PC Epic Games Losing Most Dlc [update: Not Anymore]

I forgot that that it notifies everyone every time a new message appears, sorry about that. I'm used to typing elsewhere where notifications don't happen whenever I sent a message but I forgot forums worked a different way.

 

nekochanryan you can turn it off but i like this topic so i leave them better on.

 

Yeah, I understand. No worries.

Anyway, continuing on, on my behalf at least, there's not much else to say about this, I can't think off the top of my mind what other issues I need to point out as some others have said what I wanted to say too, but the last thing I'll say is this:

No matter who's to blame, Epic users shouldn't pay the price. Something must be done, and it doesn't matter who does it. We just want our layers that we rightfully paid for in future routes and enjoy the stock we love on all iterations on TSW.

Yes, DTG doesn't guarantee compatibility, but it's an unwritten rule that players expect their content to carry over just like any other platform would.

Let's hope for the best.

 

Yeah but we should give them Some time to speak with Epic about this whole problem. I guess this will take some time.

 

That's simply not the case. If DTG want to release a new iteration of the game each September, then they are duty bound to ensure that our collections are compatible with it.

Look, no amount of White Knighting In support of DTG will change the fact that Epic players bought their content in good faith. And that faith was in DTG. And it's up to DTG to sort out this mess.

I just pray that Steam players are not at risk for this same problem.

 

IMHO this is similar to what happened with Sony. Epic probably has the limit on the number of DLCs written somewhere in their technical documents, and DTG probably didnt notice it until it was too late.

 

I would suggest all of you on Epic Games do this until the results of the DTG/Epic "negotiation" are known.

If a solution (presumably Steam migration - the sensible thing to do) doesn't happen within a couple of months then that would be bloody disgusting from DTG, quite honestly. But at the present time I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt that Epic are holding them up somehow. As others have said they can't really talk about whatever is happening. Additionally, any migration to other platforms will also need the cooperation of the other platform to an extent (at least if it's not to cost DTG megabucks). Common sense is this isn't for shits and giggles.

It also seems pretty clear to me that contractually any Epic Games player is stuffed (at least under English law). So I'd not antagonise either too much at this point.

That's not to diminish that this is an appalling situation and DTG do have a moral obligation here, even if it's not their fault. TBH they'd have been better off imo to have just discontinued Epic along with Gen8.

 

Or Epic changed their terms, perhaps recently.

If Epic had always had some limitation on DLC stock (I say stock because they are a shop, not a platform), I doubt DTG would have chosen them to sell TSW as that would have been business suicide from the start.

 

I doubt it because in terms of numbers TSC has a boatload of DLC (779 currently vs 129 for TSW5) and its never been an issue as far as I know. TSW differs though in that there are duplicates across each title on their servers; but we have not seen any issues so far in regards to this.

 

The difference being, TSC does not enforce a mandatory re-download of all the content every 12 months by every single customer. Only time you do that is if you decide to spring clean the install at which point the best and only real solution with the scattered file structure is to delete the lot and reinstall from scratch.

 

Don't you find it strange that no DTG member has commented on this thread to offer an explanation?
Especially since they're forcing Epic users to continue playing TSW5 even though TSW5 will no longer receive updates!

(According to the FAQ: Will Train Sim World 5 continue to receive updates?
No, there will be no further updates for Train Sim World 5. Please be sure to pick up the Train Sim World 6 Free Starter Pack when available to continue receiving updates.)

 

129 DLC for TSW5 of which, approximately 110 DLCs come from TSW4, representing approximately 320 GB of redundant data that must be preserved for those who haven't upgraded to TSW5. Taking only the last two iterations, combined, this represents 740 GB.

If I'm not mistaken, when TSW4's release was announced, players had warned DTG about their editorial decision to release a new annual version. DTG wanted to persevere on this path; now they should face the consequences.

 

Absolutely, and I think this is a model TSW is going to need to adopt eventually because what they are doing now does not seem sustainable. If we are still doing this catalogue re-download song and dance in TSW10, I think DTG are going to lose alot of players (at least those who have been around since the start and built up huge collections)

 

It's basically that DTG Matt is silent since Aug. 13th, who is probably the only person who can potentially deliver the kind of technical answer we want...

