Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google
npr.org
npr.org
I think Sweeney is correct, although I also think Epic tried to do the same. Their success with some of their games created capital that they used to create their own platform. Maybe as a defense mechanism or maybe because they wanted part of the pie.
If a larger developer like Epic has no recourse on store owners, the average developer will have even less. Remember the old times that actually isn't nostalgia? You could just install anything you wanted on your OS that respected your device. Great times.
If Apple fought against one or many extractive ecosystems that would be a good thing even though Apple itself does profit and plans to continue to profit from their own extractive ecosystem. ...same with Epic.
Also, actually running your software may be a challenge because the boot loader and OS are locked down, but you could have known that when you bought the device.
(This is similar to “right to repair”. That isn’t about being allowed to repair your devices, but about making it easier to do so. You’re free to repair your device, but it currently often is almost impossible)
Great!
> Also, actually running your software may be a challenge because the boot loader and OS are locked down,
Oh, so you're not free to run what you want on your device.
Effectively he wants the same deal as there is for PC gaming - eg multiple stores available that users can choose from - to be the case for mobile (and possibly consoles as well).
Even if I buy a game broadly available on multiple platforms, I’m not getting a discount on it for going to EGS, despite their lower cut.
This is much, much different than the position of Apple or Google. They don't have to pass an exclusivity contract with anybody since they have a de-facto monopoly on their device. Want you game to be playable on iPhone ? You need to pay Apple rate, you can't just decide to go an publish your game on steam or any other platform.
Nobody is complaining that you can't have iTune on another platform. But for third-party developer, it means that you have no choice but to agree with Apple and Google rates. Granted, the situation with Google is a bit different since you can technically install another store, but remember that Microsoft was forced to stop pre-installing IE on Windows and offer user a choice of browser. I hardly see how this is any different than the current situation of Apple / Google.
So you're not forced, except when you are... I think the GP meant people is forced to use their store to play certain games. Games not developed by Epic, which were meant to be released in other stores and operating systems. You can choose not to play those games. Many people do in fact just that. But that was not the point.
Of course Tim Sweeney does not force random people at gunpoint to use their store. That's never going to be the case because there's laws forbidding him!
Epic literally bribed devs to do deals that went back on promises, people are not just upset about exclusivity, they are upset about exclusivity of stuff they PAID FOR on other platforms, there were kickstarted games, games pre-sold for Steam, etc... that suddenly became Epic exclusive, and devs went and explicitly said they wouldn't even return the money.
It became an obvious pattern, whenever a game "became" Epic Exclusive, someone would be screwed by it, it is why people are so mad at Epic.
And before someone says that this is their way to compete... well, yes, a crappy one, their store suck, doesn't provide basic features, has no reviews for example, has a ton of dark patterns, it is super hard to get rid of your account or fix your account and so on.
By that logic, I'm literally "bribing" the grocer every week to get groceries
You offered extra money to the grocer to sell to you something that was already sold to someone else that had already paid? I would count that as a bribe, and yes, it is a corrupt thing to do.
Epic is literally paying people to go back on their word, or in some jurisdictions, literally commit a crime by not delivering on purpose something that was paid for, in some places that is called interference, in others it is called fraud.
You can just install all game stores on Windows and there is no downside to doing so, and no real difference between installing the Epic store and purchasing a game there and buying the game on the game publisher's website.
Also currently Steam has a dominant position and 30% cut, and if the Epic store succeeds it will result in a more competitive situation with at least two game stores probably taking a 5-15% cut, which is a drastic improvement for everyone except for Valve, which makes Steam.
Same thing on mobile if Epic succeeds in the antitrust lawsuit with Google/Apple stores instead of Steam.
Also, if there are more stores it's less likely that entire categories of games will be unavailable to you (or available but worse due to reduced budgets) due to all game stores having rules banning them, and in general game stores are less likely to be able to enact policies that serve them at your expense.
They don't. The prices, between MTX and multiple release versions, have gone up if anything.
> they will be better
Pretty close to unuantifiable. What quantification we have, critic scores, aren't showing any movement in the ~decade since Steam got competition (Origin, GoG, etc).
The only benefit seems to be for the shareholders and corporate executives thus far.
Do you wish that the Mac App Store were the only way to get apps on your Mac?
Free games are a marketing practice, nothing more. It's not a sustainable business practice, and it's paid for by Epic's exploitative Fortnight lootboxes. The "free games" will become part of a paid monthly subscription (or just go away entirely) when Epic feels like they have the audience they need.
And me? The value those free games might provide me is not worth the cost - being marketed to by a company whose values are quite the opposite of my own.
It's a marketing practice that would not happen without competing stores. The end result is user benefit.
> it's paid for by Epic's exploitative Fortnight lootboxes
Why does it matter to me how it's paid for? Does not allowing competing stores change where Epic or Amazon get their money? The end result is that I benefit from Epic and Amazon getting to compete.
> being marketed to by a company whose values are quite the opposite of my own.
I find Apple's values to be opposite to my own (selling low privacy devices and lying about it, preventing me from doing general computing on my devices, etc.). With competition, I would at least have a choice of finding an app distributer like F-Droid whose values are closer to mine were I to be stuck with an iOS device.
You still haven't answered the question about whether you would prefer if your Mac didn't allow you to install apps outside of it's app store.
Others have complained about Steam's lack of curation causing discoverability problems. It was at the height of this controversy that Epic launched their store promising better curation. Again, this helps consumers because not all consumers are alike. Some consumers do not want arbitrary moral decisions to block game availability, while others want this so that they do not have to wade through "garbage". Others, still, want to make that decision for all consumers.
Apart from Epic there are many other distribution opportunities on the PC platform. This is not the case on iOS. You either make a deal with Apple - and a very lousy deal at that, or you're not on iOS (the same problem exists on game consoles).
What he wants is the right to build his own App Store so that he can charge his own "tax" and (hopefully) become a monopolist.
Windows 10X just didn't happen due the current situation having changed schedules to everyone.
I, a customer, am not getting a price discount for a game on the EGS, despite the lower middleman cut.
Hmm... I wonder why that is? Must be some mysterious phenomena involving price competition between stores...
Oh wait, yes they did. To the same degree, and with a similar frequency.
If that's even true, it's a moot point then since there's no price competition when there's only one app store too.
Having a choice of who to do business with is always good for the customer.
Competition is good, but they're not competing for customers - they're competing for developers, to the detriment of customers.
Since when are exclusives an issue outside of console gaming? Even in console gaming - nobody cares that much. And furthermore, console gaming is not even nearly as important a market or as ubiquitous or as useful to society as smartphones are. The fact that some things are wrong with the gaming market doesn't really say much.
Anyway, app publishers like Spotify and Netflix have already offered lower prices when you signup outside of Apple's app store.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Giving customers a choice between shopping at Walmart, Target or Best Buy will always benefit customers more than only giving them the choice of Walmart.
There is simply no way in hell that you're going to convince me that having less choice is good at any level.
No they really don't. Spend time shopping around, games on Humble, GoG, and Itch often have different prices during different sale periods. I just got Into the Breach at 50% off on GoG a day or two ago, it was full price on Steam at the same time.
Different stores also cater to different niches: GoG prioritizes older games that wouldn't be updated for modern machines, itch has really experimental 'true' indie games. Neither one of those storefronts could handle the volume and diversity of both categories at the same time.
Unless you're only playing AAA games or something, I don't get the assertion that multiple storefronts don't increase consumer value. From my perspective as a user, they very clearly do. Having multiple storefronts has been a huge boon to the indie market.
> which is marketing, not competition
What on earth is the difference? Would Epic be offering those games for free if they weren't trying to pull users away from Valve? That's what competition is.
Fair enough, the timing on the sale was not the same. However, the discounted price while it's on sale is.
https://steamdb.info/app/590380/
> if they weren't trying to pull users away from Valve?
They're not trying to pull customers off Valve, they're trying to add customers to EGS. There's a difference.
Assuming this is true, is it a difference that matters? If the Epic games store didn't exist, Valve would not be stepping up and offering those games for free right now. The reason those games are available to you for free is because the Epic store exists.
As a consumer, I would have a smaller selection of discounted/free games each month to choose from if only one storefront existed. If Steam was the only platform, I wouldn't have been able to get Into the Breach at 50% off when I wanted to buy it.
Whether you think that's 'competition' or not -- I'm not going to argue over definitions, but whatever you want to call it it's good for consumers. You're still getting more stuff for cheaper just because another store exists.
> However, the discounted price while it's on sale is.
Same question as above, does this distinction matter? Would we say that Xbox and Playstation aren't competing with each other just because games generally sell for the same base price on both platforms? In reality, the price I paid between two stores was different. Why does it matter what the base price of the game would have been in a theoretical world where it wasn't on sale?
The end result of all of these situations is the same: as a consumer, I'm getting a greater variety of games at lower prices. The end result is that when I buy a game, there are pretty good odds that it might be discounted or offered for free somewhere at the exact moment that I want to buy.
And this is even ignoring the other perks you get from multiple storefronts such as the fact that you don't need to install a client to download games from GoG and Itch (not a service that Valve/Epic offers), or that GoG is going out of its way to track down rightsholders and get older games updated to run on newer systems (also not a service that Valve is prepared to offer), or that Valve is prioritizing Linux compatibility layers (which neither GoG or Itch have the resources to prioritize), or that Epic is subsidizing smaller studios and paying to get exclusives like Journey off of consoles and onto PCs (which is a service that nobody else is prioritizing right now).
The same way multiple grocery stores benefit customers. It gives them a choice.
> What he wants is the right to build his own App Store so that he can charge his own "tax" and (hopefully) become a monopolist.
That makes no sense because once the door is open for multiple app stores, there's even less of a chance to become a monopolist. To become a monopolist Epic would have to build their own smartphone platform and get enough market share to effectively control the market, like Apple has done.
Also, when using the generic term it's app store, not App Store. Apple does not have a trademark on the generic term app store [0], they have only registered for that trademark and they will lose even that if challenged. Apple is so petty though that your iPhone automatically capitalizes it anyway.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_store#%22App_Store%22_trad...
exclusive games aren't the same as a monopoly platform. Exclusive games is a choice the creators of the game made. A monopoly platform is when that choice isn't available. If apple doesn't want your app on iOS, they can remove you with no recourse.
If Epic doesn't want your game on the Epic store, you have the choice to use steam, or to go alone and distribute independently.
Epic. Dev and publisher for Fortnite. What do you need to install and run to be able to play Fortnite? Epic Games Launcher.
With Fortninte on Steam the dudes that don't want to be bothered with 2 launchers can use only one(you still need Epic accounts like in all MMOs).
