The Ongoing Disasters of the EPIC Games Store

Haha, "I truly hope the Epic Store Fails"

Now that's a "positive review" I can agree with wholeheartedly.


Here's another one I can agree with:

""Exodus is a wonderful game that will greatly benefit from some patching," AKatarzynaK wrote. "Had its release not been cast in a bad light due to a slimy business move then I feel it would be highly beloved right now. But those who are forced to wait until its return to Steam next year might actually find that this worked in their favor, as this will provide time for some final kinks to be worked out so that they may enjoy a great game the way it was meant to be played.""

Waiting brings so many benefits, and denies benefits to Epic / Tencent, as all good things come to those that wait.

"Genuinely, one of the best story driven games I have ever played," said Nuka Cola. "A shame that the publishers, not the devs, messed up the game's success by choosing to take the cash and push the game to the Epic Games Launcher. Would definitely say that this game is worth the purchase, if it ever comes back to Steam."

02/15/20, looking forward to it.

"Metro Exodus players aren't just praising the game in their reviews on Steam - they're having a dig at the Epic Games store in the process. It's as if angry Steam users are review-bombing the Epic Games store via positive reviews for Metro Exodus, which feels a bit like crossing the streams."

 

why do you guys want everything to fail? real question

competition is always good for us

 

Err, "everything"?

Not everything, just the things that take advantage of people's inability to fight back at being taken advantage of, thinking they have us over a barrel so they can take advantage of us and steal away what isn't rightfully theirs.

Like Epic/Tencent buying off Deep Silver with such a huge pile of cash and promises that Deep Silver shafted consumer expectation along with Steam business arrangements, going back on their promise to release Metro: Exodus on Steam - promised for months only to be switched at the last minute, ruining what was a highly anticipated game release with all this crap and fallout.

Epic / Tencent didn't "buy competition" they stole a game out from under everyone, stealing the expectations from months of advertising and pre-sale on Steam, not with the intent to offer the game as a competitive option, but instead to take Metro Exodus as an Epic Store Exclusive.

Epic / Tencent stole the promise of Metro: Exodus's availability on Steam - or any other PC game store - for their own anti-competitive desires.

We all get shafted throughout our lives and most often have no recourse at recompense - we are screwed with no option to recover our losses.

In this case we only need to be patient and wait for the promise of a Steam release for Metro: Exodus to be completed on 02/15/20.

To be rolled over the barrel by Deep Silver / Epic / Tencent is completely within our control. Don't let them do it by simply not playing their game, quite literally.

 

To be honest. I don't want epic to fail. In all honesty I don't want ANY etailers to fail. I want them to offer a full and actual competing product. Hell if they could offer even HALF the features steam does I may be swayed.

The core ones being localized currency, user reviews, a decent and fair return/refund policy, one click online multiplayer where I can invite friends from my list and now family share. I was bad and lured my GF into PC gaming with some Indy games and also shared with my little brothers.

Also I would like to see cross play between stores. I know now there is a lot of pain in the ass trying to play across GOG and steam. It would be nice if it became industry standard to be able to generate an invite link and be able to DM it to friends.

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There are a few mutants whose designs I preferred in Metro: Last Light (for instance, they've shrunk the flying demons and made them look more bat-like, and I think their larger, more-reptillian Last Light design made them look more menacing). Otherwise, I agree with @Mr. Fox - Metro Exodus looks stunning, much better than Metro 2033 and Last Light, even with my GTX 1060 6GB notebook in which I play on 1080p, DX11, High preset, PhysX on, every other setting turned off or set to its lowest value.

 

There you go. That's the right view, IMHO. We don't want what happened with Intel and NVIDIA and Micro$lop (monopolies) to happen to game clients, too. And, the way things have been headed with Steam, they could end up being the only game in town (pun intended). That would not be in our best interests as consumers. It would suck for Steam to be the only platform. Console jockeys already have grown numb to it. I don't think anyone really wants that to happen with PC gaming. Competition is a good thing.

And, as far as the anti-competitive/proprietary hate being flung at Epic, just look at how that kind of stupid greed-driven nonsense has literally ruined laptops. Yet, people are willing to tolerate that load of crap with their expensive turdbooks. Seems like a double-standard when you stop and think about it.

