7 ms·

Tim Sweeney: Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse

41 points by Reedx 7y ago

bitwize 7y ago
Not mentioned, but key to Tim Sweeney's success: accepting fat sacks full of cash money from the Chinese government.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > Not mentioned, but key to Tim Sweeney's success: accepting fat sacks full of cash money from the Chinese government. Good for him? Also the article mentioned Tencent's investment if that's what you are referring to. "He also owns the majority of Epic Games, while China’s Tencent is a minority owner" Your ad hominem propaganda really hurts your cause more than it helps. Whatever cause it is.
- throwaway34241 7y ago
  How was it key to his success? Is it because Tencent bought a minority share in the company after the company was already successful? Is any Chinese company just called "the Chinese government" now? Assuming he isn't the only shareholder and some of the others wanted out, would it have been much better to sell a minority share to venture capitalists instead of a Chinese gaming company (presumably for a worse price)? For a non-controlling interest why does it matter?
  - jiofih 7y ago
    Not to corroborate the parent, but yes, every Chinese company is literally the Chinese government. Mandatory control stake.
    - throwaway34241 7y ago
      Can you send a link or something about this mandatory control stake? I'm not saying you're wrong but I haven't heard of it before. Obviously Chinese companies are ultimately under the control of the Chinese government (and I suppose all companies are subject to governments, but being under an autocratic government without checks and balances is more problematic). My point was the GP comment is being extremely misleading. Not only was Epic already successful well before the investment, but I think there's plenty of more clear ways to refer to an investment from Tencent than how they stated it. Even if it's your opinion that Tencent and the government are the same organization (and not just subject to them), it would be better to add a few extra words to say so. IMO a non-controlling stock interest from a Chinese company actually seems a lot less problematic from a leverage perspective than doing business in China itself. Sure they could threaten to sell their non-controlling share to another investor, but I don't see how that would cause a real problem for Epic.
      - heartbeats 7y ago
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business... > In 2018, the securities regulator followed up by issuing a new corporate governance code requiring listed firms, at home and abroad, to include in their internal guidelines an expansive role for the party. Many Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong also wrote the party’s role into their articles of association. > In some ways, codifying in public documents the party’s role in managing companies was both an instance of rare transparency and part of an increasing trend of the party openly displaying its power. In the past, Chinese state-owned listed companies had customarily filed misleading prospectuses ahead of their stock exchange listings, omitting the party’s pivotal role in the hiring and firing of senior executives. [...] China doesn't have laws in the same way that we do. There, the model is that it's impossible to do business without violating the law, but the government might loosen up on enforcing it. If they feel like it, of course. Against this backdrop, providing explicit legislation is just an unnecessary encumberance.
  - heartbeats 7y ago
    > Is any Chinese company just called "the Chinese government" now? There's no difference. As the country lacks rule of law, companies are direct subsidiaries of the government. As such, the only useful mental model is to treat it as an aggregate. Not "a Chinese citizen/company/organization did X," but "China did X".
    - throwaway34241 7y ago
      I think that's a reasonable way of looking at things if you're thinking about how the Chinese government might use its leverage, but it's a an overly simplified way to describe selling some stock to Tencent.
      - heartbeats 7y ago
        No. Tencent = China, or in proper mathematical terms Tencent => China. Any sentence that has Tencent, you can substitute it for China and it will still be correct. He works for Tencent. He works for China. His company was purchased by Tencent. His company was purchased by China. Tencent operate the messaging app QQ. China operates the messaging app QQ.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  ...and? Are you saying that his assertions are incorrect?
- Reedx 7y ago
  Sweeney was successful well before Tencent even existed, let alone their investment. He founded Epic Games in 1991. If you were a gamer anytime from the 90s onward, there's a good chance you either played their games or games built with their tech (Unreal Engine).
scarface74 7y ago
Epic Games wanted to enable players to sideload Fortnite directly from the Epic Games site, rather than through the Google Play store. Sweeney said that Google put up “scary” pop-ups in front of users about the risks of sideloading (viruses, malware) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-android-security-problems-is-just-getting-started/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fo... As spotted by Android Central, Google has disclosed a huge vulnerability in Epic Games' original Fortnite installer for Android, one that could have taken advantage of the Fortnite installer to install and launch a rogue app, and even give that app access to your phone's data without you ever knowing.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Would going through the Play Store have prevented this?
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    In this case yes. The flaw as I recall was in their updater/launcher. Google play requires that you use Google play for updates > An app distributed via Google Play may not modify, replace, or update itself using any method other than Google Play's update mechanism. Likewise, an app may not download executable code https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/malicious-behavior/ https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/mal... So Epic would of used Google’s update feature and not their own and avoided the issue completely (any update bug would of been Google’s and not Epic’s)
    - m-p-3 7y ago
      They probably did the math and figured out they could cover the distribution and all for less than the 30% slice of the pie to Google. Hopefully they learned from that flaw.
      - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
        Google's rules on monetization was the reason they decided to distribute outside of the play store.
musicale 7y ago
Apparently the solution to Valve, Microsoft, Apple, Google and gog.com online game stores charging too much is to create yet another online game store.
- blibble 7y ago
  and one that has brought back the scourge of exclusivity to the PC essentially the opposite of openness
