Tim Sweeney: Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse | Hacker News Reader

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

venturebeat.com

41 pointsundefined153 comments

Epic Games wanted to enable players to sideload Fortnite directly from the Epic Games site, rather than through the Google Play store. Sweeney said that Google put up “scary” pop-ups in front of users about the risks of sideloading (viruses, malware)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fo...

As spotted by Android Central, Google has disclosed a huge vulnerability in Epic Games' original Fortnite installer for Android, one that could have taken advantage of the Fortnite installer to install and launch a rogue app, and even give that app access to your phone's data without you ever knowing.

Would going through the Play Store have prevented this?

In this case yes. The flaw as I recall was in their updater/launcher. Google play requires that you use Google play for updates

> An app distributed via Google Play may not modify, replace, or update itself using any method other than Google Play's update mechanism. Likewise, an app may not download executable code

https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/mal...

So Epic would of used Google’s update feature and not their own and avoided the issue completely (any update bug would of been Google’s and not Epic’s)

They probably did the math and figured out they could cover the distribution and all for less than the 30% slice of the pie to Google.

Hopefully they learned from that flaw.

Google's rules on monetization was the reason they decided to distribute outside of the play store.

And from a consumer’s point of view, it also shows why mobile app stores are valuable.

I’ll install any random crap on my iOS devices knowing that they can’t do much harm and they have a granular permission system. I’m very careful of what I install on my computer.

Even when companies aren’t acting with malicious intent, they can screw up your computer.

A Chrome update completely hosed Macs if they had System Integrity Protection turned off.

Heck, iTunes had a bug that would erase your hard drive if you had a space in its name.

Non AMP link: https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-andro...

That’s what I get for using Chrome instead of Safari. That’s weird. I guess it shouldn’t be. When I navigate to the link from Safari and use the copy action, I get the link below:

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnites-battle-royale...

From chrome I get a link from the google domain. I forgot that Safari always copies the target url from a host.

Perhaps, it still doesn’t make Tim’s claim false. Surely they can patch the vulnerability.

The point is, the world is pushed back into prodigy land of closed systems. Sure, it was completely wild west during the period when everything was open and that, the current state is defacto consolidation... however, innovation has its limits once kept in a sand box. From an ecosystem perspective, there are ways in which, closed systems and open world can exist.

Google and apple have for better or worse decent ecosystems, but, have they not stiffled competition in subtle yet effective ways for years?

The fact that they can patch their security vulnerability is poor consolidation for someone who gets hack.

People don’t understand how the Wild West where every program you install has full access to your computer and the consequences of it - adware, toolbarware, viruses, ransomware, etc makes people a lot less likely to install software.

And again we have two ecosystems - one where you can sideload and one you can’t. Where are all of the innovative apps that are only on Android?

Android makes sideloading difficult and scary enough that it's not really an option for the majority of users. Hence this article, and the lack of sideloaded apps.

It should be scary and the Fortnite vulnerability is a perfect example.

> Where are all of the innovative apps that are only on Android?

Because I'm on iOS, I can't reply to notifications from my Pebble smartwatch. If I was on Android, I'd be able to do that, because of the lack of Apple restrictions.

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

The Google - Epic thing aside, having an open market is important.

Before App stores became acceptable, the PC market was wide open and there was robust competition.

Developers could create any kind of software they wanted. They were free to distribute and sell however made sense, and there was no need to ask for permission. This advanced the state of the art exponentially for decades and decades. Customers reaped the benefits.

And with the App stores individual developers have access to even more customers than ever before without having to deal with publishing and distribution. In most cases they even gain an easy upgrade system that ensures that their customers will be working with the latest version of their software.

That might be true, but sort of secondary to the issue.

The developers would have more opportunities if there no barriers to publishing and distribution.

For example, if the developer type you are speaking of had access to two app stores, he would benefit from the competition.

And they were also free to install malware, viruses and had no means of micropayments. Customers are not going to willy nilly put their payment information on every random website.

If there was some innovative game changing idea that was prevented by app stores why don’t you see it on Android where you can side load?

> why don’t you see it on Android where you can side load?

As you quoted yourself in another comment, because:

> Google put up “scary” pop-ups in front of users about the risks of sideloading (viruses, malware)

Also in my quote, there was a good reason why.....

Whether that warning is a good idea or not is irrelevant to asking why there aren't any innovative sideloaded apps on Android.

