The Problems With The Epic Store (The Jimquisition)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ต.ค. 2024
- / jimquisition
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So, let's talk about the Epic Store. Controversial, hated, and rich enough to power through its ongoing controversies. For now, at least.
Epic's dive into PC game distribution has earned it the ire of many, and while it offers a better deal for developers than Steam, it's got to seriously address its end-user problems if it wants lasting success.
#Epic #EpicStore #Steam #PC #PCGaming
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Twitter: / jimsterling
Facebook: / jimsterling0
Jim’s Big Ego (No Relation): bigego.com/
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It's so ironic that the AAA industry loves to push "games as a service" but aren't able to actually provide good services...
"Games as a disservice" is a phrase I hear bandied about quite a lot lately.
[insert palpatine ironic meme here]
I would say, incomplete games as a service. The new milking trend.
That’s the point. They make more money while doing less work.
Besides, no one needs the time sink live services. Not when Pixelmon, which you can still pick up if you know where to look, absolutely dwarfs them as a time sink.
From "PC Gaming is Dead" to "PC Gaming is Master Console"...and now "PC Gaming has Exclusives". That's a hell of a *character arc* for PC Gaming, I'll give it that.
where can i meet you?
no exclusives for pirates tbh, this is what gabe newell meant when he emphasized that piracy is mostly a service problem
Now it has to decide between stream services or VR (spoilers VR gets f*cked)
@Grym that's semantics
Top 10 anime betrayals:
Outer Worlds exsclusive on epic stote
" Most people would consider crowdfunding a kind of pre-order. Now, we could do an entire episode on that perception"----- YES JIM, PLEASE DO MAKE THAT EPISODE
Crowd funding absolutely IS a pre-order. But in a way it's even a bit worse as the history has shown. Both can be misused.
@@FishoD but legally, it's not. If you read the fine print of Kickstarter, they don't actually have to send you anything. It's not technically a pre-order
Although I think that a lot of people do consider crowd funding to be a form of pre-ordering, I don't think that was the original intent of crowd funding as they were basically meant for consumers to fill the roll of being investors to a particular thing that they're financing that interests them enough to throw money at it in order the development of that particular thing to be completed a sold to consumers. However, instead of expecting a financial return on investing into that particular thing that appeases to you, you'll be the first to get that particular thing that you financially supported during it's development.
@@FishoD but like, it isn't. It really really isn't. There is nothing, and I mean nothing in crowdfunding that guarantees you will get what you were promised. And that's fine. Because that's the only way it can function. But people need to understand this before pledging
When the developers of Stonehearth eventually could not meet all of their goals, I had to put up with a lot of talk about how crowdfunding was an iron-clad contract. It's not of corse, reasonable people will tell you it's far more speculative than that, but this is the internet, where angry people are in abundance and reasonable people are apparently in short supply.
"You can have a baby before Epic has a shopping cart"
Challenge accepted, Jim. Challenge accepted.
name it Sterling Mallory, what ever the gender it may be born as.
@@bagrym Dude... dank AF. How old is Archer now?
Hahah this is so damn hilarious
@@adelahogarth2761 i think around seven or eight. this year should be the last season iirc
Darn it , 10 years too early...
No mention of the CEO's inflammatory statements making plain their contempt for the consumer base.
No mention of the significant security concerns (No email validation, the spying on Steam data, etc) which really should get a mention.
Dropping in the 2.5 x sales of Last Light without mentioning how Last Light didn't actually sell amazingly (compared to AAA games of today because it was a niche title, and in that same presentation they gave specific numbers of other titles, but used the 2.5 to better obfuscate; which only further drives the misinformation the way they want it. People see '2.5 times more' but that is meaningless without actual numbers. And Exodus was massively more advertised, -and- it was advertised using Steam for months beforehand.
No mention of the rather important detail regarding Phoenix Point when they, during their AMA, expressed 'Every single customer who crowdfunded us could refund it and we'd still be in the black'. Which, with associated maths, led to the conclusion that Epic paid them approximately 2 million dollars- as well as highlighting a strong attitude of 'We don't need the customer'.
Epic's entire mantra with their store is 'Developer first' and showing contempt for the customer with aggressive business tactics. It's like they forget that they kind of need customers to actually.. buy the games? You emphasise service, but.. Attitude matters too; and they have shown utter contempt towards their customers.
In fact, furthermore, Obsidian wasn't even the one at fault for the deal with Epic; Their publisher Private Division was. Obsidian were still implementing Steam features the day of. One even expressed on the Discord that they found out the same day everyone else did about the news. Given the way Publishers act, do you really think Obsidian will even see much of the fruits of that deal, considering Publishers are the ones responsible for distribution? That doesn't sound very 'Developer first' to me.
I'm glad you took on the Epic Store issues, but there were a lot of points you didn't expand upon, some rather significant, that leaves me somewhat disappointed in the episode. Sorry for the long comment, but I'm aiming to be informative and helpful, to highlight things, not to be inflammatory or aggressive. Hope you see this!
I agree. He should have expanded on the security issue.
I'm concerned Jim didn't talk about the security issue for users and instead focused on the Epic Store's right to exist as a competitor. Their competition is not as important as user safety imo.
There's talk saying the decision was made by the upper management of Obsidian and not the publisher. They may very well be to blame.
This!!!!! You covered it brilliantly mate.
Who here remembers when Steam was sued for violating consumer rights, pepperidge farm remembers...
Stopping cart... A shopping cart... Like what?!?!?! How does it take 9 months to add a shopping cart?
Nintendo Switch still doesnt have a shopping cart option 2 years after release, somehow. Epic still fails though, they did this all wrong.
@@harrymasononvacation I think Nintendo just assumes all the people who own a switch automatically buy every game they launch at launch so there is no need for a shopping cart.
9 months is the estimated time it takes for some childlabor to learn the needed programming.
It can be a pretty complicated system due to how caching works. Some more naive services had encountered countless issues due to them implementing it roughly and then having people outsmart them somehow because the cart calculation was off. A lot of services just tend to use some pre-made middleware or ready solutions for their web-based stores
Etheoma no need for a search function, categories or a shopping cart as long as the store sells just a handful of titles.
Can Jim start saying Road Map in that voice he does whenever he says Triple A these days? I'd love that
TRIPLE HAY ROAD MAP
You’re a hero and we need you. 😍❤️
Now I want to see him do an entire video with that disrespectful voice.
Can Jim hire a voice actor to speak his words for him? Because I'll be real, I'm always conflicted when I click on a video because hearing what he has to say means listening to his voice.
@@billvolk4236 Delete your account.
So far we got:
- Triple AAAAAAAYYY
- Liiiive Seervicees
- Player Choice
and now Road Map
You could make a drinking game out of this. Or Bingo at least.
I'm more worried about GOG than Steam. They had a bout of lay-offs recently. I hope their recent addition of Diablo 1 and Warcraft 1&2 gives them the boost in custom they need to stay afloat
I like GOG, but I've had the feeling for a while now that their library is lacking and their pricing off. Granted I understand why they don't have the frequency of sales or depth of discount Steam does, but that doesn't make me view Dragon Age: Origins as worthy of 20 USD. Hopefully the platform will survive until the Cyberpunk cash infusion.
@@elblaise5618 A while back i got DA:O for 5$ on GOG so i don't know what you talking about.
@@elblaise5618 Did they fix the Deluxe Edition? Steam has been happily selling a borked version for years now.
GOG is a great store, probably the best store in terms of actual care for the customer, but devs and publishers are reluctant to sell games there because of GOG's DRM policies. And the lacking library has been holding it back.
Its their fault for calling their company GOG
Developers were working on steam achievements up to hours before TOW became EGS exclusive. It was likely a publisher call.
And ultimately it's the publisher that gets that extra Epic paycheck, NOT the developers.
and when it doesn't sell well the developers get blamed. @@ProcyonDei
This point can't be more upvoted.
Metro and Outer World were absolutely publisher calls.
In every game where there's a publisher attached it's their call. The developer doesn't have a say in such decisions. Problem is it's always the developers who get the barrage of hatred directed at them.
Words in the games industry that turn me off:
“Roadmaps”
I remember Starbound had a roadmap. Complete with pretty graphics. Well, I say complete; that was pretty much all it had besides "We're going to do the things we said we'd have done by two years ago".
"Roadmap" seems to be a euphemism for "We should have done this before launch, but we wanted your money now."
"Live services"
@@hazukichanx408 I'd say "Roadmap" is an euphemism for "We want you to think you have options, but in reality the only option you have is to pay a fuckton for the whole thing, or normal price for an incomplete package"
Why? It's a case by case. Have you heard of rainbow six siege?
@@CidGuerreiro1234 not true, rainbow six siege is a perfect example of it being done correctly.
GOG is great. You can use offline installers and just create a folder with all of the shortcuts to your games. I've been trying to get my steam library onto GOG.
Is this possible to make? Transfer the SteamBib to GOG? How? No troll ... i´m quiet tired of steam and only keep it still because my bib was expensiv with many games I´m still playing and want to play.
Well ther is a service for that its most of the time on the store front on gog galaxy
@@mrjemandem4254 didnt noticed ... thanks for this enlightenment ... made my day :D
BRB downloading Galaxy
I feel this so hard. If Epic took GOG's DRM-free approach, I wouldn't give a fuck if it were paying for exclusivity, because at least I could still use Steam to launch the games if I wanted to. If DRM- free were standard I'd be so much more willing to welcome competition, but as of now, GOG is the only other distributor I will buy from.
