Oh, how the tables have turned! I still remember Microsoft's chokehold on the entire industry in the 1990s, their "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy, and nearly total monopoly.
Now the wolf is an advocate for the sheep :-)
Now the wolf is an advocate for the sheep :-)
Don't be a fool and think Microsoft has changed because they give away VSCode and have added features to Github. This isn't a goodwill measure, it's a lock in measure. They're quietly trying to lock in engineers into their platform, just like they're trying to keep gamers locked in to their platform.
They're trying to look like the scrappy little guy competing against Apple, but this only after their Windows App store has failed to do anything. They wait until their hand busts before tattling - if the Windows store succeeds, they happily go along with it. If it fails, they talk about how great a tragedy it is for the American consumer.
Epic just gave away amazing games for a month or two. I got GTA5 and Civ6 for free amongst other treasures.
The packaging story, the driver stories, the market share...
The stores don't lose anything when a developer supports Linux, Epic's own engine supports Linux as a target
The problem is the support costs don't seem to add up at all, and I fail to see why the store fronts would be to blame...
Steam has been providing support for the Linux community for years, through native ports of their games, explicitly selling Linux ports on their store, and just making sure their client works on Linux as well. This isn't to mention their actual innovations such as the Steam Controller, Steam In-home Streaming, Steam Remote Play, and even Proton.
In contrast, we have Epic Games who, besides adding nothing to the market besides a bunch of free games (which is likely going to end when/if they feel like they have a good enough share), actively killed the Linux version of Rocket League when they purchased the game.
I appreciate Epic Games for the Unreal engine, but if this is how they want to get a share of the PC game store market, they're not getting a dime from me.
Yes, really. This just sounds like the standard Linux Desktop evangelist "Works for me! (TM)". Take this case [0], where in it is claimed that support requests for Linux were vastly disproportionate to the number of Linux users.
Linux has huge problems as a platform due to its fragmentary and ever-changing nature combined with its near-total disregard (in userland) for backwards compatibility. People have been screaming this at the community for the better part of a decade and a half (including Linus himself!) and mostly falling on deaf ears.
Which is not to say that one should support Epic if you do happen to care about gaming on Linux. Quite the opposite, as Valve has done more than anyone[1] to try and make it work.
[0] https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760
[1] With the exception of the entire WINE project in general
"Linux definitely has a long way before it's usable for the majority of the public for gaming", is the crux of my comment.
Linux users on here just get very defensive when you bring up very obvious shortcomings and immediately go into "it's not that bad"-mode
You shouldn't talk about things you don't know about...
- Millions in grants for developers
- Unlimited free backend services for game developers, the same the power one of the most successful games in recent history (and the first serious offer for this caliber of service outside of Steam despite AAA publishers having stores for years)
- Millions invested in arguably one of the most technologically advanced game engines freely available
- Thousands of dollars in free content to help developers kickstart their projects
- Finally moving the needle for developer revenue splits after years of stagnation
- No built-in DRM (Games can still optionally include their own DRM, but there's no Steamworks-style DRM options)
- Built a publishing house with a blanket deal for studios which is very competitive, (50/50 split of all profit)
- _Retroactively_ waived fees for any game that made under 1 million dollars running on Unreal.
Say you didn't care about anything Epic did besides release a few free games, they did plenty more than that
Can't reply to your comment directly but for a reply...
How is massively supporting the game industry and providing a real competitor in a the market not doing anything for the end-user?
You realize the games the end-user plays benefit from literally every single thing I mentioned right?
I'm speaking explicitly as an end user here, and from my point of view the Epic Store is a straight downgrade from Steam in almost every aspect.
No one is betting their business in such tiny communities, while having exponential costs in development and dealing with very vocal and entitled gamers.
So naturally a couple of studios test waters, and then they just target Android instead.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/3409
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1223457395419930627...
Most of the rest of the arguments seem to revolve around Epic doing paid (timed) exclusive deals with an interesting cross-section of developers. (Using the weight of their Unreal engine licensing fees to sweeten the pot of what they could offer in some cases.) It's something common to console games, but some PC gamers seemed disturbed to see it on the PC. It also seems to betray a short-term memory with respect to Steam, as Steam also bootstrapped on exclusives such as Half-Life 2. (Half-Life 2 wasn't even a timed exclusive as most of Epic's have been, HL2 still requires Steam in 2020, whether or not you bought it or The Orange Box on a physical disc from a retail store back in the early oughts. Which leaves prevarication room for some Steam fans because Valve did allow multiple stores to sell the game even if it was a platform exclusive to play the game; but it still ignores the historic controversy when Steam did that in the first place and many gamers at the time called it a mistake and the death of PC gaming.)