One of the most popular games is Minecraft and it did not need to be on Steam to get popularity, so it is still possible to host downloads for your game on your servers.
People hated Ubisoft trying to cram their platform down their throats because it was a buggy mess. People are disgusted with the EGS because, likewise, it is a disaster.
You don't need a Steam Workshop (a bonus, for sure,) to distribute games. You don't need the Marketplace for Game Economy stuff (a bonus, sure.) You need a way to buy and launch games quickly, which even EGS struggles at.
People keep bringing this up as a negative, but ignore a) that many games are exclusively on Steam and b) Epic gives guaranteed revenue to developers, derisking development.
There is absolutely nothing wrong imho with companies wanting to make their own stores, set their own rules, with whatever exclusivity, to make money for themselves, AS LONG AS there is (fair and equal) competition in the market so if people (developers and/or customers) do not like the rules, they can go elsewhere.
Competition is good!
On Linux, the Epic Store does not compete and therefore it does not add choice for me.
Being on Steam does not guarantee the game will be on Linux. It sounds like your real problem is developers not bothering about shipping their game on Linux.
This might be an unpopular opinion but: I like the comfort of the Windows Store regarding installation & updates for Win32 apps. The app is installed into its own little corner and a lot of them also come with their own contained registry hive. I don't need a thousand auto update services or an app updating itself only when I open it. And the store requires extensive file signing so as long as I know it's the right developer, the need to manually check installer signatures goes out the window. And regarding minimal exposure, if you simply use it as a download source and redirect customers there, Microsoft takes only 5%.
I didn't like S Mode, Windows RT, the restriction to use just the store, etc. That shouldn't be forced upon the already-open PC platform. But I liked having a trusted channel for applications. (I don't mean that every app on there was trustworthy but you get what I mean, like above)
> I think Sweeney is correct, although I also think Epic tried to do the same. Their success with some of their games created capital that they used to create their own platform. Maybe as a defense mechanism or maybe because they wanted part of the pie.
That's what I think, too. Tim Sweeney likes to harp on about consumer choice, store freedom and such -- but with all the exclusives it's clear they just want to be the new Steam. They want you to have a big Epic Games Store library that you can't give up on, that you would always prefer to add to instead of going to another store. That's why they have these weekly free games, to get everyone to start a foundation of games without having to convince them to buy any for that to happen.
The Linux model works for a handful of trusted curators who only concern themselves with software worth their time... it can't deal with every single publisher who wants their content in your platform. It doesn't have to deal with issues regarding content for the most part (trademarks, copyright, decency, etc.)
Also npm has shown that open repositories, at certain scale, become fertile ground for malware. pip also had issues with this. I sometimes worry about homebrew, since it wouldn't be that hard to get malware in.
Sure it can, anyone can set up a Linux repository. Some apps have their own repositories just for themselves.
The Linux model is great for curation, because having multiple repositories means that you don't have to grow to npm's size if you don't want to.
Arch is a great example of this. The existence of the AUR repositories gives the official repositories much more freedom to more tightly moderate what goes into them, and it gives me a lot more confidence that packages aren't being blindly added to the official repositories.
It's the opposite of what people are implying, having more storefronts means that storefronts can be stricter about what they apply. It means as a storefront owner you don't have to come up with one moderation policy that binds literally everyone in the world, so you can be a lot more choosy and subjective about what you approve and reject.
Alternatives stores could also provide sandboxing,review and maybe even better support.
Just have a look at a mainstream Youtube video about the latest iPhone and see when they talk about the app review (hint: never). People buy phones based on camera, screen and interface, they never heard about the walled garden or Apple's practices.
Do they?
What about bugs?
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15556/Apple-Iphone-Os.htm...
If you say "I think US people are happy of having the higher life expectancy in the World" reminding them that it is the lowest in the West is just revealing a lie
There is no lack of malware on iPhones.
It's a lie.
You can put restrictions on any phone
Even on rotary phones (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gD2hcPNWc5k/hqdefault.jpg)
The problem arise when you want (or need) to remove the locks
> . Ask an average user which experience they prefer - sourcing software for a Windows PC, or downloading an App for an iPhone.
Have you ever tried to as people if they prefer a bulldozer or a Ford Ka?
Anyway, 3d artists, just to name one, prefer Windows by far
In fact, if it wasn't for the current situation the world is on, Windows 10X would have had UWP/Win32 sandbox only apps.
I agree but people who are criticizing Epic for this are missing the real point. It is good if Epic can actually take a big chunk of the pie. Sure you could say they're being hypocrites, but from the point of view of users and developers, it's good to have more competition in the platform arena. Currently it's basically duopoly between Google and Apple. A new actor like Epic can change the dynamics and that is good.
Some games choose to not release on multiple platforms - but that's not a monopoly. And other games _do_ choose to release on multiple platforms, or choose to release independently of a platform. This means the best _game_ wins. Ditto with software.
Same goes for Apple. The term "monopoly" is not really useful in this discussion. It's more about having a small number of gatekeepers. There are currently exactly 2 gatekeepers of mobile devices in the entire world: Apple and Google.
It is possible that Epic could get into a similar position as what Apple is today, but for games. My point is that I support something like this happening, even though people may think that Epic is just another gatekeeper. Gatekeepers can't be avoided, so the solution is to have more gatekeepers, so they can't abuse their power easily.
If this accident hadn't happened, the entire computing world would probably look very different. All the software giants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon wouldn't exist because they couldn't have become big on a closed IBM-controlled platform. Apple might only exist because IBM let them live as the convenient underdog, same way as Firefox is being kept alive by Google to thwart off any suspicions that there's a browser monopoly.
Maybe PCs wouldn't exist at all and we'd be all sitting in front of IBM mini-terminals now, connected to the cloud running on System/360 mainframes.
In any case, none of these(not IBM, not Apple, not Commodore etc.) restricted what software you could run on your computer.
Anyway, it's fun to speculate about alternative futures :)
But no one seriously succeeded with a closed PC experience because no one could (or wanted to) do it all - be a fully integrated retail ecosystem - at the time when facing consumers. The internet was arguably a prerequisite for this: all software was sold in physical boxes and unlike game software , the hobby experience meant there was just too much available that was cheap/free/shareware. (My favorite was the assembly hex codes published in magazines like Ahoy! That you’d type in).
Plus, the security of a curated store was on few minds until the late 90s with the internet. Viruses and Trojans existed but they were spread through physical media.
also, Microsoft already was getting its tax from users in the form of Windows licensing, which eventually was deemed anticompetitive due to their exclusivity arrangements.
The closest to a curated ecosystem started with Qlink, CompuServe, AOL and other online services.
There could be two exit points from the review process. One would be for apps that don’t want to be on the App Store. They could be cleared as free from malware, egregious behaviour, etc. and allowed to be installed through any independent means.
The higher level would be for apps that should be on the App Store. This means they meet the quality standards that Apple would like.
This would allow Apple to raise the quality bar for the App Store, while allowing indie development. Loading a non-app-store app could come with forced user acceptance flow, where you’re informed the app doesn’t meet Apple’s standards for user experience but has at least been checked for safety.
Independent app ‘stores’ would then be able to exist, and we’d have a compromise.
I don't see how such a review process would work for free software. The user should be free to run whatever software they wish on their own device.
Scaling that review process across every update either means everyone pays a percentage which hurts large business or everyone pays a significant fee which hurts independent developers and discourages bug fixes.
Counter opinion
Billions of devices are scanned everyday thanks to specialized software that do it locally
They are called anti virus (also check for malware, trojan, backdoor, rootkit etc. etc.)
That's both fun and saddening, and also true
But I have to say that Apple store policies results in massive issues as well
The illusion of choice is more dangerous than too much freedom.
1. And most anti-virus are considered a scam by most people
2. Apps that make egregious use of device APIs to implement tracking won't be flagged as a virus.
Many people consider iPhone prices a scam
and yet...
> 2. Apps that make egregious use of device APIs to implement tracking won't be flagged as a virus.
That's true for the iPhone as well
Apple itself track its users.
from a news report in the Washington Post
> Apple says, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers guzzled our data — in a single week
The point was that the check could be implemented by third party software on the device or by a software specifically crafted by the publishers, you don't need the Apple check, which is also very opaque.
Developers would make a bit less (although still more than they make on Android) and Apple would make a lot more.
I have an app that is not distributed via the app store, but is still notarized by Apple and has no Gatekeeper warning when you install it.
You still have to pay the Apple Tax to get your software signed and notarized though.
What I'm looking for is - given external intervention, what would be a workable compromise that:
* Frees developers enough that they can produce applications without the full weight of Apple's process - and its rather hazy and inconsistent application - being a constant frustration or absolute block.
* Allows Apple (and its customers) to continue to benefit from their App Store model and its safety guards, protecting their security and (most of their) revenue.
I'm sure some customers would attempt to deal with Apple support for non-App-Store apps, but my expectation is that this would be a minority case and there are plenty of ways for Apple to head this off.
I don't know that it's a 'downside' for Apple to verify that apps are safe. This is a mostly automated process and one that they don't need to build from scratch. It's a cost for them - without an associated App Store revenue, but I believe it's reasonable to ask Apple to contribute at least this much to allow more open development for their platform.
The user will say that apple are culpable because it went through their review process, they approved the app.
I think more likely apple would reluctantly do the android model and just allow apps to be downloaded and installed via safari. The user is responsible for what they install, the risk is on them, they can use the app store if they want safety.
Correct!
My phone downloads the App from the Play Store and then does a scan locally, on the device.
There's no need to have a centralized, proprietary, anti virus...
It amuses me that you're using exactly the same language used to justify the App Store in the first place. Check out Steve Job's original "Third Party Applications on the iPhone" announcement between the time of iPhoneOS 1.x and 2.0, in October 2007: https://macdailynews.com/2007/10/17/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_sdk...
"We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs."
What we need is a true champion against this stuff. Someone who is willing to sacrifice normalcy and convenience to be fully committed to software that is free as in freedom, not free as in beer.
Imagine a "free software movement". It could center around the GNU toolchain and spiral out from there.
Now, where is our hero? We've put up the signal but I do not see him. I hope nothing bad has happened...
Epic competing with Steam has been a great success for everyone I think. Developers get secure funding for games that they otherwise wouldnt be able to make. Consumers get more games, plus they get hefty discounts or even just free games. Ideally we would then see Valve/Steam trying to compete in response.
It's win/win/win.
