KingThrillgore

But a fire spell is cheaper than a molotov.

The problem is the new wave of gacha games are really selling you on characters and Hoyoverse isn't even hiding it anymore: The more money you pour into Zenless Zone Zero, the less clothes the Proxy wear in the unlockables. And they have characters for every sexual preference on Earth at this point.

Gran Turismo and Forza. I love the simulation aspect, ain't no way on Earth I want to drive a sports car. Too irresponsible.

Mario Kart for the social aspect.

yes

That's great, but I played the campaign and without more story stuff I don't have any incentive to go back to Pacific Drive. For what its worth, I enjoyed my time in the game.

Yes. Its AI generated slop. I use SearxNG, and I have it tuned to go to Startpage first, Google second.

I would think the gay and sex parts of my brain would be 99% and the other 1% existential dread

"[Stupid rich person shit]"

--Larry Ellison, soon to be major shareholder of Paramount

If you are using Steam, you likely have the resources for its overhead + Chromium.

Believe it or not, Steam used to take longer to start, due to pre-loading shaders for Source games, but its been phased out.

My reasons are as follows:

• The feature parity with Steam's social functionality is bad. There's no Messaging, no Friends list with the ability to join their games, No chat, no stats page, no achievements, no screenshots, no streaming, no trading cards, nothing to make the experience interesting outside of buying games.
• The IAP experience is not there, and if it is, they are not holding vendors to it. When I played Zenless Zone Zero, I was quickly funneled to Hoyoverse's launcher for all of that. Its incredible Epic is letting the 1-2% they could make here slip from them, and it means Hoyo needs my Paypal or whatever (i'm not comfortable with this).
• Developer API support is not there, which means that any additional EGS integration is, well, half baked. See Satisfactory for an example
• Steam offers better game discovery, family sharing, matchmaking, and so forth. EGS provides none outside of what it plans campaigns for.
• Steam provides a better API for game controllers, EGS assumes the game will use XInput which works on a per-game basis. Its nothing compared to how with Steam, I can remap controllers easily, especially on KBM only games like Factorio.
• Epic Games acquisitions of exclusives means they have little financial runway, and projects that I liked (Alan Wake 2, World of Goo 2) will probably never see the light of day outside EGS. This means the developers took a constantly shrinking advance over genuine sales and WOM, many are still not profitable. Its already unsustainable for Remedy: They've killed the deal with Epic and are now going to a shaky Annapurna. Gearbox didn't profit off Borderlands 3 off its advance, and they aren't getting any further profits from the shrinking advances.

Most importantly: EGS is supported by Fortnite money from parents who don't know any better. If Fortnite collapses (which can happen easily if regulators hold Epic to task), EGS will keel over.

In regards to community features, I know what you're thinking: Epic could buy Discord! Alas, it would take years to tie the software together, and any acquisition of Discord would significantly fracture the community. I can see a quarter to a third of Discord's userbase leaving for Matrix.

1. Fox News isn't state owned
2. Fox News has argued in court its entertainment, you're a sucker for believing their crap, and they've won

That said, yeah its quite the hypocrisy.

Probably right after the election.