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Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

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Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#271

Post by bioemerl »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #203
bioemerl wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers don't pay that 30 percent, users do. You could even say that steam is a customer of the developers (I buy your game at x to sell for y), and the average person is a customer of steam and the devs. I don't really see the customers or the developers as the core. Both groups tie into each other in a big network effect.

That is a pointless distinction. 30% of the price is distributed to Valve instead of developers. Whether that results in developers obtaining lower profits or users paying higher prices is entirely subjective; that depends on what would happen otherwise, which is categorically unprovable.

It's not pointless at all, the fact that all the money comes out of my pocket is really signific ant it comes to determining who the real customer of valve is.

If it's a point of issue between me, Valve, and the game developers, at the end of the day it's my decision that matters because I have the money and if I choose not to spend it the whole thing stops working.

Take away valve and then I go straight to the source and purchase games from the developers directly, it's going to be inconvenient, but it'll be fine.

Take away the developers and valve will fund game development and start making their own stuff like Netflix has with all the media companies.

Take away the customers? Game over.

Of logic works all right when you're talking about Google and the fact that the advertisers are the real customers, because of the end of the day the advertisers have the money and when it is advertisers versus users the advertisers always win.

It's important to be the guy funding the system at the end of the day, otherwise you get screwed.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#272

Post by imiric »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #264
tagyro wrote: post #84

My comment is going to get downvoted (or worse, ignored), but here I go again: We, as software engineers (or working in the field), have the power to not implement these features when our employer asks us to do it. Everyday we read about organisations using dark patterns in their (software) products and then we come to HN to complain about it. How did these features get built? By whom? Yes, I realise not everyone has…

> We, as software engineers (or working in the field), have the power to not implement these features when our employer asks us to do it. You don't, but, doctors and structural engineers do. I was saying for years that a licensing proffeshional body, like the one other proffesions have, would improve things in our industry. When was the last time a bridge fell down because someone boss bullied a structural engineer i…

> When was the last time a bridge fell down because someone boss bullied a structural engineer into suigning it off?

Not necessarily that scenario, but this happens all the time. See the recent catastrophe in Turkey.

But I do agree that a tech license to uphold ethics makes sense. The problem is that the negative effects of tech aren't as clear-cut as from a bridge falling down. We still don't know what the long-term effects of social media are. Advertising rules all media, yet it's one of the most manipulative and harmful industries to have ever existed. These are not going anywhere because they have made many people very rich, and now these people have enormous influence over legislators and governments.

Speaking of legislators, they're hopelessly tech illiterate, and unprepared to regulate tech in any way. It took them decades to regulate industries that were literally killing people. How long do you think it will take for them to catch up to Big Tech?

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#273

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

dkersten wrote: post #223
vuln wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting thought exercise.

I forced a book publisher to re-host videos on a particular CDN using the exact same URL’s because they advertised that the book came with videos, but the QR codes stopped working. Can’t imagine that was fun or cheap to fix. I made a complaint to the advertising standards authority in the UK. They agreed with my complaint and forced the publisher to get the URL’s working again. I’m not sure how long they will keep wo…

Bravo!

I've often been off put by books that advertise that they link to some sort of digital content because I can't trust that said content will be around when I want to actually access it. It never occurred to me they could be forced to host it, and I'm glad someone did that to at least one publisher once

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#274

Post by jhanschoo »

bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

Note of course that these are the terms of a settlement, and I don't think this has any legal implications on digital licensing and identity management.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#275

Post by mock-possum »

degenerate wrote: post #9

> In Spring 2018, Epic executives and managers discussed adding a confirm purchase button to prevent accidental purchases. Though employees were concerned that “it is a bit of a dark UX pattern to not have confirmation on ‘destructive’ actions,” Epic feared that adding a confirmation button would add “friction,” “result in a decent number of people second guessing their purchase,” and reduce the number of “impulse pu…

> Epic feared that adding a confirmation button would add “friction,” “result in a decent number of people second guessing their purchase,” and reduce the number of “impulse purchases.”

yeah, it would have absolutely done that.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#276

Post by squeaky-clean »

bioemerl wrote: post #157
capableweb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also why steam is still the leader despite having a terrible UI: they have been very good to their customers. Steams core customer is the game developers/publishers, who they take a ~30% (last time I checked) cut from the profits from. The people who buy games are simply users of Steam, and Steam has to treat them well, otherwise their actual customers (developers/publishers) won't get as much profits, and indirect…

Developers don't pay that 30 percent, users do. You could even say that steam is a customer of the developers (I buy your game at x to sell for y), and the average person is a customer of steam and the devs. I don't really see the customers or the developers as the core. Both groups tie into each other in a big network effect.

If you buy a game directly from the publisher you don't get a discount for that 30% cut on Steam. For publishers with over $50 million in sales, they take 20%. But it costs the same price to buy Assassin's Creed on Steam as it does on the Ubisoft store.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#277

Post by Dylan16807 »

bruce511 wrote: post #270
madeofpalk wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like this is a meaningful change. If steam changed all the "Buy" to "Rent" on it's website, nothing would actually change.

I think it would change, but Rent is also not the right word. I'm familiar with Rent and I intuit what it means. I have access to an asset for a limited time, and then I can choose to continue renting it, or not. The decision is in my hands. License might be a better word. Because what they're selling is a "one time payment for use of this asset for an undetermined amount of time" - that's not "buy" but it's also not…

> then I can choose to continue renting it, or not. The decision is in my hands.

That is not implied by the term rent. Very often rentals are for a fixed amount of time. Especially for video game rentals, back when they were common.

I think rent implies you have limited control better than license does.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#278

Post by joveian »

Loughla wrote: post #183
awill wrote: post #119

Epic love to complain about Valve, but consumers all love Valve. Epic? Not so much.

I deal with Valve, because I have to. There is not a good way to get video games that doesn't involve pirating, unless you use a platform like Steam. The fact that I do not really own the games is a huge pain in my ass, but I love video games, and want to spend my actual money on them, so I'm kind of stuck.

You don't have to use Steam, there is at least GOG which is much better in a number of ways. Refunds not tied to playtime but available for 30 days and most games (almost all currently but they have said they will start to sell DRMed online-focused games) work fully offline with no activation. They have a bunch of quality games and you can support developers who don't insist on using abusive practices. There are still some issues with obnoxious DLC practices but overall it much better. Some specific games may only be available on Steam but in general it is not at all necessary to use it. Unfortunately, besides GOG there are only a few other tiny DRM-free stores. Itch isn't that tiny but isn't super practical as a main game store (lots of junk, hard to find the quality stuff) and also isn't fully DRM-free, doesn't obviously label games the do have DRM, and each developer can decide to issue refunds or not so you can't rely on anything. The more money people spend on DRM-free games the more options there will be.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#279

Post by Dylan16807 »

vuln wrote: post #52
paulmd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but the EU can simply outlaw those types of contractual arrangements going forward, and require that prior purchases be either defaulted into the new purchase arrangement or refunded. Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to protecting their citizens. It doesn't have to be the way it is in the US with corporations holding all the cards, that's just regulatory capture in action. That's…

It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting thought exercise.

Just keeping it online wouldn't be hard for most companies and most items sold.

If something is under pretty active use, that should have been in the original budget, but also you can put it on cloudflare R2.

For the long tail of perpetuity, you can pay Hetzner $1200 a year for a server with 45TB (plus parity) and a gigabit port.

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