Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Kev Inkline]

Observe that this was leaked on 18th of Dec, and it has the two following (19th and 20th) free games right.

 

[LESS T_T]

That's why in the case of Epic, I'm convinced that's the only reason for the lack of cart/multibuy feature. They could have that implemented overnight if they wanted to, it's not exactly rocket science.

Especially considering that Unreal Marketplace (which has exactly the same purchase UI with EGS) had shopping cart for years.

 

[karoliner]

The long dark is cool. Alien and metro are okay too. The rest can go suck it.

 

[Dexter]

Meanwhile I'm here debating whether I should buy The Pathless for 6 dollars. Honestly I found a platform having a built-in wallet system makes it easier to impulse buy rather than... the lack of shopping cart.

I usually buy in Bulk, this includes Amazon and physical products too, less parcels are less hassle, going through the ordering process several times would also be annoying:

 

[GrainWetski]

Gaming forums, where we argue that full-priced video games being given away for free are bad for you.

What full-priced games are they giving away for free? They're currently giving away Defense Grid, a 2008 game regularly sold for just above 1€ and given away for free before. It's without the DLC like with the other old, and also previously given away for free on other places, Cities Skylines.

Turns out, they don't actually get much out of it so it's old games without DLC. Very generous and kind of them. Praise Timothy and Epic for saving PC gaming for the big bad Steam.

Well they did bring some console exclusives to PC and they financed a couple of game studios. Diabotical got released with Epic's help and they provided annual esports prize money as well. The price was their exclusivity but who knows if the game would even come out without it.

Akshually, at least some of those games were in the process of being ported and Epic just bought exclusivity.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, their model seems to be giving away the base game and expecting you to buy DLC.

 

[moraes]

Discount + coupon makes their sales superior to Steam, at least in Brazil.

 

[Lacrymas]

Discount + coupon makes their sales superior to Steam, at least in Brazil.

Sure, but how many times can you use that coupon? Or do they give one out every time there's a sale?

 

[markec]

Discount + coupon makes their sales superior to Steam, at least in Brazil.

Problem is that Epic store has some 50 games on it and almost all of them as shit.

 

[moraes]

Discount + coupon makes their sales superior to Steam, at least in Brazil.

Sure, but how many times can you use that coupon? Or do they give one out every time there's a sale?

You get the first one free and then you get another for every $15+ purchase during the sale.

 

[DalekFlay]

They last a while too, I got a coupon for free in some sale and never used it, then when I bought Outer Worlds's season pass I got $10 off.

 

[JBro]

Discount + coupon makes their sales superior to Steam, at least in Brazil.

Your status as a Brazilian makes your opinion less than worthless. Please stick to the EGS and leave the Steam storefront to the actual humans.

 

[Venser]

Just running Epic Games launcher can raise CPU temperature by 10C+ (and reduce laptop battery life).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/kjzojd/psa_disabling_epic_games_launcher_lowered_my/


EDIT: some site tested it after the reddit post:

Epic Games Launcher For Windows Caught Spiking Ryzen CPU Temps, Phoning Home Even When Idle

Though Epic Games is giving away games for Christmas, not everything that seems free truly is. Either by lousy design, stealthy data collection, or a combination of the two, the Epic Games Launcher appears to be continuously running some sort of relatively demanding process in the background. This issue is so pronounced that a Reddit user by the name Neoncarbon noticed that his AMD Ryzen 7 5800X idle temps dropped from 50C to 37C when he closed down the app. We actually proved this out for ourselves as well, as you'll see in the screen shots below. What's odd is that other game store apps, like GOG and Steam, do not show this behavior at all. What exactly could Epic Games Launcher be doing in the background that is elevating CPU temps even while idle, when other launchers do not have this issue?

With over 6.8k upvotes and 864 comments, Neoncarbon’s Reddit post has evolved into people sharing similar experiences after shutting down the Epic Games Launcher. It appears that anyone that has the Epic Games launcher running in the background has higher CPU temps and usage, even while idle on the desktop. However, it seems especially pronounced on Ryzen CPUs such as Neoncarbon’s Ryzen 7 5800X. Again, we were also able to verify this abnormal activity on one of our testbeds, running a liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. In the first image below, you'll note CPU temps on this well-cooled rig sit around 53C when the Epic Games launcher is running, and with about 2% CPU utilization from the app itself on a 16-core Zen 3 chip.


Ryzen 9 5950X CPU Epic Games Active Idle Desktop Temp

Using the same rig and taking a look at the task manager, we noted that the Epic Games launcher is lighting up cores and keeping some of them lit even while seemingly doing nothing, and not even updating a game in the background.


Ryzen 9 5950X CPU Temps And Utilization Without Epic Games Launcher


Ryzen 9 5950X CPU Temps And Utilization With Epic Games Launcher Active

Ultimately, these CPU temperature and usage spikes are not typical of game launchers. When experimenting with the Steam and GOG launchers, CPU idle temps and usage remained nominal and much lower, after an initial brief spike on loading. So what exactly is happening with the Epic Games Launcher that idle temps are spiking and CPU usage is unnecessarily engaged?

Doing some testing on another personal machine, we noticed that the Epic Games Launcher has five different processes open at one time. Out of curiosity, we opened up Glasswire, which is a free network traffic monitor. We could see that the Epic Games Launcher and associated processes were firing off data at regular intervals to over 22 different servers. This was happening whether we had the launcher open, minimized, or in the background. The larger spikes shown in the Glasswire graph below are from when we reopened the Epic Games launcher after closing it.



