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Comment by speeder | Hacker News Reader

This whole trial is being a huge mess.

1. Day 1 kids screaming on stream.

2. A ton of confidential third party data leaking.

3. Sony refusing cross platform play because it wouldn't earn them money directly meanwhile they were claiming it was for technical reasons.

4. Tim Sweeney going off on a weird tangent trying to claim Fornite is a "metaverse" and not a game.

5. Judge getting annoyed with all the requests to seal records from a ton of companies.

6. Epic lawyer saying he wants a record sealed because he doesn't want to leak that Paradox is doing a deal with Epic. And Apple lawyer pointing out he just made his request pointless.

7. Epic paid so far 1 billion USD to convince devs to not sell in competitor stores.

8. Epic tried to convince Nintendo to sell on Epic Store (lol)

9. Apple lawyer pointing out that Epic bans rule breakers, and Epic broke rules.

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> 4. Tim Sweeney going off on a weird tangent trying to claim Fornite is a "metaverse" and not a game.

I’m quite sure that’s really his plan though. During the pandemic, my 12 year old son hung out with his friends on fortnite, and I had a feeling that “being together” was more important than the game itself. I think there’s more potential in becoming the Oasis than being just an online shooter and Sweeney sees that, but he needs iOS (and mini transactions without a middleman) to pull that off. That’s why they’re going all in on this.

Isn't this trivially true for any online game though? I played Counter Strike for quite some time with the same group of people. And looking back, It's not like I disliked Counter Strike. But I would have never even played closed to the amount of hours if I didn't have that group of people.

Sitting in a lobby chatting on Discord with the team while waiting for someone to come back from a "short" afk is literally half of my hours in CS:GO.

Not even gonna count the amount of time spent just running around Dalaran in World of Warcraft while on voice with guildmates.

I'm not big on Fortnite but iirc they had some events like virtual concerts etc. in game. This signals to me they're more interested in being that "metaverse" than, say, CS:GO.

It's oddly not true for previous attempts at the thing, though - Second Life was not very popular. (I think because originality is too much effort and the client performance was poor)

Also, previous metaverses were only popular among specific demographics, like perverts/furries, or suburban teenage boys.

I in large part owe my adult software career to being an asocial, weird kid who learned Lua around ~9-10 from spending all their free time scripting random things in a 3D environment in Second Life's Lua dialect, LSL.

Really funny feeling, the sort of butterfly effect/unintended consequences.

I spent years playing an MMORPG called "Maplestory" where me and my online friends would just sit on virtual chairs and talk to each other.

There was something called the "Free Market" where there were no monsters to kill (so you couldn't die.) Guilds claimed different Free Market rooms as their "guild rooms" and people would just go AFK there. You'd always be able to find friends hanging out and talking in these rooms.

You could spend real-life money on their cash shop, which had cosmetics and small things like virtual chairs or couches to sit on.

You could even buy "friendship rings" that would display animations if the two of you were in close together.

I've been waiting for a single-player version of Maplestory to come out my entire life.

The overall art/gameplay style is lovely, there's not really a single-player offlin equivalent to the platformer-JRPG thing that I'm aware of.

I recently went back and tried to play it again almost a decade later with my partner (who had never played it) and it was not quite what I remembered.

Fantastic game back then though, as well as "Conquer Online" around the 2007-2009 era.

Conquer Online... ugh. I quit when some bug sent my market character to bot jail for no reason. Wish I'd have actually botted instead of wasting years on that game. My friend made a few bucks selling the rest of my characters, at least.

You quit? But what about all the glorious Fast Blade/Scent Sword megaduels with people hopping about the whole screen that went down in Bot Jail.

;^)

This adult stuff sucks, someone send me back to being 10 and clueless so I can relive this again.

RIP the free market. Not the same anymore unfortunately.

That was originally a surprise to Epic. It was just supposed to be a shooter, but then people started socializing in it. Then Epic realized they had a giant social network on their hands.

I hang out with my friends every day on Ventrilo voice chat playing Dota. This was just after school. No pandemic driving it. It was a game and anyone who thinks overwise is a headass or trying too hard to be smart.