Me: You were meant to bring balance to PC gaming! Not leave it in darkness..
EGS: I HATE YOU!
It's over EGS, I've got the high ground!
Given that it was funded by Fortnite some of us have always been [at first irrationally] sceptical
*Steam:* Best features
*GOG:* You actually own your games
*Epic:* Sometimes there's a decent free game I guess
Crazelord91 There are plenty of Steam games you can launch without DRM
Does anyone remember Origin and their free games? It's just a matter of time this stops, and I'm not counting on the store being much better.
@@glitchman1272 Yah, but they're usually not high profile games. GOG has more AAA quaility DRM free (even if it's last gen). And with steam you still don't get use of the actual exe, you need Steam Client to run, while GOG you can run the games completely client free and transfer them to other memory drives without hassle
@@twilightvulpine They used to do that?
*Epic:* 12% cut for developers.
I've heard of unfinished games but unfinished stores ?
😂 Ea would be proud
Hey now, they got a search feature now!
True but even EAs store/launch is far far better than what epic does offer. Just shows you how much they care about their costumers if they cant even be bothered to match EA standards and those guy allready only see you as walking bags of cash.
Lets hope the fortnite hype ends soon so we can go back to companys atleast pretending to creating products worth buying.
What about Konami Launcher? Would Jim use Konami Launcher?
The storefront is the first thing EA gets sorted in all of their games. It's the most important part of their games.
Mikhail Chuev I imagine a Konami launcher would have you pay micro transactions for each part of the store. "Oh you want a search feature? Well that is normally ten dollars but we're giving it to you for $7.50 what a steal!" Also you couldn't select what you buy but get your games through a pachinko machine.
I don't care about the unfinished store.
I don't care about the exclusives.
But I do care about security and privacy !!!!!
I was about to create an account for the Epic store, then it said I already had one on my email address... weird. Tried a few of my usual passwords in case they used an old epic account or something i don't remember, nothing works. Then when i did a password reset and finally accessed the account, I found out "my" account was created by some guy named "Ican Icanaw" from Thailand... What the hell??? I checked my emails, never received an email previously from Epic, ever.
After a quick google search, apparently the exact same thing happened to hundreds of people. So NOPE, not putting my credit card info or anything on there.
So some bored thai guy accessed readily available leaked email information to create accounts for fortnite and the blame for bad passwords is put on epic? Hmmm
@@Mineral4r7s so you should trust a company that puts SO MUCH thought into their customers welfare that it allows people to make accounts without email verification
yeah real trustworthy actions Epic is totally not allowing their numbers to be inflated with fake smurf accounts, they care about being fair right
Mineral4r7s Uh...yes? Because Epic really should verify emails. Hell, PornHub is more security conscious.
@@Mineral4r7s does it really matter how strong your password when ur email info is leaked?
Nathan-DTS yes. Because they didn’t require the account to be verified.
For those calling out 'but you agreed to the ToS', the user may have agreed, but their friends did not. Ergo, stealing user data (your friends' profile information), without permission.
TOS is not a legal contract, it has no legal meaning and you are not allowed to sign away any of your rights (including privacy) with it.
@@StrazdasLT Or indeed any of your friends' rights.
The TOS is powerless and is only meant to intimidate idiots into taking shit lying down.
Geoff Destroyer of Realms TOS are legally binding, look it up. They wouldn’t make you agree to it if it didn’t actually do anything. Any data you agree to give away as part of the TOS, it’s perfectly legal for them to use. I’m not saying it’s moral, but it is legal.
When you agree to the terms of service, you have created a legally binding contract between two parties.
I didn't mind the epic store until the paid exclusives and the fact they started clawing through my steam data without permission.
Except they didn't do that.
Shouldn't steam protect that data? If epic does it, you can be sure it is already part of some data set being sold by random companies
@@SridalB i mean when steam holds it on your hard drive it probably assumes that the competition won't be trying to peek in
The Epic Store only goes through your Steam data if you fetch your Steam friends. So, if you press the button to do allow it to look at Steam, don't complain that it actually goes looking at Steam.
@@aghayejalebian7364 except they did , they even admited to it
Competition is always welcome Jim.
Definitely.
But my case is this, I'm not from the US, and steam gives the chance of paying games at a more proper value and the money from my country. Also steam sales are pretty good.
Epic doesnt give that, and because of the fucking economy where I live, if I pay in dollars, I pay 3 to 6 times what you pay in the states.
I can afford games for myself, but I wont pay such inflated prices because of epic.
So for now I stay with steam.
And thank God for you Jim👏👏
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@goff0103
Well, unless of course all the "projected" Epic Games Store-purchases are converted into Microsoft Store-purchases in which case it's going to Microsoft that's going to be possibly the biggest winner for trying to branch-out back to the PC-game-players
( especially by putting the "Halo - Master Chief Collection" on the Steam-store ).
(( On a side note, I generally liked the idea behind the "Games for Windows Live" when there was cross-platform-multiplayer possibilities like with the "Universe At War - Earth Assault";
it is nice that finally the "online-boarders" are being taken down pretty much full-on )).
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it is funny how epic, ubisoft, battle.net... don't support PaySafeCard.
For example UPLAY doesn't support it in my country but if I live across the border like 2km away I would be able to buy games with PSC in UPLAY.
What is funny about this you can buy macro-transactions in their game with PSC... no problem there.
legit scam.
Long live macro-transactions master race!
Welcome to AllGoodLandia!
Where:
you have no voice,
you have no choice,
you have no escape,
you have no respect.
Where is the support when you need it?
Where do you live if you don't mind saying
Where you from?
you pay 3 to 6 times? oooh that's cute, i pay 18 times. 🙂
You really should have covered the security and privacy issues of the epic store
Gonna be honest, that was a bunch of ruckus over nothing.
@@kneesnap1041 Except its kinda sketchy when the storefront checks all your programs for what you have installed. Dunno, that seems kinda invasive to me.
@@OnlyNeedJuan - Steam had an exploit that allowed remote _control_ of a user's PC for 10 years.
OnlyNeedJuan it looked at your friends list. Which is already public.
@@kneesnap1041 Tencent and privacy issues aren't something people want to see.
It's worth reiterating that Phoenix Point was taken off of *GoG Galaxy* in order to be an Epic exclusive. It will take a phenomenal liar to convince me that this has anything to do with "competition for Steam".
"But Muh Fortnite!"
Listen I love xcom games and this is heartbreaking I’m not getting my favorite game for one year because epic is not epic and to be honest tho I’ll probably get a better finished game in a year
Nope that decision is all about revenue sharing. Last I checked GOG like Steam take 30%. I have to think that regardless of industry those economics are hard to pass on.
Do you seriously not understand? Competition for steam is about someone elses numbers going up. It's like voting green, democrats fucking hate the green candidates because they bite into their cake. If someone wants to be #1, they have to be #2 by a landslide first, then tip over. For Epic to EVER take over steam, they need to squash the little guys. That's how it works.
Money and numbers aren't the same thing. They have money, but they need to convert it to numbers before they can take on Steam. Epic pays for EXCLUSIVITY, not "anywhere but Steam". You can do anything but Steam, but you don't get the big exclusivity bag in that case.
@Omega0918 Did you even read my post? It's not about that, it's about who the money goes to and the fiscal benefit of letting someone sell it exclusively.
How to hurt Jim: Steal his pog collection
Or tell him he isn't the number one Boglin boy
You shouldn't. You don't know where those things have been.
Or worse, you do.
Don't try to hurt Jim, or he'll give his heavyweight mate Ster Dust a call...
I think Jim will be fine anyway i dont agree with him on e everything but he has to many solid points to be ignored. Even if he sometimes can act like a entitled brat.
@@jordanloux3883 theres probably a market for that lol
Looks like we're probably going to go back to the OG launcher.
Bittorrent.
Seriously all these media companies, all trying to have their own subscription service, distribution channels, launchers, and fractured walled gardens, makes me want to go back to pirating.
I will buy all these EXCLUSIVE games on Piratebay!
@@Kserijaro yup.. id rather send my 60 euro to north korea and then pirate the game then use epic :)
Ahhh the days of limewire
LMAO 🤣 👌💕
And they Datamine steam profiles without permission.
scam & spy live service. That's how mafiAAA works.
everything you do and put on the net gets datamined without permission. welcome to the 21st century
@Shia Lebeouf: Life Coach Your point?
@Nathan-DTS They don't have permission nor my consent and they did not disclose that it was happening until forced too.
Them and every other service
I'll take this one step further: I game on a Linux-powered rig. Epic's launcher and the games they offer do not support it. I simply can't throw my money at them.
I mean technically if you want to go that way nothing is actually stopping you from easily running a windows VM in Linux to play them if you absolutely wanted to but i get where your coming from.
@@SgtPriad But given both Steam and GoG allow him to play his games natively, why would he bother? If you're going to game on Windows, inside a VM from within Linux, you really may as well just install Windows if that's something you regularly do. I'm guessing someone who wants to game on Linux, would really rather actually game on Linux.
@@cakeisamadeupdrug6134 8k
afaict, Windows clients on Linux hosts work better than "native" Linux for most games. ymmv
btw, Linux is great, Steam is not great (e.g. iirc, Steam even hard-coded filepaths, which is contemptible).
obsidian had NOTHING to do with going to the EGS. once again, they got shafted by their publisher. just 1 hour before the announcement, they were updating steam achievements.
