Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Forest Dweller]

So I noticed these "free games." Are they actually what they say they are? Not "free to play?" Not only playable for free during the promo time? Trying to find some fine print here.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So I noticed these "free games." Are they actually what they say they are? Not "free to play?" Not only playable for free during the promo time? Trying to find some fine print here.

fine print is that you have to install a chinese rootkit

 

[NJClaw]

So I noticed these "free games." Are they actually what they say they are? Not "free to play?" Not only playable for free during the promo time? Trying to find some fine print here.

They are free and you get to keep them as long as you clicked the button while they were free. To play them you have to go through their retarded launcher, so every time you launch the game you have to remember to go back and close it because it's AIDS.

 

[GrainWetski]

You also don't get any DLC, even for the decade old games.

 

[Inhabitants of Khorinis]

Exc

You also don't get any DLC, even for the decade old games.

Exceptions being the Batman Arkham series during the Batman anniversary and GTA V Premium Edition a few months back.

 

[polo]

So I noticed these "free games." Are they actually what they say they are? Not "free to play?" Not only playable for free during the promo time? Trying to find some fine print here.

They are free and you get to keep them as long as you clicked the button while they were free. To play them you have to go through their retarded launcher, so every time you launch the game you have to remember to go back and close it because it's AIDS.

You can use gog galaxy tho.

 

[NJClaw]

So I noticed these "free games." Are they actually what they say they are? Not "free to play?" Not only playable for free during the promo time? Trying to find some fine print here.

They are free and you get to keep them as long as you clicked the button while they were free. To play them you have to go through their retarded launcher, so every time you launch the game you have to remember to go back and close it because it's AIDS.

You can use gog galaxy tho.

I'm 99% sure that GOG Galaxy still executes the original launcher when you start a game, so that would solve nothing. The problem is not that Epic Games Launcher is ugly and malfunctional, but that it actively hinders your performances clogging your PC with data collecting activities.

 

[V_K]

There's this open-source replacement for Epic launcher if anyone wants to bother with anything Epic: https://github.com/derrod/legendary

 

[Volrath]

Epic Games Hires an Investor Relations Specialist, Fueling Speculation of a Public Offering

https://wccftech.com/epic-games-public-offering-ipo-speculation-investor-relations-hire/

In a statement issued to GameSpot, an Epic Games spokesperson says the company is "monitoring the market" and "prepared to consider opportunities as they arise," but an IPO isn't necessarily coming in the short term...

Great, something else I can short. Thanks Timmy!

 

[lycanwarrior]

Fall Guys Developer Mediatonic Has Been Purchased by Epic, Game Will Remain on Steam

https://wccftech.com/fall-guys-mediatonic-purchased-epic-games-staying-on-steam/

Looks like Epic will have both Fall Guys and Rocket League to fall back on, should Fortnite peter out in the future...

 

[Ghulgothas]

Fall Guys will peter out long before Fortnite ever does.

Edit: I don't say this smugly, but with sorrow.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epic-games-store-social-update

Epic Games Store Social Update

We kicked off 2021 by recapping major features added in 2020 in the Epic Games Store Year in Review and gave a taste of what’s coming in 2021. Now it’s time to take a deeper dive to talk about what is changing, what’s launching now, and what’s around the corner.

A major priority continues to be including more features that connect you to your friends and to the games you love. That involves improving existing features like Wishlists, adding Achievements, and rehauling the Social Panel!


Vision for the Future of Social on Epic Game Store
We want to transform the Epic Games Store into a place where you can connect with your friends across platforms, effortlessly jump into parties with voice chat, and play games together without missing a beat. There are a lot of exciting features to come but today we want to share with you an early look at the Party System.

Party System Intro
In the future, the Epic Games Launcher will feature a new party system that enables players to group together and communicate via voice, text, and more. You’ll drop in or drop out at any point of a party experience with shared controls among all teammates. Talk to your friends and teammates whether you are playing a game or hanging out while searching for a new game to play together.

