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"We run twice as fast as Steam does while offering none of the features Steam does!" \- The tweet in a nutshell
Steam continuing to live rent free in Sweeny's head.
Wasn't he the guy that was pissed that Steam has an AI tag so consumers are able to avoid AI slop games too?
If Steam does it he has a braindead hot take about it. I don't bother remembering all of them.
I just remember that one because it's a braindead anti-consumer take lol
Sweeney is like the anti Newell. EPIC can't become public soon enough.
You think going public will do what? Make the company more consumer friendly?
They paid a lot of money to fail to compete with Steam. I understand his frustration, but like... idk, hard to beat a platform that just works as well as it does for a consumer. Its really hard to beat the one fairly stable entertainment distribution company gamers have heard of that isnt hand over fist enshittifying their product on a daily basis.
I'd understand the frustration more if Epic had actually built a good product. It's not like they couldn't have looked at Steam to see what people like and what people complain about and how they could try to fix it.
Instead they pushed out the minimum viable product and threw a ton of money into trying to pay people into using their launcher but as much as I'll take the free games I wouldn't leave Steam for another platform that's equally as good, much less one that's outright inferior.
When given the choice the only other storefront I'll consider is GoG because games being DRM-free is a worthwhile thing to me, and for older games the GoG version tends to run the best.
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Epic never believed they needed to provide good service to the customer, they believed they needed to provide good service to publishers, and that the customers would simply fall in line when those publishers stopped putting their games on Steam.
With that context it makes perfect sense why they never invested in their application, only in things publishers liked or things like free games and coupons that they could stop at any time.
A great example of that is why they were so against user reviews. It allowed customers to have a voice to the potential detriment of publishers.
What's the quote?
Epic and Valve both want your money and are always scheming ways to get it out of your pocket. The difference is Epic gives you free games you collect without giving them a dime, and Valve built a product worth spending money on.
Even better, Valve was built upon being screwed by big business. They nearly went bankrupt due to Halflife 1 and the controversy surrounding that as their parent company decided that making money wasn’t good enough, they wanted more and sued Valve in an attempt to bankrupt them. It obviously didn’t work, but there’s a timeline it did and we wouldn’t have steam. I think that shaped what valve would ultimately become. They are a decently fair company to work with considering what they offer to consumers and the marketshare they have. I fear for what would happen if it becomes publicly traded.
Hard to near a competitor when you are adding nothing it offers and you don't come up with any notable features other than free games sometimes.
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That's the thing. These rich c-suite types cannot understand or even conceive of a world where a business that is consumer-focused is possible, let alone profitable. To them, the consumer is the enemy that is unjustly denying them the money in their pockets, and they treat the consumer accordingly.
It gets better, has even less features and capabilities than the previous iterations of the epic store
scroll down a page on steam and then try that in the epic store.
to this day they haven't managed to smoothly load the content of their shops welcome page
Even if they managed to have a smooth store experience that was basically just buying games with a shopping cart and having a friends list… steam has a mind boggling amount of features that they would need to catch up on.
The steam community, big picture mode, controller support, family sharing, community market, the workshop, screenshot and video features, adding non steam games, I mean there are so many features it’s really hard to keep track of them.
The best crazy example I can give is that I can add dolphin emulator as a non steam game and run Mario kart double dash, then use steam to invite literally anyone with steam and a controller to my session and we can play double dash online coop that easy. Sure there are other ways to do that, but I can do this with any game ever using steam. Oh the game only supports a certain type of controller? I can remap everything using steam.
It’s way more than just a store at this point.
According to Epic, its AI-generated store loads up much quicker than Steam on a cold start (the first launch), and is, in fact, twice as fast.
But that’s definitely because of AI vibe-coding and not the fact that this new “store” lacks countless basic features, which Epic itself also admits.
Not much to be proud of if you're missing features, Epic.
You could stuff it full of all the same features and have them all running better…you’re still not going to have the consumer good-will, the brand recognition, and the trust that Steam’s got.
Especially if your outreach to customers is that you had AI write this thing instead of human beings, something that is extremely well known to be a sore spot for the public at the moment, largely across the political spectrum. While AI can do some helpful things, the environment doesn’t seem right to act like this is a benefit for people, or one they will be happy with.
