That link goes over why Epic is bad, not why grabbing free games is bad. The only relevant comment is this, which went unanswered:
Good post, but you should add a rebuttal for the free games offered by Epic. And I don’t think the Tencent argument is quite valid, considering Tencent has large shares in Discord and the site that this is posted on.
My take is that, as long as you never buy anything from Epic, here’s the impact to Epic for claiming free games:
higher stats for games “purchased”
higher stats for games “downloaded” - assuming you install them
higher stats for games “played” - assuming you play through EGS
lower stats for profit per game sold, downloaded, or played
I personally:
have never paid Epic a dime
have never played their F2P games (like Fortnite, not the free game claims)
have never installed the EGS client - I play exclusively through Heroic and claim through the browser
stopped playing Rocket League as soon as they became Epic exclusive
So while I’m boosting some stats, I’m also reducing others. I don’t know what the net is, but my guess is that they’re losing money on the free game deals since they need to pay the devs for them.
If you have a cogent argument for why I should avoid the free games, I may just go and delete my Epic account (if possible).
You can build from source. I use Linux and there are no builds, so I have no other options. It takes a long time though (hours, depending on your CPU).
Thank you for your comment! You bring up many arguments regarding their stats I would have added, too, especially that it does cost them per claimed free game.
In my opinion though:
They will use these numbers of higher purchases towards shareholders and publishers. We can see their thought process: e.g. WB Suicide Squad - a game as a service squad loot shooter might potentially bring in a lot of money in the long run, so stop developing singleplayer, go for the player number.
Publishers with their IPs of games might get approached by Tim/Epic, that they should exclusively sell their games on their platform as they have so many active users per month, purchases of this and that high number, with currently x million registered accounts and growing, creating an increased player/customer commitment. And as a player’s library grows, their reluctance to commit to this platform decreases. Resulting in more money for the publishers if they follow Epics road, at least in a predicted long run.
They still have their budget to invest in the long term growth by offering free games and buying exclusitivity of third party titles (in the past), more and more though their own published or development supported titles nowadays (better if I ignore their past behavior).
They also increase their influence by introducing Easy Anti Cheat in more and more titles, which only works due to their reach in the market. This is especially troublesome for Linux players but also for those who do not trust Epic’s scanning procedure on ones tasks, processes, services and files (when we keep in mind how they scanned certain files in folders in the past).
If you should delete your account or not, I cannot say. Data can be interpreted in many ways, they can be read positively by highlighting certain aspects while neglecting others. The same, of course, the other way around.
I have not used my epic account for many years since their Metro bait and switch action, but still keep it as I still have the developer account from previous projects on the UE4. If I had to interpret the data of my account, I have it since a long time, but am no active user, reducing their commitment percentage of active engaging users with their storefront. And I can only hope the attrition rate increases so their store won’t become so attractive to publishers for future titles, reducing the chance of further (time) exclusive games.
Same. Exclusives suck, and it’s the main reason I won’t spend a dime w/ EGS. I just hope that’s enough.
I rarely play MP games, so at least the EAC thing doesn’t bother me so much, and it at least has a path toward Linux compat if the devs enable it, unlike other anti-cheats.
Epic still has to pay the publisher whenever they give away a game. So, every time you grab a free game, the publisher gets money and Epic loses money. Right now they’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
As long as you can limit yourself to only the free games, every free game you get causes Epic to lose money and gives money to some random publisher. I grab the free weekly game every week. I’ve never played any of them. But, if there’s a really good one I haven’t played, I might do that. The key thing is that each week I cost Epic some money.
I’m just wondering if Epic pays a flat fee for unlimited copies, or if they actually pay per key. Even in the flat fee scenario, I think devs would ask for a higher payout if they could expect a higher number of claims.
So yeah, I’ll keep doing it until I hear a good reason not to.
I don’t know much about it, but I read something about epic paying for “minimums”, so it sounds like they pay a flat fee up to a certain number of “sales”, then pay per-unit (or at least pay more) beyond that. But, like you said, more “free” games claimed is more units shifted, so publishers will expect higher fees, even if it’s a flat fee.
That link goes over why Epic is bad, not why grabbing free games is bad. The only relevant comment is this, which went unanswered:
My take is that, as long as you never buy anything from Epic, here’s the impact to Epic for claiming free games:
I personally:
So while I’m boosting some stats, I’m also reducing others. I don’t know what the net is, but my guess is that they’re losing money on the free game deals since they need to pay the devs for them.
If you have a cogent argument for why I should avoid the free games, I may just go and delete my Epic account (if possible).
I only have EGS installed for Unreal Engine, if there were a way to have it without EGS I would do it
You can build from source. I use Linux and there are no builds, so I have no other options. It takes a long time though (hours, depending on your CPU).
Thank you for your comment! You bring up many arguments regarding their stats I would have added, too, especially that it does cost them per claimed free game.
In my opinion though:
They will use these numbers of higher purchases towards shareholders and publishers. We can see their thought process: e.g. WB Suicide Squad - a game as a service squad loot shooter might potentially bring in a lot of money in the long run, so stop developing singleplayer, go for the player number.
Publishers with their IPs of games might get approached by Tim/Epic, that they should exclusively sell their games on their platform as they have so many active users per month, purchases of this and that high number, with currently x million registered accounts and growing, creating an increased player/customer commitment. And as a player’s library grows, their reluctance to commit to this platform decreases. Resulting in more money for the publishers if they follow Epics road, at least in a predicted long run.
They still have their budget to invest in the long term growth by offering free games and buying exclusitivity of third party titles (in the past), more and more though their own published or development supported titles nowadays (better if I ignore their past behavior).
They also increase their influence by introducing Easy Anti Cheat in more and more titles, which only works due to their reach in the market. This is especially troublesome for Linux players but also for those who do not trust Epic’s scanning procedure on ones tasks, processes, services and files (when we keep in mind how they scanned certain files in folders in the past).
If you should delete your account or not, I cannot say. Data can be interpreted in many ways, they can be read positively by highlighting certain aspects while neglecting others. The same, of course, the other way around.
I have not used my epic account for many years since their Metro bait and switch action, but still keep it as I still have the developer account from previous projects on the UE4. If I had to interpret the data of my account, I have it since a long time, but am no active user, reducing their commitment percentage of active engaging users with their storefront. And I can only hope the attrition rate increases so their store won’t become so attractive to publishers for future titles, reducing the chance of further (time) exclusive games.
Same. Exclusives suck, and it’s the main reason I won’t spend a dime w/ EGS. I just hope that’s enough.
I rarely play MP games, so at least the EAC thing doesn’t bother me so much, and it at least has a path toward Linux compat if the devs enable it, unlike other anti-cheats.
I think you should grab the free games.
Epic still has to pay the publisher whenever they give away a game. So, every time you grab a free game, the publisher gets money and Epic loses money. Right now they’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
As long as you can limit yourself to only the free games, every free game you get causes Epic to lose money and gives money to some random publisher. I grab the free weekly game every week. I’ve never played any of them. But, if there’s a really good one I haven’t played, I might do that. The key thing is that each week I cost Epic some money.
I’m just wondering if Epic pays a flat fee for unlimited copies, or if they actually pay per key. Even in the flat fee scenario, I think devs would ask for a higher payout if they could expect a higher number of claims.
So yeah, I’ll keep doing it until I hear a good reason not to.
I don’t know much about it, but I read something about epic paying for “minimums”, so it sounds like they pay a flat fee up to a certain number of “sales”, then pay per-unit (or at least pay more) beyond that. But, like you said, more “free” games claimed is more units shifted, so publishers will expect higher fees, even if it’s a flat fee.