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'The gold rush is over:' Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon devs say that big Game Pass and Epic exclusive deals have dried up for indie devs (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Does Epic have any market share past free games and fortnight?

[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Developers. UE5 is chalking up to be the defacto standard for modern titles that don't have budgets large enough to make their own engine.

EGS, on the other hand, is still an abysmal failure beyond the lure of free (and increasingly shittier) games and a yearly 25% off discount coupon that people fall for.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I really wish they'd start by not making the EGS program a fucking UE5 app. Seriously, using the whole ass engine to render html is stupid beyond belief

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wait, is it seriously a full-blown UE5 application?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I was going to call shenanigans, but then I looked at the details of the application:

https://i.imgur.com/J30SGAr.png

So it seems there is something to it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If you peruse the folder where it's installed and compared to any UE4 or UE5 game, you'll notice all the other similarities in .dll files, folders and whatnot. Even the CrashReporter.exe is the same you see in unreal games. Or you can check the config files at Epic Games\Launcher\Engine\Config which has stuff like BaseEngine.ini which, among other networking configurations, also has this:

[/Script/Engine.Engine]
ConsoleClassName=/Script/Engine.Console
GameViewportClientClassName=/Script/Engine.GameViewportClient
LocalPlayerClassName=/Script/Engine.LocalPlayer
WorldSettingsClassName=/Script/Engine.WorldSettings
NavigationSystemClassName=/Script/NavigationSystem.NavigationSystemV1
NavigationSystemConfigClassName=/Script/NavigationSystem.NavigationSystemModuleConfig
AvoidanceManagerClassName=/Script/Engine.AvoidanceManager
PhysicsCollisionHandlerClassName=/Script/Engine.PhysicsCollisionHandler

Meanwhile, in Epic Games\Launcher\Portal\Config, the "game" part of the launcher, you have DefaultGame.ini and DefaultEngine.ini, the latter's first 2 lines pointing back to the Engine folder: [Configuration] BasedOn=..\Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini

So, yeah, it's the actual engine. I was going to complain about disk bloat, but my Steam install is currently sitting at 1.3GB and I'm not entirely sure how much of that is from cached stuff. GOG Galaxy is taking ~980MB, but roughly 650MB are from redist installers (MSVC2005, 2007, dotnet, etc), so a "clean" install would be way lighter than Steam or EGS, the latter at 1.1GB on a clean install.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

That is ridiculous. Even Electron would have been better...

[+] [email protected] -7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Why is it stupid exactly? UE5 scales very well and places very little demand on hardware for simple tasks.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ever heard the saying "Everything looks like a nail when you have a hammer"? Basically, just because you have a tool, it doesn't mean it's the best tool for every job. UE5 is great for making games, cinematics and loads of other stuff. But why use it to effectively behave as a browser like Chrome or Firefox, but worse, when there are alternatives made specifically for that?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That’s not really a valid response. Please accurately clarify why UE5 is inefficient at running a store. Benchmarks and other evidence is required.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I don't think benchmarks are really needed to explain this. The whole game engine part is an unnecessary step.

To initialize a web browser component within UE5, you first need to initialize UE5 and then the web browser within it. Or, you could initialize a web browser directly, saving the memory and time needed to start up UE5.

They clearly have developers who know how to use CEF or whatever web view framework since they added it to Unreal Engine, so it's not like they don't know how to add it to a standalone application.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Nope. Godot, a fully free Unity-like Engine is shaping up to be the defacto standard for good games (AAA garbage is being ignored purposefully)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I know Godot exists, and it's preferable to supporting Epic, but it isn't up to feature parity with UE5. Particularly, when it comes to asset streaming and open world games, Unreal has better support out of the box.

I would love for Godot to be the standard and first choice for every developer (including AAA), though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Steam is largely driven by Valve's own games and freebies as well. 1.5M currently playing Dota 2 and CS 2, with the next best being F2P games: PUBG with 370K online, Apex Legends, and Naraka.