Hmm. Interesting. Will look into that. Thx.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jun 5, 2025, 12:10:
This is also an issue for peeps like me who love their Steam controllers. The controller only works if the game is launched in Steam.

The software reWASD can help you with that, but it does cost money as I understand. Might be worth giving it a google though.

Here's my problem with Epic's store: If I want to find out if the game is worth it, I go to the Steam page for the game, to read the reviews and watch the trailers. The Epic store page sucks. It's not just lack of reviews, but even the screenshots and videos are sub-par.

And yes, as some of you have pointed out, the Steam discussion boards are primarily where I go to find help. There's nothing on Epic. Reddit is sometimes useful, but the Stem boards are a gold mine.

Also, as someone who has all their friends on Steam, Epic also really needs to make their games easier to launch from within the Steam launcher. There ARE ways, but they're complicated and difficult, and then an update negates them. I am deep enough in the friends Steam ecosystem that I want peeps to know what I'm playing, so I want it to easily launch from within Steam and show that I'm in the game. Often I'll buy a game from Steam, if it's available, even if it costs more.

This is also an issue for peeps like me who love their Steam controllers. The controller only works if the game is launched in Steam.

Prez wrote on Jun 5, 2025, 02:56:
EPIC vastly overemphasized how important the increased developer take would be to the average gamer. It's all they talked about for years after EGS was released. Don't get me wrong; it's great for developers, but you're selling to gamers, not developers. Your average gamer could not possibly care less. They really hurt themselves by focusing on that as if this is all they needed to compete. Add to that they conditioned a huge portion of gamers not to buy games on EGS because that's where you get free games from, (I am guilty of that myself), and it's hard to see how they can make up the difference at this point. They're just too far behind.

Yep, also any good-will they garnered with this narrative was countered by the same amount, though likely more, ill-will from the exclusivity deals they did. Ironically doing those predatory exclusive deals would have been one of the best ways to get people on their platform *IF* said games were top tier. At least that's how Sony managed to do it.

EPIC vastly overemphasized how important the increased developer take would be to the average gamer. It's all they talked about for years after EGS was released. Don't get me wrong; it's great for developers, but you're selling to gamers, not developers. Your average gamer could not possibly care less. They really hurt themselves by focusing on that as if this is all they needed to compete. Add to that they conditioned a huge portion of gamers not to buy games on EGS because that's where you get free games from, (I am guilty of that myself), and it's hard to see how they can make up the difference at this point. They're just too far behind.

I can see the time played on uninstalled games in Epic, so I guess that was sorted out.

One really odd thing that ends up being more detrimental than you'd think... is that you can't see time played of uninstalled games on Epic.
You literally have to reinstall it to see the time played again.
So... if you have multiple copies of a game, and are wondering, "Hey did I previously play this on Epic or did I play it on Steam?" ... well you can't answer that question with Epic alone... you have to boot up Steam.
Or hell, if you only have the one copy on Epic, and you can't remember if you ever played it... well you won't know until you install it.

edit: Hmm, I just experienced this a few weeks ago. I looked and looked and looked.
But now doing a search for it... it was a bug... three years ago?
Uninstalled Game's playtime is back
So it got fixed? And then they removed it again accidentally? Or just have it somewhere so odd that I couldn't find it.

edit2:
https://i.imgur.com/k5AZyUX.png
That's there for installed games, but not there for uninstalled games.
https://i.imgur.com/yfaxJls.png
you can even see that I have an achievement, showing that I have played it on Epic before

This comment was edited on Jun 4, 2025, 18:51.

Perfect Example. Epic Games Store recently had Limbo available for free. We could not get a PS5 controller through Windows to work with Limbo when using the Epic Games Launcher. We followed a guide that allowed us to launch Epic games through Steam as a non-Steam game. Since Steam has a built-in controller conversion utility, the PS5 controller worked instantly with Limbo.

It's features like this that keep us away from Epic Game Store. Basic functionality that gamers expect are missing. Epic gives us a free game, we end up playing on Steam anyways. Gabe wins again.

Xeth Nyrrow wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 16:12:

Quboid wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 15:47:

Xeth Nyrrow wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 14:58:
So why not put some of those billions in to developing your front end, duh. What would really be great is if they could make it easily access your Steam library from their front end. I would think this could be easily done with the Steam browser protocol. While we're at it, why not a, "Trillian" game launcher that let's you access other major providers all in one spot?

GOG did it: https://www.gog.com/galaxy

Excellent! Now Epic should do it too.

I just tried this and it seems to be having trouble syncing with other services. Maybe other services don't like to play ball with their competition.

Quboid wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 15:47:

Xeth Nyrrow wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 14:58:
So why not put some of those billions in to developing your front end, duh. What would really be great is if they could make it easily access your Steam library from their front end. I would think this could be easily done with the Steam browser protocol. While we're at it, why not a, "Trillian" game launcher that let's you access other major providers all in one spot?

GOG did it: https://www.gog.com/galaxy

Excellent! Now Epic should do it too.

Xeth Nyrrow wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 14:58:
So why not put some of those billions in to developing your front end, duh. What would really be great is if they could make it easily access your Steam library from their front end. I would think this could be easily done with the Steam browser protocol. While we're at it, why not a, "Trillian" game launcher that let's you access other major providers all in one spot?

GOG did it: https://www.gog.com/galaxy

So why not put some of those billions in to developing your front end, duh. What would really be great is if they could make it easily access your Steam library from their front end. I would think this could be easily done with the Steam browser protocol. While we're at it, why not a, "Trillian" game launcher that let's you access other major providers all in one spot?

See, I am not sure I agree that the launcher is all that bad. Okay, wait..let me rephrase...it is that bad, I am just not bothered by what it is bad at.

I can run most things in my Epic Store library without actually running the Epic Launcher. The pricing is similar if not exactly the same. I don't care about player reviews at the stores anymore because Steam "review bombing" has taught me that player reviews mean largely shit if you don't know the player yourself. I don't care about game launcher discussion boards because these games usually have their own forums, Discord, or Reddit threads. As I go down a virtual list of features and issues that the Epic Store has, the only real complaint I have is that it's kinda slow to do anything...change game pages or launch games...it all seems to have this weird delay.

So I guess if there is a point to all this, it's that I don't think game launchers need to have all the features of Steam....nor do I think it's a good thing that they try to—waste of resources IMHO. Just get me the game and gtfo of my way.

Chromius wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 13:28:
Epic needs to match Steams workshop and mod support and add the ability to follow games and keep up on updates which is important for me also. I spend a lot of time just reading up on updates of followed/watched games on Steam and if it uses mods steam workshop is a must. I really cant see how Epic in its present state cannot see how little it offers as a platform to actual game players vs devs.

Fully agreed, their store needs this functionality, and yet 95% of their playerbase wouldn't use the feature set. Still, Valve has set aside time and resources to make their Workshop feature very very good for the tiny userbase.

Epic needs to match Steams workshop and mod support and add the ability to follow games and keep up on updates which is important for me also. I spend a lot of time just reading up on updates of followed/watched games on Steam and if it uses mods steam workshop is a must. I really cant see how Epic in its present state cannot see how little it offers as a platform to actual game players vs devs.