17 ms·

Not sure why people are surprised or consider it giant news. > The court recommended that Epic follow the App Store’s guidelines and policies while the case is

Not sure why people are surprised or consider it giant news. > The court recommended that Epic follow the App Store’s guidelines and policies while the case is in progress – the rules they followed over the past ten years until they created the current situation themselves. Epic refused. Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. No matter what opinion one holds on mobile store rules, they are their rules and so far you have the choice of following them (which is also somewhat iffy) or not being on the store. The whole goal of two post-capitalism enterprises having a fit is for one or more of them to make more money. The whole "it is good for consumers" or "good for developers" is just sprinkles and marketing to appeal to the public. Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight.

gameswithgo 6y ago
people familiar with Tim Sweeny’s life and ideology know that it is an actual important issues to him that platforms be open. your cynical take is often very true but there are sometimes real human ideals behind things.
- n42 6y ago
  interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.
  - rsweeney21 6y ago
    PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
    - n42 6y ago
      sure, there is a difference for the developer. anyone who is deluding themselves into thinking that Epic is fighting for the consumer here will be sorely disappointed. Epic recently raised $1.78 billion dollars in capital. how do you think they intend to deliver a return on such a massive investment? anyone paying attention to their moves sees this as what it is. Epic wants to be the exclusive destination to build, buy and play video games. they're fighting Apple because they beat them to the punch. this is not some idealistic martyrdom. it's multi-billion dollar company fights multi-trillion dollar company for market share.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      Indeed, it is paying in order to make sure that 100% of developer revenues go through one platform... the platform may or may not take a 30% cut.
    - judge2020 6y ago
      > PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. It definitely is - one store, Epic, offers deals publishers can't refuse to make a game exclusive to their storefront which limits a consumer's ability to use a platform of their choice to purchase a game. The other, steam, puts no limits on where you can distribute your game (unless you use assets from Valve's own games, but I digress) and has done no exclusivity deals that would force a game to only use their store. Publishers are free to use steam if they want to have 30% taken, but otherwise they can completely forego steam in their distribution.
      - gsich 6y ago
        Can't refuse? Is this the Godfather now?
        Cyph0n 6y ago
        Didn’t you know that Epic holds developers hostage until they agree to their terms? I thought this was common knowledge!
        DivisionSol 6y ago
        Just like Apple holds a gun to developer’s heads to develop for the iOS. Epic is at least bringing the joy of console exclusives to the desktop. Innovative!
        chc 6y ago
        Apple holds the majority of the US market to developers' heads to develop for iOS.
        damnyou 6y ago
        Buying a new console costs hundreds of dollars, while creating an Epic Store account costs nothing. It's really not the same situation.
        judge2020 6y ago
    - cringepirate 6y ago
      >PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product. Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of. Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items. > Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice. You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer. However that isn't happening here. They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation. GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM. Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.
      - paulryanrogers 6y ago
        Are the exclusives permanent?
      - damnyou 6y ago
        Now consider that Valve games like Half Life: Alyx are platform exclusive to Steam -- presumably because Valve gets ~100% of the money spent on Valve games on Steam. Is that "less open for the consumer" as well?
  - john-shaffer 6y ago
    We've had decades of exclusivity deals for one console or another. Those actually prevented people from playing the games without shelling out for an extra console. Total War: Troy is exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year before it comes to Steam. If you got the game on its release date, Epic gave it to you for free. To play it, you need one more launcher to go along with Steam, Battle.net, GOG, and various custom launchers. What is the harm being done here? I like Steam, but I doubt that it will be good in the long term for it to be completely dominant. It needs a solid competitor.
    - MikeKusold 6y ago
      That’s a false equivalency. A more apt comparison would be if you could only buy a game at GameStop for one year, while all the Best But shoppers weren’t able to buy the game from their preferred retail store.
      - jasonlotito 6y ago
        This is fairly common in retail. I've never heard a complaint about it before in that regard.
        Macha 6y ago
        You never heard complaints about physical store exclusive DLC? It was a big topic for a year or two before Gamestop decided they weren't getting their ROI and it became less common again.
    - mrgordon 6y ago
      Well not everyone wants to have to have ten game stores with ten custom launchers if they only have ten games installed Also Epic may control the release in some ways. For example, Civ 6 on Epic is PC only but on Steam it’s PC & Mac. So I bought it on Epic and then realized I can’t play with my friends who are on Macs. Why would I want an entire new game store, an app that they’ve chosen to make incompatible with one of the two major computing platforms, and yet another thing to keep updated, minimized, and logged into. I’m all for competition but exclusivity deals are overall negative for the consumer. It’s worth $10 million to get a new game exclusively for Epic to force everyone to use a store they don’t want to install or use because they’ll end up spending $100 million on other games. It’s an effective business tactic but it’s not exactly in my interest.
  - gsich 6y ago
    Which doesn't make the PC a closed platform.
  - wilshire_nc 6y ago
    If something is exclusive to a platform that's free to use, who cares? It's not like xbox vs playstation where you have to shell out a few hundred dollars to play an exclusive title.
  - mxfh 6y ago
    Sure Origin was a failure, but that much of one? Anyone remembers "only on Origin".
    - n42 6y ago
      those were all EA titles, so EA had their own publisher exclusive marketplace. Tim Sweeney introduced buying out third-party publishers with exclusivity clauses. edit: there's a good analogy in another thread -- only being able to buy a Nintendo game at GameStop and not Best Buy.
      - slavik81 6y ago
        To be clear, you'd be perfectly happy if Epic bought the developers outright and made the games exclusive to the Epic store? To me, that seems like the same end result for consumers.
