Is that the Epic that agreed to six-year $800 million partnership with Google recently?
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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Yep, time to wipe my Epic account.
(And also pretty much the only store that matters for non-exklusive titles Tim)
Isn't Tim the guy that advocates for pedophelia through AI generation?
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Reminder: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has defended child pornography, saying that stopping it is "gatekeeping".
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Tim.. suing everyone else wont make epic store a great place to buy games
Look to GOG for inspiration…
He’s just salty because the only games people “purchase” are the weekly free ones.
Not even. I've bought games on Steam that I forgot I had in Epic because Epic is just that trash. Fuck Epic for trying to start their store by bribing developers for exclusivity on their platform. Bitch ass tactics to begin with and then crying and whining when their mob mentality strong arming didn't work. Best believe if their shit had worked and they became popular those greedy assholes would be asking a higher percentage once everyone was locked in.
I don't even bother with those anymore. I never play the free ones I have, because I'd have to use Epic's software.
- Playnite, if you're on Windows (though Linux might be over the horizon).
- Heroic Games Launcher if you're on any platform.
Playnite is the better choice if you're on Windows, but either way, don't let Tim's dumb store stop you from ruining his day by generating a bunch of metrics that show you're only playing freebies!
Keep collecting them. Each one you get costs Epic money and helps counter some of that Fortnite cash that lets Epic keep paying for exclusive contracts. Keep bleeding them and eventually they won't be able to keep buying exclusive releases.
Epic pays a flat rate to offer games for free, they don't pay per download.
Downloading them just helps Epic inflate their "active users" number when talking to investors.
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DRM free, launcher free games or fuck off.
is that Valve's policies and position as the leading distribution service in PC gaming means publishers are effectively blocked from selling games and add-ons at lower prices on competing stores
I still don't get this. As far as I can find, Steam doesn't allow steam keys to be sold cheaper elsewhere, but they don't bother with prices of games in other stores.
And doesn't Epic have a bunch of games exclusive to their store?
I still don't get this. As far as I can find, Steam doesn't allow steam keys to be sold cheaper elsewhere, but they don't bother with prices of games in other stores.
This is tricky. Officially Valve doesn't have any rules about non-Steam game prices on other stores. Unofficially evidence has been put forward by way of emails between developers and Valve that seem to show that Valve unofficially requires price parity with other stores and will punish games that offer lower prices elsewhere.
The charitable interpretation is that their policies are worded confusingly and some of their agents are misinterpreting the rule requiring Steam key prices to be uniform as applying to non-Steam keys. The uncharitable interpretation is that Valve knows such a policy would get them in hot water with anti-monopoly laws and so they're careful to make sure it stays an unofficial policy.
Is that true? I've seen devs list their games off steam for steamprice -30%. Often you can go to a devs website and buy the game $10 cheaper. However I still buy it via steam because i feel like i'll forget about the game if its just a key in my email.
That's... Weird, given I usually get games on sale from Humble if I'm getting them on steam. Might just be full price?
Steam, and Epic, both have exclusives. Steam is more incidental (some devs just don't bother releasing elsewhere), while Epic had a deal going on for devs that released exclusively on Epic for the first 6 months of the game's life. Don't remember what the deal was, but it was a marketing thing to try and get people over to Epic. After the 6 months was up most devs also released to Steam.
Has epic games developed anything like Proton? Valve isn't just a store.
They developed the Unreal engine. Not sure how “like Proton” you meant, but it’s used by lots of games and is quite a complex and well-regarded 3D engine.
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I was almost forgetting Tim's whole deal seems to be antagonizing more successful companies than his.
He wants access to massive user bases for fortnite without having to pay anything to the platforms. That's why he's so intent on attacking Steam, Apple and Google. Steam would be a massive increase in revenue even with a 30% cut going to steam for epic, but mutual benefit isn't in vogue at the moment.
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No instead epic charges 12%, and if you use unreal engine but don't sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales. Sure those number are lower but egs isn't out here "empowering" devs
Epic would charge Steam's fees if they had Steam's marketshare.
Everyone thinking they care about creators or customers is a fucking moron.
Are they close to feature parity with Steam yet? Like after a quick search of it looks like they added cloud saves but that took years.
Not even close. Plus, it's not just about feature parity. It's also about ease of use. EGS is still shit as of 2 months ago.
if you use unreal engine but don’t sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales.
Sounds like abusing market power.
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More like Tim Weenie.
Shoddy article buries the lede: Epic isn't suing Valve. UK residents are. Epic is just rooting for them because Epic makes a product (Epic Game Store) that competes with a product by Valve (Steam). Epic is not behind the lawsuit. They are just cheering for their competitor to be taken down a peg.
Literally nothing whatsoever stops Epic from releasing their Epic Game Store app on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android as these are open platforms that allow anybody to release an app (or app store) and offer it to their customers. However, Epic Game Store only actually exists on Windows, and it's on iOS in the EU. Everywhere else, they're keeping it from consumers out of pure spite in order to leverage the courts in their favour.
All of this started because Epic chose to defy Apple and the rules they agreed to in order to get Fortnite onto the iPhone's App Store, in that they could not use an alternative payment provider to sell "V-bucks," the in-game currency Fortnite uses. V-bucks cost Epic nothing to make as a virtual currency. Fortnite itself has expenses, but Fortnite is also a tech demo for the Unreal Engine. It exists, on a business level, to sell the capabilities of Epic's in-house physics engine, the Unreal Engine. A bit hypocritically, Epic takes a cut of games sold that use the Unreal Engine. It is not free. Fortnite players use the V-bucks to buy skins and other cosmetic experiences in the game. And Epic, tired of giving Apple a 30% cut of something that costs them nothing to produce, thereby giving each company 100% profit, added an option to pay Epic directly, either less money to get the same amount of V-bucks, or the same amount of money to get more V-bucks (I don't recall and it's not what matters). Apple suspended the Fortnite game until Epic fixed it. Epic refused to, so the app was de-listed, and the developer account was banned.
Epic then pulled out of the Mac ecosystem as well, which had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. Macs do have an App Store that looks like the one on iPhone, but just like the Windows Store in Windows, it's not required to install apps on a Mac. Most Mac users get their apps from the web, same as Windows users do. Like the Windows Store, the Mac App Store is just a convenience (both of them handle updates very well, for example). Not offering Fortnite and/or the Epic Game Store on the Mac has always been a choice Epic made, not any limitation imposed by Apple.
Epic is not just Fortnite, though. They made the Gears of War games for Xbox back in the day. Fortnite itself is actually a mashup of several games. The original Fortnite was a paid survival crafting game. I'm not sure it exists anymore, or if the freemium multiplayer Fortnite swallowed it up entirely. Like in Fortnite's main mode, you could build, but you could build freely (safely) during the day, and mobs would attack at night. Fortnite also contains elements of Unreal Tournament, Epic's prior multiplayer online shooter that last received a release in 2004; Rockband, the music game developed by Harmonix (which also created Guitar Hero), which is now called Fortnite Festival), and other acquisitions. Epic also made Unreal, a single-player game that Unreal Tournament was based on. They likely released a few other games I can't recall. But since Unreal and Unreal Tournament, they've also licensed the Unreal Engine to other developers, and it's been used in numerous games, including the original Deus Ex.
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