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Epic direct payment on mobile

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Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#161

Post by nottorp »

u10 wrote: post #96
nottorp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, they're not offering ME a better deal. Let's see: - games aren't cheaper on the Epic store, in spite of the allegedly smaller cut the store is supposed to take - they're Windows only (and here comes the China reference, they only know about Windows in there) - their store still doesn't have a shopping cart (i may not be current on this)... reeks of incompetence? Can you trust them with your credit card info?…

>games aren't cheaper on the Epic store, in spite of the allegedly smaller cut the store is supposed to take They are literally handing out free games, Total War: Troy, a brand new game, its free today >they're Windows only (and here comes the China reference, they only know about Windows in there) Games will not have first class support for linux for years to come, this is not indicative of the linux platform, simpl…

> Games will not have first class support for linux for years to come, this is not indicative of the linux platform, simply that the market is tiny and developer time is better spent on supporting platforms that are widely used.

The fact that there are only X% of gamers on Linux/Mac OS may be justification for you, but why would I go near a store that doesn't support my platform of choice? As I said, they're not offering ME a better deal.

> plenty, they offer a useful service by providing older games with support for modern OS. They have their niche within the ecosystem but they are by and large not competing with Steam

When have you last bought a game on GoG then? They have quite a few new titles. Everything I backed on kickstarter lately came with a GoG key, for example. Except Phoenix Point - they took the Epic bribe so I won't get to play it.

> Besides Fortnite being an economic and cultural phenomenon.

I can't afford free to play games. Even if the IAPs are all cosmetic, you can't say the design wasn't affected by their presence. For example, by making cosmetic items unobtainable or very hard to obtain through normal game play. If i wanted to grind more I'd keep up my WoW subscription thank you.

Hint: all the money coming from Tencent were made via predatory free to play mobile games, mostly in the Asia region where it's even worse than in the west.

> WRT the shopping cart, I think you're reading too much into not being able to buy 2 games at once. FWIW I've NEVER bought two games at once on Steam.

I don't buy games on launch, even if i'm in a hurry i wait for a couple reviews. Also I suppose I have more money than time so I buy my games in batches on sales, since I know I won't get to play 90% of them. Yes, I need a shopping cart.

Anyway, this is all nitpicking. The main thing is that by supporting their bribing you encourage them, and their pay to win attitude will be very very bad for you as a consumer if they manage to kill their competition.

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#162

Post by closeparen »

Hokusai wrote: post #146
gutnor wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm scared of that though. Although on one end I would like to buy my kindle books straight from the app and play xcloud games, I'm thinking of the dodgier companies. Right now I have little to worry about when I leave my kid playing a game, all the payment need to go through Apple or at least the offending app will not stay up for too long. I want Apple to be forced to come up with a fairer solution (eg: same api, b…

> I'm thinking of the dodgier companies. Right now I have little to worry about when I leave my kid playing a game, all the payment need to go through Apple or at least the offending app will not stay up for too long. Nothing stops dodgier companies to ask your kid a credit card number. If you trust an app and it charges you in a dodgy way, you can claim that charge with your credit company. On-line transactions work…

The App Store review process stops it.

To dispute charges that were indeed made by a member of your household, you usually have to file a police report against them.

The method of paying for things online by shared secret numbers is insane. Phones permit much more reasonable payments architectures, since they can sign transactions with their TPMs instead of spraying your credit card number everywhere. We should see phones replace credit card entry even for transactions started on desktops.

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#163

Post by 013a »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #48
minimaxir wrote: post #40

The Apple/antitrust angle has been covered, but this Direct payment bypass also affects Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Google. Won't they take issue with it as well?

Apparently the cuts that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo take are already acceptable to Epic. The announcement says that those users are getting the discount automatically without taking any action. Starting today, any V-Bucks or real-money offers you purchase on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Mac are now discounted by up to 20%. You don’t need to do anything!

Additionally, there's two lines in the article:

> If Apple or Google lower their fees on payments in the future, Epic will pass along the savings to you.

and

> Do you play Fortnite on Android, but don’t purchase through Google Play? No problem! You’ll find that V-Bucks and real-money offers are now discounted by up to 20% through the Epic Games app at epicgames.com and the Samsung Galaxy Store.

Both of which strongly hint to the idea that its specifically the rates the Play/App Store charge at issue here, and they likely received discounted rates on competing storefronts by default.

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#164

Post by nsilvestri »

tadzik_ wrote: post #116
virtue3 wrote: post #75

I love how they are "passing the savings down to us" from a non existing digital item that they set the price of. Ugh. Anyway, this should be absolutely fascinating to watch how the antitrust cases against the app stores go!

> a non existing digital item That's a weird thing to read in a place populated by software people.

I'm sure you don't have to look too far to find someone who believes all software should be free (and open source).

