The Epic client might not be spyware right now, but more broadly, do you really trust Epic as a company? Frankly, I don't. Do you still trust Epic knowing that users of their platform have significant issues with account security.
Epic games store update#
It's a matter of trust.ĭo you, the consumer, trust Epic to run a piece of software on your system that will self update itself periodically? Do you still trust Epic while knowing they are partially owned by a Chinese company that is known for censorship? Do you still trust Epic given that they have openly admitted to bypassing the steam API and accessing users personal steam information. Those descriptors are (so far) limited to extremely generic (and universally positive) sentiments about the game: "amazing storytelling" "diverse characters" "obsessive gameplay" "great boss battles" etc.These kinds of technical analysis completely miss the point. With EGS, on the other hand, player-reviewers answer pre-populated survey questions about specific elements of the game, which are then distilled into descriptors that are listed alongside the user review score. That can help both customers and the developers, who can learn what to focus on in future updates. On Steam, users can add text to their thumbs-up/thumbs-down reviews, highlighting which specific elements they did or didn't like. The other main problem with the Epic Games Store's user reviews is their lack of specificity. "We have already made and will continue to make adjustments to the system to provide the best information for each game. "We're continuously evaluating how players interact with our ratings and polls," Chester said. That's not necessarily a problem, so long as EGS users realize the nature of that skew and keep it in mind when comparing scores on a relative basis. On the other hand, limiting reviews to active and consistent players could be skewing those reviews toward the higher end of the scale.
Osiris: New Dawn, the absolute worst-rated game we could find on the store, currently has a rating of 3.8/5. Of the 480 or so EGS games for which we could find a public user rating thus far, only four had an overall rating of less than 4 out of 5 stars. On the downside, Epic's system also seems to lead to significant score inflation. Limiting reviewers to a small, random sampling of active players means it would be difficult if not impossible for those players to organize any such review bombing campaign. On the other hand, Epic will likely never have to worry about detecting its own EGS review bombs. Valve's efforts, which mix automated detection algorithms with decisions by "a team of people at Valve," have had mixed results. On Steam, Valve has gone to great lengths to combat a common issue where floods of "off-topic" reviews (i.e., those focused on issues "outside of the game.") mess with their user recommendation engine. Epic promises that "we won't spam our players, and we probably won't ask about every game or app used."įurther Reading Borderlands review bomb triggers Steam’s “off topic” fix That's not an insignificant improvement either. Those quick surveys-which are supplemented by polls that ask more specific questions about a game's contents-appear to players randomly after individual play sessions. On EGS, by contrast, Epic explains that the "ratings system will ask random players, who have played a game for more than two hours, to give a rating on a five point scale."
On platforms like Steam, anyone who has "recorded playtime" on a title can submit a user review. The main difference in the Epic Games Store rating system is that it's not just open to any player with an opinion. While EGS's user review system brings some interesting ideas to online game stores, it still feels a little half-baked, even after years of apparent work on Epic's part. The first set of public ratings produced by that system is now live for hundreds of titles on the Epic Games Store (skip to the end of this article for a handy breakdown of some of the best-reviewed EGS games thus far).Īfter sifting through those ratings a bit, some pros and cons of Epic's unique user review approach come to the forefront.
Epic games store Pc#
Further Reading Epic Games Store launches with extremely limited selection of gamesLast week, Epic finally added a user review system to its PC Game Store, nearly 3.5 years after the service's initial launch.
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