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Comment by siruncledrew | Hacker News Reader

Epic is not putting up some legal crusade for the “little guy” competitors. Epic is putting up a fight for Epic.

It all comes down to money.

If Epic was running their own platform, and 3rd parties didn’t want to abide by their rules, then Epic would give those 3rd parties the finger and tell them to F-off the same as Apple.

Each is trying to grab as much profit as they can while running into the issue of other hands grabbing from the same basket.

The classic case of one’s greed versus another’s desire to be greedy.

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I said the same thing in another thread. It's all about money.

But even though is all about money, a legislation change is still necessary. As long as the result of this benefits the society, who's pushing it shouldn't matter that much.

At the end of the day, antitrust process are frequently started by people with a lot of money and power to catch people with more money and power. That's the game.

> If Epic was running their own platform, and 3rd parties didn’t want to abide by their rules, then Epic would give those 3rd parties the finger and tell them to F-off the same as Apple.

What exactly is your point here? If <entity> was in Apple's position, they would protect their interests exactly as Apple is. Thats why we need to regulate companies who are in Apple's position! The fact that its greed vs. greed is immaterial.

You're right, but you're not. Yes, Epic is trying to make money. But if Epic is allowed to open their own store it would be very good for small developers. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

If they manage to land their store on iOS, expect them to do the same anti-competitive things they did in the PC market... paying studios to exclusively put their games on the Epic Store only. Even games fund raised by communities, and games already announced to be launching on other platforms.

I don't see that as much of a win.

That sounds like a gigantic win for developers to me.

Good for dev. Even good for end user since they are throwing money into easy bait like offer free things to user just to use the platform.

But I would refrain from investing much more into the platform since what Im seeing right now isnt going to sustain the platform in the long term.

Its one thing if the store has distinct feature like gog, but theyre not. In the end I(and many others surely) use it just to get free games.

It's a "gigantic win" for everyone in the same manner that Uber paying drivers and customers (via bonuses / free rides) to use their service was one for everyone involved . Sooner or later, Epic will have to stop doing this once they get their market share and there is no guarantee that this will be the financial model they follow (free games frequently, paying devs to be exclusive etc).

It works in a different context ( platform exclusives ) because the lock in / costs to developing for a different platform are far different from that for different stores on a single platform.

Developers being paid to make games sounds great. Why is Epic a bad guy for paying developers?

Because making content exclusive to a single platform is not adding value - it is removing value from other platforms, and as such is a net negative move.

It's not though. There is nothing inherently negative having to use EGS compared to any other game hub. There is absolutely nothing negative about giving developers more money to make more and/or better games. It's a net negative to take 30% from developers doing the actual work.

How is any of that anti-competitive? It's a fair competition between multiple app stores.

And Epic is also competing with Steam by having lower cut (5 % versus 30 % IIRC) leaving more money for the developers. It's good for the developers and consumers both.

Pay for studio to make game exclusive on store, how is anti-competitive? (Possibly the store might be BS but it's not anti-competitive matter)

Somehow Facebook running a market on iOS marketplace where they funnel every click to their preferred apps with their own in-app payments and frameworks mandated doesn't sound like a developer win to me. It may not much of a user win if Epic installs DRM into your phone with cool features like an always on audio chat.

Small developers don't care about minuscule savings on their low sales numbers. They primarily care about getting as many sales as possible. The only ones who benefit are those who are selling lots of copies.

That's absurd, of course I care about the 30% take. I care about both.

Epic is absolutely putting up a legal crusade for the little guy, whether or not it's motivated by their own personal gain. The lawsuit explicitly precludes special treatment for Epic.

Who cares what their motivations are if they've mandated that the benefits should be distributed?

They do run their own platform, the Epic Games Store, which is PC only but trying to compete with steam. Want to know how much cut they take in the Epic Games Store? For things worth £50+ rather than £0.99 in-app purchases?

It's 12%. They also allow selling games made with their competitor technologies (e.g. Unity), and the cut is still the same.

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