Hi nolegskitten
Good idea for a thread. Whilst not directly related to the game, I have a question I think many people would like to know the answer to. At present, the game is only available on the Epic Store. There are many controversies with this store, my own biggest worry being potential security risks as it been hacked previously. Is the Epic Store safe to use? Must personal details be given when buying the game? Is it possible to play the game without any extra launchers or software downloaded?
Grateful for any advice.
Kind regards,
Ita Bear
That works too, that's not "in" game but that's still a very relevant question.
I had my misgivings about Epic (I'm suspicious about all game launchers to be fair, yes even steam). You do have to put some personal informations in there, which can't really be avoided as you have to buy the games through it, but as anywhere else you can use a nickname and don't have to reveal your identity to others. You don't have to save your payment info in your account (and I would advise you against doing that anywhere really but it's up to you).
I don't play MP in any other game but I understand that EG features are quite poor compared to, say, steam. features like inviting friends simply don't exists, and you can't even gift a game (I wanted to do a small games giveaway at release and couldn't). So, EG is not ideal. I don't know if Epic got their security in order, but in the end a breach is a breach is a breach, so that could (and did) happen anywhere, I didn't do my homework so I don't have any serious opinion about that specific aspect.
So, subpar implementation/missing features for a game launcher, but I don't use these features that much myself. I rely on good old chat and banter with strangers on OW discord (a fine place to hang around for sure) to find MP opponents and get good MP, and so far this worked well for me.
But if you're used to inviting Steam friends, I understand EG doesn't provide much value at all intrinsically.
I love this game and would like it to reach its audience, but I won't lie, I feel like Epic Game exclusivity is its only serious flaw.
Now for
some positives. I want you to buy this game, because it's great and you deserve a great game. The devs also deserve our support, specially if we want them to be able to continue to make great game without having to sign this kind of exclusivity deals. Once you bought the game tho,
you can launch it and play with full features, including MP, without having to use the launcher or have it running. I'd advise you to launch it once a week to check and download patches, we're still receiving weekly updates as the game is still being improved and enhanced actively by Mohawk, but once you updated
you can say goodbye to the launcher for a week without ill effects. The matchmaking is going through Epic network but you don't need the launcher.
so, TLDR:
- I don't have any serious assessment of EG security. I'm a software architect so I probably want more hard facts than most to give an assessment one way or another, but there you go.
- You need to use paypal if you don't want to provide personal information in the launcher to buy the game. I would assume that payment data is separate from your account data, and you don't have to save your payment info into the store, but I can't say I know how EG SI is setup.
- You will have to get the launcher to install the game and update it conveniently. That's probably not an absolute since I think there are alternate open source launchers at least on Linux, but I can't really help you with that.
- The launcher doesn't have to run on your computer for you to play.