If they used AI to actually get close to feature parity with Steam in a short amount of time, that might actually convince me he's on to something. But this is pointless.
It's unlikely they will ever aim for feature parity or supremacy at this rate. Sweeney doesn't understand what makes Steam the superior option.
Everything he's tried revolves solely around money. Most of the great Steam features would just never enter his brain as having any sort of value.
A greenfield project being only 50% faster than steam is still pretty bad. Steam is notoriously slow to open which I always suspected to be because of the old codebase and huge list of compatibility requirements.
If you're comparing load times between an unfinished store and an entire client full of features, maybe you should take up farming or something.
Don’t worry we are due for the annual Tim Sweeney meltdown in a few days after this new „vibecoded” Epic still has 0 attention from users lmao
Oh I'm just waiting for their year-end review where they say their store had 100 million active users and made $240 million in revenue...then you do the math and realize they made less than $3 per user.
They've done it a couple times over the years and it's always hilarious.
And comparing just the first load up when you turn your PC on...
Having steam load on startup means it's not even a problem that needs boasting about being quicker on.
I do like Steam's strategy of "Do nothing, Win" is still on a streak.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
And Tim Sweeney is stepping on rakes like he's Sideshow Bob.
Comparing load times is so stupid. A huge majority of Steam users never close the app anyways, right?
I don’t, but never once have I thought “if this shit doesn’t open faster soon I’m ditching it. “ Sounds like the kind of stupidity a vibe coding enthusiast would concern themselves with.
“if this shit doesn’t open faster soon I’m ditching it. “
Tbf, that's definitely something I've thought while using the Epic launcher before lol. Shit was sloooooow. If it didn't provide free games then I would absolutely have never touched it because the experience was so bad. It's very noticeably faster now, although still not exactly great.
Even if I do, its not like it takes long to open it again. We're talking about a matter of seconds.
Tech giants, namely AI chuds, will trot out a solution to a problem that either doesnt exist or is a minor inconvenience at worst
Yes an empty boat is fast, maybe not the burn you think it is
Motherfucker it took you 3 YEARS to implement that! gtfoh
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Funny how he says "advanced" and then cites something that should be the bare minimum
Lmao, that's an actual quote? I thought they were just poking fun at him.
Books.com introduced a shopping cart to their website in 1992. I'd hardly call it an advanced feature lol
Barely tech-literate people could add shoppings carts and payment systems to Wordpress hobby-projects 10 years ago with a few clicks, and now Epic is bragging about how they added one and calling it advanced technology? I'm anxiously awaiting how they will revolutionize home audio with nothing but a needle and a grooved vinyl disk 10 years from now!
The tweet isn't for consumers to be happy, its to impress investors and brag about AI usage. We aren't the target audience for this
Hm so their fully hand made store couldn’t compete with steam, but a fully vibe coded one will be able to…?
That's the tech bros point. AI is better at coding
If AI is better than your years old platform, maybe just go out of business at that point.
I don’t think Epic Games understands nobody on Steam is jumping ship to them at this point. Personally, if Steam went down hill in major way or magically vanished, I’d go to GOG and pirate my old games because I’m not rebuying my Steam library lol
Why are they so obsessed with sounding like assholes? If they're trying to convince me to use EGS this isn't the way to do it. Their store has been awful to use for years and now they make it worse and pretend like it's some big brain move. It reminds me of the video where Adam Conover said Hollywood is addicted to failing. Feels like the exact same thing here.
Epic has an interesting business model with their game store.
I own hundreds of games on the Epic game store. I have spent $0.
The real problem that steam competitors is that steam just works. And works well.
I can’t ever recall having a reason to dislike steam, they make consumer friendly choices.
I have zero desire to switch.
Sooooo....how many hours before all the customer credit cards are stolen?
'This first release is light on features. Think of it as a speedboat and not a yacht! Though it does have advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart.'
Even the announcement reads like it was AI made. And who the hell claims that a shopping cart is an advanced digital technology? It is the bare minimum for any online store to have.
Epic is such a joke lol
lol - why are they so proud?
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