I love the idea of getting older AAA titles for free, but hate the idea of installing the Epic Games Launcher on my computer. Where do you guys stand on this?
It also makes me sad that Epig Games has fallen so far. I grew up on Unreal Tournament and now I don’t want them anywhere near my computer.
I have never installed Epic Games Launcher and still claim and play their games for free. It’s pretty easy:
- claim games on epicgames.com (I use my phone)
- install Heroic and login to your epic games account
- play your claimed games
I play on my Steam Deck and on my Linux desktop, and EGS isn’t supported on either. Seems to work fine.
Hell yeah! I did not know this was an option. Thanks for the tip!
Also works for prime games. And if you are on Linux especially GOG as well.
I’m still on Windows for now, so I use a PortableApps installation to claim the games instead of a phone. I do the same for my wife and kid too. Neither of them has the Epic installer 🤷🏻♂️😁
You can claim directly from Heroic btw, just go to “Stores”
I usually claim Thursday mornings at work so I don’t forget, and it takes like 30s. But it’s pretty cool that it works in Heroic as well.
Free games are good. Have been using Heroic launcher in Linux. Free or not, I’m still waiting for the time to be right.
I always get them but expect them to disappear.
Free is free. If they’re making a bunch of money off ten year-olds and their moms, I’ll take their giveaways. If I get something free from Epic and I really like it, I’ll buy it on gog too.
Same, but on GOG or Steam.
I have never paid a dime on EGS, nor do I plan to. I have purchased games I got for free from EGS on other stores, so there’s that.
I wish GOG would get on the Linux train a bit more.
Iirc, they’re the least profitable of the three big stores, so I understand that it might be difficult to devote the resources needed, but given that they have Linux versions of some games, it would be nice if they’d make a flatpak of Galaxy (or maybe they should just give their Galaxy dev budget to Heroic).
Not worth bothering with for me.
Heroic launcher. This is what you need, my friend.
I wonder if Epic and Gog would generate a ground-swell of support if they simultaneously announced official support for Heroic. Or even official cross-launcher support though I think Heroic would be a better long term bet.
GOG sort of has, the developer gets a cut of purchases made through Heroic. That’s almost enough for me to start buying from them, but I’d really like a blog post with official support, and perhaps a grant from GOG.
If that happens, I’ll buy a bunch of GOG games. Until then, I’ll buy from Steam.
No tux, no bux. If you support tux, you get bux. It’s simple.
I feel good. Who doesn’t like free games?
What’s wrong with Epic Games launcher? I understand that they require some sort of delivery mechanism, even if you don’t use Epic you have to use Heroic or something. Is there something else I should hate?
Some people don’t like having to use more than one launcher. Some people don’t like Epic buying out games and making them exclusive to EGS (which keeps the price artificially high for longer). Some people just feel like the launcher, er, launched without feature parity with Steam, and has made very few improvements since launch. I’m sure there’s more reasons people dislike Epic. I don’t overly care but it’s certainly not a preferred platform for me.
They have been in hot water before when they were caught scraping data without consent and sending it back to Epic. Folders/files and apparently steam user info?
The client still supposedly phones home with some encrypted data and nobody is completely sure what it is, they say it’s anti-cheat stuff, but then there’s this:
“40% of Epic Games is owned by Tencent they’re a Chinese Tech Company which the Chinese Government has a certain say in what they do. LITERALLY without Tencent Epic would go under they’re the only reason why Epic Games has gotten so many exclusives and given away so many free games. There is LITERALLY a board member in Tencent that was appointed by the Chinese Government.”
So can we trust them? Probably not.
I claim everything since free is free. But I don’t have the launcher installed, since I have a lot of other games to play so haven’t gotten around to it.
Like other commenters I take advantage of them but only if I can do so on my terms: on Linux or the Steam Deck using Heroic or a similar solution. There is absolutely no way I’d use Windows or the Epic launcher for this.
And since these methods are not officially supported and could break in the future I can’t spend money at the Epic store. I only leech on the free stuff while it’s practical to do so.
Exactly.
If EGS pulled a 180 and officially supported Linux, maybe I’d change my position, but for now I’ll play whatever works on Linux through Heroic and leave it at that.
i’ve stopped bothering. I saw dredge was free there a little while ago, and that’s a game I want to play. Didn’t even claim it.
I’m over the politics of game launchers. Like, a free game is a free game, some devs/publishers probably get paid to get their game released for free. I’ve taken advantage of them, I wish I hadn’t deleted one of my Epic games accounts before where I nearly had gotten every game that I actually had wanted that was given away for free. But I was naive because I got caught up in the stupid pissing contest between Steam fanboys and Epic fanboys.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Free is free. I would rather a free whole game, than a freemium game, which is all that Steam mostly offers.
There’s epic fanboys?
Yeah, they really like the 12% fee to devs, and think Sweeney is benevolent for suing Google and Apple.
I’m not a Steam fanboy, but they’ve done right by me in supporting Linux, so they get most of my gaming money. I didn’t have a Steam account until they supported Linux, and I used to give Humble most of my gaming money back when they were independent and actually had interesting indie bundles. I would consider switching to GOG or EGS if they committed to supporting Linux like Steam has.
If Steam changes their policies, I’ll stop buying from them. Simple as. But for now they’re making my gaming experience better, so I’ll continue buying from them. I’m easy to please, if you provide a good service that I want that supports my platform, I’ll give you money, and I’ll ignore a lot of other bad stuff you do (e.g. MTX in Valve games I don’t play anyway).
I claim whatever I can, and that still doesn’t force me to play it or install their launcher to claim them.
I don’t see any point in claiming free games from it.
If by any chance one of the games I might ever want to play becomes a freebie, then I would simply browse my backlog rather than forsake my principles.
I have claimed most of the games and some have been real gems. I’ve bought a few games too because they were the cheapest option.
Personally I don’t have a problem with the Epic launcher as it’s just a launcher which is fine by me. I use GOG Galaxy anyway and I’m not a fan of Steam either so don’t care about that aspect.
