Buying games on a Console system isn’t that difficult, but generally unless I find some deal online, I’m locked into the pricing. On a PC? There are many more options. For instance tonight after beating Gears 5 (available for “free” via Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate) I went looking for a new game to play.
After poking around in Steam and not finding anything interesting enough to pay full price for, I took a trip over to the Epic Game Store. There are others I also use, Steam, Origin (EA) and GOG (DRM-Free), and Microsoft. All PC game stores have various ways to get me to spend money on their product, and unless it’s a new AAA title, sales are where it’s at.
In this case, I chose ‘The Crew: 2’ an arcade style racer that I played around with in the past, but had no desire to drop over $50, even after playing the demo on my Xbox One. On Steam? It’s $50. Gold edition? $90. The former gets me just the game with no DLC, the latter gets me all the DLC and a ‘season pass’ which entitles me to copies of all future DLC.
Epic Game Store? $22 for the gold edition. I don’t mind dropping $20 on a game I may or may not like. So I pull the trigger and discover that I can apply a $10 coupon. Even better. $12 for a game sold for $90 elsewhere! So I buy the game, and proceed with the 40gb download. I’ve got pretty good Internet so the wait wasn’t very long.
I go back into the Epic Game Store, click on my game, click “Launch” and nothing.
I click it again, nothing.
Just in case it takes 3 clicks, I try again.
Nothing.
Google it. Ah, it’s a Ubisoft title. So in addition to running the EGS, I need to run Ubisoft’s own storefront / game manager called U-Play. I’ve hit this before, not unexpected, but still irritating. I log into the software, ah, it’s been years, I can’t recall the password. So I reset it.
After resetting the password, I get prompted to enable two-factor authentication. Again, not a bad thing. I go through all that, attempt to start the game again in EGS. EGS starts U-Play. U-Play starts the g… No, no it doesn’t.
I now need to download a 20gb update to play the game.
Had I pirated the game (I am not advocating this at all, but come on, please get your crap together game companies) – I would have likely downloaded it much faster due to Torrent technology and been playing this game over an hour ago.
Lets see if my $12 was worth it before I pass out at this keyboard.