I still don't get how the exclusives are a good deal for the creators. They get more publicity and probably some extra money for the contract. But does it really offset the lost sales? There was a large number of times when I went though: this game looks awesome, I'll buy it, oh it's exclusive for whatever-platform-i-don't-have, ... and likely not remember about it ever again. I even bought similar games which are available on platforms I already have instead.
I don't know about PS/Xbox, but the situation is probably similar.
Digital collections certainly have privacy tradeoffs. Though I'm quite happy with many of the upsides: cross-play, automatic cloud save, (sometimes) cross-save, no disc swapping, fewer things to clutter my living space.
But I was also thinking in terms of actual platforms like "Xbox only for N months"
This is great for smaller devs as you basically have 0 advertising budget and rely on worth of mouth for your game to be a success or not. So you can take guaranteed money and pay yourself (and your employees) or take the gamble and hope your game sells well.
Also Epic takes smaller cut then Valve does on Steam. (12% vs 30%)
Also these exclusives to Epic are timed. So after a couple months the developer is free to publish their game on Steam/GOG/Windows Store/whatever PC platform (Epic store exclusivity does not apply for consoles)
If you want to play any Valve games without Steam then you're out of luck.
Having another store is a low barrier to entry.
Imagine there was only one store for groceries in your whole state. And when you go to court a chorus rebukes you for not selling your produce there instead of opening another nearby.
Yes, there is nuance that I left out of my post. I agree with you here.
>If you want to play any Valve games without Steam then you're out of luck.
If you want to play any Epic games without Epic game store, you're out of luck as well.
I have no problem with another store, I have problems with another store having exclusives which do not benefit the consumer in any way (directly).
I don't think the exclusives are good for users, but from a developer perspective this is an oversimplification. Epic is essentially pre-funding games.
If you're an indie dev who's been working on a game for 3-5 years, literally everything you have is riding on that release going well. It's incredibly stressful.
So suddenly this billionaire shows up and says, "no content changes, no interference, we'll just guarantee up front that your game is profitable. We'll just give you the money to justify the last 5 years of your life, and after 6-12 months you can sell wherever." Of course developers take that. Suddenly you have the freedom to be experimental, to make games that are personal and niche without worrying about going broke.
There's a real sense in which PC exclusives are bad for the industry overall, I don't like the direction the market is headed. But from a developer perspective Epic has been pretty objectively good for indie games. The lost revenue from not being on Steam means nothing if Epic is willing to fund your game upfront. Think about how much peace of mind that means as a developer, to not have everything riding on a single launch, to not have to spend months leading up to launch getting sick worrying about what's going to happen.
And also let's be real, from a user perspective we had Steam exclusives, even if Valve didn't directly require them. I buy my games exclusively DRM free, I won't use Steam or Epic. The number of games that refuse to release outside of Steam, or who tie their multiplayer and modding communities to Steam's servers have been a pain in my side for over a decade. There are games on GoG that are missing patches and that will never get multiplayer, because Steam just happened to release frameworks encouraging devs to make themselves utterly dependent on Valve's infrastructure.
I won't install the Epic game store on my computer. But at least a game that's exclusive to Epic games store eventually becomes non-exclusive -- on average, I'll end up getting access to it later. Most of the games that get released exclusively on Steam never get ported off and I never get access to them. It's a little bit irritating to hear people pine for the day when most devs were still effectively releasing store exclusives, just without any extra compensation and to a storefront that more people happened to use.
If a developer chooses to only publish on steam, that's not really the platforms fault, is it? I dislike that some games use steam login/servers as well, but there is a trade-off: those steam servers will probably exist 10 years from now, where a lot of multiplayer games simply shut down their servers and you're out of luck. If Valve open sourced their steam infra, that would alleviate problems with self-hosting those games while allowing the devs ease of use and guaranteed infra.
>I won't install the Epic game store on my computer.
I won't either, and neither would I install steam, except for inertia (250 games bought).
It's complicated. Using Steam's infrastructure for multiplayer and mod support means that the game will only work with Steam. Valve isn't stupid, the reason they offer those services is to encourage games to be Steam exclusives. It's not an accident that Valve has no terms or options for developers releasing on other platforms to tie into those same servers.
Now, is it nice for developers that they don't have to pay for servers and that they get an easy API to integrate with them? Sure. Is it good for the consumer? No, not in any long-term way that wouldn't also apply to Epic funding games.
I will make the argument that what Epic is doing is better for the consumer than what Valve is doing. Epic exclusives are timed, eventually games leave the platform. Valve's infrastructure changes the way a game is built, it has to be re-engineered to work anywhere else. If a game is tied into those frameworks, it's very unlikely that it will ever leave Steam.
For the most part, developers that use Steam's features end up releasing gimped versions of their game elsewhere -- you buy a game on GoG and it's literally just missing features. This is especially frustrating for mods, you get cut off from the entire community. I think fragmenting the PC market so that different versions of the same game exist on different storefronts with no indication of the "proper" place to buy a game is way more toxic and harmful to the end consumer than forcing them to wait 6-12 months to play a new release.
I agree open sourcing that infrastructure would go a huge way towards alleviating the problem. If GoG could offer their own multiplayer servers that were compatible with Steam games, that would be huge. Even better if players could set up their own compatible servers for GoG games, that would be amazing. But there's very little incentive for Valve to do that. They benefit tremendously from games hard-coding those servers and making them impossible to change.
And that's not to say that what Epic is doing is good. I generally think that we should be discouraging exclusives, or at least making it easier for users to move their games between storefronts without installing new clients. Buying games from the Epic store wouldn't really be a problem if they were DRM free and you could download them from a web client, at that point I wouldn't care about exclusives at all.
My point is more that I don't think that what Epic is doing is bad in a way that makes them unsuited to bring this case, or that the way they're disrupting the status quo on PC is uniquely evil or something. Pretty much any dev you talk to will be happy to see Valve getting more competition. We don't want Valve to be taking 30% of our game revenue.
As far as devs go, EGS gives a better cut, offers stability with timed exclusivity deals, and arguably are the ones who forced steam to lower their cut to 30/25/20 on high sales figures.
Developers are making an educated choice to take their games exclusive, in exchange for guaranteed revenue. Sometimes that can be make-or-break for a game.
You’re acting as if steam doesn’t have exclusive games either - I play Destiny 2 which is only available on Steam (on PC). I would not be surprised that larger games/publishers get negotiated terms on the store which comes with contractual exclusivity clauses.
The "Epic Client" asks you for payment details, collects all kinds of private information and doesn't let you do anything unless it's up to date and connected to the internet. (DRM hello?)
Then you go to the Windows Store to buy that candy crush ad that's been sitting in your Start Menu for no reason and oh surprise, they are asking for payment details again!
Doesn't sound like a win for consumers to me.
they're complaining about monopolies, while attempting to create them
In plenty of cases this exclusivity also shut down cross platform support of the games. Fundraisers planned macOS and Linux versions of the games, but when Epic purchased exclusive rights they were effectively made Windows exclusives as well (Epic's store is only available on Windows).
We have so many options on PC that the few exclusives can be entirely ignored.
Steam has been taking huge cuts from developers. Steam also killed discoverability.
Game devs almost gave up on PC because steam killed the platform. Check out GDC talks on the "indiepocalypse".
Yes, Steam has a lot of nice QoL features on their 20 year old platform that 2 year old platforms don't have. But new platforms force them to, you know, compete instead of extract value from the ecosystem.
The consumer benefit is in terms of games that wouldn't have existed otherwise because they're economically viable now.
In 2009, 343 games were published on Steam.
In 2010, 308 games.
In 2011, 300 games.
In 2012, 377 games. Valve introduced Greenlight, allowing developers to create a page for their game and selling those that gathered the most interest.
In 2013, 511 games. Valve expanded Greenlight, lowering the threshold to enter the platform
In 2014, 1641 games.
In 2015, 2732 games.
In 2016, 4489 games.
In 2017, 6508 games. Valve introduced Steam Direct, allowing anyone to sell their game once they complete the paperwork.
In 2018, 8237 games.
In 2019, 7950 games.
When Valve was the gatekeeper, only a lucky few indie developers made it onto the platform. However, with less than 1 game being released per day, there was plenty of space for these new games on the front page. With over 21 games released per day, being available on Steam is no longer a competitive advantage.
Valve "killed discoverability" in favor of availability. Epic's store has advantages such as a lower cut, subsidized by Fortnite money. It also has disadvantages (not available in many countries, missing features, reviews, and social functionality). There is definitely a place for a smaller, curated store, where only one or two games are put out per day, which is what Epic is aiming for.
I do not find it surprising that a store asks for payment details when I purchase an item.
This is sarcasm, right? How can you buy stuff without payment details?
>collects all kinds of private information
Like what? Moreover, does steam (or other digital storefronts) not collect the same information?
> doesn't let you do anything unless it's up to date and connected to the internet. (DRM hello?)
You clearly missed all the "steam updating" memes from the early/mid 2000s.
You guys are acting like the existence of the App Store has jacked up the app prices by 200%, whereas in reality there hasn't remotely been such a thing since the inception of the App Store.
No, we got free to play with endless micro transactions instead. I would have preferred the price bump.
But Apple _never_ delivered on that. Instead, Apple pushed "subscriptions", which is just another name for rental.
Subscription models produce lots of recurring revenue, so companies absolutely adore that model when they can get away with it.
Not sure how higher prices for consumer is great for the consumer. I get the convenience argument, but not every consumer is willing to pay higher prices just for that. There is a huge difference between a 2-5% fee like CC merchants charge and a 30% across the board fee on the app store.
The App Store is also a service for distribution. If it wasn't there, I would be forced to invest much more in marketing, cloud services and all kinds of "small things" which are not the primary purpose of my apps. If anything, my apps would be more expensive outside the store.
If the default app stores provides as much value as you claim, developers would continue to distribute there, pay the fees, and consumers would go there for discoverability and convenience. Let consumers decide.
With options, consider maybe someone could provide those services even better / more cheaply and you also benefit as a developer.
Correction: all the apps that Apple thinks you need, regardless of whether or not it aligns with what you need or want.
With 20% global market share, plenty of countries don't care about Safari support.
The main problem with Internet Explorer in its hay day was that they did not play nice with other browser vendors and implemented features outside of the standard. Those features were then relied upon by website developers, causing many websites to only work on Internet Explorer. After all - most people were using internet explorer, why cater to anyone else?
Chrome is not quite in the same position as Internet Explorer was back then, but it's getting frighteningly close. There are several websites that only work on Chrome, and despite me not using Chrome as my primary browser I do have Chrome installed because for some websites I simply need Chrome. This is obviously very dangerous to the freedom of the internet.