In other words, the lack of sideloaded apps on Android is easily explained by the warnings and therefore isn't evidence that closed app stores aren't preventing innovation.

What is the solution? Should Google not put up any warnings?

I think you're overstating the "robustness" of the competition. Finding and installing apps off the internet was and is a nightmare for people that aren't comfortable with technology. To say that it was wide open and robust and that customers reaped the benefits ignores the monopolies that companies like Microsoft and IBM had and the spread of messes like the IE toolbar disasters and the proliferation of anti-virus software that only takes advantage of the ignorance of users.

There are benefits to that system but, for most people, the negatives far outweighed the positives.

I fail to see where “tech Sabine’s” has anything to do with the App Store being an advantage.

Epic kind of proved why the App Store is advantageous. They went outside the App Store and distributed an app with security vulnerabilities. How was “tech saviness” going to allow you to know that you were installing a backdoor when you install a game? Even if it were open source were you going to examine all of the code? Are you more likely to set up payments on every random app developers site or just pay through an App Store?

Meanwhile, also from Tim Sweeney: https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698...

I agree that the industry needs to be more open and shouldn't be beholden to the platform owners. But the Epic Games Store is probably the thing that now threatens gaming on desktop Linux the most, with its paid exclusivity that ends up forcing developers to drop their Linux releases.

And Linux is one of the most open platforms available, so... practice what you preach? They're making themselves reliant on the platform providers.

This part really made me think:

He drew a comparison to Visa and Mastercard and the global credit card payment system, where vendors charge 2.5% to 3.5% fees for transactions, while store vendors such as Steam, Apple, and Google charge 30%. He said the global payments industry is proof that highly profitable companies can arise from just taking the 2.5% to 3.5% cut.

He makes a very good point - tech companies do charge very high fees for using their app stores. Do regulators control how much fees payment gateways can charge?

A payment gateway isn't a channel for discovering a vendor, though. You don't go to Visa or PayPal when doing your shopping.

You go to a vendor, and the vendor has a choice of whether or not to accept a given method of payment. That's what effectively limits the fees on payments.

> That's what effectively limits the fees on payments.

And competition. When India launched its own payment processing gateway and card, branded RuPay, that charged 23% lower fees than Mastercard and Visa, they too were forced to drop the exorbitant fees they charged banks and vendors.

-> https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/ru...

-> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/vi...

-> https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/financ...

I actually thought of this a different way... visa and mastercard are gatekeepers enormously inflating the price of transactions.

The only challenges to this have been paypal which didn't seem to go that far, and more recently bitcoin.

> visa and mastercard are gatekeepers enormously inflating the price of transactions.

Doesn't the same apply to Apple and Google toO on their respective OSes? And while they (Visa/MC) are behemoths in their fields, I don't exactly agree with the "gatekeeper" terminology as they have a lot of competitors. That isn't the case with Apple App Store and Google Play Store (licensed android).

I think visa/mc have very little true competition. My way of looking at this is -- have transaction costs fallen? Maybe we're on the verge of change though.

I think that was true earlier even though there were smaller players like JCB, Discover etc. But now Mastercard and Visa are facing stiff competition in India and China, where they've already been crowded out by the local players:

https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/visa-and-m...

From article "Sweeney created the Epic Games Store, which only takes 12% of revenues"

Which is a lot more than 2.5% to 3.5%...

The Epic game store is a fake game store, propped up by giveaways and bribing developers for exclusive rights.

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

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

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

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

and one that has brought back the scourge of exclusivity to the PC

essentially the opposite of openness

As a software producer I welcome a variety of platforms for distribution, even ones own website. It reduces fees and increases competition. And as a gamer I don't mind having more than one place to shop.

> Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse

Symbian OS is open system now.[0]

JFTR, Symbian is alive![1,2,3]

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian...

[1] https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive

[2] https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1

[3] https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s...

30% is high. However - I don't see any competitive reason to lower the take rate (it's not going to realistically lead to people switching to another device, the way price might).

The best they can do is wage a PR battle, and hopefully lower it to ~20%.

As opposed to 60% for physical distribution?

The hypocrisy of arguing for openness when Epic also has a store, and it all boils down to their profits.

If Epic would get their "Visa/Mastercard" discount, then Android, iOS or even Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft wouldn't be so bad after all.

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