(ETA: Also, Epic did do one sleazy/evil thing early in the EGS: it scraped private Steam files for friends lists, rather than using documented APIs, to try to bootstrap its social network.)
Sounds like a PC to me.
That developers pay millions to license and use. This isn't charity work.
> build out the first "full house" competitor to Steam
So they can control the market as a replacement for Steam, a superior platform that has (a) an instant return policy [1], (b) the ability to emulate input for any game for the disabled[2], and (c) the ability to share your entire game library with family without having to share accounts and save files.
[1]: Obviously hasn't always been the case. [2]: Via Big Picture Mode, which allows you to use any controller for any game and remap inputs for games that have no such settings. A total blessing for anyone disabled or with a preference for different controls.
They retroactively waived licensing fees for any game that made under 1 million dollars in revenue going back years!
But, ah yes, you got them! They're a company in a capitalist society trying to make money, what crooks!
>So they can control the market as a replacement for Steam
I don't know how you can say this with a straight face. By that logic anyone who makes any store that isn't Steam is just trying to control the market.
Anyone who makes anything that isn't the current incumbent in a monopolized industry is just trying to become the new monopoly!
And the rest of your points are in the worst faith.
Epic games is how old? You're complaining that a new player hasn't matched every feature of a decades old incumbent?
Not to mention, Epic games has instant-refunds on some games (developers can disable this, also yeah, bringing up Steam in a conversation about refunds is a joke, you knew that enough that you had to pre-emptively footnote it)
And Steam was an accessibility NIGHTMARE until very recently, to the point that I had seen petitions come out against it! Not to mention accessibility in games is largely on a game-by-game basis, acting like Big Picture was made to improve accessibility is laughable when it launched without the ability to even change text sizes for years.
On that note, Epic actually supports screen readers as a first class citizen in their engine: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/UMG/UserGuide/Scr...
Steam however sells me Civ6 which works, which costs about £3,000 (£15 for the game, £3,000 for the lost time I know it will cost me if I install it)
https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality
$8 million isn't much next to Steam, but it's a lot in a world where Steam is the default when people think of PC game stores.
Note: I do wish all of these people's official clients supported Linux.
[0] If one accepts that label
Were you expecting them to just get rid of the old browser and leave users in a lurch? You'd be on here blowing them up for "taking away a browser without any instructions so my grandma is calling me now" instead of whining that they made you actually acknowledge the change.
I'm with you, launch a guide on how to use edge as soon as they click on the Internet Explorer icon. Please do not unset my preference of default browser, please do not make me crash your program to avoid your ad... in general why does my start bar get worse every time it changes as it lurches towards an ad display vector.
Funny enough, I guess they would get less criticism if Edge just came preinstalled like Mac does with safari.
There's still a full screen unskippable ad post-update, and an Edge setup process, and then additional reminders that you might want to make Edge your default browser.
The prevalence of popups and other notifications in Windows designed to drive user engagement with a specific product / feature / team has been increasingly noticeable lately, while actual productivity features like searching your local files and applications have been gummed up by web results instead.
I still use Windows on a daily basis since Visual Studio is the best tool for the work I do and Windows is the best platform for PC games, but they do plenty to exercise their leverage as the platform owner.
And none of these lock-in measures mean shit. If Microsoft is providing a service that people want/need then why is that bad? They can't lock anybody in if nobody switches. People switch since they provide value.
I want a source on that, because even Gates in this absolutely self-serving report(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/14/bill-gates-phi...) did explicitly not claim he or his foundation is responsible for the 123 million estimated reduction in infant mortality since the year 2000 . As important as vaccination is, child mortality has decreased by many many reasons, including rising standard of economic conditions,decreased world fertility, an accelerated movement to urban life and widely distributed medical care. To attribute this complex and global set of conditions to just one individual is beyond sycophantic.
> One has to be exceptionally callous to consider businesses going out of business greater than human lives.
Spare me this sanctimonious take. So Gates used some part of the money he extracted in monopolistic and quasi-criminal practices to buy children vaccines and now he cannot be criticized because "can somebody please think of children?
By the way many of those countries who receive vaccines from the Gates foundations had to pay exorbitant license fees to use monopolistic MS products.