Another interesting discovery is that the “EpicWebHelper” sent some data to the following URL:
tracking-website-prod07-epic-961842049.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com
Over the course of approximately an hour, Epic Games sent more data than 514KB of data to some server(s) somewhere. This is more than 14x what Steam and NVIDIA GeForce Experience sent in the background during the same timeframe. While it remains to be seen if the data collection is the cause of the CPU usage issue, something smells fishy here. In fact, it may be advisable to kill off the Epic Games launcher for now, when you're not actively using it.

https://hothardware.com/news/epic-games-shenanigans-with-cpus

 

[Ismaul]

Great news! Even more reasons to congratulate ourselves for avoiding the Epic pile of shit.

feels good man

 

[Dexter]

Though Epic Games is giving away games for Christmas, not everything that seems free truly is. Either by lousy design, stealthy data collection, or a combination of the two, the Epic Games Launcher appears to be continuously running some sort of relatively demanding process in the background.

It's almost like some thing someone said a week ago when retards were going around yelling "Free Gaymes!" excitedly.

 

[V_K]

Epic for some reason just disregards AMD hardware in its testing. It's the same shit for UE. I can play CryEngine games on my Ryzen-powered laptop just fine, with decent visuals and decent FPS - but every UE game I've tried both looks and runs like shit on it. And they don't stop looking like shit even if I max graphical settings, performance be damned, nor do they stop running like shit if I bring settings all the way down. I honestly get better results from Unity than from UE.

 

[Tacgnol]

Epic for some reason just disregards AMD hardware in its testing. It's the same shit for UE. I can play CryEngine games on my Ryzen-powered laptop just fine, with decent visuals and decent FPS - but every UE game I've tried both looks and runs like shit on it. And they don't stop looking like shit even if I max graphical settings, performance be damned, nor do they stop running like shit if I bring settings all the way down. I honestly get better results from Unity than from UE.

IIRC Kung Pao Tim had a pretty big spat with AMD back in 2013. He seems the type to continue to hold grudges.

 

[V_K]

But that's just dumb if so. Does he really think his games not running well on AMD will hurt AMD's sales and not his?

 

[Tacgnol]

But that's just dumb if so. Does he really think his games not running well on AMD will hurt AMD's sales and not his?

We're talking about a man that genuinely believes his current legal fight with Apple is a deadly important battle for the rights of humanity.

Reason and reality doesn't seem to factor strongly into his thinking.

 

[Lacrymas]

Reason and reality don't factor into a lot of what we do, for example politics, so no surprise there. As for the launcher treating the CPU like its bitch, I guess I'll never install the launcher, lol.

 

[lycanwarrior]

you know, if you truly want to have them for free, you can already have them, any instant, anywhere, spyware free.

Funniest thing to me is so many will claim these games and then not use the store at all for its intended purposes. How many people have actually been won over to SPEND money in the Epic Store with free games?

Raises hand...

In fact many games I have bought on EGS are currently exclusive or have been exclusives in the past (Outer Worlds, Metro Exodus, Afterparty, etc.)

Dons flame-retardant suit and scurries back into the bushes...

 

[DalekFlay]

In fact many games I have bought on EGS are currently exclusive or have been exclusives in the past (Outer Worlds, Metro Exodus, Afterparty, etc.)

Yeah, no one will ever really know what percentage of people actually would have bought games like Control on day one if they were on Steam, but did not because they were only on Epic. It's kind of an impossible thing to find out, really. However what I think we can say for sure is Epic has given people no real reason to CHOOSE Epic over Steam (or even GOG). If it ain't free or exclusive, why would you ever buy it there? I can't believe they don't have an answer for this question, and don't seem to care about finding one. It's kind of baffling.

 

[Lacrymas]

If it ain't free or exclusive, why would you ever buy it there? I can't believe they don't have an answer for this question, and don't seem to care about finding one. It's kind of baffling.

This is the same thing I've been asking. They not coming up with an answer for over 2 years now leads me to believe they make their money by some other means. Like making your CPU the launcher's bitch for some reason. Probably selling all kinds of data to whoever. According to Wikipedia, however -

Over its first year in 2019, Epic reported that the Store drew 108 million customers, and brought in over US$680 million in sales, with US$251 million being spent on third-party games. Of those third-party games, 90% of the sales came from the Epic Games Store time-limited exclusives. Overall, Epic stated that overall sales were 60% higher than they had anticipated.

So I guess their exclusives work out for them in the end, so they don't need to offer anything else to the customer. Very existential crisis inducing.

 

[Dexter]

So I guess their exclusives work out for them in the end, so they don't need to offer anything else to the customer. Very existential crisis inducing.

We've been over this a year ago, those numbers are laughable: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-war-comes-to-pc.125953/page-184#post-6509388

Chances are they've severely limited pumping much money into getting big title "Excl000sives" (what was the last big title they bought of and when did it release?) since it wasn't exactly a profitable endeavor for them.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I've bought (as in spent money) two things there. The first time it was something I wanted to check out that was exclusive and on sale + bribery coupon, the second time there was a sale + bribery coupon that made the game roughly half the price of buying it anywhere else. That's difficult to pass up.