The Epic Games Store Launches on iOS and Android
epicgames.com
epicgames.com
As a layman I doubt this is compliant with the appropriate EU laws (specifically the DMA)
Unfortunately this behaviour does not come as a surprise but I certainly hope the regulatory "beatings" will continue until compliance improves.
1. Go to Epic Store website, click on Install
2. Nothing happens
3. Click again
4. Popup message appears, I click OK
5. Popup gone. Do I have the app now?
6. No I don’t. I read the steps again.
7. Ooh I needed to go to Settings and approve it there.
8. I went to Settings, it appears at the top. I click.
9. Another popup with lots of text appears. I click yes.
10. Now I need to go back to that Epic page and hit Install again for the third time.
11. Click “Install”. Nothing happens.
12. Get annoyed, click Install five more times. Another popup appears.
13. I click yes.
14. Finally, I have the Epic Store installed!
It’s hard to imagine this experience wasn’t intentionally made so awful.
RTFM
See the video for Android for comparison
On android when you download an apk and try to install it, you get a popup saying something like "Chrome needs permission to install unknown apps." with a button to cancel or go directly to the settings and give chrome the permissions, after you enable the permissions you also get the prompt to install the apk right away. This is the equivalent on windows to just clicking next half a dozen times to install some software, on ios you have to trigger the install, go manually to the settings and enable the permission, then trigger the install again.
We already have lots of that related to website access. "Not available due to GDPR" is a pretty common error message for me.
If anyone wants to reply that "I've just dodged a bullet thanks to EU blocking unethical websites" then all I can say is I know how to dodge bullets by myself, thanks.
These websites did not get blocked by the EU. These websites chose to block themselves because they did not want to put in the effort to be GDPR compliant.
Also when it comes to random news websites (especially smaller local ones) what sort risks are there? The aren’t handling your personal information and if you’re afraid about them selling your browsing history to third parties there are way to fix that locally
The sites themselves disagree with you. They think there's risk, which is why they decided to not work in the EU. EU does not "threaten very high fines" to sites that do not collect PII. GDPR does nothing if you don't collect information. But they obviously do collect it, despite your denial.
Of course the site owners think there it introduces unnecessary risks for them, that was more or less what my initial comment was about.
> But they obviously do collect it, despite your denial.
How? are you somehow compelled to share you name and address with random local/small new-sites from the US
They very likely are just using ads and/or analytics services which technically don’t comply with GDPR..
How else than technically should they comply with the GDPR? Morally? They don't do that either. They gather as much as possible and deduce as much as possible from it. Are you actually claiming services like Google Analytics aren't interested in knowing much about a site's visitors?
Hopefully someone will do this soon, if the Epic store isn't this (or is this for just games).
Thanks for Droid-ify, I didn't know about that!
Ironically it is the fetish with free market economics that produces the monopolies. I wonder how many "techno optimist" libertarians are also cheering the fact that Apple has been forced by government regulation to allow competitors onto their platform.
Not really, it's the fetish with taking free market economics to the extreme. You can't really have a free market without regulation, though now we're getting in a GPL-vs-MIT-like argument of whether "free" means "without restrictions" or "with restrictions that ensure the desired outcomes are produced".
Indeed, as such the term "free market" is an oxymoron. Governments create markets, and the currency used to trade in those markets.
The definition of a free market is one without government regulation. There is no such GPL-vs-MIT debate here. Perhaps you are thinking of the term “capitalism”?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free%20market
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/free-market
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/free-...
Actually, there is, because I was able to find several other definitions that include minimal government regulation. This is also how most of my friends and family use the term.
only when there's not sufficient regulations from cartel like behaviour. At the risk of invoking the no-real-scotsman fallacy, i would say that a real free market cannot support a monopoly, unless said monopoly is taking as thin a cut of the profit as possible (thus leaving no room for competition as the initial outlay of capital would not be worth it).
And if that entity is superior to the market, then how can the market be "really free"?
The entity that regulates is not a participant in the free market. And free market does not imply anarchy - aka no rules.
On the other thread, people complain that Google didn't take down a scam app fast enough.
People obviously complain about the 30% commission fee for digital goods.
So if people don't want to pay the commission, and they want Google to police all the apps, isn't that just a giant cost for Google without a way of making it sustainable?
Unless people are ok with drastically higher initial phone hardware costs to make up for the loss revenue on app store commissions? For example, let's say the average phone now costs $1,000 and Google can collect 30% commission. Let's say countries ban the commission. Google has to make money somehow. They make the phone cost $2,000 now and also they no longer make Android open source to restrict workarounds. Would people prefer that more?
Obviously they can still charge the 30% for their own app stores and use that money for moderation. Why would anyone expect them to be responsible for 3rd party stores?
> also they no longer make Android open source
I don’t think that’s feasible at this point. Also $1000 per phone is not even remotely close to what they’d be losing (at least by a magnitude if not several..)
In any case Android is mainly there to funnel users into search and their other ad-funded services. Basically a cost saving measure to reduce the amount of money they need to pay Apple for keeping Google as the default search engine on iOS.
The reason grocery stores and meat packing plants are inspected, is that competition on price, on profit is a thing. So eventually in a competitive market, someone tries to cut costs by reducing safery checks.
Look at Boeing. Cutting safety in the name of profit.
So if there is a lot of competition for app stores, cost cutting could come out of reduced fees, "safety inspections" could be impacted.
Which means we'll need new laws and regulations for store owners, to make sure they are performing due diligence.
At least, as a parallel construct.
There could've been other app stores. There could've been a choice at startup like there is for browsers. There could've been 4 or 5 app stores installed by default whether you're on a Pixel or on a Samsung device.
It is nobody's fault but Google's that they became a gatekeeper with their app store. Ie: How hard open OSes have to fight to de-googlify a phone. How they push to have it installed by default, which forces me to put my apps on the Play store as 99% of users would go there to look for my apps.
Then there are scare screens to fend off the installation of competing app stores. Then once you've actually managed to install a competing app-store like F-Droid, it has to beg you to go into the settings and check some boxes or it won't be able to perform installations properly.
I mean, it seems like people want their cake and eat it too. Not Google.
People want no commission, and for Google to spend resources policing the app store.
Since Google open sources Android, Google doesn't make money from the OS itself. They only make money through pre-installed Google apps and the app store.
People are not fine with an arbitrary number of 30% and no serious competition to go to to find a better service.
If Google finds the demands unreasonable they shouldn't have put themselves in a monopoly position that'd allow them to become gatekeepers
Stop. Just stop. Google "somehow" made $305.63B last year.
I expect those to go down. It isn't a law of nature that tech platforms are insanely profitable. Plenty of products are "just" moderately profitable and survive just fine.
If the market (with fair and active competition on the software side) is able to bear "average" phone costs of 1000€ so be it.
The argument you get from Google is that downloading APKs is dangerous so everyone should use the store. When they don't police the store anyway then it's obvious they're just abusing everyone.
If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. Among other things, that means not posting flamewar comments and not using the site for ideological battle.
Plus on Android they'd be trying to convince Steam publishers to enter a platform where users don't pay for games but rather watch ads or make IAPs, so they wouldn't really get the right kind of paying customers from there.
I find the normal reasons people like digital storefronts not very compelling: safety, reviews, all in one place, etc...
I also worry about everything being in one account. If I lose my epic games account, I'm not going to worry too much. If Valve locks me out, I'm in trouble, so I would rather diversify away from Valve if I can.
That's an interesting move! I'm wondering how they are planning to handle payments there.
UPD: also would be really cool if they decide to run an F-Droid repo!