I love the idea of getting older AAA titles for free, but hate the idea of installing the Epic Games Launcher on my computer. Where do you guys stand on this?
It also makes me sad that Epig Games has fallen so far. I grew up on Unreal Tournament and now I don’t want them anywhere near my computer.
I have never installed Epic Games Launcher and still claim and play their games for free. It’s pretty easy:
- claim games on epicgames.com (I use my phone)
- install Heroic and login to your epic games account
- play your claimed games
I play on my Steam Deck and on my Linux desktop, and EGS isn’t supported on either. Seems to work fine.
Also works for prime games. And if you are on Linux especially GOG as well.
Hell yeah! I did not know this was an option. Thanks for the tip!
You can get free games with torrenting, so it never appealed to me.
I don’t want or need more accounts, nor do I want or need more launchers.
I end up claiming the games and never playing them. I wish they’d be more customer friendly, they’re swimming in money (fortnite + unreal royalties) but couldn’t for their lives surpass the very low quality bar of Origin or even UPlay!
What’s wrong with Epic Games launcher? I understand that they require some sort of delivery mechanism, even if you don’t use Epic you have to use Heroic or something. Is there something else I should hate?
Some people don’t like having to use more than one launcher. Some people don’t like Epic buying out games and making them exclusive to EGS (which keeps the price artificially high for longer). Some people just feel like the launcher, er, launched without feature parity with Steam, and has made very few improvements since launch. I’m sure there’s more reasons people dislike Epic. I don’t overly care but it’s certainly not a preferred platform for me.
They have been in hot water before when they were caught scraping data without consent and sending it back to Epic. Folders/files and apparently steam user info?
The client still supposedly phones home with some encrypted data and nobody is completely sure what it is, they say it’s anti-cheat stuff, but then there’s this:
“40% of Epic Games is owned by Tencent they’re a Chinese Tech Company which the Chinese Government has a certain say in what they do. LITERALLY without Tencent Epic would go under they’re the only reason why Epic Games has gotten so many exclusives and given away so many free games. There is LITERALLY a board member in Tencent that was appointed by the Chinese Government.”
So can we trust them? Probably not.
I only actively seek games I want to play. I have negative desire to hoard games I know I will never open. I probably wouldn’t take the clutter even if they paid me to take it. Steam or Epic.
My Steam library is caked up with a bunch of decade old Humble Bundle packing peanuts and frankly I kind of wish it wasn’t.
On the rare chance a game I’ve been wanting to play is the free givaway, I might take it if it’s on Steam just because I’m already invested in that platform. If Epic was the one giving it away I probably wouldn’t bother. I don’t need my games library splintered across multiple launchers. I’m already annoyed at having the one. I’d prefer no launcher at all.
You can hide games on the steam library. I do that to not see clutter.
I have claimed most of the games and some have been real gems. I’ve bought a few games too because they were the cheapest option.
Personally I don’t have a problem with the Epic launcher as it’s just a launcher which is fine by me. I use GOG Galaxy anyway and I’m not a fan of Steam either so don’t care about that aspect.
I feel good. Who doesn’t like free games?
I claim everything since free is free. But I don’t have the launcher installed, since I have a lot of other games to play so haven’t gotten around to it.
It’s almost stopped me buying ANY games, at all.
At some point within a year or few of a release the odds of anything I find interesting showing up for free on epic is damn near 100%.
It’s the ultimate patient gamers bit: wait 2 or 3 years and that game you want will be $0.
(It’s why my epic library is now bigger than my steam library, despite spending $0.)
Wow, that’s impressive. Or maybe I have a problem of buying way too many games.
Or maybe I don’t buy enough?
I dunno, I’ve just kinda changed what games I play to things that appear to also be the same kind of stuff that Epic is making deals to give away for free?
Also, in fairness, I do buy the occasional game for console even if it’s available on PC as sales permit, but we’re talking a game or two a year at most.
I feel pretty awesome, thanks Epic, I love you fondly…
But I suppose that wasn’t what you wanted to hear…
Jokes aside why wouldn’t someone feel good or cool about it?
The Epic games launcher is trash, you could try with Heroic Games Launcher, it also works on Linux
I’ll claim it online. Then pirate it.
I’ll just avoid using the epic launcher and I appreciate heroic launcher but I still don’t like it.
I have epic only on my steam deck and refuse to install it on my main pc
Did you actually install EGS, or are you using Heroic?
Heroic :3
I’ll claim the games if they look interesting but usually someone else has to tell me what’s on there because I don’t look. I won’t buy a game from epic though, so this marketing tactic is lost on me.
Not lost, you boost their active user numbers
Oh well
True, but active user count doesn’t increase revenue. And I imagine higher active users increases the cost Epic pays for those free games.
So I feel like claiming is a net drain.
I claim the free stuff. I don’t really understand all the hate they get. It’s just another digital software storefront for gaming. It seems to do its job. Click a button, download the game, play the game. I have no reason to be mad at them.
A big reason people dislike Epic is due to their forced-exclusivity on a lot of games. A popular, highly-anticipated game will only release the PC version on Epic for the first several months, and then it’ll appear on Steam and other platforms, forcing fans to either wait or sign up for a new platform that they didn’t want anything to do with.
And it’s just one more piece of spyware on your computer to serve as a possible vector of attack from hackers.
This is c/patientgamers, so I assume that first reason wouldn’t bother most of us here. I’m curious about the spyware assertion though. Were they caught doing something shady?
iirc it was a bit of a controversy when Epic was newer that they would- without asking- just grab a bunch of information from a Steam install on the same PC. Stuff like your friends list and your play history. They did it by directly looking at local files, too, so it wasn’t even through Steam’s API.
Yeah same. What is this spyware thing you’re taking about? Personally, I think all these connected software soy on you one way or another. I use split tunneling a lot on my VPN and I also have a pihole connected to my router. Anyways, I’m curious to hear why epic is spyware.
