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Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

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Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#91

Post by deminature »

philliphaydon wrote: post #78
belltaco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason Valve seems to have a lot of very rabid fans on Reddit, from many many years. Valve gets a free pass for showing annoying ads on every Steam update while being a paid service and also for their forced 30% cut and essentially being a monopoly. All the while barely improving the product for years while making billions from the cash cow. When I saw Epic was jumping into the fray I figured there'd be vici…

Valve needs serious competition. But I hate epic for trying to buy its way into competition by taking exclusives which were sold on steam initially. Instead of trying to actually be better than valve.

There's no way they could have gotten any traction simply by competing on quality of features. Not only does Steam has a decade-long headstart, but people aren't going to willingly split their library over multiple clients unless forced.

Epic couldn't have realistically broken in without forcing people to use their client.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#92

Post by belltaco »

anoncake wrote: post #88
codexon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has gotten lazy and incompetent from their rent seeking on the Steam monopoly. I will try to list some of the reasons. The service goes down for 15-30 minutes every single Tuesday during peak hours. Can you imagine if your internet, TV, or cellphone did this? There is also an absurd amount of unplanned downtime as well https://twitter.com/steamstatus there's a major outage every 2 months on average where you ca…

> And the only price you pay is to install another launcher that costs you nothing Yeah, no. I'm not going to install another launcher that wastes RAM, bandwidth etc. and begs for my attention. Having games spread across multiple launchers is horrible UX too. The Steam monopoly is a good thing for customers. What's bad is that it's private property and run for profit rather than to be useful.

It's not as bad as console exclusivity where you have to go out and buy another console for $400.

I'd take the annoyance if I know that the middleman isn't taking 30% of what I am paying the dev and the dev is getting 88%.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#93

Post by codexon »

anoncake wrote: post #88
codexon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has gotten lazy and incompetent from their rent seeking on the Steam monopoly. I will try to list some of the reasons. The service goes down for 15-30 minutes every single Tuesday during peak hours. Can you imagine if your internet, TV, or cellphone did this? There is also an absurd amount of unplanned downtime as well https://twitter.com/steamstatus there's a major outage every 2 months on average where you ca…

> And the only price you pay is to install another launcher that costs you nothing Yeah, no. I'm not going to install another launcher that wastes RAM, bandwidth etc. and begs for my attention. Having games spread across multiple launchers is horrible UX too. The Steam monopoly is a good thing for customers. What's bad is that it's private property and run for profit rather than to be useful.

> Yeah, no. I'm not going to install another launcher that wastes RAM, bandwidth etc. and begs for my attention. Having games spread across multiple launchers is horrible UX too.

Funny you mention this. Right now on my computer, Steam is using up over 450 mb ram while the Epic game store uses up 10 mb. Both of them being minimized.

https://imgur.com/a/wZBnGZ1

> Having games spread across multiple launchers is horrible UX too. The Steam monopoly is a good thing for customers. What's bad is that it's private property and run for profit rather than to be useful.

Yeah and so is having software being spread across multiple OSes "horrible UX" too, so you are basically suggesting that the Windows monopoly is a good thing for customers in that same vein.

We don't live in lala-land where things like this get made as non-profit. The only solution is competition.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#94

Post by BubRoss »

jplayer01 wrote: post #70
nickthegreek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that is true, they are at least on the record now with a position and I do feel like that is important. I would hope to see other game companies make these statements as well.

Statements mean and accomplish nothing. I thought after decades of being fucked over and lied to by corporations, maybe the public would become a bit more suspicious of people like this, but I guess not.

How is anyone being 'fucked over' by Tim Sweeney? He is a legendary programmer who built his company up using his own significant programming abilities.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#95

Post by serf »

jsmeaton wrote: post #85
jeegsy wrote: post #80

Ah, it would seem that Epic has a nose for marketing opportunities especially today when "values" / "we are good folk" marketing is all the rage

Pretty unfair comment. He was asked. He answered.

He answered the question by linking a Verge hit-piece against Blizzards' actions, citing Epic's opinion on the matter.

It might be an answer, but it's definitely motivated.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#96

Post by jplayer01 »

rifung wrote: post #73
jplayer01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statements mean and accomplish nothing. I thought after decades of being fucked over and lied to by corporations, maybe the public would become a bit more suspicious of people like this, but I guess not.

Indeed, actions speak louder than words, but in this specific case, making a public statement is itself a very significant action. After all, it was nothing but public statements that are the center of the controversy.

No, the controversy is the punishing of people who dared speak out. Nobody has spoken out for Sweeney to fire or otherwise punish. So his are empty words.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#97

Post by philliphaydon »

BubRoss wrote: post #94
jplayer01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statements mean and accomplish nothing. I thought after decades of being fucked over and lied to by corporations, maybe the public would become a bit more suspicious of people like this, but I guess not.

How is anyone being 'fucked over' by Tim Sweeney? He is a legendary programmer who built his company up using his own significant programming abilities.

The people who buy games on steam that he then buys exclusivity rights to. The games people help kickstart with the promise of it being on a platform which is then purchased as exclusive. He’s screwing a lot of people.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#98

Post by BubRoss »

philliphaydon wrote: post #97
BubRoss wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is anyone being 'fucked over' by Tim Sweeney? He is a legendary programmer who built his company up using his own significant programming abilities.

The people who buy games on steam that he then buys exclusivity rights to. The games people help kickstart with the promise of it being on a platform which is then purchased as exclusive. He’s screwing a lot of people.

Shouldn't they be mad at Steam for cutting access to a game they bought? Why aren't they mad at the company that bait and switched them?

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#99

Post by gbear605 »

oarsinsync wrote: post #68
gbear605 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most videogame companies are like that. It is definitely horrible, but the company's attitude toward its employees' work hours is unrelated to its attitude toward China.

Unless you take the view that human rights are human rights are human rights, and are universal. Being shitty to the humans you pay while paying lip service to some of the humans that pay you is an interesting and, from some angles, contradictory position to hold.

Human rights are universal, but one involves literal concentration camps while the other is people who are voluntarily there, even if it is abusive. I think that Epic Games should change their policies, and so should the rest of the game development industry, but I prioritize disliking fascism over disliking poor working conditions.

Re: Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights

#100

Post by philliphaydon »

BubRoss wrote: post #98
philliphaydon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who buy games on steam that he then buys exclusivity rights to. The games people help kickstart with the promise of it being on a platform which is then purchased as exclusive. He’s screwing a lot of people.

Shouldn't they be mad at Steam for cutting access to a game they bought? Why aren't they mad at the company that bait and switched them?

It wasn’t cut by steam. It was cut by epic. Steam updated its terms to prevent removal in the future.
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