Epic game store is epic at spying on you

[R0H1T]

I subscribe to the idea they are only powerless when the majority of them are content to be so, but yes, this is encroaching into philosophy. Either way my point stands. Want to change it? Doing anything is better than doing nothing and acting all "oh, we're powerless, shut up you wankers."

Of course but how much of what we do or we're able to pull off, that still depends on the people in that seat of power or to be more precise the system - which all of us are beholden to. What happened to that equifax scandal, was anyone convicted? What about FB & CA, the onion is yet to be fully peeled off that one. The 2008 meltdown among many such other scandals? I'm not even touching the (geo)political gaffes of the last century.

 

[moproblems99]

I truly hope an alternative Game Store comes out to directly compete with STEAM. Because we need fair competition. Epic may be that special storefront one day, but it has a long way to go. I just don't like the tactics used to remove the game off Steam and exclusively offer it only on Epic. That rubs me and many others the wrong way. Anyhow,
I know Metro is a single player game, that is actually the reason why I play the previous 2. I am not too fond about MMO, though some like L4D2 I don't mind, its fun and most of my friends are on it.

Everybody has their reasons for what they want. I just want to sit down and play the game. If it launches the game, I'm happy.

 

[AmioriK]

That probably applies more in a philosophical way, the plebs are more or less powerless. In the grand scheme of things gaming doesn't matter - on a macro level much of what we do is a function of the liberties, powers the rich & the powerful (elites) have afforded us. You could one day wake up as the enemy of the state & not be able do anything about it. In that sense we are more powerless than ever, at least on an individual level. The more nations grow, become rich & powerful - the more power is sucked out of that common man's hands.

You calling me a pleb m8?

Who am I kidding, I'm a pleb. :<

 

[64K]

It would be nice to see some actual sales figures.

I would like that as well. The only thing I can find is that the game is selling very well. Much better than Last Light but most of those sales are on PS4. I can't find anything on PC sales. Even then we would have to back out the pre-orders on Steam to know what the sales were on Epic Store.

I've already answered this question. You are saying Epic can't reach these 90 million people. I said no such thing.
Anyhow, Epic's is nowhere near the pull Steam has nor does it offer anything better than Steam offers. Perhaps sometime in the future it will match or exceed Steam, till that time, Steam is the better platform that offers the most games and is more stable.

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And I'll throw this out there, the sentiments of over 37K people and climbing.

In fairness to Epic they do have a Roadmap for improvements and they give specific time frames for the improvements to be implemented:

"According to the roadmap, Epic Games has recently implemented a Store Search feature, Free Game Notification, Code Redemption improvements, Collections and Bundles, an Offline mode, Pre-Loading and Regional Pricing.

In the next three months, Epic Games aims to implement the ability to search by genre or tag, make some improvements to the Offline Mode, overhaul its Install Management “Under the Hood”, add Store Video Hosting, re-design the Store page, improve DLC support, add/enable Cloud Saves, implement add-on purchase checks and improve patch sizes.

Epic’s mid term goals (4 to 6 months from now) are to enable User Reviews, add Wishlists, improve the Newsfeed and Follow features, implement additional Payment Methods and Currencies, as well as Player Play Time Tracking, add Mod support for games, enable an Epic Games Overlay and make some improvements to the Library.

Last but not least, Epic’s long term goals are to add Achievements, Shopping Cart, Direct Carrier Billing and overhaul the Social functionalities!"

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/epic...loud-saves-mod-support-achievements-and-more/

 

[silentbogo]

Can you explain how Steam has more reach?

For once, it has people like me and their friends (this is called "guaranteed auditory", or "loyal fanbase").
\

The only reason I don't have exodus, is because I don't do pre-orders. Last one was "Shadow of Mordor" and it took nearly 2.5 years to get it from "sucks" to "works", since every DLC broke the game for me.
I'll exercice patience and wait 'till 2020 for proper Steam release.

 

[R-T-B]

What happened to that equifax scandal, was anyone convicted?

Because people didn't see the effects immediately, nor did it occur near election time. Natural reaction. Sad but true. If there had been true outrage near an election something would've happened. If there had been enough outrage it would've happened whether or not there was an election time, but that takes a lot more outrage than that is likely to generate.

What about FB & CA, the onion is yet to be fully peeled off that one.

Because as pathetic as it is, people think they need those companies (social media). They will never bite the metaphorical hand that feeds them their cute cat pics.

