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Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

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Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#91

Post by blattimwind »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #74
swebs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's just evil.

Probably not evil, just incompetent. Many internet multiplayer games today place trust in the client in order to grant a smoother experience on higher latency internet connections, which makes it easier to implement cheating mechanisms. The fight against this is all about verifying the client and the environment it is running in. WINE is quite hackable, so one can see why they'd want to blacklist the platform outrigh…

CSGO (where leagues and MM use third-party anti-cheat) is an example where the community deems the vendor's AC insufficient. The most extreme example is Rockstar Games / GTA V, the multi-billion-dollar revenue AAA title where anyone with a free to download menu has far more power than all Rockstar administrators combined.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#92

Post by [deleted] »

Moru wrote: post #72
DonHopkins wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better for the environment to market useless bunches of bytes that useless blobs of plastic. Especially when they use some of that money to support useful bunches of bytes like Blender! (That said, I sure loved my Star Wars action figures!)

The environment impact of useless bunches of bytes might surprise you.

[deleted]

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#94

Post by aero142 »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #79
bhouston wrote: post #68

Commoditize one's compliments: https://jasongriffey.net/wp/2012/04/19/commoditizing-our-com... Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya, or at least that is the case with the large majority of professionals. This is an impediment to using Unreal Engine and thus makes Epic Games sort of dependent on Autodesk. There is probably no coincidence that the new general m…

I never understood when important people force deals with companies they used to work at. He doesn't work for Autodesk any more, why would he care how well they're doing? Is he being paid by autodesk? I mean I know he might be friends with people from those companies still, but he's actively hurting his own company by making these calls.

People say it's impossible to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. People don't do this conciously. Instead, I think people's worldview naturally changes to be one that benefits their employer.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#95

Post by Jach »

learc83 wrote: post #76
Jach wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% became the industry standard not just for video games for a reason. It costs money to seamlessly do business across n countries, and it's not like Valve does nothing else to try and earn that fee either. Epic's play is to try and see if being a better looking deal for game devs will translate to being better for gamers or other groups (like linux users, open source advocates) too. We'll see. Valve has already dem…

The only reason 30% is the industry standard is because network effects and walled gardens make competition very difficult. The cost to valve, Apple, and Google aren't anywhere close to that, which in an efficient market means that the price should go down as competitors enter the space. Steam isn't so much better than the competition that no one can compete with them--they just got into the market at the right time…

What are the costs close to, and what are the costs of distribution if you did it yourself? Feel free to break it down into cost of business across n countries, cost of storage and bandwidth, some bare-minimum listing fee somewhere to at least enable theoretical discovery, and ignore all the other services the platforms provide.

I mentioned probable economies of scale in a cousin comment, but I don't think they offer all that much. Do you have a % in mind that you intuitively think could be knocked off from the stores of Valve, GOG, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce App Exchange, and Amazon Appstore, all taking around 30% before you get into the fine print?

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#96

Post by MikeTheGreat »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #79
bhouston wrote: post #68

Commoditize one's compliments: https://jasongriffey.net/wp/2012/04/19/commoditizing-our-com... Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya, or at least that is the case with the large majority of professionals. This is an impediment to using Unreal Engine and thus makes Epic Games sort of dependent on Autodesk. There is probably no coincidence that the new general m…

I never understood when important people force deals with companies they used to work at. He doesn't work for Autodesk any more, why would he care how well they're doing? Is he being paid by autodesk? I mean I know he might be friends with people from those companies still, but he's actively hurting his own company by making these calls.

The person is probably most familiar with their former products and can both advocate on merit (i.e., they happen to know about obscure features that no-one knows about for other options) and is more comfortable for them. Knowing people (and being their former boss) probably helps them out, too, which makes it easier to pull things towards their former projects).

But yeah - it doesn't seem like this should happen as often as it does.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#97

Post by chc »

Deimorz wrote: post #61
foota wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with their stance that exclusives are the only way to break the hold Steam has on the market.

Yes, it's the only way when your product is objectively worse than Steam in practically every way, so the only way to get anyone to use it is to force them. It's not a good approach to competition though, and only hurts users instead of motivating innovation. I agree that Steam could use some competition, but Epic isn't actually competing with them, they're just forcibly buying their way into the market.

I think it's quite possibly the only way regardless of how your product compares to Steam. Steam has huge platform lock-in as well as other inherent advantages as an incumbent monopoly. Your platform can be better in every way and people will still use Steam because that's where all their games are and where all their friends are. The history of computing is full of better products that failed to beat lock-in. See, for example, the insane lengths we've gone to keep computers compatible with the 8086 instruction set.

People also ignore that Steam built itself up on exclusives too. Heck, Valve bought Turtle Rock Software a few months before Left 4 Dead's release to get an exclusive lock on the Left 4 Dead franchise in perpetuity, then froze the original developers out. But somehow gamers are more scandalized by Epic paying developers to release on Epic's platform a few months before Steam, despite that being less predatory in every possible way.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#98

Post by foota »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #83
foota wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is steam really that great? I say this as someone who plays many hours of games. I think some things they do well are (which are admittedly important things): * reliability * security * fast downloads * consistent achievements between games But I think they're lagging others (mainly discord) in chat and social. Their voice quality is comparatively horrible. They don't really have a good space for a group to have a se…

> Is steam really that great? Yes. Yes it is. Steam built the online games distribution market from basically nothing to where it is today. They helped usher in the indie game explosion, and gave players unprecedented tools for finding and assessing games. Not to mention the normalization of high-discount sales. Oh yeah, and also Valve went ahead and made Linux gaming a more realistic proposition than it has ever bee…

I agree that steam's existence has done wonders for gaming, and I'm also happy with their work on linux gaming (and never mind some cheap sale games)

But that doesn't mean that steam today is the best experience for gaming, and I would probably go so far as to argue that their hold on gaming is harmful to the industry, the largest issue imo being their large take of sales.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#99

Post by dleslie »

hyayz wrote: post #52
dleslie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Sweeney thinks Win32 is an open standard. I think he's operating with a different understanding of the word "open" than the rest of us.

Quote on that? Also, there's Wine and ReactOS, no? Aren't those two alternative (even if somewhat incomplete) implementations of Win32?

See "The Solution", where he argues for Win32 as a truly open standard, as explicitly opposed to UWP and Android, which he considers to be closed.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/04/microsoft...

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#100

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ssully wrote: post #89
sgarman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The % deal they are offering is a good start but I'm not sure buying exclusivity of game releases is good for "fairness in the gaming industry."

I am interested in hearing other opinions, but I personally do not care about exclusivity. I can download any store front application (Steam, Epic, GoG, Uplay, etc) for free, so the only inconvenience is having another app. Compare this to the days of console exclusives, and it's almost a non-issue. Outside of couch coop, I have no familiarity with Xbox exclusives like Gears or Halo because I could never afford more…

> Compare this to the days of console exclusives, and it's almost a non-issue.

That's the thing though, console exclusives at least saved developers the resources needed to port to another console. Especially in ye olden days, that was a non-trivial cost. The storefront exclusivity on PCs is completely artificial.

But also, yeah, my computer is full of enough bloated useless-ware. At least GoG and Itch don't make me use a client.

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