[degenerate]

> In Spring 2018, Epic executives and managers discussed adding a confirm purchase button to prevent accidental purchases. Though employees were concerned that “it is a bit of a dark UX pattern to not have confirmation on ‘destructive’ actions,” Epic feared that adding a confirmation button would add “friction,” “result in a decent number of people second guessing their purchase,” and reduce the number of “impulse purchases.”

> Epic has never allowed users to cancel or undo charges for Battle Passes or Llamas and did not begin allowing users to cancel Cosmetics charges until June 2019. Even then, Epic uses design tricks, sometimes referred to as “dark patterns,” to deter consumers from cancelling or requesting refunds for unauthorized V-Bucks charges.

> On July 20, 2018, an Epic Community Coordinator asked if there were any plans to add a confirmation step for in-game purchases, noting: “This is actually a huge complaints on our side and could remove most of the ‘excuses’ about accidental purchase: ‘I wanted to press Replay, my PS4 was in sleep mode’, etc. This is something I wanted to push forward but didn’t have time to build a real case around, has this already been discussed in the past?”

> In addition, Epic deliberately requires consumers to find and navigate a difficult and lengthy path to request a refund through the Fortnite app. To start, Epic hid the link to submit a refund request under the “Settings” tab on the Fortnite app menu, far removed from the purchase screen, even though requesting a refund is not a game or device setting. The Epic user experience (“UX”) designer who helped design the refund request path reported that he put the link there in an “attempt to obfuscate the existence of the feature” and that “not a single player found this option in the most recent round of UX testing.” When the designer asked whether he should make the feature easier to find, he was told by a superior, “it is perfect where it is at.”

Many more examples in this complaint doc: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1923203EpicGame...

[BiteCode_dev]

And despite Epic having great games, this is why I have not installed it or paid for any of their product so far.

Also why steam is still the leader despite having a terrible UI: they have been very good to their customers.

[ridgered4]

Is Steam UI terrible? It seems a little slower than I'd like, particularly initial load but otherwise it seems fine to me. And most software I use is so slow now it certainly doesn't stand out and has probably moved to the upper grade just by not getting worse over the years.

[aqme28]

Yes, it's absolutely horrible. It's just a browser and it's not well done. It takes seconds sometimes for clicks to register. Often I get blank screens and have to go back to reload the page I want. Everything about this browser-based UI is slow and cumbersome and brittle.

[thewebcount]

Yes, it is. It has all the problems of a web page plus all the problems of a native app. It's the worst of both worlds.

[yyyk]

It's a Web-based UI which doesn't allow font size control or zoom, which deserves an achievement or something since nearly all of them allow this rather easily (either in UI or by editing CSS). Maybe a magnifier glass to help with the tiny font size.

[mardifoufs]

What web engine is steam using? Has it always been a Web UI? I only started gaming on steam back in 2014, and it was a webui already back then so I'm curious!

[doublerabbit]

> What web engine is steam using?

Chrome, not quite an electron app but as sluggish as one. It's not always been however the installer has always been known to be notorious.

These gifs was well known during the golden days, classics. NSFW-ish

[1] https://i.imgur.com/0qtsE.gif

[2] https://i.imgur.com/QuJNQ4K.gif

[philistine]

It's a batty Mac citizen, with slow startup, weird fonts, the exact same UI as on Windows, and the shortcuts are all wrong. It's probably the same on Linux, where it's a Windows app on the OS as well.

Valve doesn't have enough taste to see a problem.

[capableweb]

> Also why steam is still the leader despite having a terrible UI: they have been very good to their customers.

Steams core customer is the game developers/publishers, who they take a ~30% (last time I checked) cut from the profits from.

The people who buy games are simply users of Steam, and Steam has to treat them well, otherwise their actual customers (developers/publishers) won't get as much profits, and indirectly Steam.

[bioemerl]

Developers don't pay that 30 percent, users do.

You could even say that steam is a customer of the developers (I buy your game at x to sell for y), and the average person is a customer of steam and the devs.

I don't really see the customers or the developers as the core. Both groups tie into each other in a big network effect.

