4 ms·

My cynical opinion is that it feels Tim Sweeney is purchasing companies in hopes he finds the “right” one that that causes enough public outrage to get his way

by ecf 4y ago

My cynical opinion is that it feels Tim Sweeney is purchasing companies in hopes he finds the “right” one that that causes enough public outrage to get his way in regards to App Store cuts.

valdiorn 4y ago
Good. It should cause outrage.
- riversflow 4y ago
  The only outrage I feel is that Tim Sweeney is using the compensation of starving artists, the main demographic on Bandcamp as I understand it, to try and make himself and EPIC richer or more relatively powerful. I don't give two hoots about "breaking up the App Store Model" and I doubt many/most musicians do either. I personally feel that 30% isn't even outrageous considering the value proposition. Relatively rich/privileged software developers making their problem (App Stores wanting a 30% cut) the musicians' problem isn't noble, it's evil. Edit: The way I see it, Tim Sweeney/EPIC is responsible for breaking the status quo that allowed bandcamp’s niche to operate the way they did, which seems a reasonable assumption. That acquisition turned the userbase into a pawn in the App store battle.
  - _readyforit 4y ago
    The thing is… 30% is a lot for the artists on Bandcamp. Say I sell my album for $10 for easy math. I think Bandcamp takes something like 10-15%, there’s a small PayPal fee (~1%) and the rest goes to me. That’s ~$8.41 in my pocket. If Google takes their cut at the beginning for providing…the App Store where the buyer downloaded the app… the artist’s cut becomes ~$5.89. For a $10 album. It just doesn’t line up with the whole point of Bandcamp.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      > The thing is… 30% is a lot for the artists on Bandcamp. How do you feel about 10%, which is what it probably would be according to TFA?
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > I don't give two hoots about "breaking up the App Store Model" and I doubt many/most musicians do either Well you should. Because regardless of if Epic bought bandcamp or not, the fee that google charges would come directly out of musicians pockets. Regardless of who is running bandcamp, that feel would directly cause artists to not make as much money. > I personally feel that 30% isn't even outrageous Ok, and now the end result is that fee is coming out of artists pockets. If you don't care about artist compensation, and want them to make less money, well fine. But don't pretend like you are on the side of artist compensation.
    - hamburglar 4y ago
      Yes, 100%. Epic or no, google announced that they were going to start taking an additional (and rather large) cut of payments for music sales which they have no part in. Bandcamp built a payment system that facilitates artists making money at zero cost to google, and now google wants to prevent that unless they get a cut. You can argue that google provides the foothold that gets the app on the device, so maybe a small fee could be justified, but taking place in all transactions that enables in perpetuity despite providing no technical contribution to them is ridiculous. Bandcamp could do a billion dollars a week in sales and it wouldn’t cost google a dime.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Sweeney / Epic donated $144 million to Ukraine. As far as virtue signaling goes, I think they've shown they do in fact have a fair amount of principles. Platform monopolies are real problems.
passivate 4y ago
So far he has lost a ton of cash on lawyer fees, M&A costs, etc. And EPIC now has to individually manage the acquired companies, make sure they're not competing against each other in the same market, etc, etc. I don't think this type of "spending current money to save future money" works. I don't care which company is doing it, but someone needs to break the App Store toll-booth. Apple/Google/Anyone else trying to limit general purpose computing on mobile/PC platforms is a terrible thing for computing, but thats just my view. The ideal situation is we have a default app store - where the system integrator enforces all their policies, but then a user can voluntarily choose to download a separate app store where that store is run by different less exploitative policies. To make it easy for users, you can have an central store-front which then re-directs users to the different store pages. No different than a "Nike store" on Amazon.
- fabianhjr 4y ago
  At least in Android it is already the case, I have installed both F-Droid and Huawei's AppGallery in an otherwise stock android. (And prefer to get as much as possible from F-Droid) Apple on the other hand has a war against "evil" sideloading. :P
  - anonymousab 4y ago
    > At least in Android it is already the case There are roadblocks and deficiencies though, a major one being that sideloaded app stores cannot automatically update their applications, making them permanently inferior and crippled compared to Google's offering.
    - IshKebab 4y ago
      They're actually fixing that finally (I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Epic's lawsuits...)
    - newaccount74 4y ago
      Also, some apps from F-Droid are crippled compared to what they can do when downloading from Play Store, eg. the K9 mail app from F-Droid doesn't have support for push email, it can only check at intervals. I don't know what the reason for this is, but the result is that Android is not a truly "open" platform.
antihero 4y ago
I think it is pretty outrageous to spend a grand on a phone and then be told that I’m not allowed to put what I want on it or spend money supporting artists or publishers without a middle man. It’s absolutely insane and I’m not sure why it isn’t subject to a huge antitrust investigation. And this is coming from someone that likes Apple!
- tpmoney 4y ago
  Except this is about Google, and about Android, where you can put what you want and spend money without that middle man. You just need to side load, or install some other app store.
robonerd 4y ago
Bless him for it.

