Tag Archives: Epic Games Store

I Wanted to Play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, But Apparently That Was Too Much to Ask For

Recently the Epic Games Store ran their “Epic Mega Sale,” in which not only were games on sale, but they issued ten dollar coupons to everyone to entice people to buy more. Needless to say, this offer worked and I picked up Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for only a couple of bucks, thus starting a several day journey of actually getting to play the damn thing.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey clocked in around 81 gigabytes for its initial install time. I wasn’t surprised by how massive it was considering I knew how big of a game it was. Sure having to wait a few hours for something to install sucks, but it’s an unavoidable part of playing just about any game these days. This was something I anticipated and was prepared for.

What I wasn’t ready for was the disconnect between the Epic Games Store and Uplay, a factor that took me alarmingly long to realize and fix. See, when you launch a Ubisoft title outside of Uplay itself, Uplay still has to launch and authorize that you actually own the game. What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that I hadn’t actually launched Uplay for a long time, so it needed to update itself as well, but since I was running a shell of UPlay the actual program itself was unable to update.

I was met with a blue dialogue box in Ubisoft colors that said something to the effect of “looking for updates.” This box never went away. It was looking for updates but couldn’t find any. After some time of waiting, I decided to just launch Uplay by itself to see if an update would automatically initialize. Luckily, that did the trick.

So now I was ready to go, right? Of course not. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey had a 30 gigabyte update ready and waiting for me. You would think that in buying the game I would have received the most updated version of the dang thing, but no. For some reason, far beyond my comprehension, I still had an update that was nearly half the size of the game to install before I could have my fun stabbing adventures.

Finally, the update was applied and I was ready to go, right? Nope! Because suddenly Uplay was asking me for a CD key for the game I just bought, and I couldn’t find that information in my cursory searching through the Epic Games Store. So I restarted the Epic store to see if that might refresh some entitlements or something, and it kind of worked out. I had to link my Epic account to Uplay, something I could’ve sworn I already did when I bought The Division 2 when it initially released. So I did that and finally I could play the game, right?

If that was the end of the saga, I might not have written this article at all, but unfortunately for me a new problem appeared just in time to properly piss me off. The game launches, I do the intro mission and start to progress. Not five minutes into actually playing the game as the protagonist, it crashes.

The first mission in the game has you face off against two hooligans who come and harass you on behalf of some gang leader named “The Cyclops.” After roughing them up, you get to make your first choice in the game of whether to kill them or let them live. I chose the latter. A cut-scene happens and you have to make your way a short distance to the next objective. On that journey, I was ambushed by the hooligans I had spared and had to properly dispatch them this time. Upon killing the final enemy in the group, the game crashed.

It did this every single time. I have played this 3 minute portion of the mission a total of 5 times already in the hopes that something different would happen, and I could finally enjoy the fucking game I paid for. I don’t even want to play the game that badly anymore thanks to the multi-day calamity that I’ve been through with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but part of me doesn’t want to let the game get away with this bullshit.

This whole article has been pretty directly pointed at Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but this is the kind of shit that can happen in the world of PC gaming and digital distribution. Now, I love playing games on my computer and consider it my go-to place for gaming, but this kind of nonsense is the exact kind of thing that makes me think I’d be better off just playing it on my PS4. But this isn’t unique to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey considering that just last year I went through this exact same thing with Red Dead Redemption II, also through an Epic Games Store purchase.

I know that all of this sounds like I’d end this article bashing Epic or Ubisoft, but I kind of get why it’s such a mess. Publishers want to make as much money as they possibly can, which is why almost all of them have their own PC launcher and storefront. But they also want to put their games where people will actually see them like Steam, Epic or GOG, and still be able to verify purchases and track their players habits in game. That’s why whenever you buy a Ubisoft game on Steam, it launches an extra layer of DRM in the form of Uplay. It’s cumbersome and annoying, but I get it. The problem is that while these problems don’t always crop up, when they do it’s usually because the solutions aren’t as seamless or elegant as you’d hope. I don’t know what the solution to all of this is, but I do know that I’m going to fucking play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey even if I have to reinstall the god damned thing.

UPDATE #1: I have verified the files of the game and unfortunately was greeted with the same crash in the same place, every time.

UPDATE #2: I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to have to reinstall this game, and have already begun that process. It’s been two hours and I’m around two-thirds of the way through the download.

UPDATE #3: The installation process is complete and I have officially completed that mission without any additional hiccups. The frame rate is a little wonky though.

UPDATE #4: I haven’t played the game in days. This was a really good use of my time.

Blog: Launcher Hell – 11/13/19

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A lot of PC players tend to get pretty uppity about the fact that companies are trying to maximize their profits and keep closer control over their games by requiring the use of an exclusive launcher. For the most part, I don’t mind having to open a different executable to play my games, but some recent developments have made me shift my stance a little.

Looking at my desktop I have six different launchers for my various games. Steam, Origin, Uplay, Epic, Xbox, and the latest addition, Rockstar. But that isn’t even half of the available ways to buy and launch my games. It seems like it would be a lot to manage, but it really never presented itself as much of an issue to me. That is, until Red Dead Redemption 2 launched and required authentication through their launcher.

Here’s the series of events that transpires when I try to launch Red Dead Redemption 2, a game I know isn’t going to work properly:

I’ll click the desktop shortcut, only to be met with a fatal error because I had the audacity to try and use said shortcut. I’ll then open up the Rockstar Launcher and log in because it never remembers my credentials. I’ll click the big, “Play on Epic” button that appears, because I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 through the Epic Games Store. The focus shifts to Epic for a moment, then back to Rockstar, then a windows notification asking me if I’m truly certain I want to play the game.

