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Is it Fortnite’s battle or Tencent/CCP’s battle? The timing certainly seem to indicate the latter considering Tencent owns 40% of Epic and Epic went out of thei

Is it Fortnite’s battle or Tencent/CCP’s battle? The timing certainly seem to indicate the latter considering Tencent owns 40% of Epic and Epic went out of their way to get themselves banned on purpose.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This event should've put to bed any notion that Epic is controlled by Tencent: https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-players-talking-politics-hong-kong-2019-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ba... In an incident where even fully US-based organizations were caving to maintain these Chinese market, Tim went full "I don't care what China thinks about what our players say on streams". Pretty sure Tencent is just in it for the money, Epic's a pretty good investment.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  The degree to which Blizzard kowtowed was absurd. I don’t think we should exonerate a company for choosing not to ban players that voice support for democracy in Hong Kong. It would be interesting if Fortnite allowed people to make/sell custom skins and see how they would react to a Winnie the Pooh/Xitler skin.
innagadadavida 6y ago
What does tencent have to gain by this? Or are you suggesting this is somehow influenced by CCP in some elaborate payback for Huawei?
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  I’m guessing you haven’t seen Trump’s executive order targeting WeChat ‘transactions’? Tencent and Chinese companies would benefit from being allowed to operate their own app stores or side load apps, which would allow them to significantly reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions.
  - cat199 6y ago
    > reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions. why would separate app stores limit government jurisdiction?
    - abc-xyz 6y ago
      You can see how much harder it is to ban an app on Android compared to iOS since anyone can install an apk they download from a random website (or from a third-party App Store). Whereas now, if the government tell Apple to remove an app from their App Store worldwide then it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to download it. In the past I don’t think the CCP minded - in fact, they were probably happy about it since it made it much easier to censor apps they didn’t like. Whereas now they’re freaking out since they risk having all their apps blocked from all Apple devices worldwide.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Chinese companies already have amazing China only phones, like the new Xiaomi, which operate their own app stores. They don't need anything from Apple
warp 6y ago
Tim Sweeney still has a controlling stake in Epic, and has been beating this drum for a while. Previously when Microsoft introduced the Windows Store he was decrying the future of Windows as an open platform. So to me it seems mostly Tim's personal battle. Obviously in the end it's all about money, but Tim seems to genuinely want all game developers (not just Epic) to get a larger cut of the pie as opposed to the platform holders. The stated purpose of the Epic game store on PC is to give developers a larger cut compared to what Steam was giving them.
Pfhreak 6y ago
This just seems like capitalism to me. Epic is losing millions of dollars to Apple, they think that they can keep more of those millions of they win this lawsuit. I don't think there's any reason to suspect a shadowy cabal of CCP interests when there's plenty of reason why Epic would want to do this out of self interest.
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  Fortnite might not be losing that much after all, have in mind that it's free to play, and we don't know how much profit they have after dealing with all free traffic coming from iOS devices, paying Apple tax and paying regular state income tax (although tech comapnies are known to be tricky about this last one). It might be that is just not worth for such a massive game to be free to play, if you can't extrat enough profit from paying users.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Last year Fortnite had an estimated 1.8 billion in revenue, and roughly 450 million of that was from apple/ios. They are making lots of money.
    - alfonsodev 6y ago
      it would be interesting to know from that 450M revenue what % is iOS only and from that how much profit (revenue minus operating expenses) is left for shareholders. I guess my point was, if what is left for shareholders is not "that much" compared with the opportunity cost (the loss of not being doing something else) then it might make sense to put the iOS on hold and let the lawyers fight. But I'm speculating, I'm just trying to understand the incentives in play, becuase I don't buy the 1984 video, pretending they care about what is fair.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
        The 450 is iOS. The rest is trivial to look up. You don't have to "buy" it. Everyone else is. You can verify the numbers yourself if you care to.
izacus 6y ago
This is a bizarre statement considering it's Apple who kowtows to Chinese government and censors Chinese appstore and Epic's CEO was openly criticising China and refusing to censor Fortnite players when Blizzard started doing it.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

