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Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

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Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#461

Post by Lev1a »

jfim wrote: post #366
Lev1a wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not so simple with the hypocrite named Epic who preach about competition being better for all while buying exclusive distribution rights from devs/publishers on PC, sometimes even for games that had been long announced to be coming out on Steam and/or were crowdfunded on that and other premises. Case in point: "Satisfactory". I was pretty excited about the game when it was first shown, then found later * it wo…

You can buy it on Steam now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/526870/Satisfactory/

After they had held the game hostage for a year my excitement for the game was very much gone and I didn't buy it in the end.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#462

Post by pjmlp »

simion314 wrote: post #437
pjmlp wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers get their apps, there is no undermining taking place. Maybe I should complain that Sony abuses the PS4 market so I can't run Switch titles on the PS4.

Exactly, except for Fortnite (very popular ) and other apps tha tApple don't like(Hey,Wordpress) or apps that US does not like ,and the apps that indie developers can't afford to publish(small games that have Win,Mac,Linux and Android version) , and maybe GPL(maybe it changed) apps, but except all those apps consumers can get all the apps they want. But can you write me a logical phrase about what should happen if a…

That is exactly what I look for as judge decision.

It has been legal since ever, game consoles have 40 years of history by now.

And back in the 16 bit days, one would need to pay for SDKs.

PCs only became open due to IBM's failure to keep ownership of their creation, and Compaq's cleverness in clean room reverse engineering.

Since Windows 8 I am a big fan of Windows store app.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#463

Post by TeMPOraL »

simion314 wrote: post #277
applecrazy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> devs who feel that they can supply their own marketing and payment processing can do it themselves. The issue I have with that is that then a ton of companies think it's a good idea to ship a crappy "launcher" that needs to run on startup, taking up resources in the background while providing little to no added functionality. We can see that with PC games; it used to be just Steam, but now there's the Epic Games La…

And this is a good thing, competition between this stores is good for the users, some users got free games, some developers got better deals. The "needs to launch on startup" is FALSE , you can have this launchers set no to start at all and you launch the game and the launcher will start if needed (not all Steam games need Steam in background). FYI GOG launcher is optional, you can just download the game from the web…

Competition is good for the customer when the goods are commodities. Media - books, songs, videogames - are mostly non-substitutable goods: if you want to watch Star Wars, you won't settle for an episode of Friends instead. As soon as exclusive releases are allowed, customer benefits from competition evaporate.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#464

Post by pjmlp »

simion314 wrote: post #451
pjmlp wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is mobile phones, get a device not produced by Apple and be done with it.

But if the judge decides that Apple abuses are legal the Google will do it too, then the you will say "Buy a FSF phone if you don't want Silicon Valley abuses, nobody is forcing you to have a phone or Internet"

What abuses? They are doing nothing that game consoles haven't been doing for 40 years now, or mobile stores since J2ME, Brew, Windows CE/Pocket PC locked to the mobile operator.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#465

Post by colejohnson66 »

Fnoord wrote: post #454
jfim wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy it on Steam now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/526870/Satisfactory/

Sure, years later. Compare to Iron Harvest, for example. You could invest in the development via Kickstarter. Which boils down to making the project happen (due to lack of otherwise investors aka due to crowdfunding). Now, basically right after release, you can buy the game from Steam, too, but you pay full price for it (in contrast to the crowdfunders). Contrast this to EGS. Stuff gets released on Steam many months…

A recent example of Epic exclusives was Borderlands 3. It was highly anticipated, and then it came out that it would be exclusive to EGS for 6 months. I refuse to use EGS (for my own reasons), so when the hype died down after a few months and it arrived on Steam, I forgot to buy it. In fact, I still keep forgetting.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#466

Post by Fnoord »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #457
Fnoord wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that Epic pays companies a sack of money to have exclusive right for a title, to have it temporarily only available on EGS. I don't like to be bound to any launcher or store. Apple doesn't force you to only use their own launcher; only on their own platform, or if you use their platform to complete the sale (which sounds as odd as it is).

> The irony is that Epic pays companies a sack of money to have exclusive right for a title, to have it temporarily only available on EGS. But that doesn't require you to use EGS for anything else , and the cost of using multiple game stores is minor, because installing them is free. And how do you mean that Apple doesn't force you to use only their own launcher and platform? If I want iMessage, I not only have to bu…

The thing with games and such creative content (such as also movies and series) is the hype is after release. If you watch Game of Thrones a year later because that is when it is available, you end up with spoilers.