Same with Metro, it was a Publisher deal
And even still. You cannot directly support the developers no matter what you do. Money always flows through the publisher. Even if you still want to support the devs by bending over and going to Epic's Store you can't. You cannot influence what money they will give to Obsidian. It's sad, but that's how it goes.
they kept updating the achievements even after the announcement was made. if you look at steamdb, you can see that just two hours ago they added a new achievement. while i think a lot of the staff at obsidian didn't know until the announcement, i find it very hard to believe the higher ups weren't involved in the decision somehow.
Yeah, management at obsidian isnt exactly great and does this stuff a lot.
Why does Obsidian even have a publisher? They could self-publish with no problems.
He left out all the things the Epic CEO has said regarding the issue. Things that only add fuel to the fire imo.
Just talking about Epic store has people being apoplexic. That's how ridiculous the whole thing as gotten.
@@francoiscoupal7057
Nice word usage sir. "Apoplexic" is a word that one doesn't often read.
@@RufusMcTwigglefart Well it's Apoplectic, for one.
While you are right you also have to take things "said" by CEOs with a chunk of salt these days. I'm more on the "do" or rather "have done" side of things, believe-wise.
@@Feanarth even the things he say don't sound too good. It's not the promises he made, it's how he pretty much said "we don't need to think of the players as long as we have developers on our side", just worded a bit more PR-friendly.
Good breakdown Jim, sadly you didn't analize the strange Terms and Conditions of the Epic Store
Or the fact that the Epic Store program itself spies on you, doing things like checking your browsing history.
@@sleepalaska sorry grammar nazi
@@JuanGarcia-oq5xv Also, that's not grammar, that's spelling. So he would be a spelling nazi, if anything.
Even if he clearly isn't, and you were just plain wrong and should admit your mistake.
I'd analize tim sweeney's terms and conditions dry
Does it secretly have you agree to be made into a HumancentiPad? (not that I would be surprised at this point, if it actually did, of course)
I'm surprised you fail to mention that the Outer Worlds is in the same situation as Metro: Exodus, in that Obsidian wasn't making the decision, the publisher is.
Or how the sales figures of Exodus are being compared to the second game in the series, that came out years ago, and didn't have the following (or graphically-impressive re-releases that Metro 2033 desperately needed) that the series now does.
Both of those are kind of important facts, don't you think?
I'd not mind exclusives but Epic's privacy policy is atrocious, basically "we will share your data with companies in foreign countries where laxer privacy laws apply so dont bother expecting us to comply with current laws". As long as that won't change I won't use the store and forego the games.
It is also straight up illegal.
I hope you are not in any kind of social media or an american otherwise your concerns sound pretty hyperbolic
@@Mineral4r7s I'm neither of those things but thanks for your concerns.
I'd also like to mention that there is a difference between social media (free and financed by advertising and data collection) and a storefront which should make money by selling games, not by selling customers data.
I even assume that they will revise their privacy agreements (to comply with EU laws if nothing else) in the future but will hold off until they have done so, which i do not regard as an hyperbolic reaction (not using a store seems quite measured to me).
Or consider this.
You purchase a game on the basis of good will. Piracy is extremely, extremely easy these days and if you have half a brain, far too much work to hunt down and detect for the law to bother.
You get a game because you want to play it. You buy a game because it's inherently easier and you want to support the developer. Lastly you do so for security in your purchase / stability in the product. Essentially a combination of laziness, morality, and convenience.
So, the ease aspect is thrown out the window, since EPIC requires a separate launcher.
The security is gone because the platform itself is inherently insecure for both information stored as well as selling data to foreign countries.
The company that is selling out exclusivity is making an inherently immoral decision, meaning that you are no longer bound by your own morality to support them officially.
The official product is annoying to get, immoral, and insecure.
The cracked version is easy to get, not bound my mutual moral requirements, and is actually safer and more reliable.
Piracy is literally the objectively better option that using the EPIC launcher, and that's coming from me. I think the last time I pirated a game was when I was 12. And I felt guilty and bought it the next day.
Mineral4r7s because Facebook isn’t scanning everything on my PC
The hate is very simple and basic. Nobody wants to be forced to do something. If you want people to use the epic store build a better store. Give discounts to cover your lack of features. Locking games you didn't create behind an arbitrary wall is anti consumer. Let the consumer choose your store because it is better, not because they have to.
Yeah but why make it better when they HAVE to use it?
GOG tried this, and they failed. Stop acting as if genuine competition will ever take Steam down, or denying that this hate is (in part) simple fanboyism and people still thinking Valve are the 'good guys' who need to be defended.
@Dave Watts GOG didn't fail. What they offer is an entirely different beast. Their main business is making old games working and available on a modern pc. They don't really sell many AAA games. It's an apples and oranges thing and I don't really understand why it gets brought up in comparison to steam or epic. About the only modern stuff they regularly sell are indie titles.
Jade but that’s gonna take some time and even then it doesn’t guarantee success like the GOG launcher
@@daveface69 Why would you want to take Steam down and replace it with something worse :thonking:
Remember when people could change their opinions after further examination of the evidence, or after new information has been brought to light, and not be accused of flip flops/contradictions? Pepperidge Farms remembers. But apparently a lot of TH-cam commenters don’t...
get off my internet with that logic how dare you sir
This is the internet. There is no room for logic or composure. For this place is...Chaos. Pure, undiluted, ravenous, and idiotic Chaos.
Or maybe not examining "evidence" properly and just jump on hate bandwagon like everybody else. But well, you'll still be defending him no matter what
The thing is most of the comments so far don’t say anything about that, unless you’re going out of your way to find negative ones.
Are you referring to anything in particular or just generalizing?
And now Borderlands 3 is exclusive as well, god damn it
And because EGS doesn't have offline mode and in-built netplay API, my friends and me would not be able to play it from launcher. So Pirate Bay is providing more features (offline mode) than EGS. Amazing, right?
That game is gonna have microtransactions you just wait
fuck it and epic, i'll buy it when it comes to steam
Epic paying for Metro exclusivity has a big “rich kid who uses expensive toys to attract friends” energy
Or maybe someone who wants to open a market that isn't accesible simply by being the better service.
You mean "capitalism as usual" energy, right?
@@TheTrueLeafless they'd have to be the better service in the first place, which isn't even close to true. Or they'd have to offer something Steam does not, like DRM free games the way GOG does.
@@praetorxyn if Better service was the way to go to dethrone steam, Gog would have won YEARS ago as Jim said.
Except epic got that money by making one of the most popular games on the planet
And I'm just sitting here waiting for anything to drop to $20 or below and on sale. So about as long as those exclusivity deals, welp nothing has changed for me.
Yeah, I can control myself for the time it takes to get the game how and for how much I want it. Not to mention games need a few months to work out the worst of the bugs, anyways.
Haha, yeah, I never buy games at full price... frankly, I don't think most of them are worth $60 (plus all the DLC, season pass BS). Lucky for me, I'm patient and can wait.
As Guybrush taught us back in the days: never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game.
I hope they price drop when eventually released on steam, here's hoping they don't try to sell us year old games at full price.
There are so many great games out there, why buy day one, is always my thought looking at pre-order/season pass bs
But you didn't watch Dollman VS Demonic Toys?! Ffs Jim...
He would have had a heart attack from evil bong 5- 777
He watched most of that fucking clip show already.
Demonic toys has more crossovers than actual entries. I don't know that even happens
Thought of that too lol it ties into Bad Channels which is by far my favorite Full Moon movie
Phoenix Point is the definition of selling out. The developers even said if all the backers refund they are still fine.
It's weird and contradicts all my ethics and feels but PP doing this is ok in my books, I want that game to be awesome. If it's not awesome though, affix the bow of shame and toss them in the wolf pit.
Yeah I don't care about this either. JG deserves a win. Everyone who wants PP can still buy it, and its only a temporary exclusive anyway it'll be on Steam in a year.
@@bradleyhiggs3824 Honestly PP should still honor the backers with a exclusive steam codes because they used them for a interest free loan if it was any other company with any other product doing this to backers with no interest rates and they didn't get a product or a item they signed up for then they would be getting sued.
@@bradleyhiggs3824 For what price, and would you need to pay it at all
@@joshuahibbs4639 yeah, I think they should do this for backers who were purchased a product delivered via a steam keysand want their steam key on release (same time as epic) and that should have been factored into the returns gained from signing with Epic. I didn't actually know there were a subset of customers promised steam keys on one of the campaigns. They have said Steam keys will be provided after the exclusive period, which I took to mean in general, rather than in relation to a particular campaign promise, because there's a difference between A) a FAQ citing platforms intended for release subject to change and B) listing a steam key as one of the explicit parts of the product you're purchasing
I love the prices for my country in epic store. Example Watch Dogs 2 was on sale on steam for 10 USD(around 60USD normal price) while on epic store it cost 80 USD.
Comparing a sale price to a non-sale price isn't ever considered fair, especially since few stores have non-holiday sales at the same time.
Now comparing the non-sale price of $60 to the non-sale price of $80 is a fair comparison.
@@robertrosenthal7264 But you know no other store has sales like steam. Theres some sort of sale going on pretty much 24/7.
U are not a smart guy
@@robertrosenthal7264 The "full price" is something dictated by the publishers. The sales are what the store sets, and is the compelling reason to buy from them. It's ridiculous to say that it's unfair to compare competing sale prices of stores -- that's the only real metric on which they compete. Epic are trying to obfuscate their terrible prices and lack of features by just not letting any other retailer compete with them. This might be pro-developer, but it's anti-consumer.
