The US is all I care about. And it doesn't affect us. Apple already stomped Epic over here.
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Epic Games Wins Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google Play Store
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Why was this even a case? Google literally allows for 3rd party stores. Fortnite is still on Android through Epic's store.
Until the next World War happens... Then everyone will ask for US support.
Always is a long time. That thinking is exactly why it won’t stay that way. China is coming for you.
It is overall a loss for the consumer. Consumers are not going to get a 'discount' buying the game through the Epic store vs the Google Play store, nor would they had with buying it through the AppleStore. Consumers have no benefit. While we are lucky Apple won, this decision could reopen that litigation up, its hard to say. The loss for the consumer is what you see currently in Windows. Every company has their own store that you need to install to play their games. There is the Blizzard Store, Steam, EA store, Epic Store, Microsoft store, and I am sure I am missing a bunch. It is very difficult to install games on Windows as you have to know which store you need to download and install that store on your windows machine. Then you have that store running in the background all the time, upgrading every reboot, using resources, popups, it's really a mess. Epic obviously wants their store to be installed on every phone which gives you a
"Windows Gaming Experience" on your phone. With Epic having their own store, there would be less device security and thus it's up to Epic to secure the games they offer. Which they may or may not use. Many people use phones for work and as we have seen with 'Jail Break Detection', many apps you install will not work if your phone is jailbroken because they look for an alternate store on your phone. You'll certainly see Apps, especially security apps, blocking being used if there is an insecure store installed on your phone. For gaming on like the PlayStations, people love how easy it is as you have to install everything through the one PlayStation store. Allowing multiple stores on a PlayStation would produce the same bad experience for the user and the user will not get ANY benefit. Even people who hate Apple should be against this as it affects your experience.
Epic is nothing to feel sorry for as they had their own store already on the Mac. When they decided to breach their terms of service will Apple, they also disabled their games (like Fortnite) from working on the Mac. Fortnite was NEVER installed through the AppStore, it was installed through the Epic Store on the Mac. Epic blamed disabling (punshining) of ALL Apple users including Mac's on Apple's decision of removing Epic from the App Store, but Fortnite didn't use the App Store on the Mac. They certainly could have kept developing Fortnite on the Mac, but choose to punish any user who owned a Mac. As a result users who spent hundreds of dollars on that game were no longer able to play it only because they decided to make purchases for the game on a Mac. Epic is a very scummy company, there is nothing to feel sorry for here.
"Windows Gaming Experience" on your phone. With Epic having their own store, there would be less device security and thus it's up to Epic to secure the games they offer. Which they may or may not use. Many people use phones for work and as we have seen with 'Jail Break Detection', many apps you install will not work if your phone is jailbroken because they look for an alternate store on your phone. You'll certainly see Apps, especially security apps, blocking being used if there is an insecure store installed on your phone. For gaming on like the PlayStations, people love how easy it is as you have to install everything through the one PlayStation store. Allowing multiple stores on a PlayStation would produce the same bad experience for the user and the user will not get ANY benefit. Even people who hate Apple should be against this as it affects your experience.
Epic is nothing to feel sorry for as they had their own store already on the Mac. When they decided to breach their terms of service will Apple, they also disabled their games (like Fortnite) from working on the Mac. Fortnite was NEVER installed through the AppStore, it was installed through the Epic Store on the Mac. Epic blamed disabling (punshining) of ALL Apple users including Mac's on Apple's decision of removing Epic from the App Store, but Fortnite didn't use the App Store on the Mac. They certainly could have kept developing Fortnite on the Mac, but choose to punish any user who owned a Mac. As a result users who spent hundreds of dollars on that game were no longer able to play it only because they decided to make purchases for the game on a Mac. Epic is a very scummy company, there is nothing to feel sorry for here.
Care as little as you want, what happens here will still affect you.
I bet factory workers in the car factories don’t care about China until they lose their jobs.
To be honest, the threat of China is less than what the war hawks want you to think. Their entire economy is based off of manufacturing of US invented products.