        Macha 6y ago
        This is equally unpopular when it's happening to Rocket League. At the same time, nobody really cared about Nintendo making Bayonetta 2. I think the problem is with taking away something that was already available or announced to be coming, and people have less problems with funding new things with strings attached.
        n42 6y ago
        no, I would not, but it is also not what we were discussing.
    - hnick 6y ago
      Battle.net is a store with de facto exclusivity too under those standards, and is less of a failure.
  - chc 6y ago
    This is a preposterous claim that requires a lot of revision to be even close to true. Marketplace owners have been using their own games' exclusivity to push their platforms since Steam's introduction. Even just talking about third-party exclusives (which IMO is an arbitrary distinction — they're just as exclusive and for the same reasons), Valve paid for third-party exclusives early in Steam's history. Once they got rich enough, they started just buying companies outright when they wanted exclusivity on a game somebody was making, which is a much stronger exclusivity deal than the relatively tepid "the game comes out a few months earlier on our store" deals Epic is best known for.
- xyproto 6y ago
  Why does Unreal Engine have its own marketplace? Is it still an open platform?
  - gsich 6y ago
    Yes. You can import assets independently of that marketplace.
- m3kw9 6y ago
  Open and closed is relative, as nothing is completely open unless it’s open source. Epic game store isn’t completely open. He’s just defining his version open to suit his bottom line.
  - SXX 6y ago
    That's true, but Epic is more of a friend to open source than Apple: they donated money to both Blender and Godot Engine. Also Epic benefit from game development being more open in general even if their own engine is not open source. If they gonna win in battle with Apple and will be allowed to have their own store then it's also make it possible to setup more of alternative stores for e.g open source software without waiting for jailbreak.
    - alehlopeh 6y ago
      WebKit alone makes Apple more of a friend to open source than Epic.
      - underwater 6y ago
        Apple was obligated to open source WebKit. The only other project I can think of where they have been open by choice is Swift.
        om2 6y ago
        We were obligated to provide source code for the LGPL parts corresponding to official releases. We were not obligated to make it a community open source project with a live repo, or to accept code for ports to non-Apple platforms. We chose to do those things. (clang and llvm are also open by choice)
        SXX 6y ago
        > clang and llvm are also open by choice I do like the fact that we now have two competing compilers and llvm brought a lot of innovation, but everyone know that only reason Apple invested in these projects is to avoid GPLv3. And yeah at the same time Apple's locked platform and Webkit-only policy saves us from Chromium monopoly over the web and helps Firefox live. So yeah world is not just abstract "good and evil" obviously.
- aftergibson 6y ago
  This openness ideology hardly extends to the under the table exclusivity deals Epic Store has with a number of titles?
  - esrauch 6y ago
    That seems meaningfully different. The openness here is you own a piece of hardware, another company wants to sell you software to run on your hardware; can that two-party interaction complete without an adversarial third party being involved? The answer to that question on iOS is a "strong no", on Android it's a "yes, but". On PC that answer is yes regardless if the actions of Epic Store.
    - aftergibson 6y ago
      Independent of the Epic Vs Apple debate, I’m merely stating that it’s somewhat hypocritical to claim someone is ideologically open while at the same time they take actions to lock down purchases to the Epic platform only.
      - esrauch 6y ago
        I don't really understand the hypocrisy though. It seems consistent to suggest people should be able to run the software they choose on the hardware they own, without also forcing every store to sell every product. Put another way, in real life any legal product should be feasible to sell/buy as long as there's corresponding supply/demand to make it work. No one should force Target to sell things they don't want to sell, but it shouldn't be allowed for Target to use some leverage to block any other stores from opening in driving distance of your house.
- stock_toaster 6y ago
  > people familiar with Tim Sweeny’s life and ideology know that it is an actual important issues to him that platforms be open. I get that, but I admit to finding it hard to square with his statements[1] that he is fine with game consoles not being open. Seems a strange dichotomy. [1]: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oglnAiHBXEYJ:https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/1113985565433765888%3Flang%3Den+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oglnAi...
  - SXX 6y ago
    I really not going to be surprised that in case Epic manage to win over Apple they'll put pressure on console manufacturers next.
    - stock_toaster 6y ago
      I would presume so as well. If Apple loses their case, I imagine we will see big changes in many platforms. I would also posit... much higher prices for hardware[1] to make up for the "income gap" too, presumably. [1]: hard to image game consoles being sold at a loss if they couldn't make it up in fees on the other side.
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        Consoles have been profitable since PS 4 era. https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/30/sony-posts-2-1b-profit-as-playstation-sales-keep-on-growing/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/30/sony-posts-2-1b-profit-as-...
        stock_toaster 6y ago
        hmm. I presumed they were still initially sold at a slight loss until economies of scale made them per-unit profitable in the middle of the sales curve. If that isn't the case, then it makes Sweeny's statement above seem even stranger.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  Tim Sweeney may be a wonderful man who loves open platforms, apple pie, and kittens, but: - Android is clearly more open than iOS, but Epic is also suing Google. So is this really about sideloading? From that suit, it sure doesn't sound like it. - When you do sideload Fortnite on your Android device, from what I understand, you can't actually sideload Fortnite directly. Instead you have sideload... the Epic Games Store! It seems awfully clear that Epic's real goal here is to force both Apple and Google to let you install the Epic Games Store from the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. And while I'm not much of a gamer, the stories I recall about Epic's store in the press... well, we'll just say they didn't have a "so ideals! much open!" vibe to them. I think there's a lot of valid criticisms to be made about both the "app console" model that Apple is steadfastly pushing and the specific ways in which they're running the App Store, but I am skeptical that Epic is the general this particular battle needs.
  - yyyk 6y ago
