Borderlands CEO says his hopes on Epic Store were 'overly optimistic or misplaced'
www.tweaktown.com
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford discusses his thoughts about the Epic Games Store and the years-old exclusivity deal for Borderlands 3 to skip Steam on PC.

I’m genuinely shocked how much Epic poured into the store and it still lacks so much basic features. Sorting games is still extremely barebones, store is filled with NFT/crypto garbage, the store still looks like a college student’s first front-end project, and last time I used the launcher to pick up free games (last year), it was still slow as hell. What were they doing in the past 5 years aside from dropping millions on exclusivity deals?

Epic is going to have to prioritize the store and try some new initiatives while also doubling down on earning pivotal exclusives if it is going to have a chance. I also hope other viable competitors arrive.

  • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    3 months ago

    I always say the reason they give so many free games is because the real price is in having to use that goddamn launcher

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      311·
      3 months ago

      It does what it needs to do, you open it, your installed games list is on the left, click and play.

      • yamanii@lemmy.worldEnglish
        151·
        3 months ago

        It really doesn’t, I tried finishing Industria while I had no internet and that electron piece of shit refused to open even though I set it up to work offline in the settings, thankfully the game had no DRM so I was able to finish it just by opening the exe.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          312·
          3 months ago

          Never had an issue with offline play, so there, my anecdote is just as valid as yours

        • Vent@lemm.eeEnglish
          516·
          3 months ago

          LOL the Steam launcher is basically just a web browser. Literally the same concept as Electron. It’d be Electron if it were built today, but it was built before Electron existed.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          18·
          3 months ago

          You realize there’s more DRM free games on Epic than on Steam even though there’s less games overall? If your standard for a good launcher is being able to start the game from a .exe then I’ve got bad news about Steam…

            • addie@feddit.ukEnglish
              22·
              3 months ago

              Presumably Kecessa is alluding to the fact that, unlike GOG, Steam games open however the developers / publishers want them to. Which is sometimes just a plain exe, sometimes it’s an exe that starts Steam so that it can use its API / DRM, sometimes it opens the publisher’s launcher, and so on. Bit irritating on Linux when you want to pass some options in to the command, and a bit irritating generally when you never want to see the launcher again, but it’s no disaster.

              • 9bananas@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                3 months ago

                not true; that’s a developer thing, not steam itself.

                steam offers it as an option, it doesn’t force developers to use it.

                plenty of games bought on steam can be run entirely without steam.