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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

#671

Post by jrockway »

Zash wrote: post #624
jrockway wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is annoying how every PC game company tries to be a social network and persistent advertising daemon. But a launcher is not necessary to keep an app updated. Look at Chrome -- you install it, and it stays up to date. Blizzard could do that for their games and Epic could do that for their games, but they want extra money from putting ads in a launcher. (Actually, they seem to always be "house ads", so they aren't r…

Aside: Epic Games already uses XMPP according to https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/postmortem-of-...

That's a really good postmortem.

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

#672

Post by ben_w »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #114
ben_w wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. Hypothetical: if you modify the software in a Tesla, and your modification allows a hacker to remote control it, and this power is used to commit vehicular homicide, how much of the burden of responsibility do you have? I’m not a lawyer, so while I can throw out phrases like “endangering others through negligence”, I don’t know what the threshold is or even if that’s the right concept in this case. With regards t…

> Hypothetical: if you modify the software in a Tesla, and your modification allows a hacker to remote control it, and this power is used to commit vehicular homicide, how much of the burden of responsibility do you have? If you were negligent , I'd say you were responsible, just like if you hit someone because you took off the breaks and couldn't stop. Although... response question: Let's say in ten years, Tesla sto…

> Which is to say, I'm not super into this whole internet-connected-car thing. ;)

Likewise, similar reasons.

> What if I decide to carry around a Raspberry Pi, or wear a wire?

Smartphone-software-based attacks target a wide net of unknowing victims, wearing a wire (or knowingly running a sousveilence app, which I’m all in favour of) targets just those you choose to target.

For the same reason, I regard state-mandated encryption backdoors as a much bigger privacy risk than the state giving the police authority to target specific suspects with wiretaps or even authority to replace all the target’s lightbulbs with ones that have built-in webcams — dragnet or spearfishing.

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

#673

Post by geocar »

zpeti wrote: post #12
aboringusername wrote: post #11

It feels a bit hypocritical when Apple laughs at FB for complaining about their new tracking pop-up yet when the shoe's on the other foot and Apple may actually have to compete on its own platform they double down and defend their right to be judge, jury and executioner. Apple competing with third party app stores on iOS is going to be amazing. No computer platform should be allowed to prevent sideloading or other st…

One of the absolutely obvious hypocritical things for me is that they don't allow anyone to say in their app that "Apple gets 30% of this fee" That's the equivalent of the IDFA message for Facebook. Which everyone will see, its worded in a very negative way, and it's a must.

Same reason the FDA doesn't want growers to list optional tests on the packaging: it implies the producer cares more about food safety than the FDA. The consumer should know better, but they don't.

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

#674

Post by africanboy »

NationalPark wrote: post #433
pennaMan wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Apple blessed us with it's ground breaking technology to restrict the software you are allowed to have on your own device we did just fine getting software on our devices using a file system and the internet.

Come on, we all remember what it was like going to Source Forge and trying to figure out which download button got you the malware you were actually trying to install. Don't pretend like that was a utopia.

honestly the worst moments of SF have nothing to do with app stores.

with today's operating systems 99.99℅ of the malware of the past would be detected before being downloaded.

truth is vulnerabilities are still being discovered and exploited, even with the app stores

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-fixes-another-three-ios-...

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

#675

Post by PandawanFr »

yellowapple wrote: post #499
bombela wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many standalone downloads in fact come with the publisher app store. Thay must runs in order to start the game. The end result is the same. And the store will update the game anyways, often re-downloading the equivalent of half the game (we are talking 50GB scale here). Sometimes you can use another publisher app store. Which will in fact start another app store upon starting the game. In turn starting the game. And…

> Sometimes you can use another publisher app store. Which will in fact start another app store upon starting the game. Not saying this doesn't ever happen, but I've used Steam for more than a decade now and not once have I seen that happen, ever. Yes, some games have separate launchers, and yes, sometimes these have support for their own separate accounts and mod loaders and such, but not once have they actually bee…

Ubisoft does this for games that are shared with Steam. You launch the game on Uplay which starts Steam which starts the game.

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

#676

Post by Dylan16807 »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #565
Dylan16807 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even assuming the only reason App Store revenue is that high is because of the store itself, we shouldn't treat the policies as one indivisible work set in stone. You can have a properly curated store with 10% fees, for example. And you can block malware without blocking alternative web browsers or game streaming apps.

The policies are more than fair. People on HN get mad when others make money, but they never get mad when they want to make money too. > You can have a properly curated store with 10% fees, for example. And you can block malware without blocking alternative web browsers or game streaming apps. It becomes much more difficult and time consuming, and why 10%? The service is unbelievable - it provides great access to a p…

> The policies are more than fair.

More than fair? Okay then, tell me what percent is fair.

