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Comment by nodamage | Hacker News Reader

So, let's say hypothetically Epic allowed the sale of third-party skins in Fortnite. Would a skinmaker would be entitled to demand the following concessions?

1. The ability to install skins outside of the V-bucks store.

2. The ability to pay for Fortnite skins using payment methods other than V-bucks.

Alternatively, should Epic not be permitted to impose the following restrictions in their Fortnite store?

1. Skins must be approved by Epic before they can be sold. No x-rated skins, etc.

2. Epic will take a 30% cut of each skin sold.

What if I'm a skinmaker that wants to compete with Epic because I think I can provide higher quality Fortnite skins than they have made. Should I be able to demand to participate in the "Fortnite skin" market which is currently 100% controlled by Epic?

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Not all monopolies are created equally. Some have greater cost to society. For example, Qualcomm has an essential patent which grants them a monopoly over certain communications technologies but it has been mitigated by requiring them to license it in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) way.

A monopoly by Standard Oil was pervasive in all of daily living because by the early twentieth century, they had control of more than 90% of the country's petroleum fuel production and logistics which they abused to keep any competition from ever gaining a foothold. By 1911, they were dissolved by the Supreme Court as per Sherman Antitrust Act.

VBucks and Fortnite are not pervasive in all of daily living, it is a tiny market and the monopoly is one which can easily be managed by society without breaking up the company.

> A monopoly by Standard Oil was pervasive in all of daily living because by the early twentieth century, they had control of more than 90% of the country's petroleum fuel production and logistics which they abused to keep any competition from ever gaining a foothold.

The key point here is that 90% market share constituted monopoly power, whereas Apple's 46% share of the smartphone market likely does not.

Apple and Google have some >90% and are colluding to keep their cash cows fat. Antitrust needs no monopoly to enforce.

> Antitrust needs no monopoly to enforce.

I'm not sure why you think this? Sure, certain Sherman Act violations (e.g. price fixing) do not require monopoly power to be considered illegal, but the specific claims in Epic's lawsuit (unlawful monopoly maintenance) definitely require proof of monopoly power.

“Conspiracy in restraint of trade” would fit perfectly what Apple/Google are doing.

The average American spends some what, 4-5 hours a day on their phone? Is there any even remotely comparable precedent for a company to control all trade through everything? The best I can think of is cable, imagine if there were only two cable companies and they not only had unilateral ability to control which channels appear, but also charged 30% to every channels profit.

Further, how many different commercial activities do people do every single day on their devices? This is a far, far bigger thing than any platform before it. And it’s dominated by only two companies with a history of collusion. These platforms are nothing at all like “a market” and trying to argue from narrow historical frames is poor form.

They are far bigger things. It’s more akin to a world, people use them for literally every part of their lives. I don’t think narrow precedent should ever rule our thinking and especially when it’s clear there is no historical precedent here. We need to be “courageous” enough to use moral and logical thinking and not legalistic weaseling, we need to legislate them as new types of markets far bigger and more important to every persons life than any that’s ever existed.

> “Conspiracy in restraint of trade” would fit perfectly what Apple/Google are doing.

Proving a conspiracy claim requires two parties to knowingly participate in the conspiracy. While you may believe Apple and Google are conspiring together there is a reason Epic's lawsuit does not make any conspiracy claims - their lawyers know they'd never be able to win such a claim.

At any rate that is irrelevant to my point: Epic made several claims in their lawsuit that will require proof of monopoly power.

You shifted from arguing from a purely theoretical view (if Epic had a market should they be regulated) to now arguing a very narrow view local to this case. I’m arguing the big picture, so feel free to engage there or not.

Sure, Epics specific case may be the only strategy they can take - they won’t find any documented collusion when there’s only two players, that’s obvious. They already colluded to suppress wages. We can all see what’s happening. You’re arguing semantics on one side then arguing generalities on the other. But let’s call a spade a spade: theres no smoking gun, but they are colluding, it’s just a silent “don’t lower yours and I won’t lower mine” nod.