 

yeah i think the competition is great...steam prices may come down

 

This aint competition, competition is if steam and epic offer the same games. Epic maybe a tad lower price but steam offering cloud saves etc. People have a true choice in such a scenario. Now a store with not even the fraction of the functionality compared to steam forces players to move over if they want the game thanks to exclusivity, no tbecause offering the same product for a better price or with better services.

I am not looking for another store after steam, origin, uplay, gog etc. Not to mention bethesda is also opening their own store. At least steam offers 90% of the market while the rest only a small fraction.

True competition means all games on all platforms.

edit: removed some typos, should post messages when tired haha

 

No, it just means higher profits for developers, not lower prices for gamers.

 

$65 USD = oof!

 

$65 where? Is there only 1 version / edition available?

I thought the price dropped $10 when it went to Epic? Although I hear it's not the same everywhere, some places it is higher. I think it was $59 or $85 for the Special Edition at Steam before it got pulled.

 

That's not how it's supposed to work. If a company does bad things, they shouldn't get rewarded by consumers, we should withhold our business from them - even if we wish we could have what they are offering.

If we give them money - reward them for bad behavior - that encourages them to continue doing bad things at our behest. They want money, if we give them money for doing bad things, that is telling them we want them to do bad things. If they succeed doing bad things, we've failed.

I didn't really care about Epic in particular, I wasn't interested in them before they started buying/stealing games to be exclusive on their store. When they stole Metro: Exodus out from under us from our Steam accounts - I can't buy it now because I didn't pre-order it - then Epic came on to my radar as the bad guys that they are now.

Failing as in the sense of this Metro: Exodus deal, yes, I'd like them to not get what they wanted by taking the actions they've taken. That's the specific failure I'd like to see. Failure to grab the business they've taken from Steam through bribing Deep Silver, failure to profit from it, and failure to build business due to their anti-competitive exclusive policy.

If they had done it to any other online Store I would have felt similar, but been less personally invested, as I use all the stores, but prefer Steam when making my purchases.

One of the things that's pointed out many times in the various commentary is that Steam didn't set out to be a monopoly, it's just that they were there doing a good job at it for a long time, and no one else bothered to build up a similar business.

Steam hasn't bribed or stolen business from anyone, Epic does it within a short time after starting their store. That's already soured me on their business, and I'll have nothing to do with them for that reason alone.

Then it's funded / controlled by a Chinese business (Tencent) with even less honor in dealing with personal information than western business, driven as they are by the Chinese government to gather information - outside Epic's control. You can't trust them as a group. There is no trust to be had.

So as far as failing, yes I do hope the efforts of Epic vis a vis Metro: Exodus fails, and fails badly to be an example to others to not deal in a similar fashion with Epic. That's how things self correct, we as consumers guide the business as we want them to be by only paying them money as a reward for doing good and withholding money from businesses as a vote against bad behavior.

That's how it's supposed to work.

If they can count on enough people to "give in" to their base desires - "I must play that game" - then the system breaks down, and they get rewarded for their bad behavior, and likely will continue doing the same.

Be part of the correction, not part of the crime.

 

@hmscott I do believe my statement wasn't clear enough or was misconstrued a bit.

Myself personally will not be supporting Epic games store. And really while they are pulling their sketchy stuff I wouldn't endorse it to any one.

At the end of the day I do want to see them improve and offer an actual competitive product that is in line with consumer interests.

If I hadn't pre ordered the game on steam after the early reviews indicated it was worth the money I would be in the same boat...waiting for it to come out on steam.

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I think I knew what you meant, and I am the same way, I don't want to see anyone or any business fail I want them all to suceed, but that's with the caveat that they are honest and offer business practices deserving of my patronage.

In this case Tencent / Epic / Deep Silver are not deserving of my patronage, and if that holds true as voted by everyone else their business will fail to profit from their bad behavior.