> People on HN get mad when others make money, but they never get mad when they want to make money too.

The problem is not that they make money, it's that they are engineering a lack of competition in order to keep their prices arbitrarily high.

> It becomes much more difficult and time consuming, and why 10%? The service is unbelievable - it provides great access to a platform and its high spending users. That is worth more than 10%.

Charging a significant percentage for "providing access to users" is rent-seeking. That's not a good thing.

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

#677

Post by Dma54rhs »

thereddaikon wrote: post #658
aboringusername wrote: post #11

It feels a bit hypocritical when Apple laughs at FB for complaining about their new tracking pop-up yet when the shoe's on the other foot and Apple may actually have to compete on its own platform they double down and defend their right to be judge, jury and executioner. Apple competing with third party app stores on iOS is going to be amazing. No computer platform should be allowed to prevent sideloading or other st…

The fact that you called it sideloading just shows how successful Apple has been in warping people's perception of it over the years. Installing the software you want on your compute device isn't sideloading. Its just installing software. Apple is aberration here not all of the users who just expect to actually own the products they buy.

It's depressing that even on hackernews where you expect people want to tinker and have control over their machines there's a probably a majority who are happy with the situation and use the think of my grandma (aka children) using iPhone situation. There could be numerous ways for Apple to let people run their own software or other stores without giving your grandma malware.

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

#678

Post by leokennis »

aboringusername wrote: post #11

It feels a bit hypocritical when Apple laughs at FB for complaining about their new tracking pop-up yet when the shoe's on the other foot and Apple may actually have to compete on its own platform they double down and defend their right to be judge, jury and executioner. Apple competing with third party app stores on iOS is going to be amazing. No computer platform should be allowed to prevent sideloading or other st…

My counter argument is this:

Everyone I know who uses an iPhone or iPad is generally using medium to high quality apps, and not suffering from crapware, slowdowns or weird issues.

Everyone I know who uses an Android phone is always complains about weird app behavior, ranging from crummy software quality to flashlight apps that request access to your contact list. And my guess is these people use Googles Play Store.

Somehow, Apple is doing something that is beneficial to the average Joe buyer of smartphones.

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

#679

Post by danShumway »

katbyte wrote: post #553
colinmhayes wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine hating something so trivial that provides real tangible benefits so much.

it's not trivial? its multiple accounts and multiple things to install and juggle - not everyone has the latest and greatest computer. Not to mention are you 100% sure those stores and your purchases will continue to exist longer than steam ect? regardless, I hate it too but i really don't care, companies like EA and epic can do whatever they want and i just don't install or play games not on steam or the ps4 stores…

> Not to mention are you 100% sure those stores and your purchases will continue to exist longer than steam ect

This is more of people complaining about DRM and acting like giving Steam a monopoly over the market is a solution. If you're worried about a company going under and you losing your purchases, the solution to that problem is to not tie game access to an account.

People are looking at a clearly inferior system and saying, "it's OK, Valve will do such a good job that I won't notice the flaws."

You don't have a problem with too much store diversity, you have a problem with DRM and the constant need for you to have a good-standing Steam account and a computer running their client in order for you to access any of your games. But Steam is only a solution to your problem if the company never goes out of business, never bans you, never starts doing shady stuff, never gets overshadowed by competitor... those are not safe bets for you to make.

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

#680

Post by CivBase »

dwaite wrote: post #661
CivBase wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My gaming computer is already filled with like 8 different app stores each completely different then the other and a variety of privacy/security issues on each. Do you honestly think this is a worse scenario than having to buy all of your apps/games through Microsoft's app store? Can you imagine using macOS without homebrew because everything has to come from Apple's app store? Can you imagine using Ubuntu without…

> Can you imagine using macOS without homebrew because everything has to come from Apple's app store? No, because I would have never used macOS if there were limitations that prevented me from being able to do my job. And imagining a world where Apple restricted macOS in such a way is a rather unlikely hypothetical. The big difference is that iOS has _never_ had these capabilities. Many people have opted into the cur…

> A closer equivalent there to the current game app stores would be always-on licensing servers which used physical dongles - the game stores are running basically as licensing servers. And professionals _hated_ these. Even software-based licensing servers over the LAN is much less common in professional software these days.

While it's true that apps for PC game stores often double as DRM, I don't think that's relevant to a discussion of whether or not Apple should be compelled to allow for third-party app distribution platforms and the "side loading" of apps on iOS.

After all, there is little stopping you from implementing always-on DRM on an iOS app. You'd just have to implement it in the app directly, which is how PC games used to do it before modern platforms became popular. The rise of those platforms (Steam in particular) had a lot to do with the downfall of oft-maligned DRM solutions like SecuROM. Software-embedded DRM tech like Denuvo are still a blight on PC gaming, but they're at least less common than they once were.

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