I can deal with Jim Sterling having separate opinions on gaming from me.
I can deal with the times when I feel like Jim Sterling is muck-raking.
I can deal with Jim Sterling harping on issues that I feel have been exhaustively covered.
But I'll be GODDAMNED if I'm going to sit by and let Jim Sterling shit on the Full Moon catalog of low-budget horror without speaking up.
I know right killer clowns from outer space is one of the best B horror movies of all time and by god if I will stand by and let him shit on such a masterpiece
@@tuckman315 this is true but killer klowns was the chiodo bros, not full moon. the clown jim shows in this is jack attack from demonic toys, which is also a fantastic b movie
Those movies were the hallmark of 90s B-movies, HOW DARE HE MOCK THEM, SIR 🧐👌
While it's great that you're looking into Epic more, are we just going to ignore the part where they essentially installed Malware and spied on user Steam data? A practice that's all the more believable when you're reminded that Tencent owns 40% of Epic.
This has been debunked and clarified so many times it's not even funny anymore. I guess it's easier to put a tin foil and scream "SPYYYY!!!!11!" without actually knowing anything.
@@fyce except that it hasn't, but whatever helps you sleep at night I guess
@@fyce Sources? Seen a lot proof for that being true. Managed to find literally nothing debunking it.
@@fyce bleat all you want sockpuppet, just because you can't comprehend facts doesn't mean others don't
@@fyce
It's been debunked because epic's ceo said that they didn't share the data?
Dude, i know chinese companies, i know how they work, even if epic says they're not sharing data with them, *they're sharing data with them.*
Either willingly, or unwillingly by tencent making a backdoor in epic's systems.
My problem is that epic is shit, and they're forcing me to use it.
If it wasn't a bad service, and it wasn't strong arming me.
I'd probably be buying stuff from them, so more of my money went to Devs.
The revenue split is a seller to me.
The lack of functionality, data-mining, questionable TOS and holding titles ransom isn't.
The same devs that doesnt give a shit about the performance of their games in your PC. Pretty sure you are one of those who spend 5000$ on your rig to run unoptimized games...
And the service thing is funny, if you want Epic to offer better service to you, they need to take more money from devs. New services, more people needed to mantain them.
The actual devs probably won't see a raise in their salary from Epic's launcher's revenue cut, dude, I mean it's not even an industry standard yet to pay devs for their overtime during crunch periods.
That extra money is going straight into some overpaid executive's pocket, the guys doing the real, hard work don't see shit.
"they're forcing me to use it"
Uh lol no they aren't. Literally nobody needs to use it. Thankfully.
@@BloodpactORG Yeah pretty much, the Epic Store single handedly caused a massive spike in game piracy with Metro Exodus being one of the most pirated games of all time within less than a month after its release.
Nobody is being forced to buy anything from them lol.
@@BloodpactORG Looks like someone forgot exclusivity.
The Empire, Long divided, must unite.
The Empire, Long united, must divide.
Foundation Trilogy?
Several Fighters A parable of the three kingdoms period of china.
People like benefits, people hate people that have benefits.
An endless war.
WTF are we going to do????????
Sounds like the EU
Fortunately I have the patience (common sense) to wait for any timed exclusivity to end.
The other benefit to this that no one has mentioned being: The games with exclusivity coming out a year down the line with be a better experience having had a year of players running through them into all the issues and getting them patched, along with additional content. Also if it has been out for a year, it will probably come out at a reduced price or same price for more content.
I admire that. I'd like to say I do too but my impatience always gets the better of me. Need to fix that.
Big man
Yeah, the back catalogue is getting longer and longer anyway. I just finished Yakuza 3 (what a game!), there is so many games to play, so little time, very rarely I buy something the moment they come out. I think last one was RE2:Remake, and... hmmm... Phantom Doctrine maybe? Maybe Nier:Automata before that.
I will also be waiting. I was initially excited when Epic Games said they would be making a store (not about using it, but about competition for steam) but all that has gone away. No competition, just trying to force people to use it.
I can wait a year for a single player game.
I have an account but if there is a GOG version I will drop all of them in a heartbeat.
The Outer Worlds? It'll be on Windows Store at launch as well, just so ya know.
I mostly use an account for grabbing free games. Slime Rangers was for years on my wishlist and I was lazy to buy it.
I'll hold off for a year for a single player game too, sure. I also might just forget about it instead and play some other game, like Cyberpunk or something. I mean RPGs are big, engaging, time-consuming games.
Amen to this.
@Demo GOG.com is different, no DRM for example. It's the CD Projekt store, the guys who made The Witcher games and are now making Cyberpunk.
The one platform that will stand out, exactly because of service, is GOG Galaxy 2.0. The opportunity to merge libraries and friendslists from other platforms is exactly what is needed.
Steam also is a good platform, they're doing another big service by developing Proton, a open sourced tool that allows to play Windows games on Linux with little to no problems. They also recently made Valve Index, which is important for the future of VR PC gaming. They're developing the SteamVR for Oculus Rift, which is another important thing for VR. They're also a part of Khronos project, which is a VR-related project. Epic Games too is a part of Khronos project, but they're doing absolutely NOTHING related to this project, they probably joined this only to have an excuse why Epic-exclusive Tetris Effect requires SteamVR to run.
Service, service, service. Thankfully EGS doesn't have any bad press towards their user data privacy and security...
Nah man, that's not important right now...
It's all about the exclusivity hate as of late.
Damn Epic and their last minute bullshit.
Edit: Sarcasm, added it in, just be clear.
I like Jim Sterling, but for someone who always makes quick videos to give a voice to the smaller stuff, he missed a pretty important one with the data stealing that Epic does. That's my complaint and I'll never download a launchrr from a company that actively breaks privacy laws.
He probably tiptoed around that to avoid lawsuits.
@Lancetwilight I mean, Steam has had a mountain of data privacy and security breaches over the decade. Jim has never once complained about it (probably). These issues aren't his prerogative period. If anything, bringing up security would only make Steam look more incompetent and make EGS look like a godsend.
Seriously, Epic's biggest issues on this front are a fucking joke compared to Steam's biggest issues over the years. Your personal information could be leaked to other Steam users at random if you used the steam store during a winter sale once. This includes some of your credit information. Gee golly, who would ever use the Steam Store during a winter sale though?
You could also have your account phished if you clicked on a link to a Steam profile back in the day. Then there was the fiasco where you could end up getting scammed out of hundreds of dollars because a game's name/item was impersonating a Team Fortress 2 australium rocket launcher that went for insane amounts of money.
I'm not even covering half of the worst stuff either. I got mountains more that Valve is guilty of. Valve was the only gaming company I ever knew of who used to take over a month to get an answer from in the customer service department (for reference, most other companies give a response in hours... even bad companies like EA).
If you live in the US you have zero data privacy, period. Or any data that travels through the US
Get in touch with Tim Clarke to release official Jim Sterling boglins. He worked on dark crystal so he knows what he's talking about
@@macmcskullface1004 Bogquisition?
This is a very maketable thing
@@macmcskullface1004 C'mon, not Sterlins?
I feel a lot of peopel are more pissed off that Epic not only has a bad launcher, but they fact they used big money to pull people who already announced release on steam to pull out of said release in the face of being greedy. It looks like a loss of loyalty to customers.
Luckily I plan on console and don't fucking care
To be clear I was actually excited for EGS a few months back. It would be nice to have a choice (having another storefront/launcher is a nonissue for me if it offers what I want...late forced exclusivity of a 3rd party game is in fact a reason to not install/support it but that's just me, lol) - I do like Steam, although its got its moderation issues, I get a lot of use out of things like the workshop and the community in general. Giving them legit competition would ultimately force them to up their game where it counts as everyone knows but the way Epic is going about it isn't actually competition and it creates division and toxicity among gamers...We don't need any more of that. I also think they need to do much more to address the spyware/malware claim...Tim Sweeney just comes off like he gives less than a fuck (prolly doesn't) about privacy concerns. That's one place Steam seems alright with - better than Epic - and to me that's the other reason I'm not going Epic any time soon. Taken together with eliminating our choice of where to buy just feels way too (insidiously) manipulative. I know the goal is really to just make ALL the money (I know Jim says it...I've been saying it for a while myself) but until privacy takes some priority I can't get on that train...personal preference.
There's no proof that exclusivity is working for Epic. The only supporting bit of information is that they claimed Exodus sold 2.5 times as well as Last Light did, but that has nothing to do with Epic, and Exodus would have sold many times that if it stayed on Steam. Epic must have shelled out a decent amount of cash to get some games as timed exclusives, and I don't have much reason to believe they're making a profit with those deals and their infamously low cut.
Also last light was kind of an unknown niche game when it was released.
@@BlackLotus30 unknown wtf
Accept it it sell better
@@BlackLotus30 Last Light sold 6 million. I wouldnt call that niche.
@@StrazdasLT 6 million at launch?
@@mattiamamusa5599 When that was posted Epic was taking about the non redux version which if memory serves me correctly sold something like 600,000 copies
Not a single word about EGS laucher being spyware?
Tis shifty shit, was hoping to hear him say that
As if Steam or google dont spy lol
All launchers are spyware. Where have you been?
@@VadersFist95
First, no, Steam doesn't have spyware, you have to opt-in to their data collection.
Second:
"This popular service may or may not have spyware, so this one that _definitely_ has it is A-OKAY!!"