[echelon]

Developers do. It comes out of their margins.

If game developers and publishers could get the same audience without steam and the 30% tax, they would in a heartbeat.

They'd probably cut the price a little to expand sales and enjoy the wider margin. Margin that could be spent on salaries and growth.

Thankfully Valve is investing its proceeds in developing competitive products that enrich the industry and not just skimming.

[thomastjeffery]

That is a pointless distinction.

30% of the price is distributed to Valve instead of developers.

Whether that results in developers obtaining lower profits or users paying higher prices is entirely subjective; that depends on what would happen otherwise, which is categorically unprovable.

[bioemerl]

It's not pointless at all, the fact that all the money comes out of my pocket is really signific ant it comes to determining who the real customer of valve is.

If it's a point of issue between me, Valve, and the game developers, at the end of the day it's my decision that matters because I have the money and if I choose not to spend it the whole thing stops working.

Take away valve and then I go straight to the source and purchase games from the developers directly, it's going to be inconvenient, but it'll be fine.

Take away the developers and valve will fund game development and start making their own stuff like Netflix has with all the media companies.

Take away the customers? Game over.

Of logic works all right when you're talking about Google and the fact that the advertisers are the real customers, because of the end of the day the advertisers have the money and when it is advertisers versus users the advertisers always win.

It's important to be the guy funding the system at the end of the day, otherwise you get screwed.

[j_maffe]

They are neither buyers nor sellers, they have a marketplace business model. https://www.bluecart.com/blog/marketplace-business-model#:~:....

[capableweb]

> Developers don't pay that 30 percent, users do.

No really, the developers have 30% removed from a sale which goes to Steam. People who buy games don't see a price + 30%, it's the developer who sees the fee when they look at the sales. Otherwise all receipts from Steam would be $GAME_PRICE + $STEAM_FEE, but it's simply $GAME_PRICE and then the developer when looking through their sales, that see $GAME_PRICE - $STEAM_FEE.

[harry8]

So I pay $X and 30% of that goes to steam.

This is not me as the user paying. Gotcha.

The customer pays for /everything/ /always/ under /all/ circumstances. It's not cost plus pricing, vendors will charge as much as the customer will part with. Customers are willing to part with less when competition pushes prices down. That 30% is definitely keeping prices higher to the customer in any remotely competitive market. (I say nothing about whether that is a good thing or bad, whether that is cheap or expensive - it's just nuts not to know the customer is paying it, that's whose pocket the money comes out of).

[squeaky-clean]

If you buy a game directly from the publisher you don't get a discount for that 30% cut on Steam. For publishers with over $50 million in sales, they take 20%. But it costs the same price to buy Assassin's Creed on Steam as it does on the Ubisoft store.

[account42]

Steam is not "very good" to their customers unless you mean in comparison to the abysmal competition. Remember they only started doing refunds after being taken to court by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Even now their refuns are extremely restrictive compared to what a retail store would offer.

[elpool2]

When you unlock an item in a battle-pass, you have to hold down the button for about a second to unlock it (and there's a little progress bar animation as it unlocks). This is great! it makes it much harder to accidentally unlock the wrong thing with a single button press. The downside to a wrong click is pretty negligible though, you're probably going to unlock everything in the battle-pass eventually anyway.

But in the "store" part of the app, where you're purchasing things with the "v-bucks" in-game currency (which you've paid actual money for), the purchase was just a single button press. It was very easy to accidentally purchase when instead you meant to press the "back" or "preview item" button. Only recently did they change this to use the same "hold for 1 second" pattern already used in the battle-pass.

[_the_inflator]

Somewhat ironic. Remember Epic's attack on Apple's game store? At least Apple does not apply that many controversial patterns to their customer experience.

[mock-possum]

> Epic feared that adding a confirmation button would add “friction,” “result in a decent number of people second guessing their purchase,” and reduce the number of “impulse purchases.”

yeah, it would have absolutely done that.

[tuxone]

Is this the company that craves to install its Store on the most profitable mobile platform? I will try to keep that in mind