I’ve never spent a single dollar on Epic Games Store—yet I have over 100 games there from their giveaways. Free is free, and I’ll never apologize for padding my library at no cost.

People get worked up about EGS in a way that’s almost charming. The Steam faithful clutch their launcher like pearls, and then sneer at the idea of installing one more program.

But on Linux, that entire argument evaporates. Heroic Games Launcher pulls Epic, GOG, and Prime Gaming under one roof. So I’m down to just two launchers—Steam and Heroic. Both happily run through Proton, which means most of my 596 Heroic games work great. The “problem” is imaginary, and it has been solved for years.

And yes, I’ve heard the hand-wringing: “But you don’t truly own your games…” Cute, but let’s not pretend Steam is different. Valve themselves admit it in their EULA. The only storefront that can honestly claim ownership is GOG. Everything else is just licensed access dressed up with a storefront logo.

Here’s the part people conveniently skip: in over a decade of buying digital games—always on deep discounts—I’ve never had one revoked. Even delisted games remain fully playable. Meanwhile, physical discs degrade, scratch, or demand hardware that modern TVs won’t even accept without a Frankenstein stack of adapters.

That’s the overlooked reality. Digital storefronts outlive their own limitations. I can run my games on operating systems the devs never planned for, on hardware they never envisioned. My NES cart? It’s a collector’s piece until I fire up an emulator. My digital library? It follows me everywhere.

So yes, physical media is beautiful—I collect it too. But if you’re talking about practicality, about longevity, about pure ease of play—the future has already arrived. And it didn’t ask Steam fanboys for permission.

@videogames@piefed.social