This is you, sounding like a moron.
Because its not?
What about the privacy issues? Not gonna cover that really really important bit?
The privacy "issues" were completely made up bullshit by Steam fanboys. Whether you are referring to the lie that Epic shares credit card info with Tencent (they don't, that's credit card fraud) or that it shares your Steam information without permission (it asks for permission)
@@aghayejalebian7364 It still accesses the data without permission, though. Sure, it ostensibly does not share it with Epic unless you let it to, but it shouldn't even be looking at those local files. If Respawn/EA can use Steam's API for such features, why can't Epic?
Oooh, it accessed my data and did nothing with it. My life is ruined. "Spyware"
@@tyrus1235 they explained that they rushed some process or something. from what i heard at lesst
Oh, do I have bad news for you man. Yeah, everything you do online is invading your privacy.
I feel you missed a huge chance to show a logo of Star Citizen when talking about mismanagement of money provided by a crowd.
STAR Citizen? You mean *Black hole* Citizen, right?
@@MrBigCookieCrumble
And Robert will probaly lie in his diying bead and with his last breath he will be like Wait i have an amazing Idea before we release the Game lets a .............
Yawn. You mean a game that is actually in production and Playable? Ok.
@@waking00one When is the actual release date on the current road map? 2020? 2021?
I even forgot Star Citizen is a thing! Is that still in development (hell)?
One of the reasons why crowdfunding is often accused of being a scam is because there are A LOT of crowdfunds that are scams. Crowdfunding is built on trust and a lot of people are tired of that trust being broken.
Now I swear there's also something worth mentioning about GDPR breaking in here about Epic Store, or am I mistaken?
I believe they claim to only gather data if/when you ask their store to import your Steam friends list, for that purpose. But then, what other answer would they ever give us? (regardless of what the truth is)
Hazukichan X Epic does not comply with GDPR’s article 12 as they have to disclose where data on EU citizens might be stored. Their privacy policy does not include this. Not surprising considering Tencent (which is known for breaking GDPR for the benefit of the chineese government) is backing Epic.
@@hazukichanx408 They looked through Steam files before asking if you wanted to import them. They admitted this as a mistake and is going to fix it.
But the GDPR thing is a different issue. They're storing your personal data without your consent or even informing you about it. This is exactly the type of fishy shit GDPR was made to combat.
It's extremely suspicious that they only admit to it being a .is take and fixing it AFTER they got caught
No commentary on the dystopian Term's of Service for the end user and allegations of data-mining user's systems?
@@Fragenzeichenplatte You try watching the video, you may need to take Jim's sweaty almonds out of your mouth first though.
lies made up by steam and jim fanboys.
I looked at Jim's Twitter and there's literally only one person bringing up anything close to EGS' malware functionality. Either nobody's telling him about it, or he's deleting comments from people telling him about it.
I'm more inclined to believe the former since Jim, while an open proponent of censoring comments, is a good enough guy to not actually do it.
He says that will need a whole video just for the Tencent problems.
Just be patient.
@@crazyinsane500 In pretty much every recent video he's made he's been EXTREMELY pro-censorship and against the people's right to express any form of "wrong think". Expecting moral behavior from him on that particular front seems more wishful thinking than grounded in reality.
I was surprised that Jim didn't mention the allegations that Epic Games Store's Privacy Policy may not comply with the GDPR laws, which is one of the major reasons I've seen people list on why they don't want to use the storefront. Whether the allegations are true or not true, it ought to be at least touched upon here.
It's not even an allegation anymore as the CEO at epic openly admitted that the Epic Game Store totally datamines steam user accounts on it's users computers. They claim it's a holdover from the store's development. They have not stopped doing it though
@@OtioseFanatic The TOS also still say that they'll distribute your private data among a non-disclosed list of countries without regards to data protection. That openly violates the GDPR, you don't even need to be a lawyer to understand that. Unfortunately, the mills of the judiciary grind slowly.
Maybe because he has a higher iq than 80? I love how fucking morons believe random reddit posts, like you guys know better than a multimillion dollar company's layer. Also, the reddit post stated that the part of the GDPR is not yet in function... I understand that you guys want to hate the EGS because its an another launcher, but its sad that all of you willing to go full tinfoil hat mode just to justify your hatred.
@@magyararon6918 Do you know what a multi-million dollar company's lawyer really knows, mate? How to manipulate, twist, mutilate and otherwise disfigure law into what ever abomination is required to further their rich client's narrative. An expensive lawyer is not one who is more aware of law or a better servant of the legal engine... they're rotten, skeeving, inhuman bottom feeders willing to hurt who ever it takes, lie as much as it takes, do what ever atrocity is required to beat anyone into submission that their rich-boy leash-holders can't buy off.
I assure you, there is more truth in the most fetid depths of the least truthful reddit post (as much of a cesspool as that site may be) than there is in virtually anything a corporate lawyer has to say. Ethics is dead. Truth is dead. Good is dead. All that matters now is money and how to make more obscene piles of it.
@@apenguininthemist855
This is what happens when certain tribes of a certain alignment subvert nations and people on a deeply fundamental level.
I like that you gave Magyar a whoopin' for his naivety, though. Thumbs up.
I will never ever install the Epic launcher on my PC despite what game they hold hostage. I'll wait for the steam release.
As disposable as games have become these days, even good ones, I really can not fathom how someone has the slightest twitch of FOMO anymore. Just grow up, you don't need that *specific* shiny new game, when there are 99 others released that very day elsewhere that *aren't* dicking you around. I wouldn't even blink if The Elder Scrolls 6 ended up in that pit, I'd just wave goodbye with a smile on my face.
Yo ho yo ho a pirate life for me...
I would welcome competition if it was driven by increasing quality of products. Unfortunately epic is doing the opposite.
I'd disagree that unlike Steam, Epic isn't filled with trash.
Now if you are complaining about the limitations of the Epic store itself, that is valid, but the store isn't the products.
The platform itself is 'the' product that Epic is trying to sell right now, with Incentives of other games, as bait. they are using games as bait to get us to buy the hook of the store.@@robertrosenthal7264
I bet if Epic got to the point of having a fraction of as many games as steam you will gradually start to see lesser and lesser quality and looser quality controls the more that games get added.
@@robertrosenthal7264
Good luck convincing most Japanese indie developers, since your point reveals the same problem with Sony's elevated sexually suggestive restrictions.
As a note, it took several years to draw Japan indie devs into Steam where they were fine selling their games to JP only sites where all international buyers must buy in Yen conversion.
And now you want to get rid of that like some hypocrite who champions blood and explicit gore and bans even a glance of a nipple.
Try GOG.com. Real quality.
There is one big issue not mentioned here. You can only buy Epic launcher games from Epic's own store. But there's a lot of websites that you can buy keys for Steam, Origin, Uplay etc. games and many offer better deals than the launchers' own stores.
That's the biggest problem I have with Epic. There are no alternative stores to get Epic launcher games for. They even took the Uplay keys of The Division 2 away. Green Man Gaming offers 15-20% off sales on brand new or pre-order games regularly and Humble Store has a 10% off discount for being a Humble Monthly Bundle member. But for Epic exclusives this will not be an option.
You can buy Steam games from many places. You can only buy Epic launcher games from the Epic store. Epic is creating a monopoly where one did not exist.
There's also the regional pricing concerns, although at least Epic seems to be working on that front. Still surprised they don't have a shopping cart in their storefront, though. That's like, e-commerce 101 stuff.
Wrong, you can sell keys on Humble.
I 100% agree with Jim.
SIDE NOTE:
For me the issue with Epic is Tencent. Tencent the game company that makes a social grading program for the Chinese Government. If that gets out to the masses... I don't think that EGS will be long for the world unless they break free.
Exactly. I'm not opposed to a separate launcher or even Epic as a company really. TenCent is the problem. They are a malevolent force for evil in the world that must be destroyed.
Hope you don't have discord because tencent has their finger in that pie too
@@EggyBagelface93 As does Sony and Microsoft. Like Jim said, that problem with public market shares and who owns them is a much, much larger problem, rooted in capitalism itself.
Lol, of course, you do. We are just lazy and Steam fanboys, let's ignore the fact that not too long ago we all were in favour of competition for Steam but suddenly we are lazy slobs and must defend Steam. 100%? LMFAO.
Can any of you even think for yourselves? It seems rather echoey in here, funny that.
@@policesquad I've been trying to tell people exactly this. Before everyone was all for competition but suddenly when it shows up it's regarded as the devil. People are like "it's missing features" but never once stopping to think that it's a new launcher where as steam has had well over a decade to make their launcher what it is.
The saying "if you build it, they will come" may hold true. The problem is Epic hasn't built anything, they've outlined the foundation to build a storefront on and are in the process of pouring the foundation and are doing a shoddy job of that itself lol
that aint true....if given the choice, most gamers would stay in their confort zone, if they can get X game on Steam (were they have all of their games) but also in another launcher, they will just get it on Steam 99% of the time....
Nobody is gonna give a shit about the road map of features that they plan to add on the Epic Game Store after this exclusive deal debacle and that the likes of Steam already has all the shit that they plan on adding to the Epic Games Store, so nobody is gonna all of a sudden switch over to the Epic Games Store when they add in these basic features that should've been on the Epic Games Store since day one.