 

Exactly that. It's always been said with new versions you can copy your content over. That's always been a lead selling point for new iterations.

If DTG didn't release TSW6 and just did changes as an update rush hour style which pretty much everyone wanted there would be no issue here I'm guessing?

At the same time as advertising it on the "New releases" sections for new players that may not even stick with the game, they've cut off a lot of their faithful customers who supported them buying multiple iterations of dlc.

I mean if you think about it even new players on the epic store probably won't realise upon buying TSW6 that you can't buy a lot of the old DLC for layers etc because it's hidden away on the FAQ. So it's kind of shafted new players as well as old.

 

As tsc player I agree it should be simple like a free yearly update with a yearly dlc pack.
Every year stores are overwhelmed with 1000s of tsw players downloading the same content all over again. Not to mention the space taken up by a shed load of dlc that's practically cloned.

Obviously someone at epic as done some projections and realized by 2045 dtg will have more dlc listed than than all the other developers put together.

 

Epic handles far bigger data loads with games like Fortnite, which pushes massive patches to tens of millions of users regularly. Bandwidth isn’t their bottleneck, their entitlement system is.

So no, this isn’t about 'reinstalling everything every 12 months' stressing Epic’s servers. It’s about Epic’s platform limitations. You’re presenting a narrative that sounds confident, but it’s built on zero facts.

 

Well my bad, but then DTG ought to have made it clear that’s the reason. The whole discussion and not just my contribution seems to be built on the premise Epic had shouted enough over the annual re-download farce.

 

Thats from the roadmap:

"The Epic Games Store will only support a curated selection of the most played compatible content."

I totally get the frustration of players. The dimension of tsw as a hobby requires a careful choice of the platform. Its like spending 4k on the wrong car...

I personally use steam, my only "epic fail" purchais on that store was satisfactory.
The truth hurts but with tsw and the amount of dlcs, please choose your platform wise.

 

Kind of amazing how none of all this whould be an issue or even happening at all if it wasn't for that (from user perspective) useless yearly re-release, just to tickle the "new game" marketing algos on digital store fronts.

 

Well that’s where it gets confusing. I got chided above for labouring under the impression this is because Epic are fed up with the annual farce. So does that mean, even if DTG had stuck with TSW5, Epic would still have called time on adding any more DLC to it?

 

If I read this correctly and it's the entitlements that are the problem, the point still stands. There'd be no need for an elaborate entitlement system if it was just one base game with a lot of DLCs.

 

That’s my understanding yes, under pinned by the issues of the 101 game play pack not releasing in tsw5.

 

The lightbulb has arrived!

 

Everything points to epic having a hard limit of 128.

personally I think this has to be a store issue rather than a software issue with pak files as otherwise surely someone with multiple mods and 90% of DLC would have hit this limit months ago and faced issues

 

I have a guess that the fact that TSW6 routes is not backward compatible with previous versions is also related, maybe due to a limit too, now the TSW6 dlc have reached the backward compatibility limit by giving in addition to the TSW6 dlc the others routes which are linked to it, it is only a theory.

If the theories are correct, it shows that the annual releases are not good and that we should do like TSC.

 

We’d still have hit th limit of 128 DLC regardless if we were as on TSW1 or TSW10 so sorry I don’t see how annual releases affect this theory.

 

My theory is not about the 128 limit but the limit of backward compatibility between routes, I was just wondering if for example Brighton main line can have backward compatibility from TSW2 to TSW10 without any problem and when you buy BML TSW10 you also have the previous versions or there will be a limit which will not allow Brighton to be backward compatible on a TSWX.
We have this problem with TSW6 but we don't know the reason and my theory is to think about the reason, after maybe our two theories are not linked but it's a question of limits that just made me tilt

 

The beauty about digital content is that you essentially have limitless shelf spa....

Oh.

 

They have done that in one of the roadmap blogs. So thats more fair then here on a forum where not everyone is involved.



Source:
https://live.dovetailgames.com/live...train-sim-world-6-partner-roadmap-august-2025

 

No DLC is backwards compatible and why would it be the publisher wants us to buy the latest version of the game to run the new DLC on, that’s the whole point of releasing it. I can’t think of any games where DLC would be designed to run on older versions of the game.