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#165

Post by mehlmao »

qppo wrote: post #44
superkuh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, another monopolist trying to fill their garden. Epic is literally buying the companies behind long established games, removing game support for alternative OSes, and eventually only allowing access from "the epic store". No matter who wins between Epic and Apple human people lose. They're both walled garden monopolists.

To be fair to Epic, they are/were offering developers a better deal than Steam. And they've done far more for gaming over the past decade than Valve, which hasn't been able to successfully innovate in the last two.

GoG is my store of choice, and unfortunately I can't get Epic exclusives there. I'd also say that Valve's contribution to the gaming ecosystem (VR, Proton / Linux work, Remote Play Together) is comparable to Epic's (Unreal Engine).

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#166

Post by qppo »

tadzik_ wrote: post #136
qppo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to Epic, they are/were offering developers a better deal than Steam. And they've done far more for gaming over the past decade than Valve, which hasn't been able to successfully innovate in the last two.

> And they've done far more for gaming over the past decade than Valve, which hasn't been able to successfully innovate in the last two Uhm, what? Epic has delivered Unreal Engine 4 – good for them. They've also released a successful battle royale, piggybacking off of other developers' success and rolled out a crappy store/launcher, a straight downgrade from every single competitor, that they actively force on people…

I mean we can debate this until the cows come home, but Unreal is much more significant to the development of new gaming (and recently, other) content than anything Valve has ever done. Valve is a middleman, Epic creates values.

For example, there's no VR for them to "push" without companies like Epic giving out engines to develop VR content for free.

Personally this statement:

> a straight downgrade from every single competitor

I strongly disagree with. Steam is awful on every machine I have it installed on, and it does everything worse than other programs. Browsing the store is faster and has fewer bugs in Firefox than it does in the Steam client. All my chat is in discord. I play several games that don't play well with a 4k resolution available and have to change my display resolution pretty regularly in between launching games, for this to work in steam one must manually kill all the background processes and relaunch steam. Never mind that in 2020, they're shipping a 32 bit binary.

Proton is cool and admirable. Steam is not. Origin, Epic, etc are all pieces of software that "just work." I can browse my library, buy new games, and launch them just fine. Everything else is better handled by other programs anyway, and Steam is so bug ridden that they don't need to buy exclusives for me to pick Epic over them.

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#167

Post by gok »

Curious what Epic would do if game developers started offering an option in their games to just not pay the 5% Unreal Engine tax and passed the savings onto consumers.

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#168

Post by gutnor »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #110
gutnor wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm scared of that though. Although on one end I would like to buy my kindle books straight from the app and play xcloud games, I'm thinking of the dodgier companies. Right now I have little to worry about when I leave my kid playing a game, all the payment need to go through Apple or at least the offending app will not stay up for too long. I want Apple to be forced to come up with a fairer solution (eg: same api, b…

All Apple has to do to fix this is allow sideloading. They don't need to change the App Store's rules—they can make them more stringent, actually—and you can set up your child's phone to block non-App-Store installations. Heck, Epic would probably cave and accept the cost to keep Fortnite in the App Store; they tried to go around Google Play, and it seemingly didn't work out.

The problem with that is that it is all or nothing. The milder approach I had in mind was that apps require you to register an account outside the app (like amazon) but the purchase is initiated inside the app and outside Apple api.

At the beginning that will be easy to simply not register and not use games that require registration. But well, micro-transaction started that way and nowadays all the major player do it that way.

Platform like XCloud that bundle various games from various studio will be used, and that basically mean you have a single app in your iPhone that can download a variety of content, all outside the control of Apple.

I'm not an idiot, I will whitelist and use the tool available in said platform, but that's one more thing to care about. One problem for which Apple just worked for me and won't anymore.

Re: Epic direct payment on mobile

#169

Post by lukevp »

coldcode wrote: post #101
epaga wrote: post #3

My money is on Apple cracking down hard on this. It looks clearly as if Epic remotely activated this direct payment option, thereby bypassing Apple's App Review. Apple will not take kindly to this. Best case scenario for Epic (and Fortnite players): they invite Sweeney in for some hard negotiations. Worst case: Fortnite ends up getting removed from iOS for this.

Pull it is exactly what I would do. Apple gets a cut of the paid apps, but $0 from free apps who show ads. Take away getting a cut from the paid apps then free apps suddenly cost the developers money—no more free apps. Imagine going to Walmart and telling them what you want them to give you all the revenue. Walmart will tell you exactly what they want to pay you, or you can leave. Maybe 30% is too much, but 0% is a t…

Digital goods have almost zero cost other than the payment processing, compared to manufacture, distribution, warehousing, retail space... This is apples and oranges. I can sell a SaaS license thru Stripe for 3%. A subscription through the App Store takes 30% every single month.
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