Funnily enough Apple forcing iOS users to use Safari actually helps here. Because so many people use iOS and they need to use Safari, website developers need to cater to at least one non-Chrome web browser. That in turn makes it more likely they will also cater to others (e.g. Firefox) rather than relying on Chrome-only features.
There is your list.
The problem is that it creates a single point at which a state can impose restrictions on freedom, with no way to get around it for dissidents and other people who don't agree with it.
So much for "There's an app for that".
Systemwide adblocking, non-Safari browser that wasn't artificially limited, ability to connect bluetooth mouse (mostly for when I used the iPad to remote into other computers), modified keyboard with a number row, file manager, some minor homescreen/launcher tweaks for usability, and one that allowed non-iPad apps to run at a higher resolution (at the time, non-universal apps would run in the old iPhone res, but scaled up instead of running at the higher, newer phone resolution).
I'm sure there were other little tweaks, but the main thing was that there weren't any decent Android or Windows tablet options at the time and while the iPad did many things quite well, there were all sorts of little quality of life things that I was just used to having. They weren't included in iOS and there was no way to (officially) change the launcher or keyboard or any of those other things.
It would have been quite nice to have other software repos besides just the App Store which didn't require me to exploit security flaws to use. Instead I just stopped buying iOS devices after that iPad.
You should divorce your personal anti-competition desires from the non-personal discussion. Encouraging choice is often a better way to give more people what they want.
Having choice isn't always better. I think the Apple iOS store is a very clear example where choice leads to negative experience for users. As I've mentioned before, Apple collectively bargains on behalf of users against developers. They enforce (albeit imperfectly) certain standards and force nefarious developers to implement things like sign in with Apple.
They only, and I mean only, affect of releasing developers from the App Store is that they'll sign on with some 3rd party store, and if you want to use Spotify, or Netflix, or Facebook you'll get it from a 3rd party store where they charge the exact same prices but then infest the applications with hostile anti-patterns, tracking, etc. That's it. When you advocate for "choice" here, you're simply advocating for the choice for users to pay the same prices they've been paying except also being exposed to anti-patterns that Apple is working to prevent. Choice in this case, is clearly bad.
I'll also add, I have yet to hear a peep from Epic w.r.t having to go through Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for releasing Fortnite via their locked-in app stores. The iPhone is no more or less a computing device than those are.
"Google is clearly making the right choice for me. Their motto is literally 'don't be evil'".
And in some respects it's true - A benevolent dictatorship is undeniably a great form of governance.
The problem (and this is a problem) is that benevolent dictatorships never, Never, NEVER stay benevolent.
At some point the guiding principles will change, or you will change, and you'll find yourself outside of the bubble you were so comfortable to live in.
Some of us are already outside of that bubble. I don't like not being able to run software of my choice on a device I (in theory only, in Apple's case) own.
Basically - I find this argument extremely short-sighted. It's trading any sense of long term thinking for the immediate convenience of letting someone else do the work for you in the short term. I have very, very little respect for this argument.
I just don't find this compelling and don't really care about it. There are lots of products to choose from, you can build your own stuff, buy a generic phone and load whatever you want on it, etc.
> The problem (and this is a problem) is that benevolent dictatorships never, Never, NEVER stay benevolent.
Then new products will arise when this happens.
> Basically - I find this argument extremely short-sighted. It's trading any sense of long term thinking for the immediate convenience of letting someone else do the work for you in the short term. I have very, very little respect for this argument.
We routinely delegate trust in society to experts and other accountable entities. It's like saying we shouldn't have an FDA and everybody should just make sure they aren't ingesting something that will kill them.
Also, can you clearly articulate what exactly I'm losing here with a single App Store? So far I just see more cons than pros.
No. My whole point is that you're clearly happy in your benevolent dictatorship.
But it really doesn't suite me. I just told you the reason I'm not happy, and you handily dismissed it as "not compelling". Which is fine. For you it probably isn't. For me, not having root on a device I own intended for general purpose computing is literally a no-go on every front. It's not just insulting, it's a literal threat to my source of income. I find it just as crazy as if Volvo told me I could only drive on Volvo certified roads. They may be great roads (the best roads, which will never damage the car, guaranteed!) but I don't give a shit. I bought the car to drive where I want to drive. I buy a computing device to run the software I want to run.
So that said, my real problem here is that both major mobile operating systems currently operate under this model. Google is marginally better (by the barest of margins).
So you claim that a new product will arise when Apple decides that you don't fit in their dictatorship, but watching what's happening with Google and search right now... Well, I'll quote you - "I just don't find this compelling"
Google is still the only player in search. Youtube is still the only player in video. New products are at best fringe products that don't gain traction, because there's a clear monopoly effect in play here.
I wouldn't call it that. I'm not really sure it's a dictatorship. But whatever.
> But it really doesn't suite me. I just told you the reason I'm not happy, and you handily dismissed it as "not compelling". Which is fine. For you it probably isn't. For me, not having root on a device I own intended for general purpose computing is literally a no-go on every front. It's not just insulting, it's a literal threat to my source of income. I find it just as crazy as if Volvo told me I could only drive on Volvo certified roads. They may be great roads (the best roads, which will never damage the car, guaranteed!) but I don't give a shit. I bought the car to drive where I want to drive. I buy a computing device to run the software I want to run.
I think the crux of the problem is you're buying something with different expectations than you should have. If Volvo in this case said hey we sell a Volvo car and you can only drive it on Volvo roads, then if you got mad you couldn't drive it on other roads YOU bought the wrong car.
There is nothing stopping you from buying an Android phone and rooting it. As an iPhone user, as you mentioned, I want exactly what Apple is providing, or else I'd buy a different device. So when you want to change the product I like for your own benefit, then we'll certainly be at odds and I'll continue to support and campaign to maintain what I desire in the iPhone directly against you.
> So you claim that a new product will arise when Apple decides that you don't fit in their dictatorship, but watching what's happening with Google and search right now... Well, I'll quote you - "I just don't find this compelling"
> Google is still the only player in search. Youtube is still the only player in video. New products are at best fringe products that don't gain traction, because there's a clear monopoly effect in play here.
Certainly disagree. Google has quite a few competitors, Amazon, Facebook, Apple itself (searching via Siri in iOS versus a web browser) not to mention incumbents like Bing and DDG who have taken a little bit of market share. There are alternatives that work just fine. As for Youtube, Spotify is coming after them and then you always have new products like TikTok, or streaming services like Twitch.
Again, we don't share the same perspective here. As a consumer, some of the products you've mentioned are acceptable substitutes. But I'm not just a consumer of digital products. I also produce them.
As a producer, there's really not the same sense of competition you seem to be implying here. Google owns 92.5% percent of the search marketshare (globally). Bing/DDG/Yahoo might as well be rounding errors in comparison. 90% of customers say that they primarily find new video content on Youtube. Vimeo is next. The products you've listed are not really direct competitors (and this is actually pretty normal, entrenched monopolies don't lose to direct competition, they eventually get replaced with paradigm shifts).
So to hammer home my point here - As a producer, I literally have to make results available on Google, and upload videos to Youtube in order to reach most of my audience.
Now - I also use those other services as well - I happily send folks to vimeo links instead of youtube, and DDG links instead of Google search. So at least I have some chance to promote those alternatives.
In Apple's case, I have to release on their app store. Except... wait a minute... I can't even try to promote a possible alternative! If you use an Iphone, you literally cannot choose to get my software through another channel.
They are enforcing their own store monopoly with their software dictatorship. And just like a car, no one is going to go out and buy a completely different phone to use my one app. It's just not practical.
Sure, I'm looking at things from a more broad market perspective so naturally I won't look at the individual case you experience. In the case of search I see Google under tremendous pressure. If you start your search on Facebook or Amazon, that's lost revenue for Google. Those are insanely popular companies. The fact that you are looking strictly at web search and that marketshare I think causes your perspective to be different, and in my view inaccurate when looking at the entire marketplace. Put another way, I don't really care about declining monopolies.
> In Apple's case, I have to release on their app store. Except... wait a minute... I can't even try to promote a possible alternative! If you use an Iphone, you literally cannot choose to get my software through another channel. They are enforcing their own store monopoly with their software dictatorship. And just like a car, no one is going to go out and buy a completely different phone to use my one app. It's just not practical.
It would be nice if you stopped throwing around terms like dictatorship so casually, especially given the connotations around that (murder, genocide, human suffering, etc.). I don't really see how Apple is a dictator any more than any other company is. They create a product, the iPhone. That device has certain features and capabilities. The fact that you don't have an alternative is a feature of the phone, because as I mentioned above it forces a collective bargaining situation for Apple on behalf of users. Why do you need an alternative to Apple's distribution network, and why should you not have to pay Apple for access to a revenue stream that they actually create and maintain? It doesn't make sense to me whatsoever that you would have that perspective. You just want to have your cake and eat it too, and I think that's greedy and unfair.
> And just like a car, no one is going to go out and buy a completely different phone to use my one app. It's just not practical.
Its' very practical. You can do it in an instance. iPhones have very high resale value. But people would rather have the iPhone and its App Store, over access to multiple app stores via Android, hence why they bought an iPhone.
The ability to shop based on price. The 30% fee is non-negotiable which guarantees a certain level of price gouging.
Apple is also known for implementing various anti-patterns and tracking, mostly related to promoting their own apps and cloud services over their competitors, so you lose any leverage you would have in getting them to stop that. You would have a better argument in favor of an app store monopoly if there wasn't a huge conflict of interest with them producing the hardware and selling these other services.
> The 30% fee is non-negotiable which guarantees a certain level of price gouging.
Well, if you don't want to pay that to get access to the user base that Apple created and maintains then don't pay it and don't have your app on the App Store. This is pretty easy. Heck, companies get around this all the time (Spotify for example).
Your argument that apple created and maintains the user base would be a lot stronger if google and all of the other phone makers were not quietly waiting to snatch up any customers that got sick of apple.
I can think of some things that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1) Cross platform app stores. I'd like to be able to purchase an app on one store, and automatically have access to it on Mac/Windows/iOS/Android etc.
2) Alternate web browser engines. It's hard to know exactly how much we are missing out on here, since web sites usually won't use features that aren't available on iOS. But web browsers might not exist at all if platform owners had as much control over app distribution in the 90s as Apple does now. There may be web-browser like technologies (apps that can host interactive 3rd party content), or extensions to existing web tech that never get off the ground because there's no way for it to run on iOS.
3) Emulators, game streaming services from Microsoft / Google, full featured steam link, indie games that don't pay $99/yr so aren't available.
4) App store with better discoverability and recommendations
5) "Premium" app store that isn't a race to the bottom with free apps that are designed around continued advertising / in app purchases. Could be related to (4)
6) On iPad, a wide variety of general purpose productivity software. Developer tools, etc.