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    As a software producer I welcome a variety of platforms for distribution, even ones own website. It reduces fees and increases competition. And as a gamer I don't mind having more than one place to shop.
dkonofalski 7y ago
I thank Tim for all his contributions to gaming and 3D technology but I'm not inclined to listen to this kind of nonsense without a solution to the specific problem he's addressing. Yes, there's financial incentive for Google and Apple to have closed store ecosystems but, for the majority of people, those closed, walled gardens are worth it. Tech savvy people do not make up the majority of customers and I think he's being extremely disingenuous to suggest that most users would want to be able to toss away the convenience of these App Stores in exchange for being able to install Fortnite directly from Epic. He only wants that because then he doesn't have to lose money to those companies to do so.
- m463 7y ago
  The Google - Epic thing aside, having an open market is important. Before App stores became acceptable, the PC market was wide open and there was robust competition. Developers could create any kind of software they wanted. They were free to distribute and sell however made sense, and there was no need to ask for permission. This advanced the state of the art exponentially for decades and decades. Customers reaped the benefits.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    I think you're overstating the "robustness" of the competition. Finding and installing apps off the internet was and is a nightmare for people that aren't comfortable with technology. To say that it was wide open and robust and that customers reaped the benefits ignores the monopolies that companies like Microsoft and IBM had and the spread of messes like the IE toolbar disasters and the proliferation of anti-virus software that only takes advantage of the ignorance of users. There are benefits to that system but, for most people, the negatives far outweighed the positives.
  - dragonsky67 7y ago
    And with the App stores individual developers have access to even more customers than ever before without having to deal with publishing and distribution. In most cases they even gain an easy upgrade system that ensures that their customers will be working with the latest version of their software.
ryukafalz 7y ago
Meanwhile, also from Tim Sweeney: https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698... I agree that the industry needs to be more open and shouldn't be beholden to the platform owners. But the Epic Games Store is probably the thing that now threatens gaming on desktop Linux the most, with its paid exclusivity that ends up forcing developers to drop their Linux releases. And Linux is one of the most open platforms available, so... practice what you preach? They're making themselves reliant on the platform providers.
webmobdev 7y ago
This part really made me think: He drew a comparison to Visa and Mastercard and the global credit card payment system, where vendors charge 2.5% to 3.5% fees for transactions, while store vendors such as Steam, Apple, and Google charge 30%. He said the global payments industry is proof that highly profitable companies can arise from just taking the 2.5% to 3.5% cut. He makes a very good point - tech companies do charge very high fees for using their app stores. Do regulators control how much fees payment gateways can charge?
- CarVac 7y ago
  A payment gateway isn't a channel for discovering a vendor, though. You don't go to Visa or PayPal when doing your shopping. You go to a vendor, and the vendor has a choice of whether or not to accept a given method of payment. That's what effectively limits the fees on payments.
  - webmobdev 7y ago
    > That's what effectively limits the fees on payments. And competition. When India launched its own payment processing gateway and card, branded RuPay, that charged 23% lower fees than Mastercard and Visa, they too were forced to drop the exorbitant fees they charged banks and vendors. -> https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/rupay-shines-from-limited-presence-in-2013-to-capturing-half-of-market-now-3-reasons-behind-phenomenal-rise/1378445/ https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/ru... -> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/visa-slashes-fee-on-debit-card-payments/articleshow/64565741.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/vi... -> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/rupay-forces-mastercard-to-call-for-fair-competition/articleshow/49574972.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/financ...
- m463 7y ago
  I actually thought of this a different way... visa and mastercard are gatekeepers enormously inflating the price of transactions. The only challenges to this have been paypal which didn't seem to go that far, and more recently bitcoin.
thrower123 7y ago
The Epic game store is a fake game store, propped up by giveaways and bribing developers for exclusive rights. I would never have gotten into it if The Outer Worlds were on Steam, but, eh, at this point I've spent $60 and picked up a couple hundred dollars worth of other titles that for free. Otherwise, it's fine, but there's nothing special about it and no compelling reason to switch.
salvagedcircuit 7y ago
In my mind, the minute locked bootloaders became the norm for android, and firmware source files became unavailable for devs, android became a closed-shut system. There used to be an entire ecosystem of mods and custom roms, which now have mostly dried up. The number of hoops needed to jump through to actually make an android phone your own in 2020 is completely absurd.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Android’s “openness” has always been bullshit. From day one what made Android Android to most non Chinese consumers was the proprietary bits that Google included and the drivers were always closed source.
app4soft 7y ago
> Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse Symbian OS is open system now.[0] JFTR, Symbian is alive![1,2,3] [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian.org/news-and-media/2010/02/04/symbian-completes-biggest-open-source-migration-project-ever http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian... [1] https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive [2] https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1 https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1 [3] https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s=updated&type=Repositories https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s...
diebeforei485 7y ago
30% is high. However - I don't see any competitive reason to lower the take rate (it's not going to realistically lead to people switching to another device, the way price might). The best they can do is wage a PR battle, and hopefully lower it to ~20%.
- scarface74 7y ago
  As opposed to 60% for physical distribution?
pjmlp 7y ago
The hypocrisy of arguing for openness when Epic also has a store, and it all boils down to their profits. If Epic would get their "Visa/Mastercard" discount, then Android, iOS or even Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft wouldn't be so bad after all.

