The new (and vibe coded) Epic Games Launcher | Hacker News Reader

The new (and vibe coded) Epic Games Launcher

store.epicgames.com

24 pointsLautzi15 comments

title is sensationalized, but i think the real gem of information is hidden down the page:

Fortnite is coming to Linux on the Launcher

To bring Fortnite to Linux, we are rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) and working with distro maintainers on security requirements. Once it’s working with a critical mass of distro maintainers, we’ll bring Fortnite to Linux via the Epic Games Launcher.

We’ll also make these improvements available to other developers so they can bring their games to Linux players. For more info on our work to expand EAC support across Linux, check out the tech blog we published today.

those EAC changes are discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50088166

The one good thing that vibe-coded apps by big corp bring is support for Linux. It's low cost now, almost built-in into the project.

Nice lightweight Tauri (Rust + WebView) stack and Linux support as bonus :)

How do you know this? I can't find a reference on the site.

The third party notices document mentions Tauri.

Oof, going hard mode with their launch of a Linux app I see

Epic Games launcher has been notoriously glitchy on my PC. Nice refinement!

Actual title: “The new Epic Games Launcher is finally here in Preview”

Shit company with a one hit wonder in fortnite. The meta of games. Such a tonedeaf creation is unsurprising.

I genuinely don't understand the hate they get.

- They give out free games every week. Sometimes they are AAA games like Hogwarts Legacy

- They are a competitor to steam who basically owns PC gaming. Competition is always good for the consumer

- They've sued Apple and Google for their ridiculous app store fees which is beneficial for the end users

> - They give out free games every week. Sometimes they are AAA games like Hogwarts Legacy

That a sizeable chunk of people still buy on Steam because the experience of using the Epic Games Launcher is so abysmal[0]. And I mean the experience that isn't just fixed by a fresh coat of paint, you actually need features added to fix all the interesting missing stuff from Steam.

Also, I don't think I trust anything vibecoded with my credit card/paypal/<insert-other-money-management-stuff>.

[0]: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/turns-out-having-you...

> - They give out free games every week. Sometimes they are AAA games like Hogwarts Legacy

Doesn't it tell you something that people refuse to use the platform even when bribed with free games? People are actively choosing to pay their competitors for games that they can get for free instead. Pretty much no one I know that plays PC games has ever even bothered claiming any of those free games, and if they do they'll add it as a non-Steam game in Steam instead lmao

I don't even like current Epic leadership and where they're taking the industry but this post ignores decades of work they did on engines and games that sold millions of copies.

Them unironically bragging about vibecoding this is just hilariously embarrassing, even for Sweeney Todd and his usual shenanigans. How much money has this man spent trying to bribe people into using his shitty platform with free games, and people would still rather spend money on their competitors? How garbage of a platform it must be if you can't even bribe people into using it!

Ignoring that they're bragging about first boot times of all things (for an application that you launch once when your computer starts and then never close subsequently), I just did a rough little benchmark to time steam launching on Pop_OS and becoming interactable since I was curious. I quit after 20 runs cause I got bored since the numbers are pretty stable, but here are the numbers on my machine (9800x3D, 64GB DDR5, 4080S): https://pastebin.com/0uWXyaLb. Not a perfect benchmark, I'm hitting a warm cache yada yada, but good enough I'd wager, and subjectively just timing it myself and clicking into my library or the store takes about what the results in that pastebin show. I even rebooted my machine twice and timed it from a cold boot to interactivity in Steam, and the results were roughly the same.

Now I would've tested the EGS launcher as well to compare, but going to https://store.epicgames.com/download?lang=en-US I don't see a download button on either Firefox & Chrome on Linux [1]. In fact, they seem to think I'm on a mobile device or something, because they keep referencing Android and iOS in all the FAQ items. I suppose they didn't get around to vibecoding a user agent sniffer there yet, as we all know adding a download button is almost as difficult to do as adding a shopping cart feature to your webstore - which for the uninitiated took them 3 years to do.

And yet Sweeney Todd expects me to put in my credit card details into his self-admittedly vibeslopped web store? With the garbage/non-existant support that they have? No thanks Todd, I think I'll keep spending my money on Steam, thank you very much.

[1] - https://ibb.co/RGRjkMws

EDIT: I just found the download link tucked away after doing a lot of digging, and it can't even load their own fucking store page from within the launcher [2]. It completely freezes and glitches out on the launcher page.

[2] - https://files.catbox.moe/16e1lb.mkv (be warned that it's a .mkv file I just recorded that will be directly downloaded when you click the link cause catbox is convenient).

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