> Then new products will arise when this happens.
I think the argument is it's already very difficult for new entrants in the platform space (for phones, Microsoft spent billions and failed), but the only reason app stores are not competitive is they are tied together with the platform.
There's certainly also been some benefits of Apple acting as a de facto regulator of application software. I think in a world where alternate app stores are allowed the Apple app store would continue to be a very important storefront that most developers would not want to skip (although Apple might want to make improvements to it in order to compete more effectively). Of course, other app stores would also have their own rules and hopefully Apple would continue to enforce automatic security measures like sandboxing.
2) Hm, I see your point but I'm having a hard time envisioning what I'm missing out on. As I look at the web browser ecosystem on desktop, what features are we missing?
3) Not sure why this isn't possible? I think it's more of a limitation of interface than anything. Also why isn't Microsoft making their Xbox app available on Linux or macOS? Hmmm.
4) Eh, the App Store can be improved but I think you're reaching here.
5) As you said, related to #4. I have yet to see a premium model work. I don't think it does for many applications.
6) Yea that would be nice for developer tools, but the other limitations I don't see. You can install Office, JIRA, etc. on iPad.
> I think the argument is it's already very difficult for new entrants in the platform space (for phones, Microsoft spent billions and failed), but the only reason app stores are not competitive is they are tied together with the platform.
Sure, but the same is true of aircraft engines, investment banking, and any other specialized industry. Huawei and others will be competitive and will emerge as serious contenders. It just takes time. I also disagree with your assertion that app stores are not competitive, I don't think they need to be competitive. They just host the software. It's like downloading Spotify and then being confused that you can't put your own songs on it, or that you have to pay Spotify royalties.
2) The main things that come to mind are the same advantages of native apps vs web apps. Integration/access to native API features, CPU/GPU performance, etc. Web browsers can support these things but don’t always.
3) Those specific categories aren’t possible on iOS because Apple prohibits them! That is exactly why Stadia/xCloud isn’t available.
4) Discoverability is hard with tons of apps but it's probably not impossible to do better. There’s not a huge incentive for Google/Apple to fix this since they charge to advertise in the store, some other stores don’t do this.
5) I was thinking about console games here, Switch games are often pretty different from in app purchase based mobile ones.
I think the difference with engines etc is there are big network effects - people buy phones based on the ecosystem which is determined by existing market share. IMO this is why Windows Phone died and it’s not just a matter of enough money or technology.
Don't fight five enemies when defeating one will defeat all five.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. If they win this case (unlikely) it will cause a lot of changes. It really is an interesting case though. I see applications across multiple industries and services (Amazon, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc.) as well as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and others.
If you can bypass the Apple App Store, I'm not finding a compelling reason that you can't bypass ANY App Store or similar product. If Nintendo sells a new console, they'll have to let you install any app store. Hell, why can't I create my own app store and publish it? Why only Epic?
We have to distinguish User Experience (short term comfort) from User Respect/Freedom/Rights. Choice is bad for UX, but it is good for avoiding abuses.
If you download FB, Instagram, TikTok, etc. on the app store those are malwares that collect all your data and Apple is doing absolutely nothing about it. ICloud is not even end-to-end encrypted. Let's stop this myth that Apple provides actual privacy.
Apple doesn't care about you, they care about power.
If they need to put "Privacy" in their ads for you to buy it, they'll do it. If they need to keep malwares on the app store to generate revenues, they'll do it (but they'll make sure you believe you are safe thx to their fake privacy propaganda).
It's true other game platforms are closed but first we have more choice :
Mobile gaming = Google or Apple
Home gaming = Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, Linux/Windows/Mac, Steam, Itch.io, GameJolt, Windows store, Epic game store, Origin/Ubisoft/Blizzard, etc.
Second : it's not about gaming only, it's about the right of people to control the device they bought.
Iphone & Google have a far bigger monopoly and control on our life than an Xbox sitting in our living room, so it makes sense to worry about Apple and Google first.
I think most people don't really want that right. Myself included. I like the iPhone as it is and don't see any advantages to changing the operating model. Maybe if you're a developer you don't like it, so in that case I just say too bad and just don't develop for the iPhone if it isn't profitable for you.
All this talk about "freedom" and "rights" is quite a bit of misguided grandstanding if you ask me.
"I bought an Xbox, where are my rights as a general computing device!11!" Give me a break.
If you want all this stuff to "change' then go ahead and start with making Blizzard allow me to publish my independent games on their App Store with no review process and no revenue cut. Make Microsoft let me play Nintendo Switch games on my Xbox. Make game developers make all of their games cross-platform, no more Windows-exclusive games.
The iPad Pro, the iPad and iPhone is are not general computing devices, but more like gaming consoles? Wow.
Apart from that, gaming consoles subsidize or barely eke out a profit for their hardware, whereas Apple charges buyers a huge margin on the phones. I'll agree to the forced 30% cut if Apple cuts their phone prices by 50%.
When I shop for games, I never pay the list price - ever. Well, maybe once every few years when I buy a game in the GoG store made by CD Projekt Red, which run the store but are also a publisher of AAA titles I really, really love. I pay full price for them because they really deserve it, and they get 100% of the well-deserved money if I buy in their store.
All the other games? I'll happily wait for a sale in one of the aforementioned stores, of which there are plenty and with huge rebates, because they must compete for me as a customer. First sales are usually coming just a few months after a games' release, and with lots of games to play still in my pipeline and less time to actually play them due to work, family and all that real-life stuff, I can usually muster the patience to wait for reduced prices.
Also if I want to buy a subscription for soemthing like Intellij as a developer I would feel like garbage to use a store and give a 30% cut to Microsoft or Apple for the privilege of allowing me to install something, the developers deserve those money and a big corporation because they host some files.
I saw the same thing come up when people talked about wanting to maintain status quo for in-app payment options. Because, again, adding additional choices does not just make your current choice go away. You can still choose that apple-blessed option if thats what you want. Unless, of course, it turns out that theres a lot of unnecessary margin being added on and its actually not a profitable business model when faced with competition.
Yes, I really enjoy ads every seven and a half seconds for games I am not even allowed to buy to remove ads.
I've played thousands of hours of Rocket League, but still out of principle had Psyonix refund me after the switch to Epic. Similarly, I had to ask for a refund for my kickstarter backing of Diabotical, a game I do wish to try one day. I understand why James took the money... but it's upsetting that the cost was exclusivity.
It turns out that in a surprising number of cases, you don’t have to. Control, Journey, and Beyond Two Souls (as of this writing, it launched with Denuvo) are all completely DRM Free and will run without EGS. You can download them via the open-source “Legendary” unofficial client, or even in a Virtual Machine if you feel so inclined.
There are a tiny handful DRM-free Steam games but in my experience, it seems to be way more common on the Epic Game Store, particularly for AAA titles. I’m not sure if this was intentional of a happy accident, but it’s caused me to choose EGS for several titles recently. Mind, you still need to check before buying!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/870780/Control_Ultimate_E...
This statement sounds like the "no sugar added" label that you see slapped on high sugar beverages. Yes, there's no added sugar (or DRM), but there's still sugar. It's completely different to no sugar (or no DRM), as is the case with egs (as in, you can launch the executable without egs running), according to https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Control
If you buy Horizon: Zero Dawn from Steam, you won’t be able to actually start the game unless Steam is installed. However, if you buy the game from EGS, it work fine even if EGS is not installed. The EGS version is a completely standalone copy of the game that does not require any clients in order to run.
This are a handful of Steam games like this as well. One example I purchased recently is Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which I downloaded in a VM before moving over to my main (Steamless) Windows install. It works fine. For whatever reason, however, this seems to work far more often with EGS games, and I really appreciate that!
Edit: Useful reference https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16BjnaBO40vkt6kFVl0QW...
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Edit2: By the way, I mentioned in my parent post that Journey was DRM Free on EGS. I have just learned that as of a recent update, saving is broken without EGS (although the game still launches, and you may not need saving given its two-hour runtime).
I'm willing to chalk this up to a bug rather than anything malicious—and of course, the good thing about DRM-Free software is that if you've backed up your old copy, it will keep working, and no one can take it away from you. But, this type of thing is definitely a reason to still prefer GoG and itch.io where possible.
The nature of DRM-Free media is that once I've downloaded it, no one can take it away from me. I may miss out on future updates, but I always make purchasing decisions based on what's available today, and not what may be available in the future. (And I don't play online multiplayer.)
The EGS version of Tetris Effect was DRM Free at launch, but DRM was added in an update. This means I can't recommend Tetris Effect to anyone who cares about clients or DRM—but on a personal level I don't particularly care, because I already got my copy!
Separately, if e.g. GoG was the only PC game vendor, they probably would never have made DRM-Free games a core focus of their business, because why bother when you're the only game in town? And so, I'll always welcome new entrants into the market.
What issues?
Anyway, having to install a new launcher, as annoying as it is, is a far cry from throwing out your entire phone and all your apps, and buying a different phone (which has many of the same restrictions again).
I don't understand why people keep comparing the iOS App Store to the Epic Game Store exclusives, they not remotely the same.
They has some issues where people could use any email to register an account without verification, leaving thousands (millions?) without a way to register their own valid emails.
They were caught scanning your pc for everything to 'provide a better experience' if you had some things installed.
And if (want to think) they are 'fighting' for openness, 'buying' rights to games and taking them out of other stores.
All of them can be easily googled so not going to spend time providing sources
The closest thing I could find for the registering without verification claim was a Verge article [1] about people's Fortnite account being taken over after clicking a link that was sent to them. If you have a better source please do share.
EDIT: Source has been found, apparently store didn't initially send a verification email so anyone could use any email[4], this has been fixed though. I could find no source for the claim that this affected millions or thousands of people.
As for the claim that they were "scanning your pc for everything", that is just completely wrong. According a few articles [2][3] they were reading your steam friends list after getting permission from the user.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/16/18185398/fortnite-player-... [2]: https://www.slashgear.com/epic-games-store-isnt-spying-but-d... [3]: https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-steam-data-reddit/ [4]: https://twinfinite.net/2020/09/crysis-remastered-ray-tracing...
And the following miriad of people showing that Epic is getting much more info than it says they do, even before asking permission (including even steam's games play time)
(it was the top post for me searching 'epic games store scan entire pc' btw)
Regarding the email thing, I said thousands (maybe millions) as I have no clue of the number, but remember easily over 300 comments in a'me too' kind of way on reddit when this happened.
Edit: even Tim admitted they fucked up after being found: https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...
