Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

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so it is perfectly reasonable for Epic to target what they see as the biggest problem-areas firsT

Epic is the problem in the case of Fortnite. They are no more ethical than the Candy Crush, Farmville’s of the world.

What happen to HN users who love Big Government wanting fo go after all of the “game” companies who were milking consumers selling loot boxes and virtual currency?

and that escape hatch isn't applicable to the mobile app market.

That escape hatch is called Android.

But it isn’t like we are talking about great innovative games for the most part on mobile. Mobile is mostly made up of pay to win games and “whales” buying virtual currency for dance moves. If the entire play to win games completely disappeared nothing of value would be loss.

If Apple made a rule banning in app purchases for games or at least banning consumables, it would be a better experience for customers. The entire pay to win mobile game ecosystem is a bigger stain on the iPhone than in app purchases.

I have sympathy for the Basecamp’s of the world. The Epics, not so much.

> That escape hatch is called Android.

Currently being sued for antitrust.

> But it isn’t like we are talking about great innovative games for the most part on mobile. Mobile is mostly made up of pay to win games and “whales” buying virtual currency for dance moves.

It's almost like giving two companies a stranglehold over the entire mobile market means that only certain types of games can thrive, and that by and large more serious developers will be forced to abandon mobile games entirely.

You could almost imagine that in a world where quality games weren't constantly crowded out of the ecosystem, and where developers were free to be more creative, and where serious games could sell on serious storefronts that didn't force them to advertise right next to Candy Crush, that we'd have better games and less of a race to the bottom on price and ethics.

I'm having a really hard time reconciling, "Apple is great at managing an app store", with "everything on the app store is trash."

> I have sympathy for the Basecamp’s of the world. The Epics, not so much.

You shouldn't be deciding your legal principles based on whether or not you personally like the people involved.

This came up with Google vs Oracle as well. I don't really like Google as a company; that doesn't mean I wanted Oracle to win. I was able to look past my feelings, look at what the overall threat was to the entire industry, and treat the law as more than a popularity contest.

I really don't care whether or not people like Epic, it's not relevant to the conversation.

Totally agreed on the overall criticism of the typical mobile game model, but the specific example of Fortnite is at least not really pay-to-win (afaik the only arguments for buyable benefits in it are that some skins are harder to see than others, and that some "dance moves"/"emotes" can be used to duck behind cover?)

So we are back to sympathizing for Epic and Fortnite?

It’s strange

HN: We want government to be more involved in tech.

Government: okay let’s pass laws against net neutrality, against strong encryption, the DMCA, COPPA and force the sell of TikTok and the governmebt should get a cut.

HN: oh no. The government abuses power and doesn’t understand tech. But the government will get it right next time.

You are projecting way to much into my comment. And if there were a single "HN" opinion on this, we'd not have hundreds/thousands of comments of discussion on it.

So you don’t want the same government that passed the DMCA and COPPA to have more power over tech?

Did you watch the hearings of the four CEOs? The same hearing where the biggest concern on one side was that tech was being mean to conservatives and grilled Zuckerberg about Twitter’s treatment of Don Jr.? Is this the government you trust to regulate tech and not do more harm than good?

No one has been able to rise to the challenge - name one good law that the US government has passed in the last 40 years with regard to tech - either Democratic or Republican.

I'm unsure how me voicing the opinion that Fortnite is not among the worst patterns of mobile games, which is all I've done in this thread, is related to any of that.

> okay let’s pass laws against net neutrality

This is a weird take. Do you think net neutrality isn't a government regulation?

How can anyone look at the early Bell systems regulations, telephone breakups, forced network compatibility with 3rd-party answering phones and network devices and think, "now that's a market that thrived without the government?"

The entire history of the Internet and the tech industry, from regulations around smart-phone unlocking and number porting, to net neutrality itself is a giant example of how forcing the market to be competitive against its will is sometimes really good for both consumers and for innovation.

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