Thanks for clarifying your position

 

yeah this looks like a real good game with amazing graphics......anyone have comments on performance

 

Wow, I didn't know that, Metro: Exodus was done "By Koch Media"

I am sure the 4a guys and gals won't be happy to see their contribution left off of the credit's list upon purchase.

You didn't really pay that much, right? That's way too much for the standard edition, getting up there into the "Exclusive Console" price range. Yet another reason to not support PC Exclusive game deals.

Even if I didn't have the other complaints against the situation, that price would be a show stopper for me. No need to support the trend for higher priced games. Waiting for the price to come down would be my move, if this was a normal situation.

Waiting for the Steam release on 02/15/20 is sounding better and better as time goes by.

 

nope I didn't click the confirm order button. I was just wondering if the price was the same everywhere.

 

Phew!! I saw the credit card number, another worry I would have - giving Epic / Tencent my personal banking info, although I use 1 time payment info it's still preferable to not get into "their system" in any sense, and I wasn't sure you committed to order. Hearing that you didn't, that's what I was hoping.

Thanks for gathering the info.

I thought the Epic price in the US was $49... $10 off the original $59 price.

 

there's some cd key sites for 59 USD....hmm...

 

When I first heard, and missed the pre-order, I thought to look for Steam Keys, but didn't find any... are those Steam keys or Epic? If they are CD keys, the boxed keys are Epic.

 

i think epic keys....no chance for steam keys atm.

 

I bought it from Epic and paid $49.99 for it. That's about $30 more than I am normally willing to pay for a game.
The only reason I have it now and paid more than $20 is because I sold a Clevo part I no longer had any use for.

 

i think mine is locked to Australian pricing....ggrrrr...

 

Yes the dialogue sux. It's taking over the run and gun experience. Have had thoughts about uninstalling it but will carry on. The AI is really bad as well.
Running the settings on close to max but there is no comparison.
The original metro 2033 @Dx9 with particle effects and extreme texture detail craps all over the soft pastel washed out look of metro exodus. Even the tessellation feature doesn't really offer a better more detailed texture.

IMHO, today's games just don't have the visual acuity and fluidity of old.

Just taken some screenshots

Metro Exodus



Metro 2033

 

Any chance you playing on RTX card, with DLSS enabled?
Because IMO, game looks sharper for me:

 

Good question. I will install it on Windows 7 and see how it looks/compares without RTX and DLSS. If it is designed to use those features and the hardware or OS does not support them it is entirely possible that it may not look as good as older titles. I asked the same question before, but it seems to have been overlooked.

 

Isn't it a dx12 title? Did you get that working on win 7?

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Game can run both DX11 or DX12.
I'm actually playing in DX11 (Win10), runs smother for me than in DX12.

 

Nope, it should work fine on W7 under DX11. Any game worth its salt won't be tethered to DX12 and Windoze OS X. The developer would be cutting off their nose to spite their face making it not compatible with the superior older operating system. Way too much money involved to ignore the massive base of Windows 7 users still out there. I think probably only the Redmond Retards and Micro$lop Game Studios are stupid enough to release DX12 exclusive titles (like Gears of War 4... great game apart from that stupidity).

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/metro-exodus/home

 

TBF GOW4 ran great with DX12.

 

Yes, I have it and love it. I just don't love the fact that it is a DX12 only title that requires Windoze OS X turd OS and is only available as a UWP trash app through the Micro$lop Store. I have to triple-boot my system and waste drive space on a cancer-infested version of Windoze OS X only to play that game, which kind of really sucks. I'm sure if it were available without all of that nonsense and worked under DX11 it would run and look every bit as good, or even better, than it already does.

 

All Deep Silver had to do was say no to the exclusive deal. Takes two to tango. It's a business move by Epic to try to get exclusive games on their store to compete. It's also on Deep Silver to take the deal and think that's a good idea for them. No one raises their pitchforks about console exclusives, and it's not even that bad it's not like the game won't run on your hardware.

Look at what's happening to GOG right now, they are super good DRM-free customer-friendly people over there. Valve has it's own predatory practices as well that make it hard for anyone else to compete.

I just don't understand why anyone would have such a rabid cult-like alignment with a specific retailer. None of them are your friends. It's just a store. Just buy the game at Epic, why do you care so much. It's weird.

