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Comment by ivanstojic | Hacker News Reader

It's important to remember that Epic games isn't a champion of freedom here.

After Epic store launched on the PC in 2018, Epic used their platform's growing popularity to bait and/or strong arm (it's unclear to me) indie developers into exclusivity contracts on Epic's game store. This action caused a massive uproar in the gaming community because with those exclusivity deals, Epic made developers break existing preorders.

This isn't about freedom or choice or walled gardens. It's about cutting off a slightly bigger slice of a billion dollar pie.

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I happen to know some first-time indie devs that were given this deal. The deal is incredibly generous. Basically, epic offered them a bag of money in exchange for a certain period of partial exclusivity (basically "don't be on Steam"). That's it. This bag of money allowed the developers to:

- Grow the dev team enough to accelerate time to launch--QA extra engineers, heck, the devs even used the money to pay for porting the game to other devices!

- Guarantee that they could continue to fund development of the game after launch. Bugfixes, DLC, etc.

- Have enough left over to "try again" and launch a sophomore game regardless of the performance of this one.

You'd think that fans of indie games would love this. Who could possibly be opposed to having an indie dev get funds that would enable them to graduate to managing a small indie game studio instead of a ramen diet & 20 hour work days in the living room.

And yet they got enormous amounts of hate from so-called indie game fans and members of the gaming community. And yes, the devs were aware that the hate was coming from a disproportionately small number of people and that most people don't actually care at all. But still, the psychological toll of having to deal with the harassment was enough to make them strongly consider not taking the money--even though it was the right thing to do both from a financial pov and from a development pov (because it would guarantee they could finish and support the game).

The crazy thing is that even if you hate epic you should love these deals: cheer for your favorite dev, then wait a year and buy the game on Steam, doubly sticking it to the man.

Some of the vitriol stems from the specific manner in which they set up their exclusivity deals. In multiple cases they set up deals with studios who had previously advertised or sold keys to other platforms such that customers found their purchases retroactively bound to Epic. I personally found their PR around these cases to be patronizing, and it left a bad taste in my mouth regarding Epic.

Exclusives on consoles suck, but the Epic store has been a huge win for developers and gamers. Bags of money, more choice, and competition and the only downside is needing to install an extra launcher. Yes please!

Important distinction: this is choice and competition for the developers but not for the consumers.

It would be choice and competition for the consumer if users could access any game through either platform and choose their favorite.

Do you really consider giving developers a giant bag of guaranteed money up front to be strong arming them?

They took the deal, they didn't get their life/safety threatened.

There was some really shitty behavior by developers who took the pot of money who had already made promises to crowdfunders previously. That's on the developer though, and they should be judged appropriately for their actions.

No, I do not consider that to be strong arming. I consider that to be baiting.

As my post says: it's unclear to me which tactic was used with which developers, or how those contracts influenced the promises developers made to preorder customers.

We don't know mostly because those contracts are secret.

Sure, we don't know all the details but we do know this:

The developers agreed to the deal. If that meant they had to do something shitty (Like not-provide steam keys to backers who paid for that during a crowdfunding campaign), you should be upset with the developers. They made a promise and then they went back on it.

I don't think it's fair to hold Epic's feet to the fire because a developer took the money. If someone offers you a lot of money to break a promise (and you take it), this is a reflection of your character.

Epic didn't make anyone do anything. They made the choice.

I think this is an age old question that's been discussed thoroughly.

If somebody offers you a lot of money to do something immoral, and you chose to accept it that makes YOU immoral. It also should cast a shadow on the person offering you the deal because they too know what they are asking of you is immoral.

I don't think anyone in this deal is acting in the best interest of users. Some of these options may be better than others for indie devs.

I think you still have to clarify what makes baiting bad here. If I hold a sale in my retail store, is that baiting? Is that bad? I don't think so.

In this scenario, much of the uproar that happened was developers breaking promises, and the blame for that being placed on Epic as well. Epic merely offered better deals(in the form of a better revenue split) and cash offers to developers that are notorious for being poorly funded. I don't see how this is a bad thing.

In fact, I'd make the argument that there being more competition in the PC video game marketplace is a good thing that will benefit the consumer.

There has been no strong arming whatsoever. If you believe there was, then provide any hint of proof of it.

There have been good deals for developpers, and good deals that developper shouldn't have taken but still took despite their previous engagements to their funders, but Epic literally had no position to strong arm anyone into anything, and they didn't bait anyone - no one signed then realized "oh damn, I didn't think money for exclusivity meant money for exclusivity !".