Finally the game will launch, I’ll play for 5 minutes before the frame rate hitching becomes enough of a burden, and quit.

It’s like a 5 minute wind up to play a game that doesn’t work. These are two separate issues admittedly, but its enough to make me rethink this whole “everyone has a launcher business”.

I’m also not saying that Steam should be the de facto launcher and be the only player in town. Every publisher wants control over their product, and wants the biggest slice of profits they can get. Sure Epic is doing an 88/12 split on revenue, but if I bought a game available on the Epic store on the publisher’s storefront, that’s 100% of the take right there. The business behind launchers makes sense.

There are two main categories of launcher in my eyes. The first is the publisher specific ones like Uplay or Origin. Then the second are the storefronts like Steam and Epic. I know those last two make their own games, but the volume of third party games on them warrants the separation. So I decided it would be fun to list off every launcher I can think of, just to give you a visual idea of how many of these damn things there are.

PUBLISHER SPECIFIC

Uplay (Ubisoft)
Origin (EA)
Blizzard.net (Blizzard)
Rockstar (Rockstar)
Xbox Game Pass (Microsoft)
Bethesda (Bethesda)

There’s definitely more of these that I can’t think of at the moment.

STOREFRONTS/ LIBRARIES

Steam (Valve)
Epic Games Store (Epic)
Discord (Discord)
Itch.io (Itch.io)
GOG Galaxy (GOG)
Windows Store (Microsoft)
Twitch (Twitch)

Once again, there are more that I can’t think of at this moment.

But take a moment to consider the fact that there are now several different launchers for organizing your various games spread out across different launchers. Seriously, check out this list.

I’m not complaining about having to use different launchers to play different games. It usually requires me to click a different icon and nothing more. But in the case of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Rockstar, all it seems to have done is add more points of failure to the experience, and that’s my biggest fear with this stuff.

If I buy a game on Steam that needs to authorize through Uplay, but Uplay’s authentication servers are down, that’s a hassle. That’s my biggest issue with all of this. I just want to play my games as obstacle free as I can, but with this endless fragmentation of storefronts and publishers, I think we’re just going to have to get used to these hurdles for a while.

Blog: Everyone Needs to Calm Down – 08/14/19

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Late last year the Epic Games Launcher was released to much cynicism and side eyeing from the gaming audience, myself included. I won’t lie, I was very skeptical of the product and in some regards I still am, but I’m ultimately glad to see that there’s some real competition in the PC games marketplace for once. My issues with the Epic Games Launcher are mostly directed towards the very limited feature set which to be fair, they’re working on, but most of the anger and vitriol amidst the discourse revolves around how “aggressive” Epic appears when lining up exclusives.

A few months ago, Metro Exodus was gearing up for its PC release on Steam. It had been available for pre-order on Steam for quite a while and people were eager to play it. Weeks before it launched however, it was announced that the game would be a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store. The Steam pre-orders would be honored and activated on release day, but people were not happy with the abrupt jump to this new platform. I’m guessing that was the start of everyone getting angry with the platform in general. Even I thought it was a questionable move, but I also had no intention to play Metro Exodus, so I moved on.

Since then, Epic has been courting developers of all sizes, encouraging them to release on their platform and enjoy a healthier cut of profits from sales. There should be no question that developers should get paid for the work they put into making these games, and if there’s a platform out there that better facilitates that, then it’s an easy decision to make.

But the internet is still a nightmare emporium where people will take any reason to raise their pitchforks and try to ruin the lives of others. That’s where Ooblets comes in. Ooblets is a game that appears to be mixing the elements of Animal Crossing and Pokemon together into one colorfully charming experience. Unfortunately, this post isn’t about how excited I am to check the game out (which I am), instead it’s about how on July 31st the studio behind the game announced that they were signing a deal with the Epic Games Store for a few reasons, income being the primary motivator. Let’s be clear, an indie studio doing what they have to in order to get paid more for there work is not something we should be grousing about. Developers need money to survive, and if the Epic Games Store is offering them a bigger cut alongside of a signing bonus, they should take that opportunity.

I bet you can guess what happened next. See, the team behind Ooblets put out a pretty hilarious and snarky blog post outlining the decision, while also making fun of how much people on the internet lose their minds when they hear about Epic grabbing another exclusive. I thought it was pretty hilarious but the internet did not. The internet found it so unfunny in fact, that they responded in some pretty shitty ways including racial slurs and death threats. You know, completely rational responses to a video game going to another store.

WARNING: If you want to see some of the garbage people have said, it’s here, but there’s some really horrific stuff in there, so click at your own risk.

So here we are in the aftermath of all of this, left with yet another tragic example of targeted hate campaigns over the stupidest and most inconsequential shit. The amount of hatred and anger over this move should seem unbelievable, but unfortunately the internet continues to remain a smoldering crater full of mutants with keyboards. I don’t have the solution to this problem, I can only encourage people to spare a thought for the people behind the product. It isn’t worth getting so wound up over a game that you verbally assault someone or threaten them. Nothing should prompt you to be that kind of person, especially not a video game.

It’s a shame that the developers and their insanely charming game have to be associated with this nonsense and I hope the developers are able to rise above the noise and push on. I’ve been interested in Ooblets for quite a while now and fully intended on playing it, regardless of what storefront it eventually wound up on.

Maybe it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around how to install a new launcher. Maybe they don’t like having two whole icons on their desktop for game related things. Those excuses are bullshit. None of it is worth threatening people. Get the fuck over yourselves.