Epic Games Store Victorious?

Epic Game Store has been gathering exclusive deals since it was first being made in 2018 and have only increase its benefits for developers to join their store. Not only that but key publishers have been turning away from their own game clients to join Epic Games Store as well. These include long time independent running companies such as Ubisoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment, two companies renowned for staying to themselves with their exclusives and either being incapable of being cracked or ensuring a rather buggy crack. Sony Interactive Entertainment in particular only uses PlayStation Now for PC ports and even those are not easily cracked or emulated, making them the top tier bought games that cannot be pirated and will keep Sony as a main contender in games, consoles, and game clients.

This is where Epic Games Store comes in and makes exclusivity deals to ensure that they publishers and developers they work with will get the most profit and that Epic Games Store receives big name titles. Not only is Epic Games Store picking up Sony Playstation exclusives but also community popular Indie titles as well from Hades to Satisfactory to Maneater and many more. However, this has caused major backlash in those communities and social media blew up about how vile Epic Games is, attempting to demolish their reputation. Epic Games Store countered with over one hundred free games since it opened, ranging from indie to blockbuster AAA, that has brought a playerbase to its client enough to where it can start being seen as a contender in Epic Game’s forced game client war with Steam.
 

Players vs Epic Games Store vs Pirates

However, there comes the question: Why buy or play on Epic Games Store client? Many anti-Epic Games communities would rather pirate their games as soon as they hit Epic Games Store while the majority who understand and support the developers would buy it. With the amount of games given away and the backlash of joining Epic Games Store, it would seem like it simply would not be worth the social suicide and boycotting, but is that really so? Pirating from Epic Games Store or Steam or any other game client is done every day and only those who truly wish to support the developers or like the game go to buy it. This is where Epic Games Store became Victorious. Either the games that people want are on sale, are given way free, or are exclusive to the client with no cracks such as the Quantic Dream trio and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Epic Games Store gets players one way or the other with little room to work around their deals asides from Steam who at most holds heavy sales for the given away games.

By signing deals with AAA companies like Ubisoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment along with providing support for Denuvo. Even though Epic Games DRM protection is not strong and can be cracked, these specific publishers have their own DRM protection that has not been penetrated. Through the use of these DRM protection policies, these games have not been cracked and are the majority of uncracked games on the Epic Games Store. However, there are some outliers such as Manifold Garden published by Chry Studio, Old World published by Mohawk Games, Samurai Shodown published by SNK, and SuperMash published by Digital Continue who use only Epic Games DRM protection and have not been cracked yet either. This could be anywhere from how the developers made the games, lack of interest in the games, or Epic Games DRM protection correctly worked. Though, what makes Epic Games Store stand out to victory is what happened when certain exclusives migrated from their store to Steam.
 

No Longer Exclusive

When the Quantic Dream games, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human were announced to be on the Epic Games Store, they were advertised as Sony Interactive Entertainment Exclusives moving to PC. This was a huge breakthrough since Sony Interactive Entertainment had never released their PlayStation Exclusives games on PC before their Epic Games Store deals. Beforehand, select ones were only available via PlayStation Now or the PlayStation consoles. Both the console and PS Now games having extremely strong DRM protection that no one had been able to crack or emulate as each console increased complexity of code and graphics. However, when the six month exclusivity deal was finished, Quantic Dream went to publish their games on Steam without Sony Interactive Entertainment involved. As soon as the games were released, they were immediately cracked and were open to being pirated. This begs the question: Was it the Game Client or the Publisher?

That is where the following table comes into play that lists Epic Games Store Exclusives, the DRM protection they had, their publisher, release date on Epic Games Store, and the cracked date. When looking at the list, it is plain to see that Epic Games DRM protection did nothing to protect the games, granted that there are the aforementioned outliers. Asides from the outliers, the games that went uncracked either were by Ubisoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, were part of a company under Sony Interactive Entertainment (Quantic Dream), or had Denuvo. This comes to the conclusion that when the AAA companies entrust Epic Games Store with their games, they will stay exclusive and uncracked for the term of their deal. That means no chance for pirating, a higher rate of profit, and more players coming in to play their games. Meanwhile, unless it has third party or Denuvo, it will be cracked on Steam, to the point where pirates or crackers try to beat their time on cracking the games for the fastest time. The only games that do have a strong protection are those with third party or full online integration without an offline version.
 

Victorious

At the moment, this all means that exclusive deals have succeeded in protecting the games, increasing profits, and increasing playerbase regardless what any backlash says. Begs the question on if Steam will start to do exclusives as well. If it becomes impossible to crack a game and fully necessary to buy it wholesale, then there is no choice but to buy the game on the client it is exclusive on, not even attempt to crack a demo. It is true that majority do not buy the cracked games, but it does show where trust lies and where money is being made in full. With this said, Epic Games Store is Victorious.

Publisher/ Release Information from https://www.epicgames.com/store/
Cracked Information found from https://crackwatch.com
List of game titles from https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/Epic-games-store-exclusives
* = there was a complicated way with file storage and editing between demo to get full game, but no real full game crack.
Note: free to play games, missing crackwatch games, and games with conflicting data were revoked; list accurate as of June 19, 2020. Also, DRM and release dates were adjusted to match Epic Games Store records.