This event should've put to bed any notion that Epic is controlled by Tencent: https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-players-talking-politics-hong-kong-2019-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ba... In an incident where even fully US-based organizations were caving to maintain these Chinese market, Tim went full "I don't care what China thinks about what our players say on streams". Pretty sure Tencent is just in it for the money, Epic's a pretty good investment.

abc-xyz 6y ago
The degree to which Blizzard kowtowed was absurd. I don’t think we should exonerate a company for choosing not to ban players that voice support for democracy in Hong Kong. It would be interesting if Fortnite allowed people to make/sell custom skins and see how they would react to a Winnie the Pooh/Xitler skin.

innagadadavida 6y ago

What does tencent have to gain by this? Or are you suggesting this is somehow influenced by CCP in some elaborate payback for Huawei?

abc-xyz 6y ago
I’m guessing you haven’t seen Trump’s executive order targeting WeChat ‘transactions’? Tencent and Chinese companies would benefit from being allowed to operate their own app stores or side load apps, which would allow them to significantly reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions.
- cat199 6y ago
  > reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions. why would separate app stores limit government jurisdiction?
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    You can see how much harder it is to ban an app on Android compared to iOS since anyone can install an apk they download from a random website (or from a third-party App Store). Whereas now, if the government tell Apple to remove an app from their App Store worldwide then it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to download it. In the past I don’t think the CCP minded - in fact, they were probably happy about it since it made it much easier to censor apps they didn’t like. Whereas now they’re freaking out since they risk having all their apps blocked from all Apple devices worldwide.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Chinese companies already have amazing China only phones, like the new Xiaomi, which operate their own app stores. They don't need anything from Apple

warp 6y ago

Tim Sweeney still has a controlling stake in Epic, and has been beating this drum for a while. Previously when Microsoft introduced the Windows Store he was decrying the future of Windows as an open platform. So to me it seems mostly Tim's personal battle. Obviously in the end it's all about money, but Tim seems to genuinely want all game developers (not just Epic) to get a larger cut of the pie as opposed to the platform holders. The stated purpose of the Epic game store on PC is to give developers a larger cut compared to what Steam was giving them.

Pfhreak 6y ago

This just seems like capitalism to me. Epic is losing millions of dollars to Apple, they think that they can keep more of those millions of they win this lawsuit. I don't think there's any reason to suspect a shadowy cabal of CCP interests when there's plenty of reason why Epic would want to do this out of self interest.

alfonsodev 6y ago
Fortnite might not be losing that much after all, have in mind that it's free to play, and we don't know how much profit they have after dealing with all free traffic coming from iOS devices, paying Apple tax and paying regular state income tax (although tech comapnies are known to be tricky about this last one). It might be that is just not worth for such a massive game to be free to play, if you can't extrat enough profit from paying users.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  Last year Fortnite had an estimated 1.8 billion in revenue, and roughly 450 million of that was from apple/ios. They are making lots of money.
  - alfonsodev 6y ago
    it would be interesting to know from that 450M revenue what % is iOS only and from that how much profit (revenue minus operating expenses) is left for shareholders. I guess my point was, if what is left for shareholders is not "that much" compared with the opportunity cost (the loss of not being doing something else) then it might make sense to put the iOS on hold and let the lawyers fight. But I'm speculating, I'm just trying to understand the incentives in play, becuase I don't buy the 1984 video, pretending they care about what is fair.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      The 450 is iOS. The rest is trivial to look up. You don't have to "buy" it. Everyone else is. You can verify the numbers yourself if you care to.

izacus 6y ago

This is a bizarre statement considering it's Apple who kowtows to Chinese government and censors Chinese appstore and Epic's CEO was openly criticising China and refusing to censor Fortnite players when Blizzard started doing it.