 

Very confusing. Clearly there is code available to move the existing products forward to include the new features 'Random Events/Train Faults/Passenger Announcements' etc. It seems like Epic for whatever reason is refusing to provide space to enable the ability for TSW5 and TSW6 players to run and support all of the product available. DTG is damned if they don't damned if they do. They are obliged to sustain code for all player needs (1) want to stay with TSW5 v (2) want to add new functionality with TSW6.
I personally got my fingers burnt being allured to 'special deals' with Epic. This is the case of buyer beware. Not a good situation to be in, however, if Epic wants to remain a bono fide supplier of TSW they need to bend over and provide all DLC being made available rather than picking and choosing just to support their 'maximize sales/profit' model.

 

Wow, another example of the "Sh*tification" of the online experience. It's happening everywhere, Spotify, Microsoft, Amazon, social media, You Tube. The monetization of users is now becoming exploitation and for those who let things slide, it becomes expensive. An example:

I recently had MS Autopilot enforced on me and MS started charging more per month for my Office account. I called them and eventually got them to remove Autopilot and drop me back down to "Office Classic", something that wasn't advertised as an option on their website (because the customer comes last). I recently had an update to MS and suddenly there's Autopilot again. I checked my bank account and saw they'd increased my monthly charge again. So I've had to go back round the houses with them. Every call I've had with them, all they wanted to talk about was how useful Copilot is, but I insisted that I didn't want AI and I'm back on "Office Classic" once again. Now I'm getting constant invitations to try Copilot when I'm using Word and Excel and noticed that's installed itself on my PC again. It's the same with MS cloud storage, every update, my default download location gets changed from my hard drive to their cloud, then I get warnings that my Cloud storage is full and an invitation to upgrade at a cost to have more storage.

My advice to anyone who has felt angry enough to comment on this thread is to write a formal email or letter of complaint to both Epic and DTG, kick-up a stink, don't let them (whoever is responsible, I suspect it's not DTG) get away with it. Unfortunately you have to fight and be a pain in the backside to get anything these days. Good luck and don't give in.

 

I'm still confused. If there is a 128 dlc limit, why has the number of TSW6 transfers been reduced by so many for Epic players?
What am I missing?

 

If that 128 DLC limit exists, then you need to free up space for upcoming TSW6 DLC. The total amount of DLC available currently amounts to 128 or 129 I believe.

That is, if that limit exists.

 

That sucks, but why can't users decide which 128 DLCs they transfer across? I'm sure many of us have stuff we just don't use anymore and could uninstall without having any impact on AI on other routes. I've been thinking about doing something similar with my Steam version of TSW6 as there's loads of older stuff I'm just never going to use again.

 

Because to do that transfer process you'd need all those DLC's in the system to facilitate that, negating the whole point of this exercise. The point is that DTG have hit a hard-cap on number of items you can publish for one game. You have to actively decide which bits of content are not longer worth listing and pull them to make room.

 

Because it's apparently a hard 8-bit limit at Epic's server side on how many individual unique DLCs their store is capable of recognising as existing. DTG have to choose ones to delist on that store in order to bring out new ones.

Another possibility would maybe be when pruning the list, to add one single entry on the epic store as a free SKU featuring all the delisted DLCs in a single DLC package, but I doubt they'd do something as consumer friendly.

 

I'm sure there is a good reason why not, but I don't understand why if you own the the DLC in 5 there isn't some way of patching it to be accessible in 6. What is so different in the core that the DLC wouldn't work, It's more likely just a DRM issue that could be worked around with a little effort.

Personally having experienced the complete lack of support from epic back in the early days, I've stayed well clear ever since.

While I understand DTGs stance that you bought the DLC for TSW5 and it'll still work in 5. That's not the point. Everyone else gets to carry forward their DLC and Epic users don't. Not a good look for Epic or DTG.