    The reality of the legal system is that all small companies would just get worn out and forced to settle against Apple, regardless of the justice of their complaint. No company smaller than Epic could afford to file such a case. I wonder whether any company could become large enough without having some way for people to argue that "it is not the general this particular battle needs".
    - outworlder 6y ago
      Or, you know, you could get multiple companies working together. Why does it have to be a single company?
      - yyyk 6y ago
        Yes, that would be possible. However, it is difficult to get multiple parties to cooperate and coordinate on an expensive for a long time. It requires a high degree of trust, or some form of legal instrument. Trust isn't very much around these days, maybe some clever legal instrument could have done it?
      - 6y ago
- jmull 6y ago
  It doesn’t look like the unreal marketplace is open. Nor the unreal engine itself.
- DevKoala 6y ago
  Then why did he sign with Tencent? There is no open platform competition in China.
- danbolt 6y ago
  I feel like his standards for openness are always up to where Epic's business model is a best fit. I've never heard him suggest something like letting me run my own Fortnite server or something of the sort. That said, you're right that he's consistent with these views, especially how he was against UWP during its heyday. [1] [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweeney-blasts-microsofts-aggressive-new-uwp-initiative https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweene...
- 1_player 6y ago
  He likes his platforms to be so open he openly said he doesn't care about porting his game store to Linux.
- AJ007 6y ago
  He was very vocal years back when Microsoft was trying to pull off with UWP - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweeney-blasts-microsofts-aggressive-new-uwp-initiative https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweene... - That is too much to go in to here, but I would recommend reading about it if you are concerned about being able to do things like load the software you want on to Windows. Tim Sweeney is thinking years ahead of most other people. In the case of Google and Apple, I suspect what he is actually concerned about is these two companies have control over a VR/AR/XR "metaverse" platform. There are hours of audio and transcripts about him talking about this as well. https://blog.siggraph.org/2019/10/siggraph-spotlight-episode-30-tim-sweeney-and-the-metaverse.html/ https://blog.siggraph.org/2019/10/siggraph-spotlight-episode... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ClJxjuRvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ClJxjuRvw
- risyachka 6y ago
  Everyone can have his own point of view on closed platforms. But if I make a closed platform - Tim Sweeny should not force me to open it.
- ric2b 6y ago
  I wonder why his company mostly ignores Linux then.
CraigJPerry 6y ago
>> The whole goal of two post-capitalism enterprises having a fit is for one or more of them to make more money. The whole "it is good for consumers" or "good for developers" is just sprinkles and marketing to appeal to the public. Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. An upvote didn’t seem like enough, that is a devastatingly accurate appraisal IMO
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
If Epic Games doesn't get it's way will China give Apple the boot? Are we watching a cold war unfold in front of our eyes?
- user5994461 6y ago
  Highly unlikely, the iPhone is very common and a major status symbol in China. People making up the government are not gonna ban their phones (or their son's and daughter's iPhones, considering the 70 year old politicians might not be strong users of smartphone themselves).
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    They might if Apple is forced to ban WeChat and other Chinese apps from the App Store worldwide (which is why Tencent/CCP is having all these proxy wars targeting Apple, with the sole purpose of making it possible to side-load apps so that Trump’s executive orders will hurt Tencent/Bytedance (and future Chinese companies) a lot less). The timing of 40% Tencent-owned Epic Games’ PR lawsuit is no coincidence.
  - gukov 6y ago
    Sure, they won't ban them for themselves, they'll just ban them for the regular people. Then iPhone will become an even bigger status symbol.
  - mantap 6y ago
    China is acutely aware that banning the iPhone is likely to send Apple into meltdown and by extension the US stock market and presidency. If they perceive that to be in their political interests then they will do it, otherwise they won't.
- phatfish 6y ago
  If only it were really that interesting.
jacquesm 6y ago
> just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. At the expense of the users, in both the figurative and the literal sense of the word.
- oneplane 6y ago
  Perhaps, but that is nothing new, now is it? I'm not sure why this case would be special... it's definitely not the scale, numbers or competition, because those are practically the same on plenty of other (non-IT) inter-corporate schemes. Just because you don't hear about them as much doesn't mean they aren't bigger or less relevant.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Ultimately if Apple bends if will be good for the users in the long run. That's what matters. And if Apple doesn't bend, we need antitrust action against these monopolies anyways.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    If Apple bends it will be to settle and cut a special deal with Epic. They will never let it go far enough to truly threaten their walled garden.
    - TotempaaltJ 6y ago
      I don't know that that's gonna be enough for Sweeney at this point.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > If Apple bends it will be to settle and cut a special deal with Epic. But then who isn't going to want to take their place and get their own "special deal"?
      - jonlucc 6y ago
        It's possible Apple would then proactively reach out to the largest developers to make similar deals, but the risk is pretty low to Apple if it takes a company willing to launch a multi-year lawsuit costing millions and millions of dollars; many companies, even large ones, don't have that cheddar.
colinmhayes 6y ago
> The whole goal of two post-capitalism enterprises having a fit is for one or more of them to make more money. The whole "it is good for consumers" or "good for developers" is just sprinkles and marketing to appeal to the public. Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. I don't think this means I shouldn't vehemently support companies when their policy advances my interests.
- oneplane 6y ago
  But do they? Or is that just a facade to influence public opinion. Don't forget that all large companies like to personify when it suits them, but are just legal entities with the upsides or persons but none of the downsides or actual accountability. That goes for Apple, Google, Epic and all the other big ones all the same. It's also good to remember that it's not "all the people that work at the company", but mostly a bunch of legal people, and a small blip on the calendar of the CEO.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I know it's very fashionable on Twitter to say the word "post-capitalism," but how is Epic in any way operating in a post-capitalist environment? They face heavy, almost capitalist-ideal levels of competition in every market where they compete.
