Of course, I get that. Different people value different things. So on the flip side, personally I like and use Steam’s features (and now with Steam Deck even more so) so I only ever buy on EGS if it is much cheaper than elsewhere…and even then I have to consider it. I also like the freebies, but generally place more value on the longterm feature investment Valve does (and I detest Epic’s artificial third party exclusives).
The point about not owning games is valid, although on Steam many games are DRM-free too - so it is possible to download them and archive them somewhere, like with GOG games (although you won’t have a fancy installer, just a folder with game files).
I am also a bit wary of buying lot of games on EGS because when the store is losing hundreds of millions of USD year after year, I wonder how long will Fortnite/Tim be willing to subsidise it. And I don’t see it becoming profitable anytime soon (I think Epic also expects turning profit sometime in like 2026)
I favour buying from Steam on PC mostly because of a) the easy refunds, and b) the awesome controller configuration software.
Technically it is possible to use the Steam controller configurator with a non-Steam game, but you have to stuff about renaming .exe to match existing Steam game App IDs. Unsure if renaming exes like that works under Epic.
I prefer Steam simply because most of my games are there. It’s a minor pain to use a different launcher, but I generally really play one game at a time so it isn’t a big deal. Playing Wonderlands now, so Epic is up. No biggie.
Hah. I actually used to use Steam as my universal game launcher, but ever since I started using Gamepass more, and what with its shitty encryption system making it impossible for games to be added to Steam (at least without some fussing with third party tools), I also switched to Windows Desktop as my game launcher :)
Of course, gamepass manages to piss me off anyway, because sometimes its shortcuts randomly lose icons and become blank, so I have to make custom icons…
My blank icons are where I am trying to get Elden Ring working without stuttering. One of the solution is to remove all Game Pass games. So I have installed the Game pass games on an external ssd and it’s not plugged in at the moment hence dodgy icons.
That’s a pain in the ass, tried it, nothing easier than just clicking the icon on your desktop and the game loads. Loads of disc space, loads of desktop space.
Click and Run here, don’t need no fancy showcases or displays :)
A vote for Playnite - but for knowing what I own - I’ll install/launch from there only if I’ve been browsing in there for a game. I’ve used the desktop on the rare occasion my screen is empty since the things love automatically installing icons there but 99% of the time my screens are full of windows and apparently I’d rather open the store launcher (Epic/Steam/Amazon) to keep my windows in place.
Great game (especially for free) but damn checkpoint saves forever, and curses yea unto the seventh generation on the people who came up with them.*
*I write this because I played the whole game on normal but had to drop the difficulty to easy for the last boss fight, because the [expletive deleted] checkpoint save system meant that I went into that fight without enough goodies to survive it. Feels bad man and all that.
