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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

#941

Post by kingsleyopara »

wraptile wrote: post #905
kingsleyopara wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a little short-sighted. Epic are not a charity. Discounts are clearly a ploy to capture marketshare from Steam et al... Games/products will always be priced the most the market is willing to pay for it. If just before launch costs drop by half do you really think the price drops by half?

PC gaming has been the most competitive and consumer beneficial software platform by an absurd margin for a long time now. I'm sure we can attribute at least some of this to the freedom of the market?

> consumer beneficial software platform

For people like (excuse my bluntness) us hacker news types sure. I can make a case that for a large chunk of the population this is not true - consoles are popular because people don't want to have to deal with the added complexity that came from "freedom".

If Epic wins, any user who wanted a walled garden (e.g. iOS) rather than open (e.g. Android) will be deprived of that choice. Ultimately, having looked into this quite a bit, I think this boils down to a debate whether the walled garden business model should be legal.

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

#942

Post by toastal »

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…

I would LOVE to see Steam on mobile so I could play/sync my game library. The also take a hefty cut, but at least they've taken some of that cash to increase Linux compatibility.

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

#943

Post by cryptonym »

zepto wrote: post #376
cryptonym wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally how it's implemented in the rest of the world: store owner cannot list items that are restricted, by law. Sotres can determine what goes in them, under constraints decided by society/people/governments (law).

> This is literally how it's implemented in the rest of the world Clearly not. Which department stores are forced to carry products they don’t want to deal with?

Your proposition was allowing third party store, but in the end letting Apple choose what is good or not. I'm just saying it's risky and we already have tools to decide what is good or not. A private company in full control of rules & implementation doesn't sounds like an efficient way to open a market.

That was not about forcing stores to list everything - might be an idea when there is a monopoly. Don't know if this situation exists, that's a different topic.

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

#944

Post by kmlx »

malwrar wrote: post #817
elefanten wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except as soon as it becomes a remotely feasible action (with simple instructions) for the general consumer, a bunch of businesses will start requiring their users to disable "default Grandma mode". Imagine onboarding for Netflix including a pleasantly designed screen saying "Before you can use Netflix, you must Enable Third-party Stores. Go to Settings > Privacy..." If that comes to pass, there will be no highly-gua…

> the market has spoken. And it's happy. When has the market been given a choice? App Stores have been the only way to get software on iPhones since they were first released. I can't even install an alternative OS on my iPhone, and jailbreaking seems to have become less accessible now too. How do we know what experience is more competitive if competition isn't allowed to blossom? Maybe the market would value an alter…

> When has the market been given a choice?

Android.

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

#945

Post by kmlx »

echelon wrote: post #832
leadingthenet wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, though? Why does everything need to become like Android? Why can’t Apple and its users do their own thing? What’s with this Borg mentality HN has when it comes to Apple? Assimilate or perish. I genuinely think it’s deep seated envy, frankly.

> Why does everything need to become like Android? It's not like Android. It's like computers before iPhone . > Why can’t Apple and its users do their own thing? Because if I want my startup to succeed, I have to have an iPhone app. Apple makes this hostile to everyone that isn't them. You need design approval to push updates, you can't deploy when you want. You have to pay the 30% tax and use Apple payment rails. Yo…

> Because if I want my startup to succeed, I have to have an iPhone app.

This is false.

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

#946

Post by dmitriid »

kaba0 wrote: post #936
dmitriid wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again: how do you imagine the imaginary free market works?

How do you imagine the real world works? Even in the very text written by Adam Smith he says that free market only works in a regulated environment. Because once a few gets big enough, they can control the whole market. Why do you think Microsoft failed even with the tremendous amount of money they poured into and even with having an arguibly great UX?

> How do you imagine the real world works?

The way it works. It's not me complaining about "Free market doesn’t work that way."

> Because once a few gets big enough, they can control the whole market.

Yes, yes they will.

So what is, exactly, the nature of your complaint?

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

#947

Post by _kbh_ »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #677
thereddaikon wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are numerous ways for anyone to run whatever software they feel like on a iPhone. One of those is literally a application store called AltStore.

https://altstore.io

AltStore lets you run your own app store locally on your own network and push app's to your phone from it.

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

#948

Post by username90 »

40four wrote: post #899
gretch wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such principle in our free society of what is and isn’t a fair and equitable business transaction. The only tool we have for that is what the market (supply and demand) will yield. I can take a tiny piece of carbon, call it a diamond and sell it for 50,000. Is it fair and equitable? Should that be allowed? I can take a white T shirt and print a red Supreme logo on it and sell it for 100x cost of productio…

I mean sure, you’re getting really deep and philosophical on economics here. I’m happy to have that conversation too, but I think it’s a different conversation, and one we should have over some beers :) I’m not sure how you took it as far as me arguing against free markets, but I was just trying to speak of my perception of this very specific example. I don’t think it’s fair for them to take 3/10ths of every business…

> The card reader networks take a 3% cut and we’re all ok with that.

EU busted that, so in EU it is illegal to take more than a 0.3% cut instead. Because after investigations that was roughly how much they need to be profitable. The 3% fee you see in USA is just 1000% markup.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if app store fees are found to be reasonable at about 3% level and EU enforcing that, just like they lowered credit card fees by a factor 10.

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

#949

Post by redwall_hp »

dkonofalski wrote: post #303
sheepdestroyer wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App store are good, not argument. The inability of side loading beside the store is what is being critisized.

That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things.

Imagine how much safer it would be if you got rid of the App Store and weren't allowed to install any third party software.

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

#950

Post by MayeulC »

throw_away892 wrote: post #171
the_duke wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't the case on Android. I'd argue that it is till the case on Android. Yes, alternate stores are possible, but they are severely handicapped. First, manual APK install has to be enabled in obscure settings that come with a "scary" warning. Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update. Epic gave up on running their own store on Android due to the difficulties…

> First, manual APK install has to be enabled in obscure settings that come with a "scary" warning. Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing. It's a general security notification. > Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update. Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes? We've already established that the official s…

>> Then they can't provide auto-updates but require a manual confirmation for each version update.

> Again, how is this a deterrent? How many times a day do you have to accept the new changes?

That would be about 10 times a day on average (sometimes 3, sometimes 30) for me. I have 125 apps installed from F-Droid (no google services, two external apps: Signal and the local contact tracing app), it would be a chore to update them without privileged extension, especially as some of these are nightly and get updated everyday.

> We've already established that the official store will always be designed to provide the best experience ootb compared to the 'installed' one.

F-Droid gives me a better experience, except for the bugs. Now, it's intentionally crippled by Google, so you can call Google Play "designed for a better experience" if you want.

I picked the platform due to the features, not due to the store "expericence". I would like to pick that one separately, my best experience is different from yours.

> This is true for all the other platforms where you need manual intervention to install/maintain apps "unofficially".

Not true. On windows, most auto-updaters do not need user confirmation to perform updates. Most platforms have package managers that can auto-update their packages (steam, npm, pip, texlive, nix, aptitude, pacman, apk, flatpak, whatever). Their access to the system isn't artificially restricted.

Granted, a number of these package managers could work on Android today (like a chroot), but that would be a subpar experience.

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