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Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

reuters.com

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Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#581

Post by parasubvert »

dragonwriter wrote: post #572
parasubvert wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This completely misses the point of capitalism and successful business. The whole purpose of a business is to create (and keep) a customer. The two ways it does that are innovation and marketing. Yes, there can be cases where customers are cheated, but they won't be customers for long. It's not about "extracting maximum value and giving as little back in return". That's an extremely simplistic argument that bares no…

> The whole purpose of a business is to create (and keep) a customer No, the whole point of a capitalist business is to produce returns for the business’s owners. Acquiring and retaining customers is valuable insofar as there is more value to be profitably extracted from the customer; it is instrumental, not an independent goal. > The two ways it does that are innovation and marketing. Well, no, monopolization is its…

> No, the whole point of a capitalist business is to produce returns for the business’s owners. Acquiring and retaining customers is valuable insofar as there is more value to be profitably extracted from the customer; it is instrumental, not an independent goal.

This is completely wrong. You can’t have returns without customers.

> Extracting maximum value at minimum cost (maximizing return on investment) is what business is about. Everything else is about techniques to achieve that goal. You've apparently been distracted by the techniques to acheive the goal and missed the actual goal.

Creating customers is not a “technique”. It is the essential act. You can have a business that’s not profitable. You can have a business that doesn’t attract much investment. You can have a business that doesn’t maximize profit.

But you can’t have a business if you have no customers.

You’re so distracted by profit and investment that you’ve convinced yourself it’s possible to have a successful or profitable business with no customers.

> “practical monopoly” is One whose existence is evidenced empirically through behavior in 5he market and absence of competitive substitution rather than by arbitrary, non-empirically grounded description of market categories.

In other words, “I know it when I see it”.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#582

Post by ucm_edge »

SCHiM wrote: post #197
dubcanada wrote: post #184

I can hardly wait to use Amazon App Store to install Amazon and then open up the Epic Game Store to install random game and then open up EA Game Store to install random game and then open up Facebook App Store to install Facebook and then open up the Apple App Store to install the Blizzard App Store to install Hearthstone and then go back to the Apple App Store and update the Blizzard App Store so I can get the lates…

You install those yourself you know. I'd rather have a choice than not. I feel your pain in the sense that that I think user UX will take a hit, but I think that's less important than breaking the monopoly of the current app store. For example, I can't find apps with pornography or other types of things the high overlords at apple or Google have deemed inappropriate for me to have. That's bad. Apparently apps like Ma…

Just having that choice though includes a cost. When everyone is forced onto the app store, Apple can censor as you point out, it can demand high percentages on in app transactions, and plenty of other negative things. But it can also demand certain behavior standards, easily deplatform people who abuse (in Apple's eyes) things like tracking (like when they revoked Facebook's cert in 2019), etc.

The minute you open up to multiple stores, much of that control is gone or reduced. Or at least limited. After all Apple also nuked Zoom's webserver off all OS X boxes in 2019 so I'm sure they could kill things via iOS updates.

As a more mundane issue, if now content is segregated across N store fronts, that's now N passwords I need to track, N potential places that my credit card can be stolen from, N stores I need up install, log into, and download apps from when I get a new iOS device, etc. I as a user do lose a lot of quality of life tweaks the moment balkanization of store fronts can occur. I as a consumer do feel I benefit from Apple being able to tell app providers "We have about 40% of the market on our devices and if you want to interact with them, it's our way or the highway. So if you want to sell to them, you will meet or exceed these standards, there are no other options."

Ideally this standard setting would be set by a neutral entity like say a government and applied equally across all personal devices, but US privacy regulations are a joke so basically I'm stuck hoping that Apple continues to see value in branding themselves as the more secure and private phone (I'm suddenly nostalgic for Blackberry).

You always have the recourse of buying an Android and side loading if you want total freedom.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#583

Post by ubersync »

dkonofalski wrote: post #403
gerash wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is part of your reasoning also the fact that devs can't even mention in their apps that they have a website that users can buy their subscription from?

No but that's a reasonable restriction considering that apps would still benefit from the App Store ecosystem but would be able to circumvent the requirements of it.

Wait, what? You argued that a single app store makes apple devices safer. How does not allowing devs to sell subscriptions on their website help with this arguable safety? Don't bullshit.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#584

Post by lapetitejort »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #479
vinger wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those sounds like a very bad user experience. A very bad experience is games disppearing different games appearing after purchasing something else, games not working, memory usage too high..etc No user reviews, no easy help button for noobs, no cloud save, only recently got achievements, can't crush a friends party. all sound like little nice to haves that don't add much value. Does it allow me to find/play t…

Then, no offense, but you might not understand the market very well. Achievements and friends are table stakes these days. Games are primarily a multiplayer experience with friends so platforms absolutely need those things before locking games as exclusives. This would be like shipping an OS without internet access to end-users.

