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Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

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Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#511

Post by thaumasiotes »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #485
thaumasiotes wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Northgard requires Galaxy for single-player content. It's not subtle about it. Your response says more about what you can tell with a quick google search than anything else. I'm fascinated that I've been complaining about this here on HN for months, and the only response I ever get -- which comes up every time -- is "what are you talking about, that's not true". This isn't a matter of opinion. It's not even difficult…

When checking Northgard, Galaxy seems to be required for "online content". So it at least seems right that Galaxy is not optional for some stuff. However, I haven't found any evidence that Galaxy is required for single player. In fact, I found evidence to the contrary: the game has a Linux version, where Galaxy is not available.

Jesus Christ. Your failure to find evidence is not an argument. It's not hard to find!

Here's a prominent forum thread in the Northgard forum on GoG: https://www.gog.com/forum/northgard/warning_gog_galaxy_is_re...

Note that title: "Warning: GOG Galaxy is required to use conquest mode."

Conquest mode is a single-player mode. In fact, it's the only mode that allows you to use any of the Northgard DLC content. Without running Galaxy, all you can do is run through the story campaign.

What is your mental model of my commenting here? I posted a rant complaining about deluded people contradicting the basic facts every time I bring this up, and that's the comment you responded to in order to... demonstrate an example? Did you really think I was just making it all up?

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#512

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Fnoord wrote: post #466
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #457

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. 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 iMessa…

> 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.

So you get it from whichever store has it early. That's kind of the point. But as long as that store isn't requiring you to buy their particular kind of device or preclude you from using other stores on your device, it's not the same problem.

> I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well.

It's a messaging app. It goes on your phone. And that would still require you to spend hundreds on an Apple device, then hundreds more on an Android device.

> You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage

Which not only requires you to buy both devices, now the Apple device has to be a desktop which you have to leave turned on and burning electricity at all times in order to receive messages on your phone.

It isn't not a problem just because you can work around it by walking up hill both ways in the snow every summer, it's a problem because people aren't actually going to do it that way.

> 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.

None of that stuff is huge. It doesn't prevent people from doing it in practice.

> 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.

Yes, exactly, which then addresses your concerns with having multiple stores -- but only if you can have multiple stores and use a single interface for all of them.

For example, where is the version of Pidgin which runs on Android and is compatible with iMessage without using some kind of farcical relay system? Who is the party that prevents this from existing?

> Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.

It turns out that if you apply "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" to the legal system, nobody would have standing and perpetrators could never be held to account. Fortunately that's not how it works.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#513

Post by ac29 »

lawtalkinghuman wrote: post #400
seventhtiger wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just add a billing item "30% Apple Fee" and you'll know their true feelings.

The app store: now with the usability of US sales taxes.

Not really, US local sales taxes are added after sale to the advertised price and can change from one side of a street to the other. App store fees are included in the price and the same everywhere.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#514

Post by beaner »

valuearb wrote: post #497
beaner wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple once let somebody hack my account and purchase the same $20 app 15 times. When I complained, they ignored me. When I charged back the purchases, they canceled my Apple account. Purchasing the same app more than once on the same device shouldn't even be possible. This was back in 2011, but... definitely didn't build trust. But you guys aren't arguing the actual point anyway. The question is whether the forced ap…

I’m sorry for your loss. But Apple believes the opposite of you, has direct contact with nearly a billion customers, and spends massively on safety/security which they wouldn’t do if it wasn’t important to customers.

I have nothing wrong with that. But again, besides the point that this path is always, necessarily beneficial to all users and all developers. It isn't.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#515

Post by simion314 »

pjmlp wrote: post #478
simion314 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO consoles are an historic thing, this days I think if you pay full price to a console then you should have all the rights to unlock it, and if Sony wants to limit me then this should only work if I did not buy the product but I have a subscription for it. Other giant difference between smartphones and consoles is that smartphones and internet are required for a majority of people (banking, messaging/email, COVID a…

People can get Internet via other means, and there are plenty of ways to do phone calls.

So you see this smartphones as just different kind of consoles. Maybe you just play games on them but reality is more diverse. For example in real world you are forced to own a smartphone by work or society , like parking,banking, different activities are this days setup for phone users and if you don't own one you are forced to do a lot of extra work.

