Anecdotal, but everyone in my friend group treats EGS as a free game dispenser and little more than that. Occasionally, the normies might even get an exclusive from it, but a lot simply don't bother and wait for the Steam release.
origin has already shown that strategy doesn't work. remember when
fucking EA was handing out free games left and right? now look who's selling it's gamepass on steam again...
(of course their client being crap and only slightly above EGS didn't help).
I mean I get it, for some business school tard it might look good on paper, and it's true that no one wants to use their store if they got no investment already, that's why you give them a library assuming they'll stay - however, if you give it away for free, it has literally no value (it's also hilariously ironic because the guy in charge of origin at some point claimed "sales devalue games", before flipping on that hard). it's similar to all the community shit like friendslist etc, thinking if you see your friends play something you gonna pick it up - except I already know what my friends are playing, with or without some rudimentary tacked on "social engagement features", since I'm already communicating with my friends somewhere else, duh (to be fair, you want your own backend you full control for all games, to avoid another gamespy situation. but ffs either do it properly or offer API support for external access, not that half-cooked shit).
Yeah pretty much this is what I do. Hell even having Samsho isn't enough to make me want to use tim's storefront with my real money. Again EGS would have a much better investment actually improving their storefront than buying exclusives like Shenmue 3
So Epic is basically burning a hole in it's wallet trying to create a competitor to steam, which is something GoG has been doing far more effortlessly for years. Shit them for stuff like cucking to china but CDPR didn't have to pay people to keep using the service.
gotta thank timmy for the shenmue 3 stunt tho, was angry at first but saved me 60 bucks for another cliffhanger ending. and now yu suzuki wants to make more shenmue games
also made me avoid deep silver games since they apparently don't want my money.
as for gog, that doesn't make money either. can't find it again but remember reading at the end of the day gog on it's own barely breaks even, or the profits were pretty small.
Epic doesn't provide anything that isn't provided better elsewhere. Fuck, even the shitty Ubisoft Uplay/Connect app is better, and that's almost entirely for one company's products and nobody really wants to install it.
I do, just to save money - no other company is giving you 20% off just for playing their games (and I mean playing from start to end, not autistic achievement grind). also creates competition, you can always find uplay keys cheaper than steam ones, if you already use it might as well do it without another layer steam adds.
also helps it does what it's supposed to, launch my games without much fuss.
ubisoft gets a lot of shit, but their uplay strategy was pretty smart (least before the rebrand, I assume after all the #metoo drama now the dangerhairs are in charge and we already know how that's gonna end). there was incentive to use their store, but it was never an either/or decision since it was piggybacking on steam. it has/had it's own reward scheme like the vouchers and the club that makes you wanna play their games to get some rewards (sounds dumb, but it works).
