Epic?

[CptHowdy]

I do not like the platform either but not because my games don't work. I got the free darkest dungeons and had to purchase 3 dlc separately. No shopping cart to put it all in one transaction. 3 separate transactions. Ridiculous.

[Pete Dero]

https://www.bluesnews.com/s/217885/epic-games-launcher-causing-temperature-spikes
https://hothardware.com/news/epic-games-shenanigans-with-cpus

A very active Reddit post discusses graphic card temperature spikes caused by the Epic Games Launcher, even when the program is idle.

The hot hardware experts at Hot Hardware discuss the details of what's going on:

Ultimately, these CPU temperature and usage spikes are not typical of game launchers. When experimenting with the Steam and GOG launchers, CPU idle temps and usage remained nominal and much lower, after an initial brief spike on loading. So what exactly is happening with the Epic Games Launcher that idle temps are spiking and CPU usage is unnecessarily engaged?

Doing some testing on another personal machine, we noticed that the Epic Games Launcher has five different processes open at one time. Out of curiosity, we opened up Glasswire, which is a free network traffic monitor. We could see that the Epic Games Launcher and associated processes were firing off data at regular intervals to over 22 different servers. This was happening whether we had the launcher open, minimized, or in the background. The larger spikes shown in the Glasswire graph below are from when we reopened the Epic Games launcher after closing it.

Another interesting discovery is that the "EpicWebHelper" sent some data to the following URL:

    tracking-website-prod07-epic-961842049.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com

Over the course of approximately an hour, Epic Games sent more data than 514KB of data to some server(s) somewhere. This is more than 14x what Steam and NVIDIA GeForce Experience sent in the background during the same timeframe. While it remains to be seen if the data collection is the cause of the CPU usage issue, something smells fishy here. In fact, it may be advisable to kill off the Epic Games launcher for now, when you're not actively using it.

[steve58]

Epic Games buys a mall for new campus.

[steve58]

This week's freebie is up:
Crying Suns

Next week's freebie (Jan 14-21) is:
STAR WARS Battlefront II: Celebration Edition

[Gusington]

Dammit I just bought Battlefront II...on sale for like 12.00 but still.

And I have been eyeing Crying Suns also.

[jamus34]

I haven't been able to give Crying Suns the time it deserves but it's a pretty fun indie rogue-lite.

[steve58]

This week's freebie is up:
STAR WARS Battlefront II: Celebration Edition

Next week's freebie (Jan 21-28) is:
Galactic Civilizations III

[Pete Dero]

Game announcement :

HITMAN 3 will act as a platform for the entire trilogy, making it possible for players to import locations that they own from previous HITMAN games and play all 20+ locations from the trilogy in one place. HITMAN 2 players will also have the option to carry over their hard-earned unlocks and progression into HITMAN 3.
The entire HITMAN 3 campaign will be available to play at launch when the game releases in January 2021.

Today :

A new HITMAN 3 Pre-Launch Guide paves the way for the game's launch on Wednesday. Developer IO Interactive reveals that the next installment in their assassination series will not actually allow players to access the locations from their copies of HITMAN 2 as promised when the game was announced. The complication is that the game will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store, which does not actually carry HITMAN 2. The HITMAN 2 locations will be sold separately through an Access Pass, and they say this will carry an 80% discount for two weeks after the HITMAN 3 launch on January 20th. They will be allowing players to carry over unlocks and progress from Steam versions of the prior games through a website.

[jamus34]

I don't blame Epic specifically for this, I feel this is strictly on IO interactive and the fact they decided to sign an exclusivity deal with Epic and not realize the implications.

They can make it right if they want, it's up to them to see if they do (or if the resulting outcry makes them).

[Yskonyn]

Yeah I agree with Jamus.
Within IO you'll probably hear "I told you so." a lot at the moment.
What a fuckup.

[mbar]

With the new Hitman series, a triple A production, IO has been asked time after time to provide a way to disable joystick/gamepad. If you're a flight sim enthusiast, you'll have to manually unplug or disable your HOTAS in order to play. Such a simple thing to ask, but if fell on deaf ears. Which is why I've been giving Hitman games a pass. I played the older ones to death anyway.

[Pete Dero]

Hitman 3 update :

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1350545928931966976

Sorry, the team is looking into this with IO. It's never Epic's intent to create a situation where someone who owns a game on Steam would have to buy it again on Epic Games Store.

[Grim.Reaper]

Yep, seems like the developer has now indicated nobody will have to pay......I actually pre ordered, what the heck...

[steve58]

Free this week at EpicGames:

Galactic Civilizations III

[Pete Dero]

https://twitter.com/EAStarWars/status/1353802773905760256

More than 19M PLAYERS got #StarWarsBattlefrontII from the Epic Game Store promo! Thank you so much for the continued support, even after our final content drop! We'll watch your careers with great interest! May the Force be with you, troopers!