> Achievements and friends are table stakes these days.

Nintendo must have missed this.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#585

Post by BillinghamJ »

wazanator wrote: post #524
BillinghamJ wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely yes. As a user, I really wish Microsoft required the use of their store. Having a single place to go is a lot easier

What you want is Windows 10 S mode. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/s-mode

Only works if it's enforced for all users though. Having all the Windows apps in the single official store is really the only possible way for it to function

Obviously never going to happen, but it'd be a much nicer ecosystem if it did work that way

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#586

Post by BillinghamJ »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #413
BillinghamJ wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely yes. As a user, I really wish Microsoft required the use of their store. Having a single place to go is a lot easier

Quibble: I cannot stand the Microsoft store because I cannot simply delete the apps or even understand why they are there even after I told it to uninstall. I also cannot easily move apps between drives or even control which drive something is installed on sometimes. Steam is the best this way, IMO.

That's actually one thing I quite liked about it - there's some option to just switch an app from one drive to another, and it's one of the only things I've found in Windows which actually "just works"

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#587

Post by ethbr0 »

BrianGragg wrote: post #214
SCHiM wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You install those yourself you know. I'd rather have a choice than not. I feel your pain in the sense that that I think user UX will take a hit, but I think that's less important than breaking the monopoly of the current app store. For example, I can't find apps with pornography or other types of things the high overlords at apple or Google have deemed inappropriate for me to have. That's bad. Apparently apps like Ma…

The problem is the choice is taken away from you though. Just like he said with the game market. If you want to play Game A, you go and download/install Game A's publishing app store. If you want to then play Game B, rinse and repeat. You will be forced to use so many different app stores and won't have a choice to NOT use their app store "IF" it progresses like it has on the desktop. No proof it will/won't either.

> (from parent) need their App Store running in order to play their games

This is the real UX problem.

I have no problem buying from a variety of stores. I do that in real life. Most required (pre-Covid) me to walk in each of their doors.

What's a problem is requiring the installed & running presence of a particular App Store to run an app.

If I legally purchased something, why is a particular App Store even still required? If I want to re-install (new device) then I can download it again?

If we're talking updates... I'm happy to forgo update pushing. And renting software with subscriptions just needs to die.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#588

Post by cycloptic »

Arainach wrote: post #575
cycloptic wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is all of that really a problem when the companies seem to have shown that none of that matters? The increased cut is apparently more valuable to them. And I also should note, half of those items don't need to implemented in a store. People ask for them because they are implemented as extras in other stores, but strictly speaking the distribution and support are the only things the store needs to have to be called a…

That sounds like the same class of argument as "all an operating system needs to provide is process scheduling and hardware access". It doesn't match user expectations and it certainly isn't a good user experience. Having to sign into a different account for every game to get basic functionality is a nightmare. Users want to purchase a game from a store, install it, play it, and have everything work. That's it - no o…

The answer to that isn't putting all stores but one out of business, it's having a single-sign-on provider.

Also, I doubt you would criticize an embedded OS for only having process scheduling and hardware access, because that's probably all it was designed to do. Similarly, a low-cost store may want to skip on providing all those extra features so they can keep prices down.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#589

Post by cgriswald »

threeseed wrote: post #560
bombela wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I barely play anymore. Because with all the intermediate updates and transient failures, it takes longer to start the game than the time you would spend casually playing during a week evening.

Exactly why people buy consoles. For the same experience as you get with an iPhone.

The problem referenced by the GP is worse on consoles in my experience. Did the system software get updated today? Well, no network features for you until you download it.

What about that video streaming app? Well, there's a new version, so you have to download that right now or you can't watch. Oh, and we logged you out. Get out your phone or computer and type in this link. Then log in there and type this code. Make sure you enable all javascript because otherwise this won't work. Also, there will be an awkward pause after the computer tells you you've activated where the console won't indicate the same and you'll wonder if it even worked.

Granted, some consoles handle this better than others.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#590

Post by kdmytro »

dubcanada wrote: post #184

I can hardly wait to use Amazon App Store to install Amazon and then open up the Epic Game Store to install random game and then open up EA Game Store to install random game and then open up Facebook App Store to install Facebook and then open up the Apple App Store to install the Blizzard App Store to install Hearthstone and then go back to the Apple App Store and update the Blizzard App Store so I can get the lates…

Yes, freedom is such an encumbrance. Life is so much easier when someone makes all the decisions for me.
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