I've been called a "whiny brat" by some people for pointing out at a couple of unhealthy business practices and hostile customer behaviors of Epic during discussions: first, Epic is handling the "exclusives" like a bull in a china shop, diffusing a sense of trying to close off the PC market - without counting stuff like the assholes at Koch Media actively spitting in the customer's faces - , forcing people to use Epic Store rather than having them want to do it. And it's a big issue because exclusives are rarely associated with PC - Origin, Uplay and whatever the fuck Bethesda does in its spare time aren't exactly champions of popularity either.
And part of that issues is that Epic has *nothing* to offer to gamers. Currently, their only gaming product is Fortnite, which is indeed successful, but the bubble is going to burst one day or another, and they're not going to be able to make back all the money and resources they're investing into their single product. It's the same reason as to why not even luxury car brands have a single model on the market: no sane businessman will ever recommend putting all of your eggs in one basket. One of the reasons Steam got so big back in the mid-2000s is that it had solid, fun games supporting it made by Valve itself, with games like Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike, alongside all of the features to support a unified multiplayer network for such games.
Epic, on the other hand, put Unreal Tournament's development on "indefinite halt" - a nice way to say "canceled" -, and shut down Paragon before it could even come out of its open beta phase.
What Epic should do to make their store appealing to customers is having something worth playing, rather than acting like China with Tibet. If anything, a hell of a lot more people are just gonna get the console versions of those games, or worse, pirate them.
P.S. nice Pink Floyd reference there, Jim.
@@macmcskullface1004 *You've
@@macmcskullface1004 except you changed the phrase after I corrected you to make it look like I don't know English. It shows whenever a message is edited, you know? The original sentence could only work with "you've", since it would have been "You've just repeated what Jim said in the video".
@@macmcskullface1004 I was giving a piece of my mind on the argument, and how I think Epic could fix its issues.
Betha is excusable though, they really SHOULD step out of their wackiness and make launcher for all their games + with mods management in it since it's Betha.
Of course the last part will be boycotted by 'we listen to our fanBOYS !' Sony, but fuck them.
EA and Uplay not so much - they had shitty games with lower quality, and nobody with brain trusts them.
I would gladly have specific launcher to Betha games because they do have playable games - not to mention two multiplayers.
And it's hassle to remember 'Oh this was on steam. Where is cd with TES IV ? Wait which version of TES IV I even had save to ? Why on earth is ESO completely separate ?! Ugh. Where the hell is cd with Morrowind anyway ...'
As far as launcher goes, Bethesda was sole reason why I had steam. It was Bethesda all along. And I would gladly have their games in ONE place. It's not like Betha is making game year after year.
I am all for 'stop with making launchers' but with Bethesda is exception. They made too many games I played, and each one is somewhere else. I and want to play them. Matter of convinience.
Neither Poopysoft, EAss, Take Twat, Deep Shite or Activshit care to make solid playable games. And therefore their launchers are barely usable. Betha on the other hand sustained my steam with Skyrim and 4 for years.
It literally sustained my account since 2011. I will still use Steam, even if Bethesda would do launcher.
I would use it as chat. It's no problem to me to have Steam opened in background for chat while playing on another launcher.
It's just two launchers after all. No big deal to me.
FYI, Fig is an actual investment with expected ROI. This is different from a KickStarter or Indiegogo which is more in the line of a donation with incentives.
I like Fig, but I fail to see how it's that different from KickStarter or Indiegogo in the regards to donations vs investment. For the user: You donate some money and then hopefully you get a product a few years down the line.
As a fellow Full Moon Productions binge-watcher, I understand your pain, Jim.
Dollman VS the Demonic Toys is your next challenge. Good luck, and thank God for you, Jim.
Full Moon Productions has a special place in my heart
While I'm adding a shopping cart to my eCommerce website in just a week or so, Epic Store is taking 9 months to do that? 🤨
Maybe contact them and see if they will let you freelance the task
There's one big difference. You kinda need to do it for the money. Epic already had the money, they just need to do it
@@FaiyaRay
So instead using their time and money to improve their features,they wasted their time and money to seduced more publishers into their exclusive deal?
If they really want to beat Steam,they need to more focus on their store's features
Well I guess you dont have to figure out a way to use it to gather more costumer data you can send to china without anyone knowing about it. Makes the whole thing a bit more compliacted :P
Yeah, that is pretty shocking. I'd guess that they're having a lot of trouble working through all the sphagetti code or a game launcher turned storefront.
You might want to cover the incredibly sketchy data collection the Epic launcher does while booted up, and maybe cover whether Steam is any better. For examples of what Epic does that's sketchy: reads any saved passwords and reads your Steam library. Both of those alone are alarming, albeit for different reasons. There's more, but those two data points were my big takeaways on the breakdown I read.
Thank you for doing the rest of this video, by the way, did feel the info here needed to be said given the size of your platform.
I think that's because he might do his research and an epic games developer came out in response to the allegations. No reason to put fuel on a false fire.
Nah, then he'd have to admit that he was wrong. I have no doubt, Jim's knows all about it but he has his fanboys to appease.
@@ChimerFox
So wait a minute. If McDonald's came out saying their food is actually healthy for you amidst reports of their food being unhealthy for you, you'd just believe that? Sorry, no, third party investigations without ulterior motives giving the all clear are needed before anyone should trust the Epic Games launcher.
Given the nature of his previous exploration into video games journalism, I'd actually be somewhat placated on the matter if Jim Sterling gave it the all-clear, considering it's the big reason I haven't hopped onto Epic Games. I'd want confirmation from more than just Sterling, personally, but his word would go a long way, especially in light of how many people he reaches.
Finally a video covering this. I've been confused by this whole shabangabang.
''shabangabang''
i like that word, can i use it?
Really? People have been covering this on TH-cam in better depth for like weeks. Wake up dude.
He's... missed a lot of stuff.
For example, my favorite bit is how he talks about Metro Exodus got review bombed. If you go look at Exodus' reviews on steam, it's rated OVERWHEMINGLY POSITIVE. If you want to know why, it's because people wanted to review it on EGS, but there's no review system there, so people had to review it on steam. That sounds like a joke, but it's really not.
Also, he misses that the Phoenix Point developer went to Epic Games, which makes their pivot look very shady indeed.
Edit: Oh, Obsidian also had no idea about the EGS exclusivity. They apparently received the news the moment they were adding Steam Achievements. So Obsidian didn't do any "calculations" like Jim suggests; their publisher probably did, though.
@@METALLIFY16 I think he was being sarcastic..
find another video, this one misses a lot of shit.
(as a dev) The thing I like about the epic game store is that it seems to remember that the developers are its customers too. They remember that developers have a choice of who they want to host their game, and let me tell you even without all the features that steam has, I would put my game onto epic over steam in a heartbeat. Steam is so complacent about how it treats developers. For example when they changed their algorithm late last year and a hole bunch of devs lost 80% of their natural traffic overnight, they just shrugged and said "tough luck". And we aren't looking at asset flips, we are looking at positively reviewed games made from the ground up.
Something about the way jim says "you can have a bay-bee"
Word around the streets is that Obsidian didn't even know about the exclusivity deal until a couple of hours before the announcement.
+1 for the "Wish You Were Here" reference.
EGS is a crap spyware launcher, so no, I will not be supporting it. That won't stop me from enjoying games until I can buy them on my preferred store. Time to dig out the Jolly Roger...
Exactly Jim. I am sure there are some who are 'loyalists' to Steam. But I do think the vast majority hate having to have several different clients. It's becoming ridiculous. Even if I am to buy a Ubisoft game on Steam? That's not enough for Ubisoft. Oh no. I then have to have Uplay running on top of Steam which is DRM on top of DRM. This is why I fully endorse GOG which is DRM free where I can launch the damned game from an exe if I so choose.
Steam is certainly far from perfect for reasons you have illustrated in your videos. Lack of curation, etc. etc. But over the years Steam has added features that have made it a platform where people generally know what they are getting. Cloud Saves, screen capture, broadcasting, achievements, etc. etc. All EPIC is currently offering is a launcher (as noted in your video). Like I need another launcher. Hell they just added a search bar. They can't compete on features so they are resorting to buying exclusivity which is incredibly anti consumer. I've seen some people suggest "Well steam have their own exclusives like Team Fortress 2, Portal, etc." The difference is that Valve actually developed those games. EPIC didn't spend any money to develop Metro Exodus, The Outer Worlds or any of the other games they have bought exclusive rights too. Even former Obsidian developer Chris Avellone who worked on Fall Out New Vegas called it a cash grab.
And while exclusivity has long been a thing on consoles? At least those publishers (Sony, Nintendo (not so much MS these days) spend money to make their own games. The problem with what EPIC is doing is they are trying to do this on PC which has typically been an open platform. EPIC said that the PC is an open platform themselves but what they are doing is the antithesis of an open platform. They also said that they would avoid a similar situation that they had with Metro Exodus only to repeat it with The Outer Worlds.
At the end of the day, all they have done is make what would have been a day 1 purchase from me; a hard pass and lost sale. I won't be supporting such practice and I sure as hell won't wait 12 months to play one game. I will wait and spend my money on something else i.e. Cyberpunk 2077.
gamer boycotts... lol
This reminds me of a guy unironically saying he had joined the anthem boycott AFTER he had purchased the game and been playing it since launch. He's really contributing!
Technically since it is a "Live Service" game and they want you to keep playing and spending money, what he is doing is contributing.
@@Baconomics101 If you want to convince yourself of that, you can convince yourself of anything.
For real. It's probably an effect of all these gaming media pundits acting like boycotts are the *only* recourse a consumer has when it comes to a bad company.
