One of the largest video game companies in the world, Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games-a fact cited by English speaking netizens as reason for concern. It's a lot to unpack, but the origins of the claim go back to the Chinese video game megacorporation Tencent. A sample of tweets accusing the Epic Games Store of being Spyware. Here are a few comments on Twitter to such effect. While Epic says that it can't keep offering exclusives at its current rate forever, that hasn't stopped Epic from picking up other exclusivity deals with Remedy, Obsidian, and even 2K, for the upcoming Borderlands 3.Īnd as the exclusives pile up, the assertion that the Epic Games Store is spyware has only intensified. Epic picked up highly-anticipated games like 4A Games' Metro Exodus and Ubisoft's The Division 2. One of the ways Epic has gotten potential customers to look at the Epic Games Store is through exclusives. Buoyed by the success of Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic was in a strong position to challenge Steam. But instead of asking for 30% like Valve, Epic only asks for 12%. Like Valve, the Epic Games Store also takes a cut from sales made on games sold through its store. It was during this time that Epic Games announced the Epic Games Store, a direct competitor to Steam that planned to not only offer Epic Games titles, but third-party games as well. Companies like Activision, EA, and Bethesda began launching games on their own digital stores to varying degrees of success, all bypassing a need to pay distributors like Valve. Last year, publishers began branching out on their own. That's a hefty sum, but it gives publishers access to the largest digital PC games customer base. Valve's popular digital PC games store in 2011 was reported to control anywhere between 50 to 70% of downloaded PC games, but in 2018, things started to change.īehind the scenes, Valve asked for 30 percent of the revenue on games sold through Steam. The Epic Games Store Appearsīefore the Epic Games Store, the online digital PC games market was dominated by one name: Steam. The Epic Games Store is, safe to say, certainly not a spy agency for the Chinese government, but Epic's relationship with a Chinese corporation has complicated the narrative and reinforced certain stereotypes. EA's Origin service faced similar accusations when it first launched. The accusations though are largely baseless, and criticisms of improper data handling aren't new to the Epic Games Store. There's also a highly-cited Reddit thread titled, "Epic Game Store, Spyware, Tracking, and You!" This is often done by tricking people into downloading and installing malicious software that serves as the tool to sneak out information from your computer.Ī quick search online of the terms "Epic Games Store" and "Spyware" pulls up a variety of results, mostly of commenters saying that yes, Epic Games Store is spyware. Not in a cheeky way either, but that Epic is a conduit for the Chinese government to spy on players.Īt its core, spyware is a software that enables an entity, often hostile, to obtain information from your computer to them without you ever knowing. But perhaps most stunningly some have gone as far to say that the Epic Games Store is literal spyware. They allege that the Epic Games Store is poorly designed and lacking in features, fair critcisms, actually. The Epic Games Store is currently suffering from what people in the industry call "an image problem." Despite challenging the Steam monopoly with a more generous revenue split for publishers and developers, the Epic Games Store has a vocal contingent of critics. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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