EDF 6 on steam under fire on for epic games account requirement
(store.steampowered.com)
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I don't really blame them for using Epic Online Services. If it's something you didn't know about, Epic essentially offers a ton of free multiplayer services to game developers--matchmaking, etc. I'd say for a smaller game it's probably better to use than some sort of independent server, because it may be a lot more resilient to being shut down in a year. All of it is totally cross platform, cross-engine and can be authenticated without an Epic account. I've played around with it a bit, but the miserable little game I'm working on isn't ready for a multiplayer implementation quite yet.
I know because I'm typing words on the internet I'm supposed to have a seething fire of hate for Epic because the Steam community told me to, but they actually offer a lot of really good stuff to small game devs for nothing.
The fact that an account is required is the devs fault. They should use the Connect Interface (which lets users ID by all sorts of platform tokens) versus the Auth Interface (requires Epic account). There's tech stuff about it here https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/game-services/eos-connect-interface#differences-between-auth-interface-and-connect-interface
The thing is you are right but nobody can communicate that clearly. Not even the devs. People have spent all day arguing about if its a full on account, if you just need a dummy account, if you needed one at all, because they completely fumbled actual communication. And since apparently it was an easy fix (which is why I assume this is the first people are seeing it despite the EOS popularity) it shows how shitty of a port job it is.
Epic provides wonderful services for game devs a lot of the time, and if that was all they did they'd probably have went down in history with a great legacy and minimal hate. But Sweeney caused a huge war because he wanted more. The "Steam community" didn't tell anyone to hate Epic, Epic created hate by stealing people's games away behind forced exclusivity.
Because literally no argument Epic has ever made will tell more than what they did with Metro Exodus. That alone shows what they were after and everything else is them intentionally using propaganda and emotional words to stir up controversy for themselves. Which they openly admitted in the trial with Apple to doing intentionally, as well as admitted under oath they didn't care about principles and only wanted special treatment for themselves (aka would have stopped if Apple/Steam had given them a special bigger cut).
Steam allowed peoples games and rights to be taken away and could have had secret exclusive deals too. Listening to "epic bad, muh exclusives" is all so tiresome.
"Could have" is a long way away from "we have evidence of it happening."
Steam isn't perfect and its a fucker plenty of times over. That doesn't make Epic less bad in any form, but that seems to be all you pro-Epic guys can bring to the table.
I don't care about exclusives, they all seem to leave Epic anyway after it fails to provide any sales. I care about them directly stealing my money like they did with Metro to force an exclusive.