Epic just said "hey look at this bag of money, I give it to you if you put your game here".

One of the non negotiable condition to get the pile of money was to not publish the game on steam, removing it if it was already there and cancelling preorders. That's not exactly friendly to developers, forbidden to publish to the other platform with more customers.

It's about Epic's freedom and choice. Hopefully this leads to widespread developer freedom. You're looking for a "perfect victim", but it's impossible to find those, especially perfect victims who have the financial resources to fight Apple and Google.

If this were just about money, it would be totally irrational. Epic does have money to gain if they're successful, but they have a lot more money to lose if they fail. It's kind of a suicide mission to simultaneously take on two of the most powerful corporations on Earth. No rational purely profit-seeking corporation would follow this strategy.

This is total bullshit. There is no evidence of any strong-arming. It's the usual Internet storm in a teacup from 'gamers'. They offered exclusivity monetary incentives.

$20 to a charity of your choice if you show affirmative proof of (within 7 days¹) a contract showing strong-arming². Email is in profile if I don't notice HN reply. When you make your comment showing strong-arming, I will make two comments one saying "this is strong-arming" and one saying "this is not" and we can see what the community votes up.

If there are at least 5 votes and the former wins, you get to pick the charity. Otherwise, it goes to AMF.

¹ just so that there is a day the money goes out. If you need more time, just say so.

² Email is in profile, you can set up a call with me or send me an email of the contract if you don't want to share the contract publicly.

My own view is that "They offered exclusivity monetary incentives." should be completely illegal.

Everyone should get the same rates with no lock in or out. In media terms if Netflix can stream a movie for $0.40 per stream then every other provider should be able to stream it under the same terms.

Exclusivity agreements are anti-competitive. We've seen them grow unchecked and it's created the same unhealthy relationship between distributors and creators that lead to the forced sale of movie theaters away from the movie studios.

Anyone who tries to justify epic buying exclusives is a fool IMO.

Tim isn't doing it for developers or publishers, he wants a piece of the steam pie.

If he was serious about being competition he would come out with a better platform and compete.

When MS came out the windows store, Tim said "they’re trying to force this thing on the industry and it’s woefully inadequate for the tasks they’re trying to serve it for"

https://www.pcgamer.com/tim-sweeney-microsoft-uwp-is-still-w...

Yet, the epic store, was... IS STILL woefully inadequate. They built a terrible store that has no functionality, no currency options, no linux support, nothing more than a front for a dozen games. Then turn around and buy exclusives under the disguise of "we're doing it for developers and publishers, we are the good guys, screw all you gamers out there who don't care!!!"

(I'm aware they have tried to fill some of these features, but they have ALONG way to go)

They could have come out with something better, and been competition, but they have nothing to compete with.

----

Tim also said: "I believe Microsoft has every right to operate a PC app store, and to curate it how they choose."

Tim is now: "Oh Apple and Google shouldn't be allowed to run their own app store how they choose."

By strong-arm, you mean by offering them money? I'd call that fair competition. You can't run an entertainment service without exclusive content: Sony knows it, Nintendo knows it, Netflix knows it, and Epic knows it. And Valve knows it, by the way—try to install Portal 2 without installing Steam.

Steam needed that competition. Valve's 30% cut of sales is ludicrous considering that they do not manually audit, validate, or curate the software on their store. They don't even handle security properly—there have been multiple instances of Valve ignoring vulnerabilities in Steam.

I think Epic and Tim Sweeney have acted with remarkable consistency.

Epic was fighting the Valve Steam digital store monopoly. Fact is that Epic in the process of cutting off a bigger slice of pie for themselves would be giving consumers more choice while breaking up anti consumer monopoly.

Developers were offered a lot of guaranteed money, which is vital financial support for indie devs.

I'm amazed "feeding starving artists" is turned into a bad thing.

I have no problem with villains fighting other villains.

Epic Games is obviously just out to profit more. But this is a war that we all benefit from if they win.

Sure I'd love to see someone like the EFF change this. But the reality is they don't have the funding to go directly against Apple and Google on this. Epic Games does.

Who cares? Who cares if it's for money or if Epic is not a champion of freedom here. Epic is in the right- Apple and Google need to be regulated.

who cares about their motives. i still think it’s a good thing if they win.

no one thinks corporations don’t do what’s in their best interest monetarily

The outcome may still be beneficial for others.

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