For me, the main concern is that Epic doesn’t have a system of purchasable keys, even after all these years. Most stores in PC have had a system with keys that has allowed users to purchase games from 3d party sites such as GreenManGaming and the like. That system has been one of the key reasons why prices have stayed in check in the platform, and why cool stuff like HumbleBundles exists.
Without this kind of system, every time a game is exclusive to the Epic platform, it, in effect, has a single price point with no possible competition or alternative, which is no different than a console ecosystem… And a lot of the pricing on those is not great, to say the least.
Until they have that, supporting the growth and consolidation of that store would be potentially shooting myself in the foot as a consumer.
EDIT - Turns out, I had my info somewhat outdated, this was introduced at some point recently, at least with some retailers.
However, on second check it doesn’t apply to games with Epic Store exclusivity, apparently (or at least the ones I’ve checked). It seems to only apply to games that are not exclusive. So concern still valid, unfortunately.
If someone has more info about it I’d love to hear it because it looks unclear at the moment.
And being against them is centralising the market in Valve’s hands, which is exactly what people feared would happen when they released Steam and started having games release exclusively on their platform.
They give a better share of sales to the devs and also guarantee revenues, which means some games would never have seen the light of day/some devs would have gone bankrupt without Epic supporting them.
So by not supporting them you’re also sitting yourself in the foot.
Oh and by the way, Epic’s free games are DRM free in the vast majority of cases… Guess that’s a bad thing too for some reason?
EDIT - Turns out, I had my info somewhat outdated, this was introduced at some point recently, at least with some retailers.
However, on second check it doesn’t apply to games with Epic Store exclusivity, apparently (or at least the ones I’ve checked). It seems to only apply to games that are not exclusive. So concern still valid, unfortunately.
If someone has more info about it I’d love to hear it because it looks unclear at the moment.
And being against them is centralising the market in Valve’s hands, which is exactly what people feared would happen when they released Steam and started having games release exclusively on their platform.
They give a better share of sales to the devs and also guarantee revenues, which means some games would never have seen the light of day/some devs would have gone bankrupt without Epic supporting them.
So by not supporting them you’re also sitting yourself in the foot.
Oh and by the way, Epic’s free games are DRM free in the vast majority of cases… Guess that’s a bad thing too for some reason?