You guys are way too rational about this. Marketing can convince people to almost anything, and with the money we know Epic is making on Fortnite they can buy marketing the likes of which we've never even seen. I'm not saying their success is a forgone conclusion, but it's definitely a possibilty.

Not that I much care either way, it's all the same to me whether that market share is held by Steam alone, or Steam and Epic or any other client-forcing piece of crap.

I also don't see it happening but wish them the best.

Their store is rough. You can't find games very well, their selection is small and incomplete, and they have little reason to buy there except price.

I have bought Origin and Ubisoft games there because we their price was unbeatable with sales and coupons. Bit surely they took a loss on $60 games being sold for $5 (marked down to 15, $10 off coupon).

Besides price, they have one thing going for them: lawsuits. If they can win one of those, they'll be positioned for a larger market share. I'm doubting it, though.

They're not giving all those free games out of kindness. Sacrificing profit in exchange for a dominant market share is a known strategy.

I can't discuss the store's merits or flaws as I haven't felt the need to register an account.

I have no problem with that at all.

Do they mean market share as in customers paying actual money to buy games on their store, or mindshare, which is more people getting so many free games from them and never spending money there that they end up inadvertently playing games on the Epic store because it becomes increasingly difficult to pick a game to play out of their library which isn't an Epic freebie? :)

Honestly though, I only installed the Epic client originally to try out Fortnite a couple of times to scientifically confirm that it wasn't for me, lining up with my hypotheses. After that I never used it at all until they started giving away free games in December 2019 or so, and I've only acquired free games ever since, including the weekly freebies, sporadic freebies, and the always-free ones.

I don't mind getting the free games or playing them there as long as they work, and I'm neither fond of nor have any disdain for the company overall, but I prefer to buy my games on GOG whenever possible along with some other considerations, and then on Steam second (as well as authorized Steam resellers). I almost never buy games on other storefront platforms with few notable exceptions (A few games from Shinyloot, Itch.io bundle, Starcraft Remastered on Battle.net).

Virtually every close friend as well as most Internet acquaintances use Epic just for the free games, and I don't know a single person who has ever bought a game there or who intends to do so. When we talk about it at all, nobody hates Epic but would simply rather own all of their games on Steam and/or GOG or elsewhere. I don't know how representative of the marketplace as a whole myself and my own friends and acquaintances are, but EGS owning a large percentage of the market sounds like crack to me. :)

For me, their game client is so featureless and it feels like they're either not developing new features for it at all, or if they are it isn't a very big development team as progress is snail paced. Then again, GOG Galaxy was light on features when it first came out and it took a few years for it to turn into the IMHO decent client it is today. I think if Epic wants a bigger piece of the market pie they're going to have to vastly improve their client and start having some value-add to their platform as right now the only value-add they have to offer is free games IMHO, the rest of their store and client are value-minus.

I know some people get super worked up about the exclusive titles that Epic swings, and while it has never upset me personally I do find it kind of annoying on any store, but then every single store in existence also has exclusive game titles on it and nobody ever seems to point that out either. :) Having said all of that though, while their hope with exclusivity is to get people to come to their store to buy games when they are new releases who don't want to wait... I'm more than happy to just straight up wait 3/6/9/12/24/4000 months until the given game shows up on GOG or Steam instead because I've got tonnes of games to play that I'm excited about in my library already while I wait. Also, it means Epic store exclusives customers are post-release beta testers for the rest of us who wait for the given game to be released on another storefront. :)

Epic Giveaway Store is going to need games that I really want and won't be found anywhere else before they get money from me.

They need to do a lot, to get me buying from them regularly.

To get me aboard the Epic train fully, here's some of what they need to do:

01. They're going to need to offer more $10 coupons and/or have better pricing regularly over Steam; Humble; Fanatical; and any other Digital Distributors and/or Bundle Sites.

02. More games go DRM-FREE entirely and not have a situation where Base-Game works offline-style without EGS going but the DLC gated behind requiring the client - hey, The Outer Worlds on Epic, I'm looking at you there; fix that on the DLC side.

03. More games work entirely offline like they do now w/ all DLC's without EGS Launcher running - good job, Control: Ultimate on Epic store.

04. A working offline mode and games to really support this more (since some SP-style games don't have access to work in its offline mode if they require EGS running in background)

05. More DRM-Free games for SP-style games like Shenmue 3 don't work offline there, as it doesn't work on Epic when not running EGS - you can boot the game, but it stays on a black screen.

06. User reviews, Activity Feed, and Community stuff allowed - like Steam does.

07. More Steam-like features - i.e. Remote Play Together; Big Picture Mode, Steam-Link style feature to send my EGS game over to my SamsungTV remotely; etc etc.

08. Cloud Server to send my Screenshots to over Epic, so gamers can see my progress and/or key moments in a game.

This probably ain't everything - but, here's a start. Epic, go take notes.

Steam is a monopoly, they said.

^This. Like the (increasingly sad amount of) DRM-free games on Humble. Let me download an installer or zip-file through the browser, and I'll spend money.

Steam = full-featured client, accessible, easy, large catalog, good sales, simple multiplayer, social
GOG = DRM-Free, game ownership, good discounts, curated catalog, oldies and indies
Fanatical = good prices, shovelware bundles
Humble Bundle = support your cause (archive that), value
Epic = ? Occasional coupons, free games?

I don’t see their identity yet. Certainly not a marketable one. But I have played some great games on their dime. (or at least on a loot-box buying gambler’s dime)

I did like that about Humble Bundle when I use to buy from them. What I did not like is when they did not annouce when DRMFREE titles would be pulling their binaries like they did with Skullgirls and Anodyne. I found itch.io to be the next best thing for me. The devs are responsive on their and they have plenty of games in the genres I love to download direct from their browser.

Super accurate, IMHO. I think you hit the nail perfectly here.

Epic has no real identity, but...they seem to be gaining the rep' of the place to grab free games from.

Epics half broken client is still not working for people with the unsupported graphics card error. Why it would need gpu support for the client is strange.

let's get censor free community chat on EGC to kill steam. (EGC could still have rules to ban fanboy trolls)