Vent was your community, playing Dota. There is a place to distinguish between the two. Fortnite having a concert in the game was what made it 'not a game' to me.

lol so if Valve made a good enough voice chat software to replace Vent, it wouldn't qualify as a game anymore?

your community is your friends. there's nothing special about the software. if it wasn't a game they wouldn't touch it.

Wonder if the question is more like "did you meet these friends (eg for the first time) through that game, or were they existing friends beforehand"?

Because, if they're existing friends then yeah... you could all just move to a new place to hang out whenever it's needed. But if you generally met each other through the platform, it's more acting like that Community thing (or at least ways. :)

it was both

it was still a game

You may find https://www.matthewball.vc/all/epicprimer1/#section1 an interesting discussion of the interlocking parts of Epic's business plan.

I think this has been a long-term vision. I distinctly remember reading it in interviews with both Sweeney and Blezsinski from before the release of Unreal; that they had a vision of connecting virtual worlds. You hop into a portal and you're in a completely different game that you were in before. IIRC, Unreal Engine 1 had the capability of assigning an unreal:// URL to a portal.

The metaverse point is sort of relevant, though. Epic has been trying to pin Apple down on their definition of a game. Apple says Roblox is permissible on the App Store, even though it's a user-generated content hub much like Fortnite.

But Fortnite wasn’t banned because it was or was not a game, it was banned because Apple alleged that Epic violated the App Store rules around payment.

By adding in non-apple transactions. Which is what Robles apparently does as well, and has been allowed to do so for years.

The defense from apple was apparently that roblox and Minecraft to do not in fact constitute games, whereas fortunate does, so the rules are different.

I don’t know enough to outright refute your claims, but I’m guessing you’re getting something wrong or leaving out an important detail (unintentionally). Apple doesn’t allow non-game apps selling digital goods to circumvent the 30%. So whether or not fortnite is a game or not seems irrelevant. I would be shocked if I could enter in a credit card number and buy something inside roblox without going through Apple.

There are Roblox gift cards that you can purchase at other retailers, which can be redeemed through a browser to credit the same account that you log into from the mobile app: https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/203312720-Where...

So it's not really entering a credit card number per se; it's more like giving someone else your credit card number so they can give you another number that you type into a different portal to make the digital goods "appear" on the iOS app.

Why are they making children jump through all these hoops just to enjoy an online video game https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005566223

Anyone can purchase currency outside of the App Store and use it in their iOS app, including Fortnite. Roblox doesn't bypass Apple's IAP requirement at all.

This sounds like exactly how you can do it in fortnite already.

And to further refute Epic's fanbase. Purchasing the vbucks outside of the App Store did not reduce the cost.

> 7. Epic paid so far 1 billion USD to convince devs to not sell in competitor stores.

This is kind of a toxic disingenuous spin on store exclusives, no?

I'm not sure about that. If I had an axe to grind I'd probably write something like "Epic paid so far 1 billion USD to bribe, coerce, directly incite and enable game developers and publishers to abandon previous commitments and break existing contracts, in a concerted effort to make said games not available on certain platforms such as Steam for as long as possible"[0]

[0]:Metro Exodus was supposed to be an EGS exclusive for a year but they released it on Microsoft windows store in less than 6 months. We all KNEW what was this fuss really about.

Can you explain how this post is again not just a toxic disingenuous misrepresentation of store exclusives?

Can you point out which part of my statement and the one above has been misrepresenting the facts?

"Epic Exclusive on PC" does not translate well into "Available anywhere but not Steam".

...what? "Epic Exclusive on PC" means not available on Steam

But what does that have to with all of the other things you said? You're just saying derogatory comments about store exclusives without saying why you think they're bad.

Well let's see:

Metro Exodus: Originally slanted to release on steam in Feb 2019 with preorders starting in Aug 2018. Publisher suddenly announced the game will be EGS exclusive only 2 weeks head of this date with the explicit promise "Metro Exodus will return to Steam and on other store fronts after 14 February 2020." This turned out to be a bold faced lie as they quietly made the game available through the Windows Store in Jun 2020.

