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Comment by rurounijones | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be moving the goalposts here.

> Epic has no "walled garden".

Epic is explicitly a walled garden regarding the games it has paid to be exclusive within that walled gardren (Permanently or temporarily).

> The PC is an open platform. An iPhone is not.

You are conflating hardware / software here. PC hardware is an open platform. The software is running on it is not necessarily. You could be running Linux or Windows for example. (Of which only Windows has an official Epic Games Launcher client).

> If I don't like the Epic store, I can install software from other sources just fine.

We are talking about the context of games so "software" means a particular game of which there is only one. Not "Any random note-taking application". Therefore, in the context of games, no you cannot get that software (game) legally from any other source if Epic paid for it to be exclusive.

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That is not what a walled garden is. If the developers have a choice of where to sell their software, and choose to make it exclusive, that is totally fine! It's their software, they can choose how it is sold.

It's only a walled garden if there is no other option to distribute your games but with that company... so either an enforced monopoly (Apple) or de-facto monopoly (Steam, but this is arguable).

Replied to sibling comment in a bit more detail but I think we are looking at it form different viewpoints. "customers" vs "developers"

Developers have a choice when it comes to Apple as well. They make their software, and they chose to sell it on Android and iOS devices. Is it just because Apple is “big” and has cultivated themselves a valuable customer base the reason they are now... mandatory? No one is forcing you to release on iOS.

> Epic is explicitly a walled garden regarding the games it has paid to be exclusive

That's not what walled garden means. PC game developers can sell their games any number of ways - if they choose one way instead of others that's up to them. For iOS there's no choice - either you sell through Apple or you don't support iOS. Hence "walled garden".

In short: if you have to pay people to come into your garden, it's not walled. ;)

aha, I think we are coming at the term "walled garden" from opposite ends.

For a developer I agree with you, it is not a walled garden, they can sell games however they want, epic is one option who happen to be the only one that pays, out of all the stores, 3rd parties for exclusivity.

For a customer it is a walled garden for those exclusive games in that I cannot play those games without having to install and sign-up for the Epic Games Store because they paid to make them exclusive (again, permanently or temporarily).

I understand your position, but that's not what the term means. A walled garden is when one party controls the media or distribution of content on a given platform. If you make a PC game, EGS has no control at all over how you distribute it. If you then decide to sell it exclusively through them, that doesn't make them a walled garden - you had control of how your game got distributed, not them.

Fair enough, looks like my understanding of the term was not the common one.

As a customer, if the game I'm about to buy was able to be polished because of additional funding/saving, I'm interested in the game being exclusive.

As a customer, if the game company has better chances of surviving paying their employees a decent wage, making quality games that I can enjoy, I'm interested in the game being exclusive.

As a customer, if the market could have more store options other than Steam so prices can be more competitive and developers can choose better deals, I'm interested in games being exclusive.

Also as a customer I can decide to just not play the game because of exclusivity and move on.

Why is Mario not on Steam? Why is The Last of Us or Uncharted not on PC? Yeah it sucks games are not ubiquitous but it's not always in the best interest of game developers to distribute their games everywhere and I think it should be perfectly understandable from the point of view of customers.

Also, from the point of view of Epic, I guess it's expected they want something in return for funding projects.

I don't get the anger people direct towards Epic when in fact they are doing a good thing for the market that very few companies would have the power to do.

> I don't get the anger people direct towards Epic when in fact they are doing a good thing for the market that very few companies would have the power to do.

I guess it comes down to if you think having another game store & launcher installed in your PC is free (not speaking just monetarily here) or not. If you think it is free then there is no downside.

If you think it is not free: * Another app to manage * Another company to syphon data * Another place you you have to register a credit card * Another place where you have to add your friends or hope there is cross-store play

Then you will be annoyed that they have artificially restricted access to a game you could otherwise have bought directly or on your store / launcher of choice, e.g. Steam, GOG, with the only limitation being what the the developer wanted to release on.

Now I think EGS is mostly time-based exclusivity (I think there are maybe single digit permanently exclusive games on EGS) but the point still rankles. You can argue "Short term pain" (exclusives, assuming that stays short-term) for long term gain (more store competition) but that is not a guarantee.

> Yeah it sucks games are not ubiquitous but it's not always in the best interest of game developers to distribute their games everywhere and I think it should be perfectly understandable from the point of view of customers.

Many people, myself included, do not want the console exclusivity wars to be something that migrates to PC where there is 0 need for it (i.e. you are not developing your game on two completely different console architectures which adds to cost, maybe adding some store integration code only.) Especially paid exclusives.

There is no difference between Epic or any other game store in this regard. The PC is no monopoly and no walled garden.

I am not sure in which regard you think there is no difference based on what I said. So to confirm where I think there is a difference:

Epic is the only PC store that will pay developers to restrict consumer choice by limiting distribution to their store (temporarily or permanently) only on what would otherwise be a competitive marketplace of stores on the PC platform. No other game store does this.

>You seem to be moving the goalposts here.

No, you are.

>Epic is explicitly a walled garden regarding the games it has paid to be exclusive within that walled gardren (Permanently or temporarily).

That doesn't make the PC a walled garden. And we compare PC with iPhones here. Not Apple Appstore vs. Epicstore.

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