Epic Games Store

Epic Games Store

This store is far from epic. We want a competitor for Steam, but a good one, not this trash.

Developer(s):	Epic Games
Initial Release:	December 6, 2018
Platform(s):	Microsoft Windows Mac OS X
Languages:	Arabic English French German Italian Japanese Korean Polish Brazilian Portuguese Russian European & Latin American Spanish Simplified Chinese Turkish
Website:	https://www.epicgames.com/store

The Epic Games Store is a digital store for PC games that was created by Epic Games and launched in December 8, 2018 during The Game Awards 2018. It has been heavily panned by gamers worldwide.

Why It Sucks

While it is nice that Epic Store is giving Steam competition, the way it's doing so isn't exactly fair as Epic Games makes exclusivity deals with publishers/developers to keep their games away from other launchers as opposed to providing a better service themselves.
- Given the amount of money they made from Fortnite, they can afford to make their own games to make the platform more appealing, so it doesn't make much sense to buy up exclusive games from third-party devs.
Lacks a lot of features when compared to other Launchers such as Steam, GOG or even Blizzard's Battle.net, EA's Origin and Ubisoft's Uplay, such as achievements and a shopping cart (the latter is used to prevent cards being locked up due to a quick succession of purchases).
- Considering the store wasn't even close to being ready at launch due to the aforementioned major lack of features. Taking too long to implement them ended up souring their reputation among detractors.
- To make matters worse, The Epic Store was announced and released during The Game Awards 2018. This means that the Epic Games Store was rushed for Christmas 2018.
Restrictive DRM that requires players to be online at all times, even if the game isn't online-only.
Epic often buys out third party games to be timed exclusives for their platform instead of developing their own exclusive games.
Extremely vulnerable to hacking. In fact, there are people who reported having two accounts stolen. The store overall has a lot of security flaws and many reports that users got malware due to the lack of security.
Poorly implemented fraud prevention. If a user buys too many games in a short period, Epic will block your account.
Many users who asked for refunds didn't get them despite meeting the conditions (though this has been fixed).
There are times where the user will try to purchase a game, the purchase fails, but Epic still takes the money.
Installing and uninstalling a game often requires you to open the launcher as administrator. The install/uninstall process will fail otherwise.
Dreadful customer support.
The review system allows developers to disable reviews for their games and delete reviews that they don't like, which can help toxic developers defend themselves against criticism, or worse, outright scam players out of their money.
- These features, as well as the DRM systems, were based on WeGame store launcher created by Tencent, the parent of Epic Games.
Some PC physical copies (like Metro Exodus) that have a code for Epic Store just have a sticker over the Steam logo, due to last-minute deals.
The launcher itself is extremely horrible and can slow down your computer. It also eats a lot of memory while it is trying to download or update games, a problem that isn't present in its' other competitors.
- This is because Steam first preallocates the space and the files using dummy files and installs them at the same time it downloads them. This is faster and with a more consistent performance.
- EGS preallocates the space, downloads the files, and then it installs them once all of them are downloaded. This causes a performance spike at the end and is slower overall.
Unnecessarily difficult installation of games.
No universal controller support, which is unacceptable in 2021.
No regional pricing, meaning that games are insanely expensive outside of the US.
Overly harsh penalties: If you get banned in one game, you get banned on the entire platform.
It is region locked, which is bizarre and laughably stupid in 2021.

Redeeming Qualities

Despite its multiple problems, the store does offer some real competition to Steam and has proven to be a more stable platform for indie developers.
Developers get 88% revenue of their games unlike Steam (70%, increased to 75% after $10 million in sales, and 80% after $50 million) which is very great for actual indie developers.
The store isn't clogged with massive amounts of shovelware and non-functional garbage that normally drowns indie games on Steam, partly due to the fact that there is no exploitable Direct-esque feature on Epic.
Gives away more free games than Steam. It even gives one or two games out for free every week, which is nice. and most of these games are good.
Most of the exclusivity deals that Epic Store signed are for one year only, so if you don't buy games at launch, you can still get it on Steam sometime later (though that doesn't mean Steam users will always be happy about it).
Most of the problems with Epic Store were on Steam when it first launched, so there is a chance of it improving in the future.
Despite having a pretty limited choice of products and all the problems with the store, it at least has some quality control in the game selection, as it doesn't allow the flood of almost every game possible (as of this writing), especially porn games, asset flips, and poorly made games, unlike Valve with their Steam, again, due to the lack of an exploitable Direct-esque feature on EGS.
While it doesn't excuse Epic, it should be considered that Epic is not forcing exclusivity on developers and publishers, it only gives them offers and deals, so it's not just them to blame for this.
Sometimes, games on Epic Store can be cheaper than on Steam and other launchers, though it is good only if you're living in the US.
The platform received some updates that address some of these issues.
On May 15th, 2020, Grand Theft Auto V was made free on the Epic Games Store. A massive amount of people rushed to get the game, crashing the Epic Games Store in the process.

Reception

At launch the store received positive reviews due to it being a strong competitor for Steam, but later it got heavily panned by Steam users and even non-Steam users because of how it handles exclusivity deals, being inferior when compared to other PC launchers, and for leaking private information, even Valve themselves started criticizing Epic Games for these and calling their exclusivity deals unfair to Steam players.