Anno 1800: Originally planned for release on Steam and Uplay. Switched to EGS "exclusive" very shortly before release without warning. Still not available on steam to this day unless you have preordered before the switch. Best part of this "exclusive" deal was that it has always been available on PC through Uplay, but gettig it back on steam is a no-no.

https://twitter.com/anno_en/status/1311215185114300416?lang=...

I could go on but after seeing how Epic had behaved in this market for the last couple for years I find it very hard to accept any excuse they make in good faith.

You're communicating with me as though I know what you're talking about and disagree with you. In reality I have no idea what you're talking about and am trying to understand. Just so we're crystal clear.

So it sounds as though Epic offered exclusive agreements to studios that reneged on other commitments to comply with Epic? Why isn't the anger at those studios? How is Epic at fault for other studios' behavior?

>You're communicating with me as though I know what you're talking about and disagree with you.

You came into this discussion with a very strong opinion. It's only natural for other commentators to assume you arrived at that conclusion through your own experiences and research. If your claims of ignorance is genuine, on what grounds are you calling me "toxic" and "misrepresenting" earlier? Why are you making indictments instead of asking questions?

>So it sounds as though Epic offered exclusive agreements to studios that reneged on other commitments to comply with Epic? Why isn't the anger at those studios? How is Epic at fault for other studios' behavior?

The other parties have already received their share of backlash but Epic deserves to be singled out as the instigator.

It's one thing to pay indie developers a fat sum to bring their titles as a exclusive - nobody should be too upset about that. However, paying an industry heavyweight like Ubisoft to keep Anno 1800 off Steam is different: The latter has nothing to gain from not publishing their games on Steam, if anything they will miss out on some potential purchases put off by the behavior plus the bad publicity.

In other words, this deal would not have happened without Epic reimbursing Ubisoft for the potential losses and fallout, and this kind of malicious anti-competitive is what bothers me.

> You came into this discussion with a very strong opinion.

Yes, the insanely strong opinion of "recite facts instead of injecting opinion". IE, the original post was a bunch of inflammatory nonsense that wrapped "I don't like store exclusives".

> Why are you making indictments instead of asking questions?

You may be excited to learn my first post was exactly a question.

> In other words, this deal would not have happened without Epic reimbursing Ubisoft for the potential losses and fallout, and this kind of malicious anti-competitive is what bothers me.

The anti competitive behavior of "Have more gamestores than Steam"?

I don't really think we're going to get anywhere with this conversation. I'm sorry you do not like store exclusives. I don't think Epic has done anything wrong (as it's just how business works) in this specific instance. We can disagree.

>the original post was a bunch of inflammatory nonsense

The top comment was diplomatic and mine was not. I'm sorry if blunt words hurt any feelings.

>Why are you making indictments instead of asking questions?

Instead of refuting the points being raised here you immeidately resorted to calling any critical comment "toxic spin".

>The anti competitive behavior of "Have more gamestores than Steam"?

So lemme get this right. We need to have more game stores......by making games available from fewer game stores. If that how competition works?

>I don't really think we're going to get anywhere with this conversation.

Agreed. You could have summed up everything in one sentence "Epic can do nothing wrong" and that would probably sound less apologetic.

>Can you point out which part of my statement and the one above has been misrepresenting the facts?

disingenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

this post here is disingenuous in that no one was arguing with the technical correctness of the interpretation. and the above post is disingenuous with describing the situation.

There certainly is a difference between saying "Epic blocks game from being submitted on steam" and "Epic signs contract to sell game on EGS". Pretending these have the same connotations is in fact... disingenous.

No, I was toning down what they did when I wrote that phrase.

What they actually did, was bribe developers to screw people that had already paid for their products, in efforts to damage Steam.

For example Shenmue debacle: It was kickstarter with the promise it would be on Steam, suddenly it went Epic exclusive, the people that backed on Kickstarter asked for their money back, the dev refused until people started to prepare to sue, even then it was a screwy process.

I remember at the time there was 2 or 3 other games the same thing happened, where Epic paid developers of crowdfunded games to literally break their contracts with their backers.