 

[Valantar]

So just to follow up on my request to Epic for any and all information they had collected on me - they delivered. They did their due diligence, requiring me to confirm some stuff before providing any data (hey, someone at least pretends to care about security!), and provided a PDF with a clear and concise overview of my account info: display name, first and last name, account ID, account status, date of account creation, list of failed logins, any registered addresses, devices, sessions, IP addresses, user names for linked external accounts (and region for my PSN user), account history (a list of significant account actions - linking of external accounts, creation of the account, etc.), "entitlements" (the stuff I own through the Epic store, I guess?), a list of the agreements I've accepted and the date and time of this, payment info, tax info, transaction history (free games don't count as transactions, apparently), and code redemptions.

To sum up: this contained nothing I haven't directly provided them with myself. Certainly no usage logs or system data.

They also sent a .zip file containing the files "profile.html" and "profile.json". The json file contains this: "[ ]". Yeah, that's it. The html contains the necessary html code to make the background black and print "No Profile Data Available".

Of course, trusting this to be the end of things requires a few assumptions:
a) that Epic is actually sending me all the data they have.
b) that the short time I've had the app open is enough for any hidden shenanigans to activate itself.

So, tl;dr: they were helpful and did indeed send over the required data, and none of it looks fishy. On the other hand, there's no way of knowing if they're omitting anything.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

They got this fixed. EpicGamesLauncher.exe is no longer looking any deeper at Steam other than checking the registry that it is installed.

 

[64K]

Sweeney has made a few interesting tweets in the last few days to address some concerns from the PC gaming community:

"Tencent has no access to customer data. The Terms of Service references data shared between Epic’s wholly owned international subsidiaries (which exist to process purchases and pay tax around the world). Tencent is an investor only and is not covered by that language."

"Investors have access to Epic’s financial statements. For an example what’s in a company’s financial statement, look up EA’s financial statement online (it’s publicly available). Investors do not have access to Epic customer data."

Concerning the security breach that has been pointed to by a lot of gamers as a reason to avoid the Epic Store:

"Epic Games login data has not been leaked. Rather, hackers use databases of email address and password combinations that were leaked from other sites, and attempt to login to Epic and other services using the same credentials. (Always use a unique password everywhere.)"

He also mentioned bringing some older Epic games to the Store in the future at some point:

"Making older Epic games available on the Epic Games store is completely logical and something we’re looking into in the background, but this isn’t coming shortly."

He also said that he will be opening the Store to all small Indie Developers later this year but bear in mind he is against having shovelware and porn on their Store.

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/tim-...c-store-exclusives-older-epic-games-and-more/

 

[Deleted member 24505]

And re- his comment about porn, there are some very dubious indeed "games" on the steam store, which are just fapware if you ask me.

 

[GoldenX]

You know what doesn't spy on you? Defenceless .torrent files.

 

[Cvrk]

good find. You can also monitor this activity with GlassWire Firewall extension.

 

[moproblems99]

You know what doesn't spy on you? Defenceless .torrent files.

You may wanna think twice about that.

 

[R-T-B]

You know what doesn't spy on you? Defenceless .torrent files.

Except for the part where bittorrent literally is a "tracker" based technology for the basis of it's file sharing, sharing your ip and files...

And re- his comment about porn, there are some very dubious indeed "games" on the steam store, which are just fapware if you ask me.

Personally I have no issue with this. Not my thing but some people, heck even some of our users (cough cough @xkm1948) love this sort of thing. If your an adult why the ruckus?

 

[biffzinker]

There's a link in the launcher under settings for a roadmap of changes coming to the Epic Games Store.
https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap

 

[R-T-B]

In other fun news, I learned the hard way today, to make an ARK mod I have to install the epic games store just to get their toolkit... which uploads to the steam workshop.

lolwut?

 

[moproblems99]

There's a link in the launcher under settings for a roadmap of changes coming to the Epic Games Store.
https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap
View attachment 120738

The fact it is a trello board pisses me off.

 

[64K]

The fact it is a trello board pisses me off.

Why? It's just a convenient medium for Epic to keep us up to date on features added and features planned within time frames.

 

[biffzinker]

@rtwjunkie, Where you at man? No one wants to be friends.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@rtwjunkie, Where you at man? No one wants to be friends.
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Lolwut?

 

[biffzinker]

Lolwut?

Epic Game Launcher

 

[moproblems99]

Why? It's just a convenient medium for Epic to keep us up to date on features added and features planned within time frames.

Just a personal thing, I hate trello.

 

[Space Lynx]

I mean Discord spies on you too, and no one complains about that. I am still amazed at how much systems info Discord knows about my PC. It literally knows and reports every program automatically... I really miss Ventrilo client... it was not invasive at all and did only what it was meant to do...

 

[rtwjunkie]

Epic Game Launcher

I'll get on a little later this afternoon.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

In other fun news, I learned the hard way today, to make an ARK mod I have to install the epic games store just to get their toolkit... which uploads to the steam workshop.

lolwut?

Unreal Engine 4 is distributed and updated via Epic Games Launcher.