> The current implementation is a remnant left over from our rush to implement social features in the early days of Fortnite. It's actually my fault for pushing the launcher team to support it super quickly and then identifying that we had to change it. Since this issue came to the forefront we're going to fix it.
The publisher sells their fan base to Epic, and Epic gets a list of potential people they can sell their own crap to, and gets a big install base number they can leverage to convince more publishers to sell them more fan bases.
#1 the publisher wins because they don't like risk in the first place, and free money is free money
#2 epic wins because they build legitimacy and reach, and they sell more fortnite MTX to their burgeoning install base
#3 the developer loses because their brand is tarnished and their potential for future titles is damaged due to lower sales numbers and shredding their fan base
#4 the players lose because they lose choice and have their library locked in a 2nd rate predatory ecosystem
EGS represents the choice in the market, and the market can act on that. Developers have the choice to go on the store, and they have the choice to take exclusivity agreements, or they can choose to go on steam or to offer direct downloads. Customers and chose whether they want to purchase a game from EGS, or go elsewhere.
"a product exists that I don't like" is not "bad competition". If you don't like Epic Game Store, then continue to not use it and go to a competing service/game.
Not for Linux gamers who can no longer play Rocket League
And while of apple you don't have this, when you buy a Iphone your trading this liberty for stability and security.
For example, my mother loves to install little games from the store, but she agree with any terms and conditions that pops in the screen. So I feel more secure giving her an Iphone that I know the apps pass for more scrutiny before entering the store.
So I don't see as a monopoly, since you do get option of changing platforms and alternative stores.
I think in this case epic is in the wrong. They start this on purpose to involve the government in the history, just so they can take a bigger share of gullible people who spends to much on skins in fortinite.
Epic has to do something similar. Sure thats not easy but given they are billion dollar company, they should be able to do it.
There are other options out there where you can do whatever you want and side load, why not go use those yourself and stop demanding others be subjected to this same situation?
Your mom is presumably able to drive a car, which is a killing machine in the wrong hands. Your mom can drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, buy a gun, use a chainsaw. All of these activities are infinitely more dangerous than using a smartphone. OS lockdown in completely unjustified in comparison. It's a vast overreaction by "helicopter children".
And overall I don't understand why people take sides in corporate battles like any of those mega corporations stand for morals or the greater good or anything like that.
Corporate ethics are hypocrisy all the way down.
This lawsuit is taking place in the USA where people overwhelmingly value freedom of choice.
Speaking of China - Apple gave the Chinese government their own app store. Perhaps Epic should point that out as well. It would make for a great headline: Apple gives China their own app store, but not US!
That’s the problem though. When half of the people in United States have no choice but to leave their digital home in order to get some rights to use their own equipment without begging Apple... that needs to change.
The store itself is so big as to be it's own market, and as such Apple shouldn't be allowed to use monopolistic practices even though they created the market themselves.
I absolutely dislike some of linux philosophy like "everything is a file" which I find plain wrong.
But I agree that he go too far and hurt users only due to engineering taste.
https://www.rocketleague.com/news/ending-support-for-mac-and...
[1] https://support.rocketleague.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042201...
[2] https://support.rocketleague.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043307...
Given that, the microscopic market, and the additional programming complexity I don't see a reason why any game company should go out of their way to support Linux ever.
(As a Linux desktop user, I'm thankful when they do though. I'm so glad that Beyond Compare from Scooter Software works on my main workstation, for instance. Also Zoom, Slack and VS Code among others... Looking forward to trying MS Edge some day soon.)
Meanwhile, Steam is doubling down with Proton. Since Proton, I don't have a Windows partition around anymore, it just works for an enormous number of titles.
Don't forget when calculating profitability that you also have to account for opportunity cost: the devs you hire to work on Linux could instead be working on improving your fledgling client for the much more profitable Windows platform. Valve is already over that hurdle with Steam, so their profitability calculations will be different. You can't draw a direct comparison.
Like I said, I work on Linux. Trust me when I say there's a lot of very good reasons not to support it that have nothing to do with one's personal opinions of the platform, or whatever it is the OP meant by "incredibly hostile."
Just because they don't want to build for and support a relatively tiny platform does not mean that they're hostile toward that platform. They support it in other ways via their game engine. Steam, on the other hand, has a vested interest in supporting Linux due to SteamOS, which they hope to pursue again in the future.
Just because Valve has a lot of goodwill in supporting Linux, even though Proton hasn't really affected Linux's market share in gaming, does not mean everyone else is actively hostile toward it.
Why do this if Tim is "incredibly hostile towards Linux"?
Seems more like indifference to me.
Do people really think app store approvers are doing malware analysis on apps and analyzing network traffic to approve them?
People who know better tend to have the self control not to engage. I often get baited into engaging.
There are plenty of APIs available within the sandbox that are meant to be used by developers to use for legitimate purposes. But those same APIs could be abused by malicious actors as well.
That is why Android has historically had more problems with malware even though Android apps are also sandboxed.
This is not case just about AppStore being only store. This is Apple misusing AppStore's monopoly position.
In many cases competition law allows single supplier, but they are not allowed to misuse their power. Epic makes three cases:
(1) Apple prevents other companies from setting up their own app stores;
(2) Apple prevents other companies from providing their own "payment processing" services in the market;
(3) Apple imposes an arguably unreasonably high fee upon sales in the market (30%), to the detriment of consumers.
You could have good security with sandboxing without AppStore.
On the other hand the AppStore is full of spyware/malware (TikTok, FB, etc.) and Apple is of course doing nothing about it as it brings more user and revenues.
Not saying the situation is any better on other platform though
I used to develop games and apps for MS PocketPC. Our users could install apps straight from their PC to the PocketPC.
But guess how apps were sold: through portals. These portals also took around 30% (Handango and PocketGear were the biggest ones back then).
We were also selling straight from our website, where we could have had 0% cost. But guess what: We wanted to reach top 10 on Handango, and the best way to do that was send our customers through Handango. Once in the top 10 (front page), it would multiply our sales. So even on our own site we choose to 'lose' 30%.
Just take a look at Steam: it's PC games! You can sell all those things straight to the consumer. But developers still choose to give 30% (or how much is it now?) for the exposure.
Conclusion: there will always be some party taking around 30%. Why? Because it's well worth the 30%
Everything on top of that is the platform on top of which they are building their system.
Anyone who thinks the App Store is just stripe plus a file server simply doesn’t understand what is involved.
What's your opinion on the following:
* pay-for-play "acceptable ads" in ABP
* having to get a EV code signing certificate ($300+/yr) to bypass windows smartscreen warnings, which are enabled by default
Are they acceptable? Are they a net good for consumers? They're all examples of optional programs that clearly provide value to the buyers (otherwise they wouldn't be buying it), in exchange for a payment to the gatekeepers. This is basically the same role as steam (or the portals). However, I have a feeling that most hn readers would not have a positive opinion of either of those programs.
My point was not that I don't mind gatekeepers, but more that if you get rid of the platform gatekeeper, you will end up with the "customers" gatekeeper. In the end for us developers or customers it makes no difference.
$300 should not be a problem for someone who sells proper software. Such $100+ gates keep a lot of the crap out.
Windows was a malware disaster before measures like this were added to the OS, so I would argue this (and other warnings preventing people from randomly clicking and installing things) are a net good for the consumer.
You also technically don't need an EV cert, you can get a regular code signing cert (it will just take longer to build your reputation).
It's the 30% + being feature/speech-restricted by Apple while also competing with Apple in Apple's app store which holds half the US audience captive.
Third parties can't even make a browser that gets set as the default that opens hyperlinks. They can't replace iMessage or the phone dialer. They can't even use a browser engine other than the one that Apple restricts them to. They can't make political apps. They can't offer porn apps. The list goes on and on and on.
Furthermore, smartphones are way, way, way more ubiquitous and important to society right now than those devices ever were back in the 90s and early 2000s. Imagine only being allowed to shop at Walmart or Target with no other choice anywhere at all. If that ever happened in the real world and those companies were acting like Apple is, things'd change real quick.
And overworks his employees to exhaustion, while stomping on their unionizing...
They wanted Fortnite to get removed from the App Store in hopes that their rabid fan base of adolescent Fortnite gamers would create insane amounts of bad PR for Apple.
But It never reached critical mass and Apple stood their ground.
"Through twitter, Sweeney said that when the land was put up for sale, many were concerned that the state wouldn't be able to buy it quick enough.
"He said he will own the farm to protect the land's rare oak and pine ecosystem until a permanent conservation home is arranged, which would take two to three years.
"According to the Wall Street Journal, Sweeney has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to preserve more than 45,000 acres of forest throughout North Carolina."
https://wset.com/news/local/fortnite-ceo-buys-7000-acre-farm...
Not defending Sweeney on anything else, just clarifying this specific point about owning huge farmlands.
1. Multiple App Stores would be good for free speech, and for avoidance of USA cultural and legal hegemony.
2. How can this be done without loss of security for typical users? We don’t want phones to become botnets with microphones and cameras — imagine the opportunities for automatic criminal blackmail, theft planning, target acquisition, or 2FA interception. This is bad for the societies we live in even if we here on HN don’t personally install bad apps or bad stores.
3. It does feel like Sweeney is arguing in bad faith.
4. The the money is being raised as an issue implies these markets are now red-water rather than blue-water.
They already are. Walled gardens do nothing to prevent this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-pariahs-location-tracking-...
However, that is not a botnet.
Those systems cannot, at least not to my knowledge, turn on the microphone in the background and listen for useful blackmail-worthy phrases without alerting the user (like Siri et al are presumably capable of); They cannot subvert the WiFi chip to be a wall-penetrating radar capable of pose detection, heart rate monitoring, etc [0]; They cannot snap random photos, finding out who has anything worth stealing, nor also revealing the shape of their keys for 3D printed replication (ditto audio, at least for the keys) [1][2]; They cannot read your email and SMS messages and take over your bank accounts [3].
[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/household-radar-c...
[1] https://kottke.org/20/08/researchers-can-duplicate-keys-from...
[2] https://www.wired.com/2015/08/this-app-lets-anyone-3-d-print... (not state of the art, but ICBA to go through all the irrelevant links)
[3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/android-malware-can-steal-goog... (old Android example, but even Google stamped down on this kind of thing because it is a threat to the value proposition of a smartphone)
It cannot. Typical users are not capable of 'vetting' app stores for their security capabilities.
This is one reason Google Play Protect scans all apps installed, not just those installed through the Play Store. "That way, no matter where you download an app from, you know it's been checked by Google Play Protect"[1]
I just hope it’s done by governments who actually care about end users, not by those acting as though feudal aristocracy is the current economic standard and want a cut of Big Tech’s trillions.
