I'm beginning to think poor Epic is developing some sort of complex. Nary a month after CEO Tim Sweeney took to the airwaves to admit that, yeah, the , the store's general manager Steve Allison has taken to the stage (via ) at yesterday's Unreal Fest to admit that "even after years of building the store on PC, we know there's still a ton of work to be done to deliver a world-class experience."
Of course, he's not wrong. Allison said that as a lead-in to talk about all the features that were due [[link]] to trickle into the Epic Games Store in the near future: stuff like preloading, gifting, and game-independent voice and text chat. You know, stuff that Steam has had for years. Oh, and as for clunkiness: "We're also putting great focus on ongoing launcher improvements that will make the store feel great to use."
Hey, good for Epic. As much as I don't use the Epic launcher, I do think the company—whatever its reason—does a lot of things on its business-side I wish Steam would adopt. EGS' 12% cut on revenue from its store is a lot less galling than the meaty 30% Valve takes at base, and its various schemes to tempt devs and publishers—like its recently announced 0% fee for all games until they make $1 million in revenue—would be great to see on PC gaming's most popular storefront.
But none of these things are going to tempt players, I think, and nor will just bringing the EGS up to parity with Steam. I have to admit, Epic's biggest hurdle to getting me using its store has little to do with functionality or player-treat schemes. It's the simple fact that I have 1,400 games on Steam and little desire to suddenly start up a whole new, separate shelf. I don't know how Epic can ever overcome that, but it's probably not with preloading.