Edit: further, with the amount of lock in they each have, there’s not much pressure anyway. It’s just not comparable to anything really that has existed beyond Windows/Mac which were/are entirely open. And it goes even further. Mobile phones are on people at all times. They do way way more. You have accounts with hundreds of apps, services. It’s just not a comparable thing, it’s a world with big lock-in.

I mean, you changed the topic to whether antitrust cases require monopoly power, which I acknowledged wasn't required for certain types of violations such as price fixing, but is required for the original topic being discussed in this thread, which is Epic and their lawsuit against Apple.

How are they colluding? Both google and apple seem to be trying to commoditize each other's (very different) cash cows and both are mostly failing at that. At least, google is failing miserably to make a dent in smartphone hardware, apple seems to struggle with software services, but maybe not as badly as google is at hardware.

Apple avoids search and ads. Google avoids high end anything (except phones perhaps, but they will never take Apple’s share there anyway).

Apple has a 100% monopoly on the market for iOS app distribution, which can be argued is bad for the customer because the 30% revenue share they take is inflating app prices.

People keep saying this but in an antitrust case you cannot simply declare the narrowest market that fits your argument and expect the court to accept it. The court will examine the market reality and examine how consumers actually behave to determine what the actual relevant market is, and it's unlikely that a court would find "iOS app distribution" to be a separate and relevant market for antitrust purposes. I've explained why in detail elsewhere [1], but in short, the US legal system generally does not consider an aftermarket consisting of a single brand's product to be a relevant product market unless specific rules are met:

> Because it would be inappropriate to punish a firm for its natural monopoly in its own products, courts embraced a sweeping prohibition against analyzing alleged anticompetitive activity by focusing on single-brand relevant markets: "[A]bsent exceptional market conditions, one brand in a market of competing brands cannot constitute a relevant product market." [2]

For a much more thorough explanation see my linked comment below.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24193731

[2] https://casetext.com/case/metzler-v-bear-automotive-service-...

Not being a pure monopoly doesn't prove that Apple doesn't have market power. Moreover I don't think people are saying that Apple has a monopoly of smartphones.

The argument is that Apple is using their market power to set prices that seems well above the marginal cost. And they also have created policies that prevent competition in their store. Imagine Windows not allowing any apps unless they give them a 30% cut.

> it has been mitigated by requiring them to license it in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) way.

Writing it in passive voice makes it look like there is some governmental force at play that made them license on FRAND terms. They voluntarily agreed to that in negotiations with a standards body/industry consortium which otherwise would not have agreed to utilize their technology in a communication standard. The trade-off is they benefit automatically by getting distribution and licensing the technology to a lot of people that need to implement that standard.

I think it's a very American perspective to see this as black or white. You should be able to tell something is wrong by looking at what Apple is doing. Looking at how Fortnite operates does not give me the same feeling. Obviously Fortnite as a platform is not the same as iOS as a platform, and holding monopoly positions for each yield completely different outcomes. They are not equivalent.

Maybe you should read more about Epic games the “private” company. It is owned mainly by Tencent which answers to the Chinese government.

How is that relevant to this conversation at all?

Regulation is a blunt tool - it not enough to just feel they are not equivalent. Any law that may apply to Apple will apply to everyone else as well. The American perspective is that the government should not pick and choose winners

Isn't Fortnite a free online game? How is that comparable to a general-purpose computer that the consumer bought and owns?

If skins are what I imagine they are, Epic needs oversight over which ones players are allowed to use because they affect the experience of other players. And Epic provides Fortnite gratis specifically so that they can sell premium features like skins, so it seems completely reasonable that they would take a large cut out of third-party sales of those features.

To be analagous to IOS devices, Fortnite would have to be a single-player game that players bought a copy of. In that case, I think people would be right to be upset if Epic prevented them from getting skins through some other channel.

> 1. The ability to install skins outside of the V-bucks store.

Isn’t this like allowing mods, custom maps etc? So CounterStrike, DoTA, etc shouldn’t exist?

Honestly I started off on the fence but now I’m 100% against Apple here, and I’m an iOS dev. This is kinda crazy.

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