Sometimes the DLC for the free game on epic costs the same as the full package on steam. So epic is an extended demo really
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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I bought a game on steam once that I already had on epic for free. It was on sale for like $5 on steam(Hunter: Call of the Wild), and I was curious if all the shader pre-caching and optimizations steam does with the Steam Deck would have it run better with the steam version, compared to the epic games version.
Did it run better?
Totally left us hanging.
What a tease.
An Epic win for Steam!
It's a win for everyone except Epic. PURE BLISS.
“I used to think EGS was a Marketing Black Hole,” the New Blood CEO said, “but turns out having your game be free on Epic is great advertising for Steam sales!” Alongside the boost in Steam sales, Blood West also saw a jump in console sales as well while it was free on Epic.
That's incredible.
Oshry is far from the only developer to point out issues with the Epic Games Store. Just recently, in an interview with FRVR, Painkiller and Witchfire creator Adrian Chmielarz explained that Epic doesn’t feel like “home” to players, and that causes many to simply clock out, saying “EGS is a shop, and Steam is a community.”
I have a lot of free games on Epic. But when I want to play with my gaming group, we're using Steam. It's just where everybody is.
Indeed, I suspect the sales funnel is like this: one person picks it up for free on EGS and then annoys their friends to get it as well for multiplayer, but those friends rather buy it on Steam than to bother with installing another (bad) store app. At least I had that happen to me a few times.
Makes sense. By the time a game shows up on a giveaway it has been out long enough that there's lot of discounts for it. So small budget price that might be less than the price of buying lunch is worth it for some to not deal with Epic.
And the giveaway is good promotion, since even people like me who don't have epic launcher installed will still be aware of it and claim it through a browser. Ends up being free marketing among those who subscribe to gamedeals type communities or visit sites like isthereanydeals. Gives games an opportunity to get a second wind.
By the time a game shows up on a giveaway it has been out long enough that there’s lot of discounts for it
That's often but not always the case. For example, the first ever giveaway in Dec 2018 was Subnautica, which was released in Jan that same year. Occasionally other stuff has only been out a couple years, which means it's showed up with discounts before but probably not deep ones.
It's true for me at least. If I like a freebie from Epic, I'm more likely to buy it on Steam also just so that I can use it easily with the Steam Deck without additional configuration.
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The current free game are the two Styx games. I grabbed them on Steam when I saw they went 90% off so I'd have an easier time running them on my legion go and my Android phone. I learned of the games because of them being the EGS free game and the game looked up my alley
https://store.steampowered.com/app/242640/Styx_Master_of_Shadows/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/355790/Styx_Shards_of_Darkness/
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This is just the PS3 vs Xbox 360 game wars but worse. Stop being loyal to corporations you imbeciles, of course a dev will say whatever makes him more money. Including appeasing the fellating steam fanboys. The game could have gone completely unnoticed if it wasn't on epic, barely any sales, and even a minor bump in visibility would have created more steam sales regardless if users knew if it was available on epic for free. Unless I see numbers I don't care what this dev says and you shouldn't either.
But you're all rabid to hate on epic when both stores are just bum ass corporations and will circle jerk each other off on why your team is better.
But you're all rabid to hate on epic
If I had to pick between buying a game on Steam or Epic, I would pick the one which did some good things for consumers over the one that stuck their middle finger up at us.
There's no denying that Valve's contributions to DXVK, WINE, KDE, and Linux are a self-serving way to ensure Steam remains relevant after Microsoft locks Windows into a walled garden. Even so, the end result was an overall benefit for consumers. We would have had something like Proton eventually, but it would not have come nearly as quickly without their financial backing.
What has Epic done? A bunch of free games that I still don't have enough time to play and would not have picked up anyways, great. That doesn't make up for the rest of their wannabe-monopoly, anticonsumer practices like making exclusivity deals to railroad people into using their store by making sure consumers are denied a choice.
Fuck Epic, and fuck Tim Sweeney's self-aggrandizing attitude. If he actually gave a shit about anything other than his ego, he would have spent his time leading Epic Games to challenge "the Steam monopoly" by providing a better customer experience, not posting on Twitter acting like the messiah of PC gaming.
You make some good points about Valve's bread crumbs, but my point still stands that this is an article with no other purpose than to reinforce the opinions of those who already had their minds made up about this. The dev possibly included, or inciting the opinions of those who have.
It's a circlejerk post and article. Just because Valve sucks slightly less doesn't mean we need to treat them like god's gaming storefront. If people weren't already on the "fuck Epic" bandwagon this is a non-story.
Agreed on both points.
If it was GOG and not EGS, the reaction would probably be very different. But, because people already hate Epic (for good reason), writing an article that appeals to schadenfreude makes for some easy ad revenue.
People also shouldn't be idolizing corporations. They're not our friends; we're only a means to an end for them. The best case scenario for us is mutualism, and the worst case is parasitism. All it takes is a change in leadership or a change in circumstances to go from one to the other, and a constant need for growth encourages the parasitic enshittification we're well acquainted with.
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