Party Window
The Party System coming soon will feature an “Active Party Window”, a dedicated window for the Party you are actively engaging in. In this window you’ll have a host of options with your friends and teammates to communicate and play. Share your latest highlights to convince your friends to play a game with you or kick off a match with only a few friends in the group while being able to continue talking to your entire Party.

Drop In / Drop Out Parties
There will be no single owner of the party, so if a friend needs to head offline, the remainder of the Party will continue on. Inside the window, each party member will have control of their own audio and video options. You can also invite other players and lock the party.

Continue the Party In-Game
The addition of the Party Window will also feature In-Game Party Representation. A simplified view of the party will be toggleable while in-game, showing party members and their status.

What is Coming This Month!
To make sure that we’re creating a seamless social experience for our users, we are constantly building, improving, and iterating on existing features. We’re revamping our Social Panel to improve functionality across the board and here’s some of the awesome features you’ll start to see this month:

Player Cards
Player Cards are coming! Clicking on a friend in the Social Panel will pull up their Player Card and give you multiple new options. Viewing the card will allow the player to take important actions to manage their friendship and see mutual friends. In the future, you’ll also be able to join their party, invite them to a new party, and even customize your Player Card.

Spoiler

Improved Search
The new Epic Games Store Social Panel comes equipped with a more efficient search tool. We’ve improved the search query and the results will now feature mutual friend count, the ability to search across platforms, and better matching overall. If you have a pending game invite, you’ll be able to click “Join” and the game will launch and auto-join your friend.

Minimized View
While you’re browsing the Epic Games Store, we wanted users to be able to interact with an accessible, minimized view of the Social Panel without having to open an entirely separate window. Here you’ll be able to see notifications such as game invites and friend requests.

Do Not Disturb
With the addition of extra social features, we understand that you might not want to be interrupted while you’re in the launcher or a game! The “Do Not Disturb” button will make sure that you’re not notified of game invites or friend requests while playing.

Whispers
Whispers haven't been wildely used, so this feature is going into the vault for now, but we’re hopeful to bring it back later with improved functionality for messaging your friends.

More Updates Coming
On top of more major game releases and weekly free games you won’t want to miss, we’ll have more updates to share with you soon!

We’ll continue to improve existing features while building out new ones. Be sure to stay up to date on features coming to the Epic Games Store by bookmarking and checking out the official Trello.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ctrl+f cart...
Nope

 

[Perkel]

Ctrl+f AOL support...
Nope

fixed

 

[rusty_shackleford]

reminder that epic games is the reason so many games have a rootkit(easyanticheat) now

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ctrl+f AOL support...
Nope

fixed

What the fuck is an AOL support.

 

[lycanwarrior]

reminder that epic games is the reason so many games have a rootkit(easyanticheat) now

More likely due to the fact that the 'open' nature of the PC encourages rampant cheating in multi-player games.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Fall Guys will peter out long before Fortnite ever does.

Edit: I don't say this smugly, but with sorrow.

Battle Royales are an especially brutal market, which is one subsection of the general "live services" game segment.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

reminder that epic games is the reason so many games have a rootkit(easyanticheat) now

More likely due to the fact that the 'open' nature of the PC encourages rampant cheating in multi-player games.

anticheat garbage does nothing to prevent cheating, the only thing that prevents cheating is proper separation of the client/server logic and sanitation of all input received from the client.

 

[J1M]

Probably going public after seeing what Roblox's market cap jumped to.

 

[abija]

anticheat garbage does nothing to prevent cheating, the only thing that prevents cheating is proper separation of the client/server logic and sanitation of all input received from the client.

In order for that to be sufficient you need a game that isn't impacted by reaction time or processing/tracking information. Hardware is strong enough that you can cheat processing just absolutely critical client data, like final video/sound output.