 

yah really weird

 

Gog isnt doing great because its game selection, 90% are old and indie titles. Developers do not want to release their games eithout DRM and gog is a victim of that. Great concept but in practice flawed.

 

@Talon this game runs amazingly smooth on my 3440x1440 ultra wide with ultra settings and dlss on. The rtx 2080 does get very hot though, I had to use a blower gpu, ASUS turbo card due to the small space available in the all in one barebone.

 

Metro Exodus plays flawlessly under Windows 7, and--at least during the first 15 minutes or so--I cannot really tell any difference in image quality with or without RTX and DLSS. But, I already knew that and didn't buy an RTX 2080 Ti for those features. It looks equally great to me with DX11 or DX12. The only difference I really notice is DX12 framerate is lower (as usual) because it is, arguably, an inferior API that exists only for the Redmond Retards to use as a marketing gimmick to try to coerce adoption of their latest abortion OS. It's really sad that a great title like Gears of War 4 is tethered to the crappy new OS and UWP filth. I'll play more and flip between OSes. If I can actually spot anything nicer with DX12/RTX/DLSS versus DX11 I will try to capture it in a screen shot as an example.

Can anyone else here spot any differences worth mentioning? The screen shots with the OSD on the left are Windows 7 and those with the OSD on the right are Windows OS X. The only thing I can really see is the environment looks a little bit darker on Windows 10 and the shadows obscure less stuff in the background under Windows 7 (and I actually prefer the latter). For example, in the first pair of images, look at the left side of Anna's face that is in the shadows. Also look at the books in the background on the left side of the screen shot.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Images

 

Yup, that's what others have observed as well, the RTX / DX12 net effect is to darken the underground and interior shots to the point you can't see adequately for game play without turning on the flashlight which alerts others to your presence, so you can be discovered while playing with RTX / DX12.

When in DX11 you can see well enough without a flashlight and can play on in the "dark" underground undiscovered.

In the outdoors scenes RTX / DX12 blows out the tree's in an odd way removing their color and shadows, while not being part of the game play it's distracting.

People's faces and body textures also get washed out colors and loss of detail with RTX / DX12.

There are scenes put in the shadow side of the train and other features seemingly at random - mostly to show off the RTX GI lighting effects, but these scenes aren't key to game play.

Given the RTX performance hit of reflections in one game, performance loss from GI in another game, and rumored shadows in others, we basically can get at best 1/3 of the pallet of RTX effects in any one game - and still lose ~50% of the FPS.

Given those numbers, if a game tried to put all 3 effects from RTX in one game, it would run at -150% FPS.

Doubling performance in "Gen 2" RTX GPU's will give -75% performance with all RTX features enabled.

So it will be Gen 3 RTX GPU's with a -35% performance hit and all RTX features active. Probably Gen 3 will be the RTX generation that actually begins to offer games with all the RTX features enabled.

With 18 months between doubling of performance x 3 = 54 months, or 4.5 years away.

 

I'd like to see how Metro Exodus runs on Linux. Maybe somebody will show us that. Metro 2033 Redux and Last Light Redux run on Linux, so I suspect this will, too.

 

does RT even work on linux? does vulcan even support RT?

 

Doesn't need to. In fact, RTX doesn't actually need to work at all, on any OS. It's not relevant... at least not yet. It's too new to matter. And, it may never matter.

Metro Exodus is a truly awesome game. Aside from that, what do you reckon will be the next to-die-for gimmick the Redmond Retards and the Green Goblin pitch to the kiddos? (Watch this full-screen in 4K.)

Should be interesting to see what kind of comments I get on this YouTube video.

"OMG... DX12, RTX and DLSS are so awesome! Really? Are you sure?"


Most people will NEVER get to see an actual side-by-side comparison like this. Having a multi-boot setup allows me the luxury of comparing things that most people cannot and/or will not because they don't have multi-boot capabilities. In fact, my ability to do this is largely what fuels my hatred for Windows 10 crap (and Windows 8.X before 10). I might never know it sucks as bad as it does if I were not running both operating systems on the same machine and constantly comparing them. For the mindless masses, ignorance is bliss.