41 points by Reedx 7y ago

bitwize 7y ago

Not mentioned, but key to Tim Sweeney's success: accepting fat sacks full of cash money from the Chinese government.

dntbnmpls 7y ago
> Not mentioned, but key to Tim Sweeney's success: accepting fat sacks full of cash money from the Chinese government. Good for him? Also the article mentioned Tencent's investment if that's what you are referring to. "He also owns the majority of Epic Games, while China’s Tencent is a minority owner" Your ad hominem propaganda really hurts your cause more than it helps. Whatever cause it is.
throwaway34241 7y ago
How was it key to his success? Is it because Tencent bought a minority share in the company after the company was already successful? Is any Chinese company just called "the Chinese government" now? Assuming he isn't the only shareholder and some of the others wanted out, would it have been much better to sell a minority share to venture capitalists instead of a Chinese gaming company (presumably for a worse price)? For a non-controlling interest why does it matter?
- jiofih 7y ago
  Not to corroborate the parent, but yes, every Chinese company is literally the Chinese government. Mandatory control stake.
  - throwaway34241 7y ago
    Can you send a link or something about this mandatory control stake? I'm not saying you're wrong but I haven't heard of it before. Obviously Chinese companies are ultimately under the control of the Chinese government (and I suppose all companies are subject to governments, but being under an autocratic government without checks and balances is more problematic). My point was the GP comment is being extremely misleading. Not only was Epic already successful well before the investment, but I think there's plenty of more clear ways to refer to an investment from Tencent than how they stated it. Even if it's your opinion that Tencent and the government are the same organization (and not just subject to them), it would be better to add a few extra words to say so. IMO a non-controlling stock interest from a Chinese company actually seems a lot less problematic from a leverage perspective than doing business in China itself. Sure they could threaten to sell their non-controlling share to another investor, but I don't see how that would cause a real problem for Epic.
    - heartbeats 7y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business... > In 2018, the securities regulator followed up by issuing a new corporate governance code requiring listed firms, at home and abroad, to include in their internal guidelines an expansive role for the party. Many Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong also wrote the party’s role into their articles of association. > In some ways, codifying in public documents the party’s role in managing companies was both an instance of rare transparency and part of an increasing trend of the party openly displaying its power. In the past, Chinese state-owned listed companies had customarily filed misleading prospectuses ahead of their stock exchange listings, omitting the party’s pivotal role in the hiring and firing of senior executives. [...] China doesn't have laws in the same way that we do. There, the model is that it's impossible to do business without violating the law, but the government might loosen up on enforcing it. If they feel like it, of course. Against this backdrop, providing explicit legislation is just an unnecessary encumberance.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  > Is any Chinese company just called "the Chinese government" now? There's no difference. As the country lacks rule of law, companies are direct subsidiaries of the government. As such, the only useful mental model is to treat it as an aggregate. Not "a Chinese citizen/company/organization did X," but "China did X".
  - throwaway34241 7y ago
    I think that's a reasonable way of looking at things if you're thinking about how the Chinese government might use its leverage, but it's a an overly simplified way to describe selling some stock to Tencent.
    - heartbeats 7y ago
      No. Tencent = China, or in proper mathematical terms Tencent => China. Any sentence that has Tencent, you can substitute it for China and it will still be correct. He works for Tencent. He works for China. His company was purchased by Tencent. His company was purchased by China. Tencent operate the messaging app QQ. China operates the messaging app QQ.
JohnFen 7y ago
...and? Are you saying that his assertions are incorrect?
Reedx 7y ago
Sweeney was successful well before Tencent even existed, let alone their investment. He founded Epic Games in 1991. If you were a gamer anytime from the 90s onward, there's a good chance you either played their games or games built with their tech (Unreal Engine).