Apparently there is this revisionism where Microsoft was doing Mafia style visits to everyone, giving advices at gun point that accidents happen.
It is incredible how there is this culture that only the man is to blame, while those taking the money couldn't be helped to do otherwise, those pour souls.
Don’t forget “developing countries” too: a brasilian friend was running a copy of windows “licensed” for poor people. Wtf.
The glorification of Gates nowadays still worries me.
(To not talk about their server and enterprise monopoly)
But even during those times, you were still free to install/mod whatever you wanted on your computer, and even now it is (just barely) possible with Windows. Apple has always been far more controlling than Microsoft, although the latter is slowly moving in that direction too. Maybe this is finally a welcome change in direction, but I doubt it...
When it comes to permission dialogs Windows has always been worse IMO
A few days ago I downloaded a non-notarized app. The dialog that I saw baffled me and it took me a while to recall how to run a non-notarized app.
You have to right-click on it and clock on "open", something that should be equivalent to double-clicking, but isn't. That's harder than clicking a security box. Someone with no knowledge might never find out how to run these apps.
> Apple has always been far more controlling than Microsoft
Notarization came out with Catalina.
How so? Both MacOS and Windows for years had a completely unhindered app installation process. Though it was much simpler on MacOS because you didn't need a custom installer, and you could easily move apps from one computer to another.
It’s completely reasonable to argue that this is no longer true, but it’s denial to say that it has always been this way.
True. For the users, app installation wasn't a problem, until Internet Explorer came for Netscape.
The problem was mainly Microsoft having the majority of manufacturers like, Dell, IBM, HP, Compaq, Packard Bell, Hitachi, Toshiba having Windows pre-installed and threatening a rise in prices of their Windows license or even revoking their licenses if they sell PCs pre-installed with desktop OS competitors like Be Inc's BeOS. [0]
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20131109045719/http://www.intern...
Replies like yours and another sibling ( hoorayimhelping) do put that hope into my heart.
Although, I am questioning the utility of WhatsApp as they seem to be particularly fond of forwarding absolute garbage on WhatsApp.
Unfortunately, I don't know if a non lock down system is possible. The incentives for bad actors and the attack surface is so huge, I wonder what can be done.
It is hard to beat advertisement machine by powerful organization with unlimited resources which utilize small window opportunity gain monopoly. There is nothing magical about Steve Jobs and iPhone, it was obvious so much that design was tried again and again through decade.
Today - PinePhone, Librem.
I don’t want to troubleshoot my older relatives tech issues, I just point them to the apple store. Time is worth a lot.
As far as I can tell, only Apple wanted to invest in this route. Nokia, Google, Microsoft all have tons of cash, but no one wants to invest it into low ROI high liability physical retail options.
Nokia was perfectly okay letting the mobile carriers and their uneducated minimum wage staff deal with customer service. Apple decided to invest in customer service.
Also, all of this migration to smartphones happened in 2010 to 2014. If other companies had invested as much as Apple into the user experience (including what you do when you have a problem), maybe they would be in their position.
Corporations do no not care about people. People form communities to help themself, open small shops. LineageOS, postmarketOS - that is magical.
Debian can't open brick and mortar stores.
Android while perfectly able resolve your first request (video calls and web browser) become more and more closed over the years. Because user freedoms is not valuable differentiator for most of the customers. Google and manufacturers are corporations too. They seek profit.
Users value experience, true. And Apple understands that support is part of the experience, they invest to build their brand. That's good, but they do it to exploit customers as much as possible, 30% cut is part of it.
It does not matter who is on top of the mountain. It is underdog who is trying to differentiate. Maybe if nonprofit, but it could not produce newest and shiniest, without support it does not work. Support either from government (like do not sell poisonous products) or customers (conscious choice). History shown again and again that government does not care and for customers it take a long time to figure out [1].
[1] Arsenic wallpaper never officially banned in Britain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fru5Q-6p9lk
Android did not have a FaceTime equivalent back in 2010 to 2014. I know, because I tried it. A simple app where you pressed the contact name and it called the person, reliably and consistently was all that was needed.
There might have been Viber but I didn’t trust that company at all. But when I’m dealing with non tech literate people, I want a consistent, unchanging experience, and that’s what FaceTime was and what all the Android video calling apps lacked.
I see, no compromises - no non locked down system for you.
My point is that Apple offered the buyers something they wanted, and no one else did, hence they were rewarded.
https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Against-Windows-10-Microsoft-...