Metro was an *utter disaster* on Epic Store, and 'saved' by moderate console sales. Then again the game, while a vast amount of hard work, was extremely mediocre. It didn't come close to Witcher, Skyrim or GTA (or even Stalker) in quality, being instead more like an interactive movie. But it would have made a ton more money on Steam.
I was on an Epic Store page a day ago, and my first thought was "where is all the info I need about the game?". It is an effing joke- a joke of a joke- a slap in the face of every consumer whose IQ reaches at least double digits. What kind of braindead scum lauds the Epic Store over Steam. I've never seen such a customer pleasing sales service as steam- Steam is a one-in-a-lifetime miracle of a catalogue, the impossibly rare example of Internet tech reaching full potential.
Ah- but the depraved neo-liberal, alt-left, fabian monsters howl their outrage at Steam allowing those that pay the bills to have a say.
Epic exists for one reason only- the sociopatic nature of John Carmack. Id had the massive lead, and Unreal (years before Unreal the game launched) was a pathetic joke- and I talk as probably the *only* person here who ran the first alpha of the engine on the day it was posted. But Carmack *hates* more talented coders than himself, and drove out of iD any coder who showed actual talent. As one of the three owners of iD, Carmack also insisted on a say about biz issues, the direction of game design and the direction of iDs future engines.
So Carmack *ruined* iD's ability to make engines worth using by third parties, and Epic simply stepped in. As a one-man-shop, Carmack could never compete with the sane many-man Epic team, even tho Carmack was vastly better than any of the coders at Epic in the early days.
Epic was an accidental success, simply claiming the established iD throne when Carmack crashed iD's ability to continue wearing the crown.
So Sweeney comes from a bad place in the first instance- and his current success, Fortnite, was actually down to people-can-fly, who left Epic before their code base morphed into the BR megasuccess.
Sweeney doesn't care about the health of the market, or the service given to gamers. He simply wants to be the most successful *cancer* - to infect and destroy for his own glory.
Today, like all evil corporations, he gives 'free sweets' to the 'children' to earn their 'loyalty' and to hurt established businesses attempting to operate on a profit basis. Intel tried the same thing against ARM in the phone and cheap tablet biz- illegally giving away its first decent generation of Atom chips to any company that would use them to build a phone or tablet. Once America enforced its laws against such illegal practices, but since the time of Bush/Clinton/Obama no longer.
But Steam is also a giant, and it is hard to see how Steam has reason to worry long term. Sure, cretins will praise Epic while Epic gives them freebies- but such mouth-breathers always behave thusly. Sweeney relies on moronic idiocy in 'customers', and self serving greed in devs and publishers. These two base qualities will always carry some sway. But long term, sane biz methods win out.