scarface74 7y ago

Epic Games wanted to enable players to sideload Fortnite directly from the Epic Games site, rather than through the Google Play store. Sweeney said that Google put up “scary” pop-ups in front of users about the risks of sideloading (viruses, malware) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-android-security-problems-is-just-getting-started/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fo... As spotted by Android Central, Google has disclosed a huge vulnerability in Epic Games' original Fortnite installer for Android, one that could have taken advantage of the Fortnite installer to install and launch a rogue app, and even give that app access to your phone's data without you ever knowing.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Would going through the Play Store have prevented this?
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  In this case yes. The flaw as I recall was in their updater/launcher. Google play requires that you use Google play for updates > An app distributed via Google Play may not modify, replace, or update itself using any method other than Google Play's update mechanism. Likewise, an app may not download executable code https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/malicious-behavior/ https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/mal... So Epic would of used Google’s update feature and not their own and avoided the issue completely (any update bug would of been Google’s and not Epic’s)
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    They probably did the math and figured out they could cover the distribution and all for less than the 30% slice of the pie to Google. Hopefully they learned from that flaw.
    - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
      Google's rules on monetization was the reason they decided to distribute outside of the play store.

musicale 7y ago

Apparently the solution to Valve, Microsoft, Apple, Google and gog.com online game stores charging too much is to create yet another online game store.

blibble 7y ago
and one that has brought back the scourge of exclusivity to the PC essentially the opposite of openness
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  As a software producer I welcome a variety of platforms for distribution, even ones own website. It reduces fees and increases competition. And as a gamer I don't mind having more than one place to shop.

dkonofalski 7y ago

I thank Tim for all his contributions to gaming and 3D technology but I'm not inclined to listen to this kind of nonsense without a solution to the specific problem he's addressing. Yes, there's financial incentive for Google and Apple to have closed store ecosystems but, for the majority of people, those closed, walled gardens are worth it. Tech savvy people do not make up the majority of customers and I think he's being extremely disingenuous to suggest that most users would want to be able to toss away the convenience of these App Stores in exchange for being able to install Fortnite directly from Epic. He only wants that because then he doesn't have to lose money to those companies to do so.