akira2501 6y ago
> No matter what opinion one holds on mobile store rules, they are their rules and so far you have the choice of following them (which is also somewhat iffy) or not being on the store. A valid opinion is that those rules are illegal under current federal statue. Another one is that although they currently aren't, they should be. > Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. Yes, but the only reason they get to adjudicate it in tax payer funded courts is precisely _because_ the decision will have a major impact on consumers and developers as as whole. It's a surprise because typically these departments have a much larger incentive to settle, and not to create new case law. It's giant news because of the potential impact to many individuals and to the industry as a whole.
- gowld 6y ago
  > Yes, but the only reason they get to adjudicate it in tax payer funded courts is precisely _because_ the decision will have a major impact on consumers and developers as as whole. That's not right. Civil tort suits are for any citizens to seek justice for themselves.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
    Tort reform is a travesty, for sure, but I'm not sure it's a relevant point to make here.
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
  If it makes you feel better, the tax payer funded courts are only about 0.05% of the annual budget.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Guess that explains why everything is so glacially slow. How about deverting a tenth of a percent from the military? :)
outworlder 6y ago
I agree. Epic could have taken the matter directly to the courts and taken action (whatever it was) after a verdict. Heck, they could even have tried to make a case to the European Union, which seems to have a knack for pursuing this kind of thing. A ruling over there wouldn't directly impact the rest of the world, but it could get the ball rolling. Instead, they decided to make a spectacle of this whole issue to try to rally customers to their cause. For that, I have no sympathy. Customers are being used as cannon fodder here. And it's not by Apple. I agree that the App store cut is too high. But this is not the way to go about things.
- caf 6y ago
  Epic could have taken the matter directly to the courts and taken action (whatever it was) after a verdict. No, I don't believe they could. The courts in common law jurisdictions generally don't rule on speculative harm, they require an active controversy to rule on.
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    The complaint is based on antitrust statutes.
- Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
  Under American law there has to be an actual harm (meaning alleged harm). Speculative lawsuits where you ask the courts to rule on something ahead of times is not allowed. It's just not how this country views its court system. The courts are for resolving specific conflicts that have occurred -- with factual histories playing key roles in determining which precedents may apply. The larger topic of which this is a part is something called "standing." Lack of standing is quite a common reason for a court to deny hearing a case. Not only does there have to be a harm, the party suing has to be the party that suffered the harm. So you also cannot sue on behalf of others. This is the reason for the initial actions Epic took. Tim Sweeney has been chomping at the bit for this sort of suit for years. But they needed a harm to use as the locus for a suit. There has certainly been a big PR campaign surrounding it to try to sway public opinion to Epic's side, but the action itself was necessary.
zerocrates 6y ago
What I don't get is: they pushed a noncompliant Fortnite update, and Apple took it down. So aren't they, in fact, not currently in violation? Since Fortnite is not on the store? Is it not a valid response to Apple finding a violation to just say: "OK, then we just won't try to put it back up"?
Dylan16807 6y ago
> Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. I don't think they want special treatment. I think they want the rules to change.
carabiner 6y ago
I'm tired of these comments stating that the headline should not be surprising. Can you just accept that not everyone's life is fixated on the subject at hand, and that this still constitutes "news" for them?
- raindropm 6y ago
  Honestly, this happened in every section of any big/ semi-big news lmfao. You just skip pass them real fast.
weixiyen 6y ago
> not getting the special treatment they want They are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the courts to curtail Apple's absolute power over how applications can be installed on an operating system designed for general computing. That would be a game changer for the entire developer ecosystem. Whether that's good or bad is another debate, but the industry-shifting impact it could have is undeniable.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  Yeah, it would be the end of it. This kind of thing didn't exist before because it was impossible to make people follow the rules, and it's pretty costly to maintain, given that Apple has to vet all the software, host all the content, and do that across hundreds of jurisdictions with various local rules. Before Apple there was no way any of this could happen, Google followed suit only because it looked so profitable, and they could afford to bite the losses for as long as it took to prop up their smartphone. So, yeah, it would shake the industry to the core, just not the way most of the people begging for it think it would.
- risyachka 6y ago
  It is not an abuse of power when you created a phone many years ago, and when it was way less popular you told everyone beforehand that it will be impossible on install random software, only though store. It is called a built-in feature and iPhones were designed with it from the very start.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    The first sold version of the iPhone had no app store and only allowed web apps to be used. Without Apple having any say over what you could install or not. It was also marketed accordingly.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  > on an operating system designed for general computing Apple could easily make the case that the platform was never designed for general computing. It was never an open platform, and what Epic is asking is for the government to 'compel speech' from Apple in the form of changes to their product in order to make it one.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
> not getting the special treatment they want this is pretty dismissive considering Apple is messing with every developers on their platform and their known not to give special treatment.
- thefreeman 6y ago
  Not defending apple here at all but they do give special treatment to both Netflix and Amazon.
smabie 6y ago
What is post-capitalism?
docv 6y ago
Now that you can play Fortnight on iOS and on the console is it fair that Apple can force Epic to a sell vbucks through its App Store because the game exists on iOS? I'm stepping out on a limb and saying Apple is going to end up settling with Epic so they don't have to host competing App Stores.