Sorry, in what way is that Epic's fault? Isn't that the fault of the developers? What makes Epic offering exclusive agreements to game studios a "bribe", as opposed to any other financial/contractual commitment?

epic money incentives the developers to kick out the original investors (Kickstarter supporters are investors, with rather weak conditions) with no care for what they promised ,yesterday ( "not legally bing nah nah").

the word "bribe" connotes the motivation to over advantage and plain wrongdoing aspect in financial incentives, as opposed to an ethically clean normal "financial commitment", like dollar for milk.

Again, Epic offers money to a game studio and the studio decides to screw over their existing investors and commitments. Why is Epic at fault for this?

> investors

investors assume risk. including losing the capital because of jerks.

Lol, this happens all the time in the gaming world. Not excusing bad behavior but when a company agrees to something contractually that is how the legal system works.

You can't say... But they bribed me. They gave me a deal that was too good so I took it and it wasn't my fault so now I shouldn't have to honor it.

Yeah it sounds like normal capitalism to me. Epic offers someone enough money to consider screwing over their existing investors and commitments, they take it. Why wouldn't Epic do this?

Because it is illegal to pay someone else to do a crime?

Breaking contracts is a crime, since these contracts are not "that serious", nobody attempted to prosecute devs, but that doesn't make it stop being a crime.

Also I believe in some countries what Epic is doing is called "Tortious Interference with Contract" or something like that. I am not a lawyer though.

But for example, Shenmue devs, if they didn't had backed down from refunds and got sued, they could get convicted of literally stealing money, since they got money and ran away with it.

Then in their defense, they could point out that Epic told them to do it and gave them a lot of money to ensure they would do it.

What you think would have happened in that case?

EDIT: I will be clear, and stop arguing this point because it is being stupid now.

I am not "angry" at epic, or at anyone.

I am only explaining what I meant on my point above about Epic paying people to not sell on other stores, this is a fact, not a negative and toxic spin, Epic DID pay devs to not sell on other stores, they said that themselves on the trial. I am not "angry" at them for it, or with the devs, I am only saying what happened.

I am not a Valve fanboy, not a Epic fanboy, I am not a fanboy, I don't like Apple disallowing sideloading, but I also think Epic approach to this subject could been done differently (not breaking rules, to start).

> Also I believe in some countries what Epic is doing is called "Tortious Interference with Contract" or something like that. I am not a lawyer though.

No, it doesn't sound at all like what you're bringing up. You can read about what you referenced here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

> But for example, Shenmue devs, if they didn't had backed down from refunds and got sued, they could get convicted of literally stealing money, since they got money and ran away with it.

Again, why aren't you angry at the Shenmue devs instead?

> Then in their defense, they could point out that Epic told them to do it and gave them a lot of money to ensure they would do it.

Epic's agreement didn't say "Break the law to sell exclusively in our store." Epic's agreement said "Sell exclusively in our store." The decision to (potentially) break the law rests purely on the developer.

Shenmue did not promise Steam, it promised PC. There's absolutely no mention of Steam in the original Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3/

https://twitter.com/LewieP/status/1138148240627515394

In what way do you think this contradicts what the user you're responding to wrote?

If you promise PC exclusivity, that doesn't mean Steam. That means PC. You can promise PC exclusivity and then sign with Epic and maintain your commitment to PC exclusivity. Briefly having a Steam page doesn't change any of that.

"Previous" is an update blogpost that happened after the Kickstarter had ended. After people have given money for a promise of a PC game, not for a promise of a Steam key like you suggest.

It definitely is a negative spin. I know people like the convenience of having one store, but Valve isn't entitled to a monopoly and frankly Epic using their Fortnite cash to get as many exclusives as possible to get as many people on their store as fast as possible was their only move when facing a juggernaut. Competition between them will be good.

There is a difference between buying exclusivity in the early stages and buying exclusivity after the game was announced for a different platform.

In my case, phoenix point is the final straw that made me REALLY hate epic.

> There is a difference between buying exclusivity in the early stages and buying exclusivity after the game was announced for a different platform.

Again, how is this Epic's problem?