m463 7y ago
The Google - Epic thing aside, having an open market is important. Before App stores became acceptable, the PC market was wide open and there was robust competition. Developers could create any kind of software they wanted. They were free to distribute and sell however made sense, and there was no need to ask for permission. This advanced the state of the art exponentially for decades and decades. Customers reaped the benefits.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  I think you're overstating the "robustness" of the competition. Finding and installing apps off the internet was and is a nightmare for people that aren't comfortable with technology. To say that it was wide open and robust and that customers reaped the benefits ignores the monopolies that companies like Microsoft and IBM had and the spread of messes like the IE toolbar disasters and the proliferation of anti-virus software that only takes advantage of the ignorance of users. There are benefits to that system but, for most people, the negatives far outweighed the positives.
- dragonsky67 7y ago
  And with the App stores individual developers have access to even more customers than ever before without having to deal with publishing and distribution. In most cases they even gain an easy upgrade system that ensures that their customers will be working with the latest version of their software.

ryukafalz 7y ago

Meanwhile, also from Tim Sweeney: https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698... I agree that the industry needs to be more open and shouldn't be beholden to the platform owners. But the Epic Games Store is probably the thing that now threatens gaming on desktop Linux the most, with its paid exclusivity that ends up forcing developers to drop their Linux releases. And Linux is one of the most open platforms available, so... practice what you preach? They're making themselves reliant on the platform providers.

webmobdev 7y ago

This part really made me think: He drew a comparison to Visa and Mastercard and the global credit card payment system, where vendors charge 2.5% to 3.5% fees for transactions, while store vendors such as Steam, Apple, and Google charge 30%. He said the global payments industry is proof that highly profitable companies can arise from just taking the 2.5% to 3.5% cut. He makes a very good point - tech companies do charge very high fees for using their app stores. Do regulators control how much fees payment gateways can charge?

CarVac 7y ago
A payment gateway isn't a channel for discovering a vendor, though. You don't go to Visa or PayPal when doing your shopping. You go to a vendor, and the vendor has a choice of whether or not to accept a given method of payment. That's what effectively limits the fees on payments.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  > That's what effectively limits the fees on payments. And competition. When India launched its own payment processing gateway and card, branded RuPay, that charged 23% lower fees than Mastercard and Visa, they too were forced to drop the exorbitant fees they charged banks and vendors. -> https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/rupay-shines-from-limited-presence-in-2013-to-capturing-half-of-market-now-3-reasons-behind-phenomenal-rise/1378445/ https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/ru... -> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/visa-slashes-fee-on-debit-card-payments/articleshow/64565741.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/vi... -> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/rupay-forces-mastercard-to-call-for-fair-competition/articleshow/49574972.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/financ...
m463 7y ago
I actually thought of this a different way... visa and mastercard are gatekeepers enormously inflating the price of transactions. The only challenges to this have been paypal which didn't seem to go that far, and more recently bitcoin.

thrower123 7y ago

The Epic game store is a fake game store, propped up by giveaways and bribing developers for exclusive rights. I would never have gotten into it if The Outer Worlds were on Steam, but, eh, at this point I've spent $60 and picked up a couple hundred dollars worth of other titles that for free. Otherwise, it's fine, but there's nothing special about it and no compelling reason to switch.

salvagedcircuit 7y ago

In my mind, the minute locked bootloaders became the norm for android, and firmware source files became unavailable for devs, android became a closed-shut system. There used to be an entire ecosystem of mods and custom roms, which now have mostly dried up. The number of hoops needed to jump through to actually make an android phone your own in 2020 is completely absurd.

scarface74 7y ago
Android’s “openness” has always been bullshit. From day one what made Android Android to most non Chinese consumers was the proprietary bits that Google included and the drivers were always closed source.

app4soft 7y ago

> Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse Symbian OS is open system now.[0] JFTR, Symbian is alive![1,2,3] [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian.org/news-and-media/2010/02/04/symbian-completes-biggest-open-source-migration-project-ever http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian... [1] https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive [2] https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1 https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1 [3] https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s=updated&type=Repositories https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s...

diebeforei485 7y ago

30% is high. However - I don't see any competitive reason to lower the take rate (it's not going to realistically lead to people switching to another device, the way price might). The best they can do is wage a PR battle, and hopefully lower it to ~20%.

scarface74 7y ago
As opposed to 60% for physical distribution?

pjmlp 7y ago

The hypocrisy of arguing for openness when Epic also has a store, and it all boils down to their profits. If Epic would get their "Visa/Mastercard" discount, then Android, iOS or even Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft wouldn't be so bad after all.