Saints Row the Third: Remastered is free (to keep) on Epic until September 2nd. Probably to hype the new Saints Row game announced today. I’m on mobile which doesn’t want to take the link from Epic’s site but you’ll find it.
SR3 does co-op really well. I wish other games did co-op like that. Not only can you free roam with your partner but they can go along with most of the missions with you, and the game accomodates them by giving them something additional for them to do in a lot of the missions. Like if you’re a helicopter pilot for a mission, maybe they’re your gunner. Or if you’re in a car chase, maybe they can fire a rocket launcher from the passenger’s seat. Or the most ridiculous one… as you’re trying to drive a tiger without hitting anything and disturbing it, the co-op player tries to pet it and calm it down.
Oh my god SR3: Remastered being free is a kick in the pants.
And, while I don’t want to be curmudgeonly, it winds up breaking more than it enhances; my wife and I agree the original SR3 is the superior product of the two.
Also, when I read there was a new Saints Row game, I did go, “What?!” aloud, so… excuse me, I need to do some research. (And thanks to you for bringing it to my attention.)
I was hoping the original SR was coming to the PC there, I think it was the only one not to be on the platform. I’ve played SR2 and 3 pretty much to the end (I think to the end on 3, one of the missions seemed to repeat and I’m not sure that blocked it). SR4 I seemed to start and not complete, I started it one day and went “Eh? I didn’t finish this one?”.
8 years since the last one, pretty much a successful franchise abandoned. Wondering why it took so long to release another one.
Volition did “Agents of Mayhem”, set in the Saints Row universe, in 2017. It pretty much bombed. Before that, the studio was caught up in THQ’s bankruptcy and being sold to Deep Silver which probably delayed some stuff.
This is the only reason I pick up Epic games for free. I will never install them and play them, but I’d like Epic to pay the developers, because I dislike their attempt to end-run around Steam with the exclusivity deals, trying to force folks to use their platform through manipulation rather than just making a better platform than Steam (an admittedly tall order).
Most gamers are on Steam and are so beholden to them at this point that if you are a new platform it is nearly impossible to be so much better that people will run to the new platform and abandon what they have known for 10+ years.
Epic HAD to do exclusives to pull people over. And loads and loads of free games.
In the end, it is better for you and me as a consumer. I now have over 200 games on Epic and I think I paid for two of them.
I say let them fight it out.
The ones that bug me more are Ubisoft and Battle.net (especially Battle.net) and Origin.
GOG is cool but has their own niche.
Meh. Steam has competition from other 3rd part retailers. I have regularly bought “Steam” games from GMG, Humble, DLGamer, Gamersgate, Amazon and other sellers because they beat Steam on price. When a game is exclusive on Epic, it’s worse for me as a consumer since there’s only one price: Epic’s price. Epic claimed we’d see lower prices because the larger cut to publishers meant they could offer a lower MSRP but that hasn’t happened aside from when Metro: Exodus made a last second flip to Epic Exclusive and tried to mollify people with a lower base price.
The free games are nice but when the games I actually want at that moment are price-locked to a single store, that’s anti-consumer no matter how many unasked for extra freebies they throw at me. I’ll still take the free games funded by the credit cards of Fortnite players’ moms, of course.
I have not seen “better prices” on Amazon and whatnot. Sure sales and specials happen here and there but, mostly, game prices are pretty fixed. Maybe you save a few dollars but nothing to write home about. Steam sales usually suffice.
And, of course, the developers are going to take the money and run on Epic.
Again, we are better off to have competition. Even if we, as a player, never see a dime in savings. If the developers get more money there will be more devs trying for a piece of the bigger pie. More games and better games for us (and a lot of shit probably too, have to take some bad with the good).
I am 54 years old. I plan to retire in 10 years (give or take). Having a library of a few hundred games will see me occupied in the old people’s home for a long, long time. 
Dunno what to tell you. I own some 3,000+ games and can definitely say I have bought a ton of them from places besides Steam because they were cheaper. Within the last few weeks, I’ve bought from DLGamer, GMG and Humble because all had better pricing than Steam was offering. Regardless, there’s definitely no consumer-friendly competitive advantage to having a game exclusively available from a single point of sale.
There’s zero shortage of developers for this to make a difference. Steam added over 10,000 games last year. If anything, good new indie games are choked out by the amount of low effort garbage but Epic isn’t trying to elevate that kind of stuff with their exclusivity arrangements.
Sooner or later, Microsoft Game Pass will make them all irrelevant anyway 
9,900 people banging away in their basement are barely “developers”. I wish them luck but this is up there with saying Spotify adds 10,000 new artists every month. Technically true but 99.9% is shit.
The 100 good developers will be getting most of the pie and they should.
And how is Steam making money if everyone else is selling games for less than Steam but using Steam to distribute? Surely there is more to that story. Is this buying Steam keys in Burundi and re-selling them in the US?
We went through this in another thread but the short answer is that Steam absorbs the hosting of titles bought via 3rd party sales because it gets people into the Steam ecosystem and using their platform. And because allowing GMG to sell Steam keys keeps GMG from creating their own competing platform (which they once did have, in fact). Then there’s money they make back through “trading cards” and associated microtransactions that come from playing the games.
Also, of course, not everyone is constantly selling every Steam game cheaper all the time. But the deals do come up and benefit the pocketbook of the savvy consumer better than if your only option was to wait for Steam to exclusively set a sale price.
But, again, Epic isn’t the place to go to find an offbeat, up and coming indie title by an unknown developer. Those come up through Steam or maybe Itch io and catch fire from there. Epic isn’t interested until you already have a proven product.
[Moderating]
Can we get this thread back to notifying folks of free games (whatever platform they may be on)?
If you have Amazon Prime, the following games are free this month:
Tools Up!
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Puzzle Agent
Candleman: the Complete Journey
Unmemory
Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
These are downloaded through Amazon but, once claimed, are tied to your account to be downloaded whenever. Go to Prime Gaming and click “Games with Prime”.
Anno 1800 is free to play on Ubisoft Connect (which I think used to be called UPlay, right?) now through September 6.
38 Gb install for me, if that matters to you.
I’d say that was one of the good ones, better than FC5, but the copter on 4 made it the best.