Which still keeps the Apple vs. Google debate going regarding anticompetitive behavior. If it's anticompetitive for Google to give companies a choice to offer app access alternatives on Android but incentivizes them not to then Apple is being even more anticompetitive by not giving companies a choice to offer app access alternatives on iOS.
lol. no.
Yes it is. You are breaking encryption and copyright by dumping keys and firmware to even have the capability and then the roms.
Invented, yes. Designed, no. Europeans and Americans like to believe that China is just the factory and all the engineering happens in the west, because that's what the marketing says. Increasingly, the engineering is shifting to also happen in Asia, and only the high-level specifications are done in the west. This is the real reason why we don't just bring all the manufacturing robots to the US - this is not where the expertise is anymore. Apple even stated this as a fact, in response to why they don't move all manufacturing back to the US.
It's not about "war hawks", I'm not at all afraid of WW3. I'm just being realistic about what is happening with the world economy, while the west is sleeping.
These people go way overboard about the “selling at a loss” argument. Essentially every product in the world is sold at a loss due to R&D, employee costs, software, hardware, marketing, etc. You think one Switch covers the ENTIRE production and marketing costs?
So with that same mindset, the iPhone is sold where it is and the App Store gets 30% for operating costs and paying employees.
No, it's not. That doesn't follow at all. Incentivizing other companies not to use competing app stores is not the same as choosing not to use them yourselves.
In the PC space, they literally pay game devs to have exclusivity to their garbage store (see Final Fantasy 7 Remake (1 year), Tony Hawk games, Kingdom Hearts games, etc.) so how does this whole thing ever made sense?
Tim Epic has been annoying ever since the Apple v Epic case happened. Trying hard to recoup that Tencent money?
Tim Epic has been annoying ever since the Apple v Epic case happened. Trying hard to recoup that Tencent money?
That's a pretty harsh statement. I have purchased and refunded a game from the Epic Store and they treated me just like Steam does. I was given a prompt refund. I primarily buy on Steam, but I have no issues or angst towards Epic and their store.
The problem with Epic's approach to online game buying is that they are were so late to the game (no pun intended). Those who have used Steam primarily for game purchases are going to stay with Steam to protect their purchases. They don't want to see Steam layoff staff or close their doors so they will treat Epic as an outsider. I would not have opened a game store to compete with Steam. If Epic sold their own games and had an extensive back catalog like Ubisoft, that would be different but their main claim to fame is their Unreal Engine and Fortnight. Ubisoft isn't in the same league with Steam and they do make games while Steam really doesn't with the exception of Half Life and a couple of other titles. Those running Epic should have taken note of that and they didn't.
Google may have been incentivizing companies to not make their Android apps available for sideloading or not put alternative app stores on Android but Apple already restricted those things on iOS. Google/Android at least allowed for more potential app access competition as sideloading and alternative app stores were still an option. They are not an option on iOS.
Financial projections always change, so you can't see into the future.
Refunds should be the least that they can do with the lack of feature parity with other stores/launchers. If they can't even provide prompt refunds, they wouldn't last trying to battle it out with Steam or anything else really.
I'm fine with having competitors on anything - otherwise no innovation/development would happen (see Intel being complacent for years) because of lack of competition. But throwing money buying out studios to get full exclusivity and paying out developers to get timed exclusivity for a game to get people use their store is not a good solution.
Don't even get me started on their store snooping around on people's drives for no apparent reason a year ago. Other store/launchers do this, but only to their own files and some Windows files for obvious reasons.
Also, if he's such a magnanimous person doing this for the developers "fighting" the corpos with 15-30% store cut, why does he also have one on his own store? Oh right, because it's not free to run those servers.
There are plenty of things to criticize about app stores, but I don’t see any reason private companies need to form identical contracts with all developers. There wasn’t even any rent-seeking behavior in this situation. Are equal contracts required in any industry?
You completely ignored the distinction I made. Again, incentivizing other companies to not do business with your competitors is different than choosing not to do business with them on your own.
Microsoft didn't get in trouble because they didn't bundle Netscape with Windows. They got in trouble for incentivizing Dell to not bundle Netscape on their computers. Among other things.