He's personally worth $5.3 billion.
Surely that's enough to take Android Open Source Project and make his own version.
It's easy to burn down a store that you think charges too much. It's harder to make a new store that people will like. Maybe take the high road, Mr. Sweeney.
Note that updates via webview or JS code are explicitly allowed by contracts, and what Fortnite did is very likely to have used that mechanism.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfTZ1pwWkAI3aUH.jpg:large
Either way violates guidelines
But a novel definition of monopoly may be warranted. As smartphones become more and more a part of the fundamental infrastructure of society, and remain relatively expensive and slow to replace, it's not crazy to say that iPhone users are a market in itself and that market should be protected from monopoly. In the same way that a company in the 1800s might not have been a national or regional monopoly, but very much was a monopoly in their own company town, or how car manufacturers in the 20th Century were forced to allow competition in repair services.
I think ultimately, right now, my personal sense is that iPhones don't quite rise to the level of their own market that needs to be opened up, but it's close.
It’s like Apple being the sole supplier of a specific type of unleaded fuel. And people like me choosing that fuel because it might be more expensive and more restrictive, but I don’t have to worry as much about the condition of my car engine on a regular basis for using it.
There are plenty of other just as powerful, or even more powerful, fuels on the market that function on the same principles but with different features.
This perspective underpins a lot of the pushback against Apple & Google but I just don’t understand it.
Any cell phone, and especially a smartphone, is not integral to modern society. Random usage by consumers is recreational. Businesses have a million ways to replace things they ask employees to rely on smartphones for. In fact not all uses of smartphones are productivity increasing, and it could easily be argued that we need better ways to just switch them off, whether at work or at home, to get things done.
An iPhone is like a video game console. Whether you use for seemingly “important” things like PagerDuty or day trading or checking your child’s location or hailing a car ride for a home-bound elder or sick person ... the smartphone is purely extra consumer gadgetry to do it and it could be accomplished many other ways.
Given that smartphones are just an optional, convenient luxury item, I don’t see how any argument about them being critical to modern society can possibly be used to claim Apple must be forced to operate its app distribution channel a certain way or cannot set its own monetization policies.
This like saying "hey, if you don't like buying from standard oil, just get a horse!" when 1) you might already have a car, 2) you can't afford a horse on top of that, and 3) society has restructured itself such that a horse is not even viable in your day-to-day life.
[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/17/pew-smartphone-only...
Oil is a natural resource. This is software that didn’t exist 12 years ago.
Is advertising and hosting software so novel that it doesn't deserve any scrutiny?
Just like there are plenty of Internet capable smartphones that aren't made by Apple.
A smartphone is not a luxury item.
It is a productivity device.
It is a general purpose computer, no matter how Apple wants to say it isn't.
It is also a vital machine for participation in the democracy. For many it is the only way they can talk to others and to their government representatives.
> An iPhone is like a video game console
The minute that video game consoles have "games" that are text editors, file editors, web browsers, email clients, etc, they stop being gaming platforms and become productivity devices that replace the household computer.
You seem to be conflating the idea of “this thing is convenient for what I like to do” with “this thing should be supported as a pivotal component of civic life.”
Smartphones are absolutely nowhere remotely close to the latter.
Covid shows us that a smartphone is a pivotal component of your literal life. At risk patients now can have doctor appointments over video and electronic prescriptions. This mostly happens on portable devices.
These portable devices, despite branding and marketing, work in the same way to enable citizens to actively participate in the democracy (access to information, discussion, governmental resources, etc), their personal life (healthcare, family and education) but also on their professional life (working in a Uber-for-X, using maps, search, etc)
Portable and relatively cheap, smartphones are a necessity, a utility. You can argue that "not exactly", but it is what it is. The bigger and more ubiquitous something is, the closer it is to a utility and a shared space. Being part of a private enterprise is secondary and shouldn't take precedence over society.
When you replace the town square with your big backyard, it then becomes the townsquare
> “ When you replace the town square with your big backyard, it then becomes the townsquare”
Uhhh no, it doesn’t?
Neither is hot, running water. A bucket and a hole in the backyard were good enough for my ancestors, they're good enough for everyone else in 2020!
Joke aside, are you saying online banking and payment is a luxury? Do you realize that many basic services are switching over to smartphone payment? Such as public transport fares.
Online banking or smartphone public transit passes aren’t just luxuries, they are extreme luxuries.
For example, I don’t have any banking apps on my phone and I get mailed a paper subway pass every month. Same for millions of others.
No banking app is owed a slot in an app store, and no consumer is owed an app based workflow. Those are just products in a marketplace, nowhere remotely close to the concept of public utilities.
True, you could just shoplift your food instead of paying for it with money earned by going to a job.
Not sure what your definition of "luxury" let alone "extreme luxury" is, but it clearly is a unique one.
Or do you believe many entry-level jobs pay in cash and are at walking distance from places working class people can afford to live in?
As game engines become more and more a part of the fundamental infrastructure of games, and remain relatively expensive and slow to replace, it's not crazy to say that Unreal developers are a market in itself and that market should be protected from monopoly.
Somehow people have come to the conclusion that if something is so good that they can't contemplate using anything else then it's a monopoly.
If you want to get a game on iOS today, you have to go through the app store+IAP or Apple Arcade or make a browser-based game. That comes down to: pay the Apple cut/tax or make a browser based game. This is the opposite of what Steam/GOG/Itch do: buy it once, play on 3+ platforms. Not allowing emulators/flash/alternative browser engines a few years ago might have been overlooked, but not allowing MS xCloud, GF now, Stadia, FB gaming while pushing Apple Arcade and individual app store game submissions definitely seems like an anti-competitive move to me.
This combined with offering pre-installed apps that compete with Spotify/news/video app store apps (at a higher price) and trying to force apps to add subscriptions through iOS like Hey and Wordpress, Apple has shown it's willing and able to exploit the monopoly they have on iOS users.
A platform-agnostic free market is more important than the iOS+Metal+AppStore monopoly Apple offers it's users IMO, if you must have a "guaranteed" walled garden, build one for yourself using privacy/security/parental controls. Every other user should be able to run the apps that they want and expect, and developers should be able to negotiate fairer terms.
Most people think about that for a second, then say "oh wow." Google is the only other company like Apple in the top twenty largest gaming companies, and at least they're trying to make some games and improve the ecosystem via Stadia. But Apple: they take 30%. For games like Fortnite, that represents hundreds of millions of dollars; have they actually provided hundreds of millions of dollars in value back?
With app stores, its difficult to build correlates to traditional marketplaces, but I think about it like: imagine if Toyota decided to begin building roads that only Toyota cars can drive on, and Toyota cars can only drive on those roads. Toyota defers the cost of building these roads on-to the businesses the roads connect. Toyota cars are awesome, so many consumers want them. Some businesses greatly benefit from being on the Toyota network, but others find the fees far too high. And, additionally, Toyota can refuse to connect your business to their network, for any reason, and has a demonstrated history of refusing to connect businesses to the network for very poor reasons.
There is a good argument for the App Store to be made: It helps with security, with privacy, with convenience, its not all bad. But, I also believe freedom is more important than any of those. I think there's a middle-ground to be found, which looks something like forcing Apple to approve any application submitted to the store which does not break the law.
https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/epic-games (Season 7, Episode 3, September 1, 2020)
It helped me a lot with positioning Epic and Sweeney, with his current actions, into my mental knowledge base, in the context of Doom and what was happening in the 90s and thereafter in the gaming industry. It also touches the current topic. It's worth listening to.
It's interesting that they've gone the 'pick a fight' route, when 8 years ago when Valve had similar concerns about Windows 8 they did as GP suggested and rolled their own Linux distro and made a bid for the living room space. That particular offensive failed, but Valve's continued investment in the Linux space now means that now, 8 years later, most AAA games without Anti-cheat or some kinds of DRM can be played on Linux seamlessly.
If Epic wanted to do likewise, they could invest in Librem 5 or Pinephone and make alternatives more viable.
Sure, currently it is insignificant, but so is Linux Desktop, yet Valve invests in Wine/Photon/Wayland/etc. and on the long run it might pay off when they'll have their own consoles.
I don't really understand Tim S. , on one hand he hates Apple monopoly, on the other hand he also hates Linux which is the only viable alternative, yet he still supports open source a lot (e.g epic mega grant)
Apple did. They were worth approximately the same as Epic are now when they launched the iPhone. They hadn’t any meaningful presence in the phone industry and people thought it was ridiculous that they were trying.
Palm CEO Ed Colligan:
> We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.
Telstra COO Greg Winn:
> There’s an old saying — stick to your knitting — and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting…
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:
> There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.
In 2007, there were tonnes of people saying “Apple cannot feasibly do that” as well, just like you are saying it about Epic today. But Apple did it anyway and succeeded. Epic have that opportunity too, they could attempt to build their own mobile platform. Apple tried and succeeded. Google tried and succeeded. Epic could try, but instead they are asking the court to force Apple and Google to change their platforms to be more favourable to Epic’s wishes.
I don't care that they had to "work hard" to get there or whatever; the fact is they now have too much power.
Just because a market is hard or expensive to get into doesn't mean it's not a market worth entering. The real crux is Epic doesn't actually want an open phone platform, they just want to be software rent-slurping middlemen for an arbitrary 'cut' of a pie.
Edit: even if it was as "easy". It's not like there are dozens of companies the size of Google and Apple that could pull it off.
There.
My feelings about this do tend to vacillate. My opinion right now is sort of circumstantial, in that I don't think it's even tongue in cheek to call 30% the apple/google tax.
apple defends itself with the work it puts into maintaining app store quality. But imo enforced app quality and the store experience is something you sell to customers, not developers.
So apple talks about how there's so many free apps that never give apple a nickel. I can understand differentiated pricing for different customers, but framing app developers as app store customers is where I feel apple and google run afoul. So it's like, why is it acceptable that mega-apps like fortnite are basically levied to support the app store, that apple turns around and presents to the customer and says "look how nice we made this"?
I don't know, it feels like the anti "developers, developers, developers". They don't have to make any concession to promote developers to use their platform, because there practically isn't much of a choice, between the two they're nearly the only game in town.
The claim is there isn’t a company backing it - presumably from lack of market demand for it. There have been attempts but they’ve not gained steam. Even Google is now moving away from Linux as the core of android.
I generally agree that we need some countervailing pressure against the monopolies of today. But I can’t help to suspect there’s an argument to be made that turns the argument on its head: in a free market it is valid to tell someone asking for a product to produce their own desired good. If it’s a popular idea the implementation has a chance at being popular.