And sanitizing input is part of what they try to do and "require" higher privileges than what they should have.

 

[Infinitron]

Some nice gamer paranoia fuel here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/360...ore-can-reduce-your-laptops-battery-life.html

Tested: How the Epic Games Store can drain your laptop's battery life
This gaming app demands a surprising amount of resources.

As laptop performance improves over time, you may be excited to discover that the PC you reserved exclusively for Excel and Zoom calls now can serve as a gaming PC, too. But beware: Leaving a game store app like the Epic Games Store open may significantly slice into your laptop’s battery life.

Consider Intel’s latest Tiger Lake H35 announcement. The new CPUs enable a class of ultraportable laptops that wield office apps and Zoom calls by day, then play Destiny 2 or Valorant by night. The problem is that if you buy a game via, say, the Epic Game Store, the EGS app must be running while you play the game. The app remains active once you quit the game, too. As we found, simply leaving the store app in place when you’re not gaming can reduce your battery life by as much as 20 percent, cutting hours off of your laptop’s longevity off AC.

What we found appears to be specific to the Epic Games Store and Intel’s Tiger Lake platform, though the time required for battery rundown tests and the available equipment we had on hand limited our tests. We can say the battery hit that our Tiger Lake platform experienced in conjunction with the Epic Games Store did not extend as significantly to Steam, and we could not reproduce it as extensively on a laptop powered by AMD’s Ryzen processor.


Normally, these taskbar icons are hidden on the Windows 10 Taskbar, and they’re easy to forget. What we wanted to know was whether the Epic Games Store, even while hidden, was the culprit behind our lower battery life. It was.

Spoiler

How this all came about
Our discovery was a by-product of testing the Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ tablet, which uses a tablet-class Intel “Tiger Lake” Core processor inside. Who games on a tablet? Good question. As processor and GPU performance increases, more and more platforms are becoming hybrid productivity and gaming machines. Tablets are simply an extreme example.

Because of the incredible leap in graphics performance engendered by Intel’s new Iris Xe GPU, we wanted to test its capabilities in a few games. But we ran into an odd anomaly while testing: The battery life tests we ran didn’t deliver consistent results.

To be clear, the first two results were consistent. PCWorld has traditionally used a video rundown test, where we loop a video over and over until the battery expires. In the case of the Surface Pro 7+, the first two test runs provided consistent results; the third did not.

So we ran another. And another. And another, each requiring hours at a time. Somewhat exasperated at this point, we reset the PC—and our battery test finally again generated a score consistent with our earlier results.

What had changed? None of our benchmark software, or even the games, ran in the background when not in use. But the Epic Games Store, the service by which we downloaded our games and the service those games required to run, had remained hidden in the taskbar the entire time. Could that have made a difference? As we discovered, yes.


The main Epic Games Store home screen, within the app. Leaving this app open and running lowered battery life, too, which we expected.

Though we’re using Epic as an example, all we’re pointing out is that your PC can be running any number of background apps at any one time: antivirus, audio enhancements, instant messaging apps, and so on. We typically remove, block, or simply don’t install those apps when we’re testing battery life. Depending upon how well each one is coded, and how active they are, they all can affect your battery life.

What we tested
We were a little shocked at how profoundly just one app could affect your battery life. To test it, we decided to run a series of scenarios:

• A battery life test on a “clean” PC after a factory reset
• A battery life test after loading and signing into the Epic Games Store, with the app hidden in the taskbar
• A battery life test after loading and signing into the Epic Games store, with the window active
• A battery life test after loading the Epic Games Store, then signing out
• A battery life test after exiting the Epic Games Store app

In all of the cases, we ran the battery tests in airplane mode, preventing the app or PC from connecting to the Internet. The goal was to emulate what you might do at the end of a long day: play some games, exit out of the game (but not the Epic Game Store app) and then see what effect leaving that app running in the taskbar would have on your battery life at work the next day.