gameswithgo 6y ago

people familiar with Tim Sweeny’s life and ideology know that it is an actual important issues to him that platforms be open. your cynical take is often very true but there are sometimes real human ideals behind things.

n42 6y ago
interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.
- rsweeney21 6y ago
  PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
  - n42 6y ago
    sure, there is a difference for the developer. anyone who is deluding themselves into thinking that Epic is fighting for the consumer here will be sorely disappointed. Epic recently raised $1.78 billion dollars in capital. how do you think they intend to deliver a return on such a massive investment? anyone paying attention to their moves sees this as what it is. Epic wants to be the exclusive destination to build, buy and play video games. they're fighting Apple because they beat them to the punch. this is not some idealistic martyrdom. it's multi-billion dollar company fights multi-trillion dollar company for market share.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Indeed, it is paying in order to make sure that 100% of developer revenues go through one platform... the platform may or may not take a 30% cut.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    > PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. It definitely is - one store, Epic, offers deals publishers can't refuse to make a game exclusive to their storefront which limits a consumer's ability to use a platform of their choice to purchase a game. The other, steam, puts no limits on where you can distribute your game (unless you use assets from Valve's own games, but I digress) and has done no exclusivity deals that would force a game to only use their store. Publishers are free to use steam if they want to have 30% taken, but otherwise they can completely forego steam in their distribution.
    - gsich 6y ago
      Can't refuse? Is this the Godfather now?
      - Cyph0n 6y ago
        Didn’t you know that Epic holds developers hostage until they agree to their terms? I thought this was common knowledge!
        DivisionSol 6y ago
        Just like Apple holds a gun to developer’s heads to develop for the iOS. Epic is at least bringing the joy of console exclusives to the desktop. Innovative!
        chc 6y ago
        Apple holds the majority of the US market to developers' heads to develop for iOS.
        damnyou 6y ago
        Buying a new console costs hundreds of dollars, while creating an Epic Store account costs nothing. It's really not the same situation.
      - judge2020 6y ago
  - cringepirate 6y ago
    >PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product. Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of. Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items. > Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice. You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer. However that isn't happening here. They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation. GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM. Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      Are the exclusives permanent?
    - damnyou 6y ago
      Now consider that Valve games like Half Life: Alyx are platform exclusive to Steam -- presumably because Valve gets ~100% of the money spent on Valve games on Steam. Is that "less open for the consumer" as well?
- john-shaffer 6y ago
  We've had decades of exclusivity deals for one console or another. Those actually prevented people from playing the games without shelling out for an extra console. Total War: Troy is exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year before it comes to Steam. If you got the game on its release date, Epic gave it to you for free. To play it, you need one more launcher to go along with Steam, Battle.net, GOG, and various custom launchers. What is the harm being done here? I like Steam, but I doubt that it will be good in the long term for it to be completely dominant. It needs a solid competitor.
  - MikeKusold 6y ago
    That’s a false equivalency. A more apt comparison would be if you could only buy a game at GameStop for one year, while all the Best But shoppers weren’t able to buy the game from their preferred retail store.
    - jasonlotito 6y ago
      This is fairly common in retail. I've never heard a complaint about it before in that regard.
      - Macha 6y ago
        You never heard complaints about physical store exclusive DLC? It was a big topic for a year or two before Gamestop decided they weren't getting their ROI and it became less common again.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Well not everyone wants to have to have ten game stores with ten custom launchers if they only have ten games installed Also Epic may control the release in some ways. For example, Civ 6 on Epic is PC only but on Steam it’s PC & Mac. So I bought it on Epic and then realized I can’t play with my friends who are on Macs. Why would I want an entire new game store, an app that they’ve chosen to make incompatible with one of the two major computing platforms, and yet another thing to keep updated, minimized, and logged into. I’m all for competition but exclusivity deals are overall negative for the consumer. It’s worth $10 million to get a new game exclusively for Epic to force everyone to use a store they don’t want to install or use because they’ll end up spending $100 million on other games. It’s an effective business tactic but it’s not exactly in my interest.
- gsich 6y ago
  Which doesn't make the PC a closed platform.
- wilshire_nc 6y ago
  If something is exclusive to a platform that's free to use, who cares? It's not like xbox vs playstation where you have to shell out a few hundred dollars to play an exclusive title.
- mxfh 6y ago
  Sure Origin was a failure, but that much of one? Anyone remembers "only on Origin".
  - n42 6y ago
    those were all EA titles, so EA had their own publisher exclusive marketplace. Tim Sweeney introduced buying out third-party publishers with exclusivity clauses. edit: there's a good analogy in another thread -- only being able to buy a Nintendo game at GameStop and not Best Buy.
    - slavik81 6y ago
      To be clear, you'd be perfectly happy if Epic bought the developers outright and made the games exclusive to the Epic store? To me, that seems like the same end result for consumers.
      - Macha 6y ago
        This is equally unpopular when it's happening to Rocket League. At the same time, nobody really cared about Nintendo making Bayonetta 2. I think the problem is with taking away something that was already available or announced to be coming, and people have less problems with funding new things with strings attached.
      - n42 6y ago
        no, I would not, but it is also not what we were discussing.
  - hnick 6y ago
    Battle.net is a store with de facto exclusivity too under those standards, and is less of a failure.
- chc 6y ago
  This is a preposterous claim that requires a lot of revision to be even close to true. Marketplace owners have been using their own games' exclusivity to push their platforms since Steam's introduction. Even just talking about third-party exclusives (which IMO is an arbitrary distinction — they're just as exclusive and for the same reasons), Valve paid for third-party exclusives early in Steam's history. Once they got rich enough, they started just buying companies outright when they wanted exclusivity on a game somebody was making, which is a much stronger exclusivity deal than the relatively tepid "the game comes out a few months earlier on our store" deals Epic is best known for.
xyproto 6y ago
Why does Unreal Engine have its own marketplace? Is it still an open platform?
- gsich 6y ago
  Yes. You can import assets independently of that marketplace.
m3kw9 6y ago
Open and closed is relative, as nothing is completely open unless it’s open source. Epic game store isn’t completely open. He’s just defining his version open to suit his bottom line.
- SXX 6y ago