>buying exclusivity after the game was announced for a different platform

contracts take two parties to agree to something.

IMO epic is still majorily at fault for that, due to offering the incentive in the first place, either due to incompetence or malice, while also saying that valve is engaging in monopolistic tactics.

I find it really fascinating that there are people bothered by Epic’s exclusives and not bothered by how the App Store works.

Epic paid developers money to get them to release games exclusively on the Epic store. Consumers have access to these games on the roughly same computers that can access other PC games. In other words, consumer or publisher freedom was not materially impacted. Epic’s deals with game developers are effectively subsidies, which save developers and/or consumers money.

On the other hand, Apple’s App Store policy makes it impossible for developers to access the iOS market without paying Apple’s tax. Every iOS app is an App Store exclusive, and Apple is not paying developers for the privilege. This costs consumers and developers huge amounts of money and limits their freedom.

I recognize the inconvenience of installing the Epic store, but comparing the effects of these two controversial policies reveals how benign Epic’s is.

One certainly can be bothered by both. I can live without sideloading apps but expect some control on the version of app I prefer. Apple's decision to remove the option of backing up apps from the device was the final straw for me to abandon the entire ecosystem and I have not looked back.

That said, I really don't think Epic's policy and practice is necessarily benign. Multiple indie developers have reported that Epic is not even going to consider publishing your game unless you agree to some kind of exclusivity first. Has Apple every turned down an app submission because the same software is being offered on Android?

In the past I have bought several consoles to play titles exclusive to that platform and I was not bothered about that. For all I know the game may not even get made without the backing of Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, not to mention they were marketed as "Console X exclusive" from the get go. Once upon a time when EA pulled their games off Steam there was much less controversy as people understand that EA has the right to make any business decision for their first party games. However things are quite different when Epic decides to waltz in at the last minute and scoop games from other store fronts because they can outspend others.

>Multiple indie developers have reported that Epic is not even going to consider publishing your game unless you agree to some kind of exclusivity first. Has Apple every turned down an app submission because the same software is being offered on Android?

If Apple did that, it would be so much worse, because it would exclude developers from half of the market (all iOS devices).

If Epic doesn’t allow your game on their store, you can still sell your game on another store, to be purchased by the same consumers on the same devices. There just isn’t as much harm to be done there, because Epic doesn’t have the power to kick developers off the PC platform.

>Once upon a time when EA pulled their games off Steam there was much less controversy as people understand that EA has the right to make any business decision for their first party games.

we saw very different reactions back then. Most of it may have been existing unrest over EA, but I wouldn't downplay the reaction back then.

> However things are quite different when Epic decides to waltz in at the last minute and scoop games from other store fronts because they can outspend others.

I don't see the difference outside of it more immediately inconveniencing you with a title you care about more.

And I don't understand when the contractor became the sole fault over an agreement on 2 parties. I doubt epic is holding people agreeing to terms under duress.

> Has Apple every turned down an app submission because the same software is being offered on Android?

- if you made an app targeting IOS using native tools (to extract out the argument of "but X framework can target 10 platforms") and it was rejected, you're SOL on what to do with it unless you want to target the jailbreak homebrew market. - If you made an app targeting Android using native tools and it was rejected, you can still sideload it or use a few other stores out there to publish it. - if you made an app targeting Steam and it was rejected, you have the entire windows ecosystem to deploy your app on. Including hosts like Itch.IO if you don't want to spin up your own server.

I see epic just like Steam. It's their rules on what to accept or not. I care less about the rulings than the ability to have a plan B if they decide to not host the app. Which apple has practically zero option of.

I know that my use-case isn't exactly the most common one, but games being exclusive to the Epic store most definitely affect my ability to play them. I run linux. Just running the epic store itself under wine requires heaps of hacks just to get working, let alone the games it installs. Steam on the other hand is absolutely seamless these days. Steam handles all the wine hackery to make it all work.

People can reasonably get annoyed if they get forced to use a non-prefered launcher.

