Technology

(And also pretty much the only store that matters for non-exklusive titles Tim)

Yep, time to wipe my Epic account.

Isn't Tim the guy that advocates for pedophelia through AI generation?

Edit: yep https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-games-ceo-tim-sweeney-argues-banning-twitter-over-its-ability-to-ai-generate-pornographic-images-of-minors-is-just-gatekeepers-attempting-to-censor-all-of-their-political-opponents/

Reminder: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has defended child pornography, saying that stopping it is "gatekeeping".

DRM free, launcher free games or fuck off.

Gamers hear that Valve has been overcharging them for years, and think Epic is the villain.

Everyone's collective dick slobbering of Valve and billionaire Gabe is embarassing as fuck.

Tim.. suing everyone else wont make epic store a great place to buy games

Look to GOG for inspiration…

More like Tim Weenie.

The lawsuit - filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London - alleges Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.

It claims that as Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam, if they've bought the initial game through the platform it is essentially "locking in" users to continue making purchases there.

This, Ms Shotbolt argues, has enabled Steam to charge an "excessive commission of up to 30%", making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content.

The case is what is known as a collective action claim, which means that one person goes to court on behalf of a much larger group of people.

In this instance, it has been brought on behalf of up to 14 million people in the United Kingdom who bought games or additional content through Steam or other platforms since 2018.

The claim is backed by legal firm Milberg London LLP, which brings group action cases against large companies.

A separate consumer action case, filed in August 2024, has been brought against Valve in the US.

From another article because this one has half the info and reads like it was commissioned by steam. The effects of a company go further than your enjoyment of their product. I'm seeing a lot of people lick the boot just because it tastes sweet.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2g1md0l23o

is that Valve's policies and position as the leading distribution service in PC gaming means publishers are effectively blocked from selling games and add-ons at lower prices on competing stores

I still don't get this. As far as I can find, Steam doesn't allow steam keys to be sold cheaper elsewhere, but they don't bother with prices of games in other stores.

And doesn't Epic have a bunch of games exclusive to their store?

Has epic games developed anything like Proton? Valve isn't just a store.

No instead epic charges 12%, and if you use unreal engine but don't sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales. Sure those number are lower but egs isn't out here "empowering" devs

Shoddy article buries the lede: Epic isn't suing Valve. UK residents are. Epic is just rooting for them because Epic makes a product (Epic Game Store) that competes with a product by Valve (Steam). Epic is not behind the lawsuit. They are just cheering for their competitor to be taken down a peg.

Literally nothing whatsoever stops Epic from releasing their Epic Game Store app on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android as these are open platforms that allow anybody to release an app (or app store) and offer it to their customers. However, Epic Game Store only actually exists on Windows, and it's on iOS in the EU. Everywhere else, they're keeping it from consumers out of pure spite in order to leverage the courts in their favour.

All of this started because Epic chose to defy Apple and the rules they agreed to in order to get Fortnite onto the iPhone's App Store, in that they could not use an alternative payment provider to sell "V-bucks," the in-game currency Fortnite uses. V-bucks cost Epic nothing to make as a virtual currency. Fortnite itself has expenses, but Fortnite is also a tech demo for the Unreal Engine. It exists, on a business level, to sell the capabilities of Epic's in-house physics engine, the Unreal Engine. A bit hypocritically, Epic takes a cut of games sold that use the Unreal Engine. It is not free. Fortnite players use the V-bucks to buy skins and other cosmetic experiences in the game. And Epic, tired of giving Apple a 30% cut of something that costs them nothing to produce, thereby giving each company 100% profit, added an option to pay Epic directly, either less money to get the same amount of V-bucks, or the same amount of money to get more V-bucks (I don't recall and it's not what matters). Apple suspended the Fortnite game until Epic fixed it. Epic refused to, so the app was de-listed, and the developer account was banned.

Epic then pulled out of the Mac ecosystem as well, which had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. Macs do have an App Store that looks like the one on iPhone, but just like the Windows Store in Windows, it's not required to install apps on a Mac. Most Mac users get their apps from the web, same as Windows users do. Like the Windows Store, the Mac App Store is just a convenience (both of them handle updates very well, for example). Not offering Fortnite and/or the Epic Game Store on the Mac has always been a choice Epic made, not any limitation imposed by Apple.

Epic is not just Fortnite, though. They made the Gears of War games for Xbox back in the day. Fortnite itself is actually a mashup of several games. The original Fortnite was a paid survival crafting game. I'm not sure it exists anymore, or if the freemium multiplayer Fortnite swallowed it up entirely. Like in Fortnite's main mode, you could build, but you could build freely (safely) during the day, and mobs would attack at night. Fortnite also contains elements of Unreal Tournament, Epic's prior multiplayer online shooter that last received a release in 2004; Rockband, the music game developed by Harmonix (which also created Guitar Hero), which is now called Fortnite Festival), and other acquisitions. Epic also made Unreal, a single-player game that Unreal Tournament was based on. They likely released a few other games I can't recall. But since Unreal and Unreal Tournament, they've also licensed the Unreal Engine to other developers, and it's been used in numerous games, including the original Deus Ex.

I was almost forgetting Tim's whole deal seems to be antagonizing more successful companies than his.