I mean, it's not like we have fucking laws or anything preventing anti-competition and anti-consumer actions by business, or regulatory agencies to investigate and enforce laws. /s
well they may not work completely but they absolutely do put a dent in these companies' bottom lines and when we are talking about companies like Ubishit who want to make every last bit of money, they do care about that dent. Also, please take a look at EA games for like, the last two years!! fans have been boycotting their games for one reason or another and EA has been hit HARD!! If it weren't for Apex Legends, their shares would have plummeted further even.... (sadly tho bad press doesn't seem to affect other companies on the same scale, even companies just as evil as EA like Activision or 2k/rockstar....)
@@NatrajChaturvedi
EA has been hit hard LOL ........ So have you told yourslef this BS that you actualy now belive it ? Seriously Ea couldnt give less then a fuck about any boycot. I mean everyone was yeah we gonna Boycot BF 5 still sold around 7.3 Milion Copies and People still buying it. And sure EA stated that they were not happy with the sales but EA is greedy they will never be happy but they still made more then enough many and will make money with it. And do you belive without Apex they wouldnt still made enough money ?
And also speaking of Boycoting EA why the fuck is now everyone spend Money on Apex its still the same Company and nothing have changed and when their now yearly Sport Games come ourt Kaching.
They put a shopping cart in Fortnite before they added one to their store?
These people are geniuses!
Surely their plans for their store with exclusives are equally genius! ^^
well, one of the guys from epic took a jab at steam, saying they don't take any 2-bit shit developer in for the ride
so far he sure has a point, steam greenlight/early access wasn't exactly the best exhibition of video games as a form of art ;)
i don't like this exclusivity shit much, but they do seem have a certain bottom line for quality.
Once upon a time Steam had far better curation... there just comes a point where that is no longer feasible.
At some point the applicants to put games on Epic will overwhelm the curation team.
It's not that they won't want to only allow good games, but that they cannot possibly check all the games and check their quality.
For Steam that's 27 games per day, or 3.3 per hour.
Or at least that is the number of games we know.
Keep in mind not every one of them is conveniently labeled "R*** Day".
At any point in any of those game r*** or whatever could exist.
This also excludes checking thousands of already released games that you want to add.
In a few years Epic will face similar problems or risk losing out on hidden gems and niches.
Along with their audiences.
Steam's curation or lack of does not really effect me though. I buy what I want and the hell with the rest.
@@Oldschool_Gamer_ Valve can literally double its employee base, assign them all to game curation, & still make more per employee than Google & Apple. It would still be an extremely profitable company.
@@nickman187 It'd affect you more if you realized how many actually good games you never even see because they are instantly buried by crappy asset flips.
Holy fucking hell... Epic is using "Pay to Win" mechanics in real life! lmao 🤣
What do you mean? That's always been how life works. It just sucks in video games because it's not fun.
life is pay to win
Its called price fixing... and its illegal in most places.
Steam also has modding community support with workshops for lots of games and easy way to apply them for everyone. And hosting standalone mods themselves based on Source and their games.
Yay, another PC DRM client! We just can't get enough of those.
With Denuvo on top please. Otherwise I don't even bother to play games nowadays.
Epic Store doesn't have DRM.
It doesn't even seem to be necessary to launch games, just to purchase them (source, Phoenix Point is stated to not require the launcher to be played).
Any DRM you might encounter is on the developers who put it there, not the store.
@@urbantwilight Useful info, thanks. But does it put the game into the Start menu so people actually _can_ launch it easily without having to manually hunt down the EXE and make a shortcut? Because there are DRM-free games on Steam too, but you would have to go through that rigmarole to launch them without Steam running.
@@urbantwilight tried division 2? even if it doesn't have denuvo, (cuz its an online game and less people pirate those) you can bet your bottom dollar that future releases from big publishers will have them so.... who are you kidding?
@@urbantwilight Pheonix point was stated to be on Steam and GOG, how things can change so fast.
wait whoa, you brought up puppet master like it was a bad thing.
I know right?
Its a goofy classic. The original anyway.
Greg Sestero is in one of those movies, right?
Was hoping you would have touched on the security issues. There have been some horror stories about people having their accounts/credit card numbers stolen and Epic refusing the refund.
Any stories you can share? I'm not trying to put you on the spot but I am curious
Thank God for You Jim, here's hoping for a good recovery. Keep taking care of you're self, you do a good thing for us and it does not go unappreciated. Love ya you big gremlin!
This will be very *very* interesting to watch.
I am over 6 minutes in but are we glossing over the Tencent spyware pulling information and dumping it Chinese servers...?
Mac mcskullface When companies are upfront and honest about it, and not directly affiliated with the CCP, I have marginally less of an issue.
Daniel Schmitt
No that was me, thanks bud.
Yup, prolly so.
I don't agree with Jim all of the time but I respect his opinion, and the work he puts into his job. Keep it up jim, good work.
Congrats
perhaps you are too introverted and afraid to see things in extremist point of view.... sometime being a middle-ground and normies will not give you answers and self actualization
@@nickochioneantony9288 that's just stupid rhetoric people still have the right to hold their OWN opinions moderate or not.
@@Yungtacosss but when those rhetoric people post their opinion on youtube comment, it will be treated as public and they have to be ready to face all responses. If you can't accept critism then keep your opinion to yourself... that is unless you are too entitled to your point of view without considering others. So stop being "support it all" guys, because it actually has no substance.
@@nickochioneantony9288 nah, I'd rather think critically about everything, than pick a side and mindlessly agree with the group just to feel better about myself. There are many things I agree with on both sides and many things I don't. There's also many issues I think about that the right or left never even touch on because they're too busy with their pissing contest to stop and say "hey, fuck who's right or wrong, how can we better humanity as a whole?". Do what you will, but I'll stay just as I am thank you.
Wait, they have the next Supergiant game?
GOD
DAMNIT
While it's on early access. It'll get a steam and console release when the game is fully developed, you're good.
I love the idea of competition to Steam. But there’s so much going on behind the scenes at Epic with regards to ownership and exclusive PC platforms is the very opposite of what they should be doing
Steam had plenty of competition with the multitude of keystores available. Epic is the very anti-competition monopoly we need
Honestly Epic's business strategy could end up bringing about an actual monopoly to the PC market. While Valve does(or at least did depending on how successful you think Epic has been) have a virtual monopoly, they've never really done anything to prevent other stores from competing. However, if Epic keeps doing what they're doing successfully then they'll eventually be the only place to get most new releases on PC.
As far as I'm concerned, if a piece of software scours my files and is owned by China, I will be apprehensive at best.
I honestly don't trust a massive American/Western corporation more than a Chinese one at this point
Concern yourself better. Epic is not *owned* by China, Tencent does not have a majority stake, and the scans of your machine are no more intrusive than what Steam already does.
By all means be concerned about the lack of proper security and lack of basic features, but this "ChiNa bAdD!!!" paranoia is literally the least productive bent to approach this situation.
First of all, Epic is not owned by Tencent.
Second of all, what Epic does in regards to scanning is no different from what numerous safe games and services already do. There's no evidence it phones home to anywhere.
@@BoloJolo China does not 'own' TenCent on paper, but they do regularly own enterprises, and if you think for a second that, if China thought they could gain something by telling TenCent what to do or taking over completely that TenCent would say 'no', you're out of your mind. Chinese tech companies are currently under investigation for the very thing people are worried about. The US House Intelligence Committe had this as part of their release on Huawei -
"Chinese telecommunications companies provide an opportunity for the Chinese government to tamper with the United States telecommunications supply chain. That said, understanding the level and means of state influence and control of economic entities in China remains difficult. As Chinese analysts explain, state control or influence of purportedly private-sector entities in China is neither clear nor disclosed. The Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, experts explain, can exert influence over the corporate boards and management of private sector companies, either formally through personnel choices, or in more subtle ways. As ZTE’s submission to the Committee states, “the degree of possible government influence must vary across a spectrum.”
The Committee thus focused primarily on reviewing Huawei’s and ZTE’s ties to the Chinese state, including support by the Chinese government and state-owned banks, their connections to the Chinese Communist Party, and their work done on behalf of the Chinese military and intelligence services."
And also this -
"Recommendation 1: The United States should view with suspicion the continued penetration of the U.S. telecommunications market by Chinese
telecommunications companies.
Recommendation 2: Private-sector entities in the United States are strongly encouraged to consider the long-term security risks associated with doing business with either ZTE or Huawei for equipment or services. U.S. network providers and systems developers are strongly encouraged to seek other vendors for their projects. Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems."
So I think people are justified to be concerned that software being installed on millions of western PC's are 40% owned by a Chinese tech company.
@@Sophistry0001 cool story bro, doesn't change the fact that even if tencent was Winnie-the-Pooh himself, they don't run Epic.
Oh, and if you are that concerned with companies partially owned by them, look up where else they own shares, you are in for a ride.