  That's true, but Epic is more of a friend to open source than Apple: they donated money to both Blender and Godot Engine. Also Epic benefit from game development being more open in general even if their own engine is not open source. If they gonna win in battle with Apple and will be allowed to have their own store then it's also make it possible to setup more of alternative stores for e.g open source software without waiting for jailbreak.
  - alehlopeh 6y ago
    WebKit alone makes Apple more of a friend to open source than Epic.
    - underwater 6y ago
      Apple was obligated to open source WebKit. The only other project I can think of where they have been open by choice is Swift.
      - om2 6y ago
        We were obligated to provide source code for the LGPL parts corresponding to official releases. We were not obligated to make it a community open source project with a live repo, or to accept code for ports to non-Apple platforms. We chose to do those things. (clang and llvm are also open by choice)
        SXX 6y ago
        > clang and llvm are also open by choice I do like the fact that we now have two competing compilers and llvm brought a lot of innovation, but everyone know that only reason Apple invested in these projects is to avoid GPLv3. And yeah at the same time Apple's locked platform and Webkit-only policy saves us from Chromium monopoly over the web and helps Firefox live. So yeah world is not just abstract "good and evil" obviously.
aftergibson 6y ago
This openness ideology hardly extends to the under the table exclusivity deals Epic Store has with a number of titles?
- esrauch 6y ago
  That seems meaningfully different. The openness here is you own a piece of hardware, another company wants to sell you software to run on your hardware; can that two-party interaction complete without an adversarial third party being involved? The answer to that question on iOS is a "strong no", on Android it's a "yes, but". On PC that answer is yes regardless if the actions of Epic Store.
  - aftergibson 6y ago
    Independent of the Epic Vs Apple debate, I’m merely stating that it’s somewhat hypocritical to claim someone is ideologically open while at the same time they take actions to lock down purchases to the Epic platform only.
    - esrauch 6y ago
      I don't really understand the hypocrisy though. It seems consistent to suggest people should be able to run the software they choose on the hardware they own, without also forcing every store to sell every product. Put another way, in real life any legal product should be feasible to sell/buy as long as there's corresponding supply/demand to make it work. No one should force Target to sell things they don't want to sell, but it shouldn't be allowed for Target to use some leverage to block any other stores from opening in driving distance of your house.
stock_toaster 6y ago
> people familiar with Tim Sweeny’s life and ideology know that it is an actual important issues to him that platforms be open. I get that, but I admit to finding it hard to square with his statements[1] that he is fine with game consoles not being open. Seems a strange dichotomy. [1]: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oglnAiHBXEYJ:https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/1113985565433765888%3Flang%3Den+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oglnAi...
- SXX 6y ago
  I really not going to be surprised that in case Epic manage to win over Apple they'll put pressure on console manufacturers next.
  - stock_toaster 6y ago
    I would presume so as well. If Apple loses their case, I imagine we will see big changes in many platforms. I would also posit... much higher prices for hardware[1] to make up for the "income gap" too, presumably. [1]: hard to image game consoles being sold at a loss if they couldn't make it up in fees on the other side.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      Consoles have been profitable since PS 4 era. https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/30/sony-posts-2-1b-profit-as-playstation-sales-keep-on-growing/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/30/sony-posts-2-1b-profit-as-...
      - stock_toaster 6y ago
        hmm. I presumed they were still initially sold at a slight loss until economies of scale made them per-unit profitable in the middle of the sales curve. If that isn't the case, then it makes Sweeny's statement above seem even stranger.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
Tim Sweeney may be a wonderful man who loves open platforms, apple pie, and kittens, but: - Android is clearly more open than iOS, but Epic is also suing Google. So is this really about sideloading? From that suit, it sure doesn't sound like it. - When you do sideload Fortnite on your Android device, from what I understand, you can't actually sideload Fortnite directly. Instead you have sideload... the Epic Games Store! It seems awfully clear that Epic's real goal here is to force both Apple and Google to let you install the Epic Games Store from the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. And while I'm not much of a gamer, the stories I recall about Epic's store in the press... well, we'll just say they didn't have a "so ideals! much open!" vibe to them. I think there's a lot of valid criticisms to be made about both the "app console" model that Apple is steadfastly pushing and the specific ways in which they're running the App Store, but I am skeptical that Epic is the general this particular battle needs.
- yyyk 6y ago
  The reality of the legal system is that all small companies would just get worn out and forced to settle against Apple, regardless of the justice of their complaint. No company smaller than Epic could afford to file such a case. I wonder whether any company could become large enough without having some way for people to argue that "it is not the general this particular battle needs".
  - outworlder 6y ago
    Or, you know, you could get multiple companies working together. Why does it have to be a single company?
    - yyyk 6y ago
      Yes, that would be possible. However, it is difficult to get multiple parties to cooperate and coordinate on an expensive for a long time. It requires a high degree of trust, or some form of legal instrument. Trust isn't very much around these days, maybe some clever legal instrument could have done it?
    - 6y ago
jmull 6y ago
It doesn’t look like the unreal marketplace is open. Nor the unreal engine itself.
DevKoala 6y ago
Then why did he sign with Tencent? There is no open platform competition in China.
danbolt 6y ago
I feel like his standards for openness are always up to where Epic's business model is a best fit. I've never heard him suggest something like letting me run my own Fortnite server or something of the sort. That said, you're right that he's consistent with these views, especially how he was against UWP during its heyday. [1] [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweeney-blasts-microsofts-aggressive-new-uwp-initiative https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweene...
1_player 6y ago
He likes his platforms to be so open he openly said he doesn't care about porting his game store to Linux.
AJ007 6y ago
He was very vocal years back when Microsoft was trying to pull off with UWP - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweeney-blasts-microsofts-aggressive-new-uwp-initiative https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-03-04-tim-sweene... - That is too much to go in to here, but I would recommend reading about it if you are concerned about being able to do things like load the software you want on to Windows. Tim Sweeney is thinking years ahead of most other people. In the case of Google and Apple, I suspect what he is actually concerned about is these two companies have control over a VR/AR/XR "metaverse" platform. There are hours of audio and transcripts about him talking about this as well. https://blog.siggraph.org/2019/10/siggraph-spotlight-episode-30-tim-sweeney-and-the-metaverse.html/ https://blog.siggraph.org/2019/10/siggraph-spotlight-episode... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ClJxjuRvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ClJxjuRvw
risyachka 6y ago
Everyone can have his own point of view on closed platforms. But if I make a closed platform - Tim Sweeny should not force me to open it.
ric2b 6y ago
I wonder why his company mostly ignores Linux then.

