Is it Electron? Someone elsewhere mentioned it was actually an instance of Unreal Engine running for the webview component. Something about the EGS install directory containing the same UE settings file that games use for initializing Unreal
Or, more likely, the publisher. But, that’s beside the point.
As it has been demonstrated when Epic tried the “developers pay less fees here” approach, the average Joe Gamer doesn’t benefit in any way whatsoever. Your premise of the savings being passed down doesn’t exactly pan out.
Lock-in != Monopoly.
The fact that you can’t transfer your purchases […] to other platforms
This is ridiculously unrealistic in a capitalist society.
It costs the platform money whenever a user downloads a game, and a user who didn’t buy from their store isn’t a user that they make money from. No other platform would voluntarily accept a recurring cost like that unless they profit from user data.
Also, it’s not like they stop publishers from doing that themselves. Ubisoft and EA use the cd-key generated by steam to associate the game with your U-Play and Origin accounts.
At the expense of literally every single game player
How is it at the expense of the game player? Even if they paid less, the publisher and developers aren’t going to pass the savings on to the consumer. That’s wishful thinking in the same vain as hoping Starbucks would make their drinks cheaper because their rent went down.
If anything, one can argue that the 30% fee shelled out by the publisher pays for the various nice-to-haves that players get on Steam, like: a functional review system, free cloud save syncing, the workshop, game discussion forum, friends system, family sharing, game streaming, Steam input (which is a godsend for accessibility), etc.
No, they don’t. Literally every single gamer across the world pays 15% more on every single game purchase, for literally no reason except to make the 1% at Valve even richer.
Do you seriously believe that if a developer pays 15% less in platform fees to Valve, that savings will be passed on to us? Epic Games tried that. Guess what: games still cost us the same there as every other platform.
Being cautious of a corporation is never a bad thing, but remember: Valve isn’t a public company. They don’t have the same incentives and fiduciary duties that led to the enshittification of most other companies and services.
Ultimately, yes, everything they do is entirely for their own benefit. But, they’re also free to focus on their long-term growth and returns. As long as the leadership doesn’t get changed to a bunch of shit-for-brains golden parachute MBAs, they’re going to want to keep their customers happy. It’s good for them, and it’s not terrible for us. Everybody wins.
I would prefer they were a nonprofit, but I’m not going to complain when the mainstream alternatives to Steam are mostly comprised of shitty sales-focused storefronts created by companies beholden to their investors.
In reality, it’s likely a self-preservation move. Microsoft made what appeared to be a monopolistic move to control the entire Windows ecosystem when they added their own app store and the locked down S edition of Windows. If Valve both hadn’t invested in Linux and Microsoft hadn’t halted going down that path, they would have been screwed.
Comment OP appears to have drank the Epic Games Kool-aid.
They have a monopoly on video game distribution.
They have a massive marketshare, but that doesn’t make them a monopoly. Developers are still free to distribute their games through any other storefront/launcher, and Valve isn’t going out of its way to engage in anticompetitive practices like exclusive publishing deals with third-party studios.
Sounds like my bank.
If you’re using a decent development system, you’ll have an executable called diff installed already :)
I dont see blocking doing much good there as there is no such thing as being able to stop your public posts being viewed, because they’re public.
My thoughts as well. Someone dedicated to harassing you isn’t going to give up when they get blocked. They’ll just make another account and do it again, but now with the knowledge of what gets under your skin.
An egotistical twat at the helm.
Could be worse. I never liked the idea of blocking “hiding” your content from other people to begin with. It makes it too easy to give trolls the confirmation they succeeded in getting under your skin, encouraging them to make another account to continue harassing their victim.
Come on, this is Google we’re talking about. The ads come before opening the app.
Video content never changes, but the order and content of ads do. Automated browser, record the video 2-3 times. Diff the frames and slice out the ones that don’t match between runs.
This might be the only valid reason to ever name a kid “Jayrahmyie”
I just downloaded and installed EGS to a Windows VM.
strings EpicGamesLauncher.exe | select-string "unreal"returns some interesting results:FCommunityPortalManagerImpl::SetUnrealEnginePortalViewModel{USER}Unreal Engine/Engine/Config/User{TYPE}.iniUnrealHeaderToolCannot call UnrealScript (%s - %s) while stopped at a breakpoint.UnrealVersionSelectorCreated with FUnrealEngineFileAssociationServiceFactory at D:/build/++Portal/Sync/Portal/Source/Programs/EpicGamesLauncher/Layers/Domain/Private/UserDomain.cpp:866A search for “electron” only matches the words “Electronic Arts”