A few years ago some money exchanges were abusing the users by having large commissions rates, then a law was passed so this commissions will be printed in large fonts outside the exchange, this worked so maybe we can force Apple to print with large fonts on the box "30% of all future transactions go to Apple" (Apple can add with smaller fonts that they have some special exceptions) or "Apple decides what can you install and can change it's mind at any moment".

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#516

Post by pier25 »

pjmlp wrote: post #319
pier25 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. From the court documents, Apple said there are 27M AppStore registered devs. Even if only half of those pay $100 per year that's still about $1.3B per year.

Pennies, when compared with console devkit prices.

Those devs do still need a Mac and (most likely) an iOS device too. There's your dev kit.

Edit:

It's even worse than with consoles as every dev needs at least a Mac. When developing for consoles most work is not done on the dev kit itself.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#517

Post by Bud »

loktarogar wrote: post #245
Bud wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's laughable. It's been shown over and over that iOS customers spend a lot more money than Android customers.

iOS in its first year was only 20% of EPIC's overall Fortnite revenue that year. I'm not comparing iOS to Android - i'm comparing iOS to every platform EPIC makes money on. 20% is a big chunk yes, but 2 billion instead of 2.5 billion is still a ton of money, and they're obviously willing to sacrifice in order to get to their real goal - bringing the EPIC game store to iOS

You're cherry-picking your data. What about the % of revenue in 2020, or in 2019?

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#518

Post by simion314 »

pjmlp wrote: post #483
simion314 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. Let's assume that Apple wins. Smartphones makers can legally completely lock the users so you run only what they approve. In your opinion if Android is locked then is the argument "use Android if you don't like iOS walls" completely obliterated? I am curious if TikTok gets banned and then will Apple remove the app from existing phones or somehow block it and will they do it for non US citizens (inside and outside…

No, because that is how game consoles have been doing for 40 years now. I also don't get to choose what goes into my cable tv box software although it runs some strange Linux distribution, and I really don't care.

Your arguments are ilogical, try thinking more before commenting, is like saying "We could shit behind our homes since generations but the new king is demanding we build toilets and also to wash our hands" - if something was legal in the past for millennia does not mean it should not change.

Consider that there will be a judge and a trial and you can't claim that someone else started it , you need to show the judge that the users are not hurt by Apple businesses and IMO if we are lucky a law will be passed that will also fix console issues too.

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#519

Post by gamblor956 »

stale2002 wrote: post #287
threeseed wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently, what Apple is doing violates EU and US antitrust laws Please provide legal documents equivocally stating this.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890

It's not actually the Sherman Antitrust Act they violate, since that law specifically requires a monopoly.

It's the followup laws broadening the Sherman Antitrust Act that Apple violates. The amendments to the Sherman Act target anti-competitive behavior that results in market distortive effects, even in the absence of a monopoly. This includes price-fixing, collusion, and using leverage in one market to interfere with the market dynamics of another (usually smaller) market (see, e.g., Microsoft). There is at least one landmark case in which minor market participants were found to have violated the antitrust laws because their collusion would have anticompetitive effects even though their combined market share was less than half of the market, though the case dates to a more active time in antitrust jurisprudence.

Apple is no stranger to anti-competitive behavior; they are in fact the banner case for the last big antitrust case...which similarly did not involve a monopoly of any sort. (The book price-fixing case.)

Re: Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages

#520

Post by gamblor956 »

pjmlp wrote: post #246
gamblor956 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. Sony and MS games can be programmed without licenses or devkits (which make it much easier to debug games by providing debug access not available on retail consoles). Moreover, devkits are frequently made available for free by both companies to indie developers and even major partners.

Please provide the link for the Sony SDK, and Microsoft's XDK. In Microsoft's case, UWP on XBox doesn't count as it is castrated to the actual OS capabilities, and hasn't been updated for a while and most likely it won't.

SDK:https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers

In some version of Visual Studio the SDK can be downloaded from within the program.

XDK: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/xbox-live/get-starte...

The XDK (aka HDK) includes physical hardware and is intended for more demanding games.

Sony SDK: https://www.companyregistration.playstation.com/SCEInternetA...

The Sony SDK and HDKs are available to registered partners only, though registration is free and the SDK (but not the HDK) is free to all partners.

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