Posted December 07, 2018
Mawthra: I was able to launch the game without the Epic Games Launcher open and the game didn't try to launch the Epic Games Launcher when launching the game from the install folder's main EXE... this is good and bad, I guess... because if they're releasing into the wild with no DRM and Annapurna has released games here on GOG before, yet nothing...
If you can launch the game without the launcher active, then there's no DRM... I even copied the game to another one of my computers that's never had the Epic Launcher installed and it works just fine
The latter sentence sounds promising, but I think a lot more detail is needed across a wider spread of games before declaring the store DRM-Free. Eg, can you zip up the downloaded game folder and then unzip it on a second PC with different hardware without Epic Games Launcher ever being installed on just that one game or multiple other games? If it's yes on a scale of the Steam Games That Don't Need Steam Client thread, then that sounds promising. If you can launch the game without the launcher active, then there's no DRM... I even copied the game to another one of my computers that's never had the Epic Launcher installed and it works just fine
But what if one game worked whilst most others refused to start on different hardware (has "quiet" CEG-like restrictions that locks the initial .exe to your CPU which you only realise when changing hardware). Or it doesn't start the launcher's .exe but still maybe pulls a DLL file from the Epic Launcher's install folder? Or the game starts up fine but game save's don't work properly without the Launcher handling Cloud Save's and there's no local-save fall-back code (because it was never expected to have a "can't find client" response, only a "client is online / in offline mode")? Or it works fine short-term but there's a silent "time limit" of some kind that's not apparent until later (as Steam's "unlimited" Offline Mode suffered from for years)? Web browsers aren't remotely like vendor-locked game-clients for the obvious differences that they aren't created by the owner of the website you're trying to visit who then locks the browser into being valid for just their website. Want Steam/EA/uPlay/Blizzard games? Youll need 4x clients. Want to visit 100,000 websites? Do you need 100,000 browsers each one made specifically by the site owners just for their own content - or just one open-source one made by anyone that works with everyone's?
Post edited December 07, 2018 by AB2012