Rank the Launchers/Stores

[Slasken]

My favorite store is GOG because of no DRM. I have more than one PC, including a couple of which my daughters play on, so they get to try games without having to buy them twice.

 

[Pifanjr]

Concerning the available game store/launchers: For those of you that use Epic, how often do you think you'd use it as a store/launcher if they didn't constantly give away free games?

Honestly, I probably wouldn't have ever looked at it if they hadn't started giving out free games regularly. I just don't buy games often enough any more to warrant looking into a different store than Steam.

 

[McStabStab]

Concerning the available game store/launchers: For those of you that use Epic, how often do you think you'd use it as a store/launcher if they didn't constantly give away free games? It seems like that is its biggest draw, but I've never used it, so I really don't know.

Epic gives away a lot of really great games, and I don't begrudge anyone for grabbing them, I'm always looking for freebies and discounts. I don't have anything against Epic (though I used to when it first launched), I just prefer to have all my games consolidated into one or two launchers. My initial dislike of them stemmed from the way they had some games as "Epic Exclusives" for a year, but that seems to have faded, as I haven't seen much about that feature recently.

I wouldn't use it at all sadly. It just doesn't have the features I want.

 

[Slasken]

I have bought three titles on Epic Store, not because I preferred to buy it there. Because they were exclusive at the time. Looking back, I probably could have waited.

The games are Satisfactory, Detroit Become Human, and Sifu.

 

[Brian Boru]

integrations … community

Ah, thanks—sorry for being slow, I wasn't sure what those words meant in this context

For those of you that use Epic, how often do you think you'd use it as a store/launcher if they didn't constantly give away free games?

Similar to now—never as a launcher, apart from when I'm playing a game I bought there. I do all my free game interaction via their site, not their launcher, so that should be similar too—I typically visit a bunch of gaming sites once a week or more.

free games? It seems like that is its biggest draw

It very probably is, but not for me—there are maybe a handful of the freebies I'll try sometime. Example—I picked up Civ6 there but later got the complete version for $40 on Steam.

Biggest draw for me is as a Steam competitor. Business history shows the problem with one mega-dominant player in a sector—in short, it's always less desirable than a competitive marketplace.

Other draw is that they give devs 88% [if I recall correctly] of revenue, compared to 70% from Steam and others—that's a huge difference, and an existential concern for devs trading on the brink of making ends meet.

"Epic Exclusives"

That is annoying. I hate that Zelda is/was console exclusive, Netflix only has 7 of 9 seasons, and Crysis was PC exclusive—business practice can suck for sure in a Capitalist system.

 

[Rustledjimm]

Concerning the available game store/launchers: For those of you that use Epic, how often do you think you'd use it as a store/launcher if they didn't constantly give away free games? It seems like that is its biggest draw, but I've never used it, so I really don't know.

Epic gives away a lot of really great games, and I don't begrudge anyone for grabbing them, I'm always looking for freebies and discounts. I don't have anything against Epic (though I used to when it first launched), I just prefer to have all my games consolidated into one or two launchers. My initial dislike of them stemmed from the way they had some games as "Epic Exclusives" for a year, but that seems to have faded, as I haven't seen much about that feature recently.

I'd use it far less if it wasn't for the free games personally.

I will note though, Steam has been pushing to improve their store more recently than in the past. It occurs to me that perhaps the competition from Epic is pushing Steam to improve their own store more? Competition does help the consumer in the long run as long as it isn't things like exclusives which are terrible for consumer choice.

 

[Sarafan]

Other draw is that they give devs 88% [if I recall correctly] of revenue, compared to 70% from Steam and others—that's a huge difference, and an existential concern for devs trading on the brink of making ends meet.

But in the end it isn't transferred to better consumer prices in any way, despite that this should be the end effect of higher competitiveness. This doesn't work as it should in the digital distribution market. Of course the devs receive a bigger portion of the share, but the sale records are incomparably worse on Epic than on Steam. This means that majority of incomes come from Steam anyway. Not that I'm against market competition though.

 

[DXCHASE]

Steam is the only true launcher thats doing more right than not imo regardless of DRM etc. It just has the most features and usefulness to me by far. Battlenet has only become usable because of Diablo 4 (and its not a good launcher). I use it for others but before Diablo, it was far less. So those are my two mains atm.

GOG, EPIC, MS and EA (in that order) grace my taskbar for very specific reasons and arent used all that much (GOG for retro games i have, EPIC for free ones to collect, MS for when i have the subscription active and EA for when i have their subscription active).

The rest (ubisoft connect, amazon, rockstars) dont make it because they are so 1-off with games i play that i dont need quick access to them really but they are installed.