CraigJPerry 6y ago

>> The whole goal of two post-capitalism enterprises having a fit is for one or more of them to make more money. The whole "it is good for consumers" or "good for developers" is just sprinkles and marketing to appeal to the public. Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. An upvote didn’t seem like enough, that is a devastatingly accurate appraisal IMO

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

If Epic Games doesn't get it's way will China give Apple the boot? Are we watching a cold war unfold in front of our eyes?

user5994461 6y ago
Highly unlikely, the iPhone is very common and a major status symbol in China. People making up the government are not gonna ban their phones (or their son's and daughter's iPhones, considering the 70 year old politicians might not be strong users of smartphone themselves).
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  They might if Apple is forced to ban WeChat and other Chinese apps from the App Store worldwide (which is why Tencent/CCP is having all these proxy wars targeting Apple, with the sole purpose of making it possible to side-load apps so that Trump’s executive orders will hurt Tencent/Bytedance (and future Chinese companies) a lot less). The timing of 40% Tencent-owned Epic Games’ PR lawsuit is no coincidence.
- gukov 6y ago
  Sure, they won't ban them for themselves, they'll just ban them for the regular people. Then iPhone will become an even bigger status symbol.
- mantap 6y ago
  China is acutely aware that banning the iPhone is likely to send Apple into meltdown and by extension the US stock market and presidency. If they perceive that to be in their political interests then they will do it, otherwise they won't.
phatfish 6y ago
If only it were really that interesting.

jacquesm 6y ago

> just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. At the expense of the users, in both the figurative and the literal sense of the word.

oneplane 6y ago
Perhaps, but that is nothing new, now is it? I'm not sure why this case would be special... it's definitely not the scale, numbers or competition, because those are practically the same on plenty of other (non-IT) inter-corporate schemes. Just because you don't hear about them as much doesn't mean they aren't bigger or less relevant.
chrisco255 6y ago
Ultimately if Apple bends if will be good for the users in the long run. That's what matters. And if Apple doesn't bend, we need antitrust action against these monopolies anyways.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  If Apple bends it will be to settle and cut a special deal with Epic. They will never let it go far enough to truly threaten their walled garden.
  - TotempaaltJ 6y ago
    I don't know that that's gonna be enough for Sweeney at this point.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > If Apple bends it will be to settle and cut a special deal with Epic. But then who isn't going to want to take their place and get their own "special deal"?
    - jonlucc 6y ago
      It's possible Apple would then proactively reach out to the largest developers to make similar deals, but the risk is pretty low to Apple if it takes a company willing to launch a multi-year lawsuit costing millions and millions of dollars; many companies, even large ones, don't have that cheddar.

colinmhayes 6y ago

> The whole goal of two post-capitalism enterprises having a fit is for one or more of them to make more money. The whole "it is good for consumers" or "good for developers" is just sprinkles and marketing to appeal to the public. Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. I don't think this means I shouldn't vehemently support companies when their policy advances my interests.

oneplane 6y ago
But do they? Or is that just a facade to influence public opinion. Don't forget that all large companies like to personify when it suits them, but are just legal entities with the upsides or persons but none of the downsides or actual accountability. That goes for Apple, Google, Epic and all the other big ones all the same. It's also good to remember that it's not "all the people that work at the company", but mostly a bunch of legal people, and a small blip on the calendar of the CEO.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I know it's very fashionable on Twitter to say the word "post-capitalism," but how is Epic in any way operating in a post-capitalist environment? They face heavy, almost capitalist-ideal levels of competition in every market where they compete.

