Apple collects the rent from the apps that exist withn their walled garden. Epic employs behavioural specialists tasked in making their games addictive and coerce user into spending with micro-transactions.
>Epic employs behavioural specialists tasked in making their games addictive and coerce user into spending with micro-transactions.
Epic also has their own game store that they will happily charge 30% once they have more marketshare. They also want to be able to put their own game store on iOS.
>that they will happily charge 30% once they have more marketshare.
I don't know. They haven't done as much with UE or any other tools, outside of actually charging for non-games (I'm honestly surprised that the Mandelorian was able to be made with no kick back to Epic at all).
Historically Epic has been relatively lenient for how it taxes developers. Say what you want about Sweeny and Fortnite and the Games Store, but I can definitely tell he still takes pride and empathizes with being in the gamedev trenches once upon a time. Can't say that about too many other gaming execs of today.
They're developer friendly because they're trying to get marketshare. They're competing with market leader in Steam which charges 30%.
Don't think for a second that they wouldn't charge 30% once they get enough market power. In fact, in the Apple lawsuit, it was revealed that the Epic Game Store was operating on a $300-$400m loss in order to acquire marketshare. Epic has to increase commission fees in order to break even and make a profit eventually. Epic isn't a non-profit.
Here's a preview how they might treat customers of their own app store if they have market power:
Epic Games, the company responsible for Fortnite, agreed to pay $245 million to settle FTC allegations related to in-game purchases. According to the FTC, the company charged parents and gamers of all ages for unwanted items and locked the accounts of customers who disputed wrongful charges with their credit card companies.
Isn’t that how competition works? Ideally, no company becomes so large that they don’t feel the pressure to remain competitive. Of course there’s countless examples of big players stagnating and becoming rent collectors with a captive market. But, I see that as all the more reason to have competition.
I think it’s rather optimistic to believe the Epic Games Store going to overtake Steam. If that’s the criteria for raising their cut, I wouldn’t expect it to happen anytime soon. Outside of annoying exclusive distribution rights on some games, having another store has given game developers another way to sell and players a way to purchase games cheaper. With that said, I’d guess their real gambit is to create enough pressure to drive the standard 30% down.
Maybe 30% made sense at one point. Maybe it does now. It strikes me that there have been efficiencies that haven’t been passed along to the consumer. Having a competitive market would let us find out.
> way to sell and players a way to purchase games cheaper.
If you believe because the cut is less on epic store (assuming a developer uses all the methods available to a game developer to reduce it) that they then charge less on the epic store you are mistaken. Prices are the same between the two stores.
I'm fairly certain I'm not mistaken. The MSRP may be the same, sure. Some games, however, are routinely cheaper on sale on EGS than they are on Steam. "Alan Wake 2" in particular has been cheaper on EGS and came with "Alan Wake Remastered". EGS has been giving away free games since its inception. They have issued coupons with pretty large discounts ($15 or 33% off) that can be used on just about any game, effectively reducing the price below what Steam is selling games for.
Yes, this is a typical tactic to gain customers, burn money. If you think these incentives will continue should EGS gain some meaningful market share, then you are again mistaken.
We’re in a promotional period for EGS right now. The free games and coupons won’t continue.
I'm still optimistic, but I wouldn't be completely gobsmacked if I was wrong. I would have argued 20 years ago Valve would have done more to lock in their market (I was kind of right, but they are much more clever with it and it doesn't impact consumers). I also would have argued 20 years ago that Sony would topple Nintendo in the portable market.
>Here's an example showing how they're just like any other company:
They aren't really too special on the consumer facing front, I agree. But I still assert they've been pretty goo on the dev facing front. I've heard very little bad about them on the dev end.
>game time tracking and end of year reports mean a lot to some gamers.
some indeed. It's another network effect and it is indeed useless to try and grab people away from something even if EGS had every feature of steam. So I get why Epic didn't try to be a social network (it could do game tracking reports if it wanted to. But that's not selling anyone).
traditionally, storefronts live and die by its library, pricing, and especially exclusives, So I understand how and why they focused on what they did.