I don't really mind other launchers, and I'll be happy to leave Steam for something better when (if) it comes along. But the way Epic established itself, the way Tim Swine-y responded to backlash, the way they keep treating themselves like second coming of Christ while they got nothing to show for themselves...I'm not gonna use it EVER. It's a one-man statement to corporate degenerates that think they can wipe their butt with our faces and expect us to say "thank you" and keep using their services like nothing happened. Actually it's not "expect". They KNOW sheeple gonna do exactly that and hence they do all this. Microtransactions, lowered quality, exclusives, spitting in our faces like EA did with Battlefield, etc. I refuse to be a part of this crowd. I'm not gonna change the industry with this, but I'm sure as hell gonna feel proud about it no matter how many sheeple gonna laugh at me for it.
i agree that they have to be better but i also want to add the fact that the people who agreed making their product exclusive to that launcher are also to be blamed (specially if problems like the metro exodus controversy happen). some people seem to only blame Epic and i think both should be ashamed! but that's how capitalism works, it's all about the money and screw everything else... the only way to win is if masses of gamers didn't buy the games and didn't use the launcher but that is highly unlikely.
"and I'll be happy to leave Steam for something better when (if) it comes along. "
I see you jumped to GoG then? Oh no, you clearly didnt. And dont tell me that is because steam gets more bigger games. If we all had jumped to GoG because its clearly a better service they would have been getting all the games steam gets but with a gatekeep to all the shit that tries to pass up for games. Playing nice and making a better service doesnt work.
You think you are helping "gamers" or the smaller part of the industry (so the indies and smaller publishers), but the only thing you are doing right now is being a stubborn idiot that is killing that industry slowly and playing in the hands of the bigger more corrupt publishers. Congrats on not downloading another fucking client. You are SO brave!
Also, I dont have Epic Launcher, im actually waiting for them to be better as a service (although I think right now its similar to Steam becuase of all the negatives that store has, even if steam as a launcher has more QoL build for the users). But I completely understand why they are buying exclusives as it seems is the only thing is gonna works with "gamers". I do have GoG Galaxy though, and its a pity that not more people are using it.
I like you! Well spoken and well said!
I only ever buy any shitty publishers games preowned, denying them the revenue. Of course I never buy micro transactions in these games or dlc, unless I can get the game of the year version.
@@SPRidley gog is not a "better" service, its an alternative service, i buy whatever games i can, people aren't angry when a game isn't released on gog because steam is adequate, its not downright insulting to the consumer like epic is.
@@worm6820 It is a better service. Less crap (so more discoverability), a streamlined launcher that still has achievements, reviews, friends (all the 'community' features people complain Epic doesn't have), and all your content is DRM free. But no one uses it and they are struggling financially because people - and I include myself in this - are wed to Steam.
People saying "I would totally move to a better launcher" are lying, if this was true GOG wouldn't be in financial trouble.
If epic spent that money making the store better, rather than get exclusives, things would be better. The real big problem that epic has are security concerns. It already has some extremely dangerous design flaws that seem to be features. It's all fun and games until there is a massive credit card data breach. Then there are the GDPR violations.
HA! Epic I have been cynical about all new games for years you have no power over me. Thanks EA and Bethesda.
Bethesda didn’t get REALLY bad until last year.
@@redjed100 yeah, but they went all in.
I mean hell, they went full on, Indiana Jones getting raped by Spielberg Southpark style evil.
Out of left field to.
@@redjed100 well besides being the first to sell cosmestic as dlc witch is buiness standard by now they also introduced paid mods with their creation club a way to earn money on content they didnt create while under the guise of paying modders.
We had console wars, now we have storefront wars. I'm just sick that we have to talk so much about economy in the gaming industry, and less about the art and possibilities. That said, Jim, I love your creative use of pictures and memes. You have the best mix of Critique&Aesthetics. Proud to crowdfund you with that massive 1 euro in the month!
@@Y0G0FU Exactly. It's hilarious reading all the comments about how it's not fair, like they didn't know money makes the world go round lol.
That and its malware, unsurprising considering tencents imvolvment
This is why I've probably stuck with console gaming all these years. It's so much easier to play games on a single system without some garbage launcher forcing me to download it in order to play my game. Still kinda happens with Ubisoft games, but you get the picture.
Tencent, the backers of the Epic Launcher... the same Tencent behind Diablo: Immortal? Not touching that launcher or anything related to it with a ten foot pole.
Given how often I've seen people say "My epic account was hacked" I have a distinct trepidation in regard to using it.
Tack on the fact that if you type in "Epic store hack" you'll get news articles that say stuff like "9 million accounts hacked" and said trepidation becomes absolute.
@@ArlanKels Heck, when making an account, you don't have to verify it. So if somebody uses your email without your permission, tough shit.
That's how bad the security is.
Money may talk, but Tencent sits in your lap, screaming in your face after eating a rancid heap of raw meat. It doesn't need to talk, it is deplorable and disgusting enough to ward one off without words.
@@steelsunglasses4291
That is horrifyingly bad. To the point of being like a tenth grader programmed it level.
I think the vicious exclusivity tactics of Epic will backfire on the long run. I have an Epic Launcher and I would've no problems buying stuff on it, had Epic just decided in my stead that I really had to play games on it rather somewhere else I would've liked them better.
Now, I'm not gonna buy any of those "Epic Exclusives" on it. If I really want to play them, I may go yarr temporarily and buy them legitimately when they come out on my platform of preference, if they ever come out on that platform.
This is because some games like "The Outer Worlds" will suffer greatly when they will come out on Steam. Because of the 1 year deal not only it will lose value since it will be a 1 year old game but it will lose even more value since the game is a single player experience that is about the exploration of planets and player choices, which in a whole year (hell, probably already in a couple of months) will be thoroughly well known.
I would strike the 1 year deal if I was an Indie Dev. Right for the reason Jim pointed out:
-first, it won't anger games so much.
-second, bigger fish in a smaller pond.
-third, even if people were following the game, they won't be nearly as mad as with one published by a big AAA studio, because it's a game from an Indie team so they will be more understanding.
After the year the game gets released on other platforms allowing more people to discover it and hopefully bringing in a second big wave of customers.
Still, this road doesn't work for big hyped games. People already know about them and are following developments as well as controversies they get stuck in. The people that won't buy TOW on launch, probably will buy it on Steam only with a heavy discount. Instead, was the deal not made, the game would've come out at launch and people would've bought it at full price whether it was on Steam, Epic or some other launcher.
Ultimately, I also agree that competition is good but that the choice of where to buy should be up to the customers, otherwise nothing is really gonna change.
If I can buy Doom Eternal at 60$ only on Steam and The Outer Worlds at 60$ only on Epic, that really doesn't benefit the customer at all and doesn't encourage studios and launchers at selling at lower prices. It simply will end up splitting my library and making me go back and forth between launchers to guess where the game I want to play at that moment is more and more which, is why a lot of the Steam users are getting angry about Epics vicious practices.
Loads of people keep pointing out that Epic gives developers a better deal... But do the developers see any of that money?
I find it more believable that publishers are pocketing the extra cash from the exclusivity contracts. The devs will have already been paid their salary.
Obsidian didn't even know about the deal 2k made with Epic until it was made public.
I have a challenge for the Epic Games Store: "Eventually" isn't good enough! If you *actually* think you can compete with Steam, then stop buying out game publishers *TODAY*"
I imagine that in a lot of cases, the extra money trickles right up to the top; the publisher's CEO, board members, investors. Those visionaries who sit on their butts for the two hours a week they're even at a workplace, occasionally yelling "make me more money!!" through the floorboards (in business jargon, naturally).
Don't seem right to me.
They also do not realize they can change the deal later anyway, input sunset clauses and also eventually IP troll.
DID YOU EXCHANGE
A WALK ON PART IN THE WAR
FOR A LEAD ROLE IN A CAGE
pink floyd references on fleek
So you've not mentioned the EGS spyware stuff?
All launchers are spyware.
@@BLasherman All launchers are spyware? Fascinating, I had no idea Steam and Origin was pulled out personal account information from your other applications as well.
@@Garinovitch They do, you just don't know it. They all will, they haven't been caught yet If you don't think they are, you are fooling yourself.
@@BLasherman any proofof this?
@@BLasherman Windows 10 does this on a much larger scale and you agree to it the moment you install it (although there is ways to prevent it). I am guessing most of the people worried about the EGS spyware have dozens of outlet for spyware already.
EGS didn't invent spyware and they only use it because its economically a good decision. Thats what happens when profit is the only motive.
Tencent, same company to manage china's social credit system 2020 (sesame credit app)
BenAbrigil Quarrel if you want to stay away from tencent, you will also have to reconsider Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, Riot Games, Supercel, Take-Two Interactive Software, and Square Enix.
You Just need one.
Bit torrent
I wasn't too bothered about Metro Exodus but The Outer Worlds being available only on Epic and Microsoft is very irritating
Sometimes it pays off to be a console peasant, lol.
Wasn't Microsoft's inability to properly host games the reason to close down GfWL? I see the history is repeating again.
raid the bay
Control is more irritating than both
@@SlyCooperJr not really, when pc gamers still have a choice to sail the seas
I came back to re-watch this video.....and i see TH-cam has "un-dinged the bell".....so I don't get immediate notifications...
Jim what about the Epic datamining our information?! Why didn't you talk about that? Surely you've heard about that too?
Clearwateralchemist +1 ,guess he doesn’t like to make .
steam also datamining your data. They just (as far as I know) don't deal with chinese company.
kharisma muchammad yeah and Jim Sterling is not mentioning or responded to that . Wow ..
But with Epic that data is going to China, who don’t follow either U.S or EU laws. That data is easily going to the authoritarian Chinese Government.
@jocaguz18 Clearly you haven't lived there, or done any research.
The US has to pretend to care, China does not. The amount of open corruption that's actually *officially supported* is absurd.
It's generally recommended you try and be knowledgeable before spewing shit out, but this is the internet.