 

Thanks for making this. The difference between RTX/DLSS on and off is barely noticeable. The only time I noticed a real difference was at the 0:35 mark, where RTX/DLSS makes the outside of the house look considerably darker. I wouldn't say the lightning look noticeably more "realistic;" it just looks darker. And I prefer the DX11 side. Other than that house... I could barely tell a difference between the two. So, no surprise then, it's definitely not worth the performance hit to turn RTX/DLSS on, not even in a game that actually uses ray tracing!

 

if i bought the game i'd probably just run it on high preset with no supersampling and an fps cap with the 1070.

 

A lot of complaints about stuttering, on a wide range of GPU's including the 2080ti, both before and after this latest patch that hasn't fixed it.

Did the update add stuttering and framedrops to you as well?
submitted 11 hours ago by Gonzito3420
https://www.reddit.com/r/metro/comments/av6f39/did_the_update_add_stuttering_and_framedrops_to/

New patch on PC (Feb 26, 2019)
submitted 20 hours ago by prankfurter
https://www.reddit.com/r/metro/comments/av023g/new_patch_on_pc_feb_26_2019/?sort=new

Carbideninja 1 point 5 hours ago
"Guys how's the performance / stuttering after this patch?. I had previously uninstalled the game because of stuttering and reinstalled it yesterday night. Didn't know a patch was out. Still haven't had a chance to play the game after the patch."

Gonzito3420 2 points 11 hours ago
"The stuttering on pc is HORRIBLE. I am playing with a rtx2080ti and its just imposible"

zody0 1 point 5 hours ago
"Even at a low setting the game has this constant stutter, it’s not about the FPS, many people have complained about this in steam discussion even at high end rigs with up to 80 FPS there was always this constant stutter that kills immersion, while many proposed things that “decreased” it, many couldn’t find a way to completely remove it"

NovaLizzie 1 point 3 hours ago
"Yeah it's really depressing 1080Ti here and it's awful to the point where I'm considering putting the game on the shelf and waiting for fixes because it's destroying any immersion"

adri1444 1 point 17 hours ago
"I have a 2060 and the only game that doesn't work with DX12 is this one don't know why, when I played it with my 1060 back in launch day I could play it in DX12 but after I installed the 2060 I got crashes in the intro scene."

 

Denuvo does a lot to mess with your game. So that might be the reason.

I'm still in Volga but I haven't seen much if any stutter. I think maybe once or twice when something tried to run in the background.

And as some other people mentioned. I am hoping that Linux takes off for gaming a littleore so I can hop the boat. Because I think there was a project going on that could stream translate dx12 to Vulkan or something like that. I want to see how that works.

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I figured out the issue run the game in directx11 and it works fine even on extreme for me. Run it in directx12 and you’ll get major issues.
That’s seems to be the problem for me anyway, I don’t care if the graphics aren’t ‘as real life as possible’ I just want to play the game lol.

 

The game runs super smooth for me either way. The 2080 Ti is a beast GPU as far as raw power is concerned, but RTX and DLSS are just marketing gimmicks (deceptive crap) that don't really add any value. That's status quo for the NVIDIOTS and I've learned to expect nothing less from them.

 

My honest opinion: I couldn’t give a care about rtx I just wanted a gpu that was as fast as a gtx 1080 ti but used significantly less power, hence this gpu fit the bill for my psu. Otherwise I wouldn’t in my right mind buy an rtx gpu. £600 for what 1080p 60fps or less with dlss pathetic. At least amd didn’t do the same.

Edit: I hate nvidia but there’s nothing you can do when no one else comes close in terms of gpu power.

It’s the same with apple and Samsung. I chose apple simply because of the power and I know for a fact my Xs max won’t slow down after a year like my s9 plus. As an android kernel developer a long time ago there is a limit to how ‘smooth’ the android experience can be. It’s like amd vs intel in terms of cpu power too.

 

Yeah, having to choose between contentment with second fiddle mediocrity and feeding the hand that bites you is a tough spot to be in. The classic definition of being between a rock and a hard place.