The counter to this would probably include lack of hardware to really target. Apples not letting anyone side load an entirely different OS on its phones, for instance.
Maybe that’s an angle to counter these monopolies without needing to go so far as to dissect them into smaller companies? Simply pass a law saying hardware and software should always be self contained goods - you can bundle them but have to offer them separately too.
Ninja edit- I think in that universe with self contained goods that hardware companies would have to make source code for drivers OSS (why should they care where it’s ran?) or enough information to make writing drivers possible.
Could not find much about this, could you link to something that provides more details on it?
Project Treble kind of isolates Linux kernel from modern Android drivers, where standard Linux drivers are considered legacy, while Treble drivers follow a mikrokernel like approach using Android IPC to talk to the kernel.
https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hal-types
Also note that Linux specific calls aren't part of the official APIs exposed to userspace,
https://source.android.com/compatibility/11/android-11-cdd#3...
Used to have a Nokia N9, awesome phone, great OS, but there weren't any apps to speak of which I think is a large part of why MeeGo died.
Honestly the one way I see out of this is if web-apps largely replace native apps, which means that a new OS only needs to support a standards compliant web-browser.
That or get the existing actors to agree on and support an open 'app-container' format ...
There’s a reason the web once was a threat to Microsoft’s monopoly: it led to rich experiences they couldn’t control.
The web is so popular, Apple couldn’t block it. The trick to attacking them anticompetitively is to enhance the browser to take advantage of modern hardware capabilities and then go after the iOS browser restrictions as anticompetitive.
Google Stadia is an example of this arguably. But with things coming up like WASM I could see the browser being a local experience for games too.
JavaScript + WebGL are very capable, right now, and for the past ~5 years.
He is probably right, not sure, but he only got on this high horse after Apple and Google told him to get f*cked when he wanted a special deal. So maybe he should sit this one out and let the relevant regulators handle it? He is just in it to cry in the media if you ask me
What if it was an European or Indian company?
It's just sad that the EU stance seems increasingly naive, the "lead by example" stance doesn't seem to work at all, and we're steam rolled between US and China.
Why isn't the EU stopping monopolies from acting in EU territory if it's in the EU best interest? Why not stop predatory takeovers? It's like we're just bystanders watching US and China... just sad.
Thank you for your honesty
On one mind the app stores do provide a mechanism for security, that is of great value to end users. On the other hand, the amount they collect is way too large.
I'm wondering if there is a middle path. If one wants to use the app store to make your apps discoverable, you pay the higher fee, but if you just use the app store for distribution (and hence don't disrupt the end user security model) you can pay a smaller fee.
so how would users install apps without being able to discover it on the store? via the desktop (and not mobile, if we want to be strict) web. i.e. epic can give users a url that they can use to connect to google' web market (which already allow you to install apps to your device, and apple can do the same).
This would be the only way to install these apps (though updates would proceed as normal). if one searches for the app in the marketplace, it wont come up. And as I said, perhaps even on mobile the direct link to app wont work (though of multiple minds on this as well).
For app developers that need the app store to drive interest and demand, the 30% cut google/apple take is then reasonable. For app developers that can drive their own demand, they would pay a much smaller cut (perhaps 5-10%, with a decent chunk of that being the normal credit card processing fees that they would have anyways).
just a thought
Well that's one way to look at it. What made him really rich was selling out to Tencent, who just so happens to also have a mobile app store that they would love to get onto your phone.
But why is this invalidated by allowing allowing the user to install software from other sources, allow a the user to install a browser that is not a skin on top of safari, allow non apple game streaming services on the platform, allow the use of images/text that mentions or shows competing software company logos/names, allow apps to show price differences in payment processing or allow established payment methods like PayPal to be used on the platform.
If would still allow the same user to only use apple pay or the apple version of their loved service of choice but also gives users that don't alternatives.
Because that really is the only recourse here to give people what they want.
Markets aren’t created by god, they’re created by customers. If you want to force the creation of an App Store market, one that customers aren’t actually asking for, it will need to be government-mandated.
Maybe there will be a weak sauce version of this where the review process isn’t regulated but the commission rates are regulated. We aren’t going back to the PC model where a thousand app stores bloom. No government will force that - there’s too much risk for malware and spyware as it is. At best it will be government-sanctioned stores with a government-sanctioned review process.
Windows once had 95% market share (still does!) and this hasn’t happened, even though Microsoft still gets a cut of almost every PC sale.
Be careful what you wish for. Folks here really haven’t studied history of antitrust beyond scanning Wikipedia.
There is a ton potential for new devices and platforms in VR, AR, and other experiences. The current state of affairs is not permanent. Most historical antitrust actions had very limited positive effects on consumers. The Standard Oil breakup, for example, is often cited. But it’s breakup didn’t really fix anything. Its children became bigger than the parent within a few years! Same with the AT&T breakup. It led to oligopoly. The only real telecom competition has been foreign entrants like T-Mobile. Microsoft’s consent decree had almost no impact on its monopoly status and revenue steam. What mattered was the market changing, to the point we didn’t care about the Windows monopoly anymore. There were other platforms that mattered in iOS, Android.
Valve has a near monopoly for PC game app stores and is poised to compete with Facebook and Apple for the next generation of VR/AR. Epic wants in on that. And likely there will be others.
Since when does any government anywhere on this planet care about "risk for malware and spyware" on operating systems? If they did, they'd turn up the heat on software developers in terms of responsibility for blatant security violations and security-related software bugs. The fact that no government does any of that tells us that they don't care about secure software. Some governments - I'm not calling names now - may even have active interest in insecure software due to their law enforcement and intelligence arms depending on security flaws for their work.
Your comment is my preferred outcome as well. It would at least be a sign of good faith that they’re in it for the values they’re professing rather than only diverting money into their pockets.
From my own personal perspective, I would like to be able to permanently install an app that I developed myself, on my own Mac, on the iOS devices that I own without having to go through the app store or Apple's review process. But I'm not holding my breath that the outcome of this fight will deliver even that.
As long as you coded to the published API, you were good to go.
Doesn't matter if people like it or not, but freedom of choice must be given to users and developers alike. Choice should not be an option, but a basic right.
The people defending Apple and it's walled garden of life remind me of Socrates and his "Allegory of the cave" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave ). This becomes a philosophical dilemma unless you believe freedom and truth should be absolute.
That's a completely unreasonable sales strategy for a company to take, telling their customers to jailbreak their phones or to purchase a different phone.
You can keep using the App Store and be inside your curated platform or you can alternatively also use Epic's or Amazon's, whoever tries to make their own platform on iOS and Android, so that people are free to choose.
Either that or the App Store needs to be separated from Apple Inc. which makes the hardware. Currently, the App Store doesn't cover the user's best interests but Apple's best (financial) interest, and as long as it is under one company, App Store will always push to the benefit of Apple and detriment to all others. Think Spotify and Apple Music, Chrome and Safari, Google Maps and Apple Maps.
One possible workaround would be for Apple to allow additional stores/sideloading, but all apps available via this method would need to also be available via the Apple store, if accepted. Not sure how this would be enforced though.
Apples not letting anyone side
load an entirely different OS
on its phones
Still remember the cost of Getting into windows developer.
To be honest they are not small player. If they fight for lower percentage for small player may be ... but if rich one do not pay
I mention npm because it's always in the news, and because it's a much smaller and simpler problem that a whole App Store.
If we could fix something like npm the solution could perhaps be generalized or built on to open trustworthy repos for all kinds of content. At that point we would have a very strong working argument against privately-run monopolistic app stores. Until then I prefer Apple as a benevolent dictator to mad-max style libertarianism. I need to use Adobe software for professional reasons, but I'd rather not have to deal with an Adobe app store... or an EA app store... or an Ubisoft app store... or apps stores from a variety of shitty companies with bad practices.
Many of their current practices with the Epic Store could be potentially seen as being anti-competitive, but they are currently being given the benefit of the doubt because they are nowhere near as big as Steam.
Would it change even further if people moved there BECAUSE Walmart was the only store that was allowed to operate?
And since someone will ask "why would you want that?". The analogy won't completely work, but I'll go with it. When my son wants to buy a bike, they go off and bike a bike. I can be sure that they bought it at Walmart, and that Walmart has done some work to make sure the bike is safe for my son.
If I don't have that, then maybe he buys a bike at "Joe's bike shop". Maybe that bike was made poorly in China. I don't know that the bike he bought was safe.
I mean, https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo.... And, what do you know, Sweeney was mad at Google for finding it.
But a lemonade stand in a Walmart wouldn't necessarily harm consumers, and lots of things Apple blocks or requires a cut of wouldn't either if things were changed.
Going back to an iPhone, the answer is usually "you don't have to use any other app stores". But what about if I _do_? What if I have to use the new Coronavirus test that requires an app? And the only way to get the app is to install Abbott's app store? Are you guaranteed that they aren't also consuming all your health information?
My view would be different if Android didn't exist, or if iPhone had a much higher market share. But for now, I'm happy to pay extra to be in the walled garden, because I trust the king of the castle to try to protect me (as opposed to figuring out who to trust out on the street).
For physical marketplace we should define relevant geographic market. A relevant geographic market is the area where they the conditions of competition are sufficiently homogeneous. For buying lemonade it's not the case that consumers can reasonably only shop inside Walmart.
I don’t see how there’s any way you can tell Apple how Apple has to run infrastructure to support a distribution channel, but it cannot determine the prices or policies for someone using it to distribute an app.
For a system where I want openness, I’ll use Librem 5 for example.
It didn’t. Microsoft still gets a cut of almost every PC sold. It is valued up their with Amazon and Apple in the trillions.
The difference is that no one cares anymore because new platforms arose in Android and iOS, and Windows mobile failed.
In this case, people are requesting a far more extreme remedy: that iOS and Android and their stores become regulated like public utilities.
As long as it doesn't conflict with public interests. For this purpose, antitrust laws are designed to tackle this particular type of situations.
> the world wants the standardization and managed ecosystem of each platform
This maybe true, and such standards might also be too important to be controlled by just one or two companies.
Windows once had 95% market share and that didn’t even happen.
> If you don’t like it, distribute differently.
Relevant market for networked multiplayer games can't be divided between platforms. People who own iPhones and Android phones play the same game online with their friends. Epic can't stay competitive and stay outside Apple AppStore and sell only for Android pones.
I play chess against people on any devices, through chess.com in a browser, even on my mobile devices.
“Epic can’t stay competitive” in that scenario is 100% Epic’s problem, they are not owed a slot in an app store distribution mechanism that they also don’t have to obey the policies of.