The first two tests—the clean PC versus signed in to the Epic Games Store—were what we were concerned with. The other tests were merely edge cases, simply to see if other behaviors made a difference.


On average, battery life dropped by 20 percent while the Epic Games Store app was signed in but the app was hidden in the taskbar— approximately two whole hours. (We would expect that battery life would drop more significantly while the app was active, and it did.)

We also tried loading the Epic Games Store, but not signing in. (The Epic store remained in our taskbar, hidden in a cluster of other apps.) Those results fell roughly in line with the battery-life scores we recorded when signed into the Epic store. Finally, we installed the Epic Games Store, then formally exited out of the application. That, fortunately, seemed to solve the problem, and battery life returned to the levels found in our “clean” PC.

We also performed one more check. We uninstalled the Epic Games Store, then performed a similar test with Valve’s Steam store. Would battery life decrease proportionately with Steam, not Epic, running in the background? We tested while signed into Steam, with the app running quietly in our Windows taskbar. As you can see, there was an effect, though not as profound.

We also speculated that, for whatever reason, the battery-life issues could have been tied specifically to Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake platform, the associated chipset, or just the Surface Pro tablet line. As a check, we performed similar tests on Microsoft’s Ryzen-based Surface Laptop 3. (This doesn’t rule out some Microsoft-specific firmware bug that could affect both platforms, but we had to cut off the test somewhere.)


Battery life also dropped while the Epic Games Store app was loaded and minimized on the Ryzen platform, though by not nearly as much—about 8 percent, by our estimates.

We contacted Epic with our findings and provided them with the details of our test. “In general, we are actively working to improve the performance and reduce the power consumption of our launcher,” an Epic representative replied via email. “The power consumption varies based on whether the launcher’s window is open.”

Accurately measuring battery life has become more of a challenge over the past few years, because the number of variables has increased. Display brightness, whether Wi-Fi is on, and even the Windows performance slider can affect battery life. What we’re showing here is that a hidden app—even one that you might want to leave open—affects battery life, and even those effects may vary from one CPU platform to another.

So many games now require some sort of overarching game store or monitor application—Steam, GOG, the Epic Game Store, even the Xbox app—to be active when the game runs. But we don’t think of those store apps as the anchor that drags down battery life—we expect the games themselves to do that.

In all, it was a bit of a rude surprise to discover that the Epic Game Store slashed as much battery life off our test tablet as it did. But if Intel and AMD manage to enable laptops that can be used for both work and gaming, consumers are going to have to adapt to the demands of both worlds. In this case, it might mean “cleaning up” your PC for work by shutting down game stores to ensure maximum battery life.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

[surprised kirk]

 

[CyberModuled]

hahahahahaha

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/epic...million-on-egs-in-2019-and-2020-respectively/

Epic Games lost almost $181 million & $273 million on EGS in 2019 and 2020, respectively

A new court filing has revealed some interesting new details about Epic Games and Epic Games Store. According to the filling, Epic has lost around $181 million & $273 million on EGS in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

This basically means that Epic Games Store has not been profitable these past two years. Epic expects its store to turn a profit in 2023, though this sounds like an optimistic scenario. Furthermore, Epic’s exclusives are not that profitable for the company.

Additionally, EGS has currently more than 160 million registered users and more than 56 million monthly active users.

Lastly, the 12% distribution amount charged by EGS is sufficient to cover the operating costs of EGS.

It will be interesting to see whether EGS will become profitable in 2023. It will also be interesting to see whether Epic will keep signing up new exclusive deals in order to further increase its market share.

Stay tuned for more!

 

[deama]

hahahahahaha

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/epic...million-on-egs-in-2019-and-2020-respectively/

Oh shit, if epic closes down, does that mean you can sue them because they won't be able to provide services to the games you have bought? I know in USA that probably won't happen, but in EU the laws for this sort of stuff is stricter, especially in france.