Comment by ohithereyou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ohithereyou | Hacker News Reader

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PC Gaming has really only accepted two major launchers: Steam and Blizzard. Blizzard's launcher is only majorly accepted in my group of friends as it's the only way for some of them to get their WoW fix.

Origin is actively avoided (to the point of avoiding EA's games completely), Ubisoft's Uplay will work with Steam, and Bethesda's launcher was immediately uninstalled after the debacle which was Fallout 76.

None of my friends (that will admit it, anyway) have the Epic launcher installed. They are all frustrated that games they're excited about ("The Outer Worlds" and "Borderlands 3") are timed exclusives on Epic's launcher.

Some of them are very hung up on the fact that Tencent owns a major stake in Epic Games (between 40%-50%). They have seen how China deals with games (WoW in China is the biggest one, game consoles not being legal in the county until recently) and the Internet (Great Firewall of China) and are in no way interested in allowing their software on the machine. Further, it has been observed that the Epic Launcher performs behaviors that behaviors they consider shady[1].

Personally, I won't play any games that are Epic Store exclusives. Not because I have any particular anger toward Epic (I've loved Unreal Tournament for a long time), but because I already have a large backlog of games on Steam, I'd like to keep everything in a single launcher, and by the time I have my backlog cleared, these games should be on Steam and a GOTY version will be out that has all of the DLC included, or if they're not, something else that I care about more will likely have come along.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...

> Further, it has been observed that the Epic Launcher performs behaviors that behaviors they consider shady[1].

you mean behaviors entirely consistent with a browser process? https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...

As we all know, everyone loves browser tracking and nobody ever uses that data in a shady way.

I'm all against tracking, but the whole post was framed as "epic launcher is doing [scary techno-sounding stuff]", when really it's "epic game launcher is using a webview".

There's no need for them to use a webview - launching a game, purchasing a game, and installing a game do not inherently need a webview. See the last thirty years of gaming history for examples that show this.

Yes, it's a webview. Yes, it's also making requests that are not transparent to the user. Yes, it's a bad thing and it is an issue no matter how many times apologists try to downplay it.

>There's no need for them to use a webview

alll the major ones use some sort of a webview. uplay and origin are essentially electron apps (js + chromium wrapper). steam uses a webview for its community/store page.

All that the rabblerousing gamer anger amounts to is that you and your friends have not yet had the new store successfully marketed to you. The companies involved have fixed their PR before, they'll do it again. Give it a few years.

I'm another person completely different than the OP the only two installers I'll allow on my machine are Steam and GOG. Why? Because Origin was garbage and EA is a terrible company to support. Ubisoft will not compel new to install a game. Rockstar and their stupid ass community requirements even in single player games have made be never want to play another Rockstar game and wishing I could get a refund on games that backported this to. Steam and GOG worked hard for user trust and built it over years, not by what games they have not but how they've constantly tried to listen to users. You can tell that the people running these companies are games themselves and probably use the same launchers. I can promise you there are people at EA who have never played a video game intentionally in their lives. It's a shame too as there are some really good games in their stables.

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