by ecf 4y ago

My cynical opinion is that it feels Tim Sweeney is purchasing companies in hopes he finds the “right” one that that causes enough public outrage to get his way in regards to App Store cuts.

valdiorn 4y ago

Good. It should cause outrage.

riversflow 4y ago
The only outrage I feel is that Tim Sweeney is using the compensation of starving artists, the main demographic on Bandcamp as I understand it, to try and make himself and EPIC richer or more relatively powerful. I don't give two hoots about "breaking up the App Store Model" and I doubt many/most musicians do either. I personally feel that 30% isn't even outrageous considering the value proposition. Relatively rich/privileged software developers making their problem (App Stores wanting a 30% cut) the musicians' problem isn't noble, it's evil. Edit: The way I see it, Tim Sweeney/EPIC is responsible for breaking the status quo that allowed bandcamp’s niche to operate the way they did, which seems a reasonable assumption. That acquisition turned the userbase into a pawn in the App store battle.
- _readyforit 4y ago
  The thing is… 30% is a lot for the artists on Bandcamp. Say I sell my album for $10 for easy math. I think Bandcamp takes something like 10-15%, there’s a small PayPal fee (~1%) and the rest goes to me. That’s ~$8.41 in my pocket. If Google takes their cut at the beginning for providing…the App Store where the buyer downloaded the app… the artist’s cut becomes ~$5.89. For a $10 album. It just doesn’t line up with the whole point of Bandcamp.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > The thing is… 30% is a lot for the artists on Bandcamp. How do you feel about 10%, which is what it probably would be according to TFA?
- stale2002 4y ago
  > I don't give two hoots about "breaking up the App Store Model" and I doubt many/most musicians do either Well you should. Because regardless of if Epic bought bandcamp or not, the fee that google charges would come directly out of musicians pockets. Regardless of who is running bandcamp, that feel would directly cause artists to not make as much money. > I personally feel that 30% isn't even outrageous Ok, and now the end result is that fee is coming out of artists pockets. If you don't care about artist compensation, and want them to make less money, well fine. But don't pretend like you are on the side of artist compensation.
  - hamburglar 4y ago
    Yes, 100%. Epic or no, google announced that they were going to start taking an additional (and rather large) cut of payments for music sales which they have no part in. Bandcamp built a payment system that facilitates artists making money at zero cost to google, and now google wants to prevent that unless they get a cut. You can argue that google provides the foothold that gets the app on the device, so maybe a small fee could be justified, but taking place in all transactions that enables in perpetuity despite providing no technical contribution to them is ridiculous. Bandcamp could do a billion dollars a week in sales and it wouldn’t cost google a dime.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Sweeney / Epic donated $144 million to Ukraine. As far as virtue signaling goes, I think they've shown they do in fact have a fair amount of principles. Platform monopolies are real problems.

passivate 4y ago

So far he has lost a ton of cash on lawyer fees, M&A costs, etc. And EPIC now has to individually manage the acquired companies, make sure they're not competing against each other in the same market, etc, etc. I don't think this type of "spending current money to save future money" works. I don't care which company is doing it, but someone needs to break the App Store toll-booth. Apple/Google/Anyone else trying to limit general purpose computing on mobile/PC platforms is a terrible thing for computing, but thats just my view. The ideal situation is we have a default app store - where the system integrator enforces all their policies, but then a user can voluntarily choose to download a separate app store where that store is run by different less exploitative policies. To make it easy for users, you can have an central store-front which then re-directs users to the different store pages. No different than a "Nike store" on Amazon.

fabianhjr 4y ago
At least in Android it is already the case, I have installed both F-Droid and Huawei's AppGallery in an otherwise stock android. (And prefer to get as much as possible from F-Droid) Apple on the other hand has a war against "evil" sideloading. :P
- anonymousab 4y ago
  > At least in Android it is already the case There are roadblocks and deficiencies though, a major one being that sideloaded app stores cannot automatically update their applications, making them permanently inferior and crippled compared to Google's offering.
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    They're actually fixing that finally (I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Epic's lawsuits...)
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    Also, some apps from F-Droid are crippled compared to what they can do when downloading from Play Store, eg. the K9 mail app from F-Droid doesn't have support for push email, it can only check at intervals. I don't know what the reason for this is, but the result is that Android is not a truly "open" platform.

antihero 4y ago

I think it is pretty outrageous to spend a grand on a phone and then be told that I’m not allowed to put what I want on it or spend money supporting artists or publishers without a middle man. It’s absolutely insane and I’m not sure why it isn’t subject to a huge antitrust investigation. And this is coming from someone that likes Apple!

tpmoney 4y ago
Except this is about Google, and about Android, where you can put what you want and spend money without that middle man. You just need to side load, or install some other app store.

robonerd 4y ago

Bless him for it.