I've bought a few games on Epic, and had no problems. The lack of junkware like on Steam is great – I can honestly browse the store knowing that every game is high quality (even if not necessarily in the genre I enjoy).
Achieveemnts not popping up helps focus on the actual game.
Cloud save, family sharing etc. are of marginal use for me and I imagine 99% of consumers outside the vocal minority.
Well, I was about to comment that the lack of cloud save is the absolute dealbraker for me as I play games at home and at work, so if I can't sync saves automatically then I won't buy a game from there(#1 reason why I haven't bought Metro Exodus for instance, game which I am otherwise super interested in).
Yes, that would be an option if my work allowed any services like that(and yes, it's slightly odd that dropbox/google drive are not allowed, but Steam cloud sync is).
Oh but it's not a technical issue - both dropbox and google drive would install and work fine, we have full administrative access on our machines with no restrictions. But it is against policy.
One man's Junkware is another's charming indie. GOG is a curated store and, among others, initially denied Zachtronics game Opus Magnum. I personally appreciate the fact that Steam and Itch don't curate.
The link you provided doesn't say what you claim it says. The parent post is discussing giving away free games, not acquisitions. What is unhealthy about the way Epic is trying to attract users? I know they've received some negative press but I have yet to see a good argument for this.
From the update at the very top of the article the GP linked:
> Epic has offered an update on the confusingly worded statement issued to press earlier today regarding Rocket League's future status on Steam, now insisting that it has "not announced plans to stop selling the game there".
Even if they do pull future sales of Rocket League off of Steam why is that a problem? Valve has purchased game companies. I've never seen anyone complain that you can't buy Left 4 Dead on GoG.
When EA pulled their games from Steam, Valve replied in kind.
One thing that irks me is that Valve seems way more committed to interoperability, open standards and its consumers' wellness than its competitors (likely as a result of being privately owned); while the competitors in question use every trick in the evil corporate playbook to try to increase their marketshare. We've seen how they play, and the friendly façade is likely to change to ad more value-extracting one once/if they gain marketshare.
Valve made L4D2. Or at least did a significant portion of the work. The problem with Epic is that they are either paying publishers for timed exclusives, or purchasing publishers outright in order to create artificial monopolies, and restricting consumer choice.
> If paying for exclusives is bad what viable alternative strategy should Epic be using to get users to their store?
Offering the games DRM-free (the audience that GOG is aiming - though I am really concerned about what GOG is currently doing with GOG Galaxy and cloud synchronisation).
Epic are trying to do with gaming what Disney are doing with TV -- not pay distributers when they can do that but themselves, and use a strong monopoly on a sector of popular material to leverage their way in to distribution.
Achieveemnts not popping up helps focus on the actual game.
Cloud save, family sharing etc. are of marginal use for me and I imagine 99% of consumers outside the vocal minority.