> To avoid this I would have to buy two separate phones at a cost of hundreds of dollars, with two separate phone contracts and phone numbers, and then carry them both around.

I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well. You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage [1]. Its true that some Apple software is specific to their platforms though.

Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where. An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with your disliking of Apple's practices. Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.

[1] https://airmessage.org/

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#467

Post by colejohnson66 »

tssva wrote: post #353
canofbars wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem here is that companies are forced to accept apples terms. Because apple controls every level of the stack, to opt out of the App store ToS you have to opt out of the store, the OS, and the hardware. If there was a way to install apps outside of the store this would not be an issue. Most users and developers would still use the app store since it provides value but devs who feel that they can supply t…

Android allows installation of apps outside of the Google Play store but Epic is pursuing the same path against Google.

Didn’t Epic initially go around the Play Store and require you to download an installer from their website? And then it turned out that it was a good malware vector? That’s what I fear will happen if we get alternate stores: lax security leading to malware.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#468

Post by wrsh07 »

canofbars wrote: post #337
danbolt wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We better start launching apps for Pinephones and asking MNT Research to make a phone, then.

The simple solution to this is a law requiring that all general purpose computing devices (Lets define this as something that the user can install and run programs on) must provide a feature to run unauthenticated 3rd party software. Android, Windows and Linux already allow this and macOS used to. IMO this should extend to game consoles too. You should be able to run homebrew games and tools on a console.

I agree with this completely. (And also don't think the current laws support Epic)

However, I am curious about what happens when you force xbox to run unauthenticated 3rd party software. The reason why consoles can be priced the way they are (very low, usually taking losses) is because the company makes it back on game sales.

So what happens? Microsoft is in a solid position with its "stream to system" upcoming hardware, but I think this will force console prices to go up.

As soon as you can run anything on a console, the creators of the console no longer have the same LTV per customer (gamers will buy from cheaper app stores). Additionally, you'll have new demand for consoles for eg deep learning applications on xbox (this increases the value of a console)

I think this is fundamentally bad for the console ecosystem, although I think Microsoft (and its console division) will be fine because of their investments in "x cloud"

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#469

Post by Fnoord »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #465
Fnoord wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, years later. Compare to Iron Harvest, for example. You could invest in the development via Kickstarter. Which boils down to making the project happen (due to lack of otherwise investors aka due to crowdfunding). Now, basically right after release, you can buy the game from Steam, too, but you pay full price for it (in contrast to the crowdfunders). Contrast this to EGS. Stuff gets released on Steam many months…

A recent example of Epic exclusives was Borderlands 3. It was highly anticipated, and then it came out that it would be exclusive to EGS for 6 months. I refuse to use EGS (for my own reasons), so when the hype died down after a few months and it arrived on Steam, I forgot to buy it. In fact, I still keep forgetting.

I get free games every month with Amazon Prime. I can only use this via the Twitch launcher (doesn't even work on Linux AFAIK).

Borderlands 3 I bought when it came out on Steam, I believe in start of Steam release it was on sale. Else I wouldn't have picked it up, simple as that. They release DLCs for the game, so that's nice, and keeps it a little bit alive I suppose.

Guild Wars 2 recently launched on Steam (like 8 years after release). I cannot merge my Guild Wars 2 account to Steam though, so its useless to me.

Humblebundle, in contrast to platforms like EGS, yields you serials you can apply to a launcher, usually Steam. That's convenient, but I suppose it isn't for people who don't want to use Steam.

Though I'm a heavy Steam user, so Steam being the defacto standard is fine with me.

I don't want another launcher, therefore I either use Steam or use Lutris to abstract all other launchers (and emulators and such).

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#470

Post by colejohnson66 »

tylorr wrote: post #270
cf_ wrote: post #203

I really wish there was a third party - the customer - actually represented in this trial. Apple and Epic arguing over what is best for the customer, while clearly they are having their own interests in mind, screams for the actual customers to be represented. The whole argument about them promoting an app „for free“ is a bit ridiculous. They clearly knew the amount of commission they were going to earn from pushing…

> Let‘s see how valuable everybody thinks the App Store is when they actually have to pay an access fee directly to Apple Many apps compensate for the apple fees by increasing the IAP prices. So they already do but may not be aware of it I guess.

I’m partial to Apple in this case, but one of the arguments against Apple is that those higher costs harm consumers by making them pay more than they can somewhere else.
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