both of those options are equally shit id rather steam shutdown.

3

u/kingdead42 11h 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 11h 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 4h 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.