I'll take the gaming addiction. Epic wasn't the first to do this (remember way back when we lauded "Nintendo hard" which was simply based on making you eat quarters in the 70's/80's arcade? Yeah...), nor will this be the last kind of game monetization we see. People were hard on lootboxes and the (western) industry already shifted to Battle passes before any serious US legislation started.
Meanwhile the idea of an OS and how open it should be will probably be a battle for decades to come, for old, new, and yet to be made companies. May as well nip it in the bud now.
False equivalency. Most people like living in America and tons of people want to move there, while only religious fanatics would be okay living in a country built and controlled by Al-qaeda
> Bad entities can point out when other entities behave badly. You don't have to like either of them.
> See: bin Laden's letter to America doing rounds in the internet in 2023.
> False equivalency. Most people like living in America and tons of people want to move there, while only religious fanatics would be okay living in a country built and controlled by Al-qaeda
Without question, the comparison is equivalent. Portraying it as either-or is ignoring the root sentiment of "everyone has faults", regardless of who you think is superior in an example.
Our religious fanatics have put an insurrectionist who stole classified documents as their top choice for leader. Hopefully the trend of being a desirable place to live continues, but I don't know if it's yet safe to point fingers at the awful governments built by other sets of religious fanatics.
the assumption is that Trump was only elected by Christians?
I honestly feel bad for the left. Given everything their news media tells them is under threat they seem legitimately scared about a nonissue. The power of the news cycle.
Which is my point, your average non-religious person does not understand the difference between religions. Be it Islam vs Christianity, or Christianity vs Catholicism.
If you're going to tar all of Islam by their worst members ("the latter literally convinving people to convert by sword"), you can't object if someone applies the same logic to Christianity.
> Christianity vs Catholicism
Catholics aren't Christian? Sounds exactly like some of evangelical nuts I grew up around. Most of the world views Christianity as a big umbrella, with Catholics and Protestants being two of the major flavors. (Somehow I highly doubt you're Eastern Orthodox.)
> your average non-religious person does not understand the difference between religions
And apparently, neither do you, my evangelical wingnut in Christ.
You can take your classist “Y’all Qaeda” and shove it. If you want to critique politics that’s fine, but please understand what you’re spewing is dehumanizing propaganda implying more than half of the country are dumb hicks.
Me neither. Epic is such an obvious part of a walled-garden duopoly with monetary and lobbying power that nation states would be envious of and has done such things in the past that is unheard of in case of Apple, or maybe is equal to Apple hence, of course, no taking sides.
Tim is fighting the good fight despite his intentions being aligned differently from people generally wanting greater software/hardware freedom. You don't need to take sides.
I also like how he hasn't updated his Twitter profile image in 20 years. He's probably riding his 'rati in sunglasses at his age of 50+ thinking he's still got it. And what if he doesn't? Somebody needed to file this lawsuit sooner than later, and I'm glad he did. Big Sweeney boy is scoring relative high on my list right now.
Now open that can of popcorn and watch two corporations trying to defend their own turd. Apple's new UX/tax on third-party payments is an incredible sucking of the MBA's cock on behalf of whoever implemented that. And watching people here still defend them is even better. Why do people pay a $19.99/mo Netflix subscription when you have real life?
All businesses employ manipulative practices, marketing and sales are built on them. An indictment of Epic on these grounds is an indictment of modern capitalism. It's annoying, base and tragic but not ultimately anywhere near the mafia-level thuggery to which Apple has engaged.
How does the tea shop down the road from me manipulate anyone? I think maybe it’s the case that most large businesses do so because their bureaucracy comes to demand it for ever greater gains. But it is not the case that all businesses do so.
If they do sales and marketing, they do. Premium tea shops will try to upsell customers all sorts of paraphernalia to prepare tea "just so" and rare expensive teas that taste nearly indistinguishable from less expensive varieties (particularly to randos with sub-sommelier level palates).
If it's just a chill little tea shop that doesn't advertise or go crazy on social media, focuses more on good tea and a comfortable space, keeps things affordable without trying to upsell or be pretentious, then lucky you. Those sorts of lifestyle businesses are very rare these days, they're being outcompeted by predatory hyper-efficient modern businesses to the detriment of all.
I do not want to take a side in this fight.