People will be more invested in whatever immediately inconveniences them. Apple Arcade is doing the exact same thing with timed exclusives that appear before any console port (if at all). I didn't hear much fuss about Apple's "forcing" Oceanhorn 2 to stay on IOS for a year before coming to Switch (and still TBA on PC). It's in effect the exact same factor.

I'm sure once Apple had something the PC audience actually cared about, like Hades, that you'd hear the same complaints on Apple.

I understand some of the dislike on EGS, but the "anti-consumer" argument is a very shallow one. I also think it's a bit dishonest for a few others elsewhere to say "they've done nothing the past 2 years", despite having a public roadmap on Trello. Whether it's stuff you personally care about is certainly up for discussion, but they are much more transparent about plans than Valve is.

No, it's actually quite accurate. In many cases, the games were allowed to be sold on any platform and digital service _except_ Steam. Epic was, quite literally, paying developers to not sell on Steam.

Accurrate in how Microsoft acquisition literally pays a studio to not sell on Sony, yes.

>8. Epic tried to convince Nintendo to sell on Epic Store (lol)

This didn't happen, Epic specifically said they were NOT in talks with nintendo

This is a lie because The World Ends With You NEO is coming to PC via the Epic Game Store. Maybe this is lawyer speak for "we were in talks but we have a deal so we are not in talks any more"

Neo: TWEWY is made and published by Square Enix. Why would this imply they had talks with Nintendo?

That's my mistake. I knew it was developed my Square Enix but for some reason I thought it was published by Nintendo. My fault I should've double checked.

> Neo: The World Ends With You is an upcoming action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix.

Doesn't sound like it's a Nintendo game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo:_The_World_Ends_With_You

It seems Epic put more energy into the commercial announcing the trial than they put into the actual trial. I’m rooting for them but I really don’t know what they’re doing or how they’ve lost control of the narrative so badly so early on. Maybe they underestimated Goliath’s PR machine? I don’t envy their legal team trying to regroup this weekend.

It's a sure-to-lose lawsuit launched in the hopes of motivating a Congress strongly influenced by an anti-tech, anti-corporate progressive insurgency in the ruling party and, oh yeah, a global pandemic. I appreciate Epic's position, and would support it if it had been litigated through the legislature. But as it is, it's a flagrant waste of our courts' time, a public resource.

Its not anti-tech or anti-corpprate, its anti-monopoly. Remember its two huge corporations fighting this battle, Epic isn't some innocent tiny startup but in this case they have a point that Apple and Google have too much control and the fight has already resulted in smaller developers getting more share of their sales on the two app stores.

> Its not anti-tech or anti-corpprate, its anti-monopoly

Sorry for being unclear, I was referring to the current mood in Congress. Epic has tailwinds in there being a desire to reign in Big Tech. It has headwinds in being, itself, a tech company. That balance is, on the net, favourable to Epic. But marginally favourable isn’t a great position to be in when it comes to policy in a crowded legislative session.

Epic is certainly not anti-monopoly.

And Apple is actually trashing them in court because of that.

For example Apple lawyer asked if Epic would have accepted a deal where Apple maintained the current ecosystem but let Epic have an exception... Epic said yes.

At another point Apple asked difference between them, Xbox, Switch, etc..., Epic said that because consoles are sold at loss they having a monopoly is fine... so that is a bad argument if you are trying to prove you are anti-monopoly.

And this goes on and on...

Then there is the fact Epic paid 1 billion USD to developers not sell in other stores, including in some cases to break contracts to do so (for example kickstarted games, that promised Steam delivery, and then told the people that paid them that it would be Epic only and there would be no refunds).

Sounds like OP meant this case is anti-monopoly, not Epic itself.

Epic doesn’t have to convince the jury that they’re innocent or even not despicable. They only need to convince the jury that Apple is doing bad things.

Epic’s “position” that came out in trial was that they wanted a special deal from Apple. They are fighting for no one other than themselves.

3,7, and 8 aren't related to the trial.

And 8 is normal business practice with little reprecussion (not unlike how Microsoft attempted to buy Nintendo 20 years ago). I believe they even called the point a "moonshot", so it's not like Epic had high hopes.

I hope finding out how much an Xbox really costs isn't too much to ask for after these disclosures.

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