 

Maths, would appear to be the reason why not.
128+1=129, 129 cannot be stored in the file type the store seems to use for its DLC lists. There is a fix for it, but it would require Epic updating their store to keep that information as 32 or 64-bit values, so more DLC can fit in the list. TSW was apparently the first one to hit that cap and expose the issue. Which, y'know, it was gonna be DTG or Paradox at the end of the day

 

Yes it wouldn't solve the problem of the number of DLC's in the store. What I mean is that if you already have the 5 version downloaded, can't it be patched to work in 6. DTG don't have any way to patch the store, but Epic can't control what is already on the users drive. DTG already have experience of working around limitations like they did with Sony, I can't believe there isn't something that can be done if sufficient effort was made. I guess it's just a case of money and whether the effort is worth it.

 

In theory DTG could recompile a fresh version of the packages for TSW6 compatibility and they could work in a cracked copy of the game that didn't have any licensing checks, I guess? That seems the closest solution to what you are describing? They wouldn't, for obvious reasons, but as a pure hypothetical. As I say, other workarounds are theoretically possible, such as the one I described earlier, but fundamentally sooner or later the game would run up against the same limits on Epic.

 

Somewhere in the forum, an Epic player wrote the following about this.

He copied the 101 Game Play Pack Steam version into his Epic TSW5, and he was even able to play it without any problems.

 

Yeah, but the reason you need to redownload all your DLC for newer versions is that they need to be repackaged for the new version of the game. So DTG would need to make this and, crucially, distribute it somehow independently to Epic players of the Epic store. Which would have implications once that's available that I think DTG are unwilling to go with, or we'd already see a GOG version of TSW.

 

Maybe one way round the Epic problem for DTG is to split TSW into three separate editions, UK, Europe and USA/Other. Pricing for the core games would need to be worked out once the free period is over but given the content between the three regions is mutually exclusive that should bring the total under each banner down to around 40 or 50. So plenty of wiggle room for forthcoming DLC too.

 

I count 58 compatible dlc for TSW6 for Epic players. Why is that the magic number?

 

I’m guessing Epic themselves have made a decision as to what sells and reduced their catalog accordingly. If they really wanted to they could find a way. I don’t buy the 128 bit limit. Making most of the TSW6 release and hope people upgrade/duplicate DLC later when they drop their ‘sales’ to entice.

 

But it appears for older DLC they were indeed granting entitlements backwards, I noticed a while ago I now have more add-ons in the older TSW versions than I had when I played them. Older DLCs I bought in the current TSW version were also being granted to the old versions in my library where applicable. So ending the backwards compatibility is cleaning up a bunch of useless work they were doing granting those entitlements no one was using anyways.

DW

 

I don't know what the cause is, but as someone with more than a bit of expertise in cloud systems (nowt to do with gaming) I guarantee it's neither a 7 (not 8) bit limit nor a few hundred gigs of storage.

Either of those would point to implausible incompetence at Epic.

 

Both of these are great points that I don't think have been recognized enough. This thread has received regular traffic since Tuesday, which means it is repeatedly showing at the top of the forum list for this category, just below all the pinned threads. To go along with the rest of the communication channels for this game, it has felt like a point is being made not to comment on it, only after pretty much directly replying to CMs on discord about the topic to get any response.

Like hello, this is a major issue, even when its a minority of the players that it effects, even if it is just a "we hear you, we are working on it and will continue to work with epic to get the content that you have paid for" instead of something ending along the lines of "we can’t provide a timeframe for when this content might be available on TSW6 – if at all". As I said on one of the discords yesterday, I think it is important to keep the topic alive so this issue doesn't get swept under the rug.

The second great point you made is the counter to the argument of support, CMs, and the other community members who seem to be tired of Epic players complaining, sure we can be told that we can still enjoy our content on TSW5, and yeah it will probably be the same experience on TSW6 for everyone else since new features usually aren't backported onto older DLCs. However, this presents the space issue of having 2 clients installed, and the fact that TSW5 will (as is tradition) become abandonware. There are those rare occasions where older DLCs get bug fixes on a new platform, and those won't come to TSW5. So effectively we get to play potentially broken and abandoned content.

Given the way the DLC spread on the stuff that does carry over is, this would definitely be a benefit to everyone, but non UK stuff the most. Also something I would be completely fine with given I only play North American content, although it would be an inconvenience storage wise for those who play multiple different regions.