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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of shocked Stephenson would associate with the kind of person that runs a company like Epic. I guess Epic's unethetical behavior is just not widely known. Epic bought Psyonix, makers of Rocket League, promised not to change anything, then 6 months later they stole the game from people who bought it for mac and linux. Now on those platforms there are no native clients for multiplayer.

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> I'm kind of shocked Stephenson would associate with the kind of person that runs a company like Epic.

A person with one of the very longest runs in history as CEO of a tech company? A tech company CEO who is also involved in all the company's engineering and knows what he is talking about?

> Epic bought Psyonix, makers of Rocket League, promised not to change anything, then 6 months later they stole the game from people who bought it for mac and linux.

Didn't they stop developing the macOS and Linux versions and give those players their money back?

What a monster. I can see why people wouldn't want to be in the same room as him for some reason.

> knows what he is talking about?

I have my doubts. For example, he claims that they won't support Linux because it's too niche but Linux has been (slightly) ahead of MacOS in the Steam survey for a while now (context: Fortnite is available on MacOS). Making is mistake is human, but he's sticking to his guns despite objective metrics to the contrary - I would expect more from a renowned CEO.

It seems rather irrational of a company to turn away paying customers, right? Except his view isn't at all unique. They judge that Linux and its user base isn't big enough to be worth much of their time, but it's not like they're the only ones.

Of course if you include the first half of the sentence you quoted it's obvious that I was talking about engineering when it comes to "knows what he is talking about." The question of whether Linux is worth supporting is at least half a marketing question. I doubt they're wrong about it, but I try to keep an open mind...

> objective metrics to the contrary

Please do share.

> Please do share.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Expand "OS Version."

Thanks but ninety-seven percent windows why are we even having this conversation.

Because the data and the opinion differ, which was my initial point. Put another way, if Linux is too niche then why is he wasting resources on MacOS?

I expect macOS is cheaper to support and develop for (if for no other reason then because it's a well supported Unreal Engine target) and judged to be, at least potentially, more profitable. But I imagine the relationship with Apple carries a huge amount of weight in a decision like that as well, and I can't even guess how that factors in.

UE supports Linux (via Wine/Proton) just fine. There are tons of games that use it. The main issue is the anti-cheat solution, which does support Linux, but needs to be enabled (they have not). While I am sure there would be issues beyond that, they would almost certainly be minor.

> at least potentially, more profitable.

This is because MacOS is more widespread as a general purpose desktop operating system. Those statistics are irrelevant here. Linux is a more widespread gaming operating system. Dogma is pointless drivel.

I think Tim took the right approach for the both the right and wrong reasons. We don't need more system programming, but more agnosticism.

This is what SteamPlay and tools like proton and WINE solve. Why develop for Windows when you can build with respect to tools like those, and if the customer base exists, then allocate resources?

> objective metrics to the contrary

Of the 2ish% of the market gaming on Linux, what subset will buy your software? If I had one customer in 50 who submitted nearly half of all of our support tickets for development that wasn't transferrable to the other 49 and I couldn't charge them to cover it, I'd fire them, too.

They also moved the servers from Steam to Epic around the same time, and it's unmitigated rubbish ever since. Match-ups are a joke. People with a lower ping than you basically have superpowers. With the addition of machine-learning bots becoming popular just after all that, it's made the game pretty hard to like these days.

On the spectrum of awfullness this is kinda... low? Rocket League works in Steam and with Wine.

Epic's behavior has been consistently ethical as long as I can remember (and I've been following them since the 90s). The reason Sweeney is an interesting person is that he has been developing the industry (not just his company) for the past 30 years, and has interesting things to say based on that experience because he has a strategic vision and also continues to be deeply technically involved (he was the original architect of the Unreal Engine and continues to personally design tools and entire languages/frameworks for game engines). He was a technical founder role model long before pretty much every operator on scene today even started their career.

I agree, Tim Sweeney sucks. It was still an interesting interview.

I fully agree with him on Apple. The current App Store rules are insanely anti-competitive. It is as if Microsoft would launch Windows 12 where all software, I mean apps, had to be downloaded and purchased (30% goes to MS) via the Microsoft store. Valve's Steam would be forbidden, browsers other than Edge as well.

Not really the same because Microsoft isn't the sole manufacturer of Windows devices

How would that be relevant?

A better comparison: what if Comcast required you to pay 5% of your income to use their Internet. After all, you can always switch, right?

A broken clock may be right twice a day, but it's still a broken clock.

but apple

Could be Apple contributed if it was around the time they dropped 32bit support. I'm kind of amazed the new Doom+Doom2 re-release doesn't support even Intel Macs, despite moving to Kex. IDK whose at fault but it's lame if they let support drop and don't at least offer refunds to recent purchasers.

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