akira2501 6y ago

> No matter what opinion one holds on mobile store rules, they are their rules and so far you have the choice of following them (which is also somewhat iffy) or not being on the store. A valid opinion is that those rules are illegal under current federal statue. Another one is that although they currently aren't, they should be. > Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight. Yes, but the only reason they get to adjudicate it in tax payer funded courts is precisely _because_ the decision will have a major impact on consumers and developers as as whole. It's a surprise because typically these departments have a much larger incentive to settle, and not to create new case law. It's giant news because of the potential impact to many individuals and to the industry as a whole.

gowld 6y ago
> Yes, but the only reason they get to adjudicate it in tax payer funded courts is precisely _because_ the decision will have a major impact on consumers and developers as as whole. That's not right. Civil tort suits are for any citizens to seek justice for themselves.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
  Tort reform is a travesty, for sure, but I'm not sure it's a relevant point to make here.
sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
If it makes you feel better, the tax payer funded courts are only about 0.05% of the annual budget.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Guess that explains why everything is so glacially slow. How about deverting a tenth of a percent from the military? :)

outworlder 6y ago

I agree. Epic could have taken the matter directly to the courts and taken action (whatever it was) after a verdict. Heck, they could even have tried to make a case to the European Union, which seems to have a knack for pursuing this kind of thing. A ruling over there wouldn't directly impact the rest of the world, but it could get the ball rolling. Instead, they decided to make a spectacle of this whole issue to try to rally customers to their cause. For that, I have no sympathy. Customers are being used as cannon fodder here. And it's not by Apple. I agree that the App store cut is too high. But this is not the way to go about things.

caf 6y ago
Epic could have taken the matter directly to the courts and taken action (whatever it was) after a verdict. No, I don't believe they could. The courts in common law jurisdictions generally don't rule on speculative harm, they require an active controversy to rule on.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  The complaint is based on antitrust statutes.
Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
Under American law there has to be an actual harm (meaning alleged harm). Speculative lawsuits where you ask the courts to rule on something ahead of times is not allowed. It's just not how this country views its court system. The courts are for resolving specific conflicts that have occurred -- with factual histories playing key roles in determining which precedents may apply. The larger topic of which this is a part is something called "standing." Lack of standing is quite a common reason for a court to deny hearing a case. Not only does there have to be a harm, the party suing has to be the party that suffered the harm. So you also cannot sue on behalf of others. This is the reason for the initial actions Epic took. Tim Sweeney has been chomping at the bit for this sort of suit for years. But they needed a harm to use as the locus for a suit. There has certainly been a big PR campaign surrounding it to try to sway public opinion to Epic's side, but the action itself was necessary.

zerocrates 6y ago

What I don't get is: they pushed a noncompliant Fortnite update, and Apple took it down. So aren't they, in fact, not currently in violation? Since Fortnite is not on the store? Is it not a valid response to Apple finding a violation to just say: "OK, then we just won't try to put it back up"?

Dylan16807 6y ago

> Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. I don't think they want special treatment. I think they want the rules to change.

carabiner 6y ago

I'm tired of these comments stating that the headline should not be surprising. Can you just accept that not everyone's life is fixated on the subject at hand, and that this still constitutes "news" for them?

raindropm 6y ago
Honestly, this happened in every section of any big/ semi-big news lmfao. You just skip pass them real fast.

weixiyen 6y ago

> not getting the special treatment they want They are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the courts to curtail Apple's absolute power over how applications can be installed on an operating system designed for general computing. That would be a game changer for the entire developer ecosystem. Whether that's good or bad is another debate, but the industry-shifting impact it could have is undeniable.

bobdole12345 6y ago
Yeah, it would be the end of it. This kind of thing didn't exist before because it was impossible to make people follow the rules, and it's pretty costly to maintain, given that Apple has to vet all the software, host all the content, and do that across hundreds of jurisdictions with various local rules. Before Apple there was no way any of this could happen, Google followed suit only because it looked so profitable, and they could afford to bite the losses for as long as it took to prop up their smartphone. So, yeah, it would shake the industry to the core, just not the way most of the people begging for it think it would.
risyachka 6y ago
It is not an abuse of power when you created a phone many years ago, and when it was way less popular you told everyone beforehand that it will be impossible on install random software, only though store. It is called a built-in feature and iPhones were designed with it from the very start.
- kuschku 6y ago
  The first sold version of the iPhone had no app store and only allowed web apps to be used. Without Apple having any say over what you could install or not. It was also marketed accordingly.
mullingitover 6y ago
> on an operating system designed for general computing Apple could easily make the case that the platform was never designed for general computing. It was never an open platform, and what Epic is asking is for the government to 'compel speech' from Apple in the form of changes to their product in order to make it one.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

> not getting the special treatment they want this is pretty dismissive considering Apple is messing with every developers on their platform and their known not to give special treatment.

thefreeman 6y ago
Not defending apple here at all but they do give special treatment to both Netflix and Amazon.

smabie 6y ago

What is post-capitalism?

docv 6y ago

Now that you can play Fortnight on iOS and on the console is it fair that Apple can force Epic to a sell vbucks through its App Store because the game exists on iOS? I'm stepping out on a limb and saying Apple is going to end up settling with Epic so they don't have to host competing App Stores.