Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

meowkit wrote: post #280

ekianjo wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You install those yourself you know. I'd rather have a choice than not. yes and No. When some games are "exclusives" to a certain store, if you want to play such games you end up having to install every store in existence which is not very consumer friendly. It would be better for stores to have every game possible, just like at the time of good old physical retail. It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games…

> It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games, right? Either you’re younger than me or you’ve forgotten about the pre-order content exclusives from different stores. If physical retailers had the marketshare that online distribution now has I’m sure they would have done exclusive games. If you have smaller game devs and no cost of disc manufacturing (ie download only) its easier to make exclusivity deals.

> Either you’re younger than me or you’ve forgotten about the pre-order content exclusives from different stores.

This has basically no bearing to the actual game access. While now, buying in a certain store means a very limited selection of titles, which is unlike anything ever experienced in physical retail. So, bad analogy.

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

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Post by dubcanada » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

curiouser2 wrote: post #227

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.

Yeah what the hell is this person talking about? How do they think software was installed prior to Steam?

Going online to a download website and downloading what ever you want.

There has always been "app stores" if it's tucows download or filehippo or gamespy or what not.

Very few people google "simulation games" and scroll through the pages and pages of google results and go directly to a publishers website and download an exe that they run.

There is and always has been a middleman.

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

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Post by dkonofalski » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

sheepdestroyer wrote: post #292

dkonofalski wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have but the rest of the world did so with a lot of hand-wringing and a boatload of viruses, toolbars, malware, and everything else. As someone who has worked in IT and in tech support, I get and agree with what Apple has done.

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.

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

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Post by chc » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #98

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you can argue for less software freedoms, while paying a 30% tax for any app you distribute, is honestly mind boggling to me. >On the one hand, Apple is acting as a store curator and demanding that its customers be made aware of tracking software. This sounds like marketing. Apple is limiting what apps their customers have access to. I wonder if you would make the same argument if Apple starts blocking websites?

It’s not about the outcome, it’s about reasoning from first principles and going where ever that leads you, regardless of how much you dislike the outcome. Nobody has to buy an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook. Apple has the right to create the software ecosystem they want to create. Their success in mobile computing is arguably a direct result of their closed ecosystem.

It's true that nobody has to buy an iPhone, in that they can choose any of the one competing platform. "There's literally a single competitor" isn't a very strong argument against regulation, though.

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

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Post by kempbellt » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #183

kempbellt wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple has lots of money so they can afford to give some of it away because we want them to" is not an argument that Epic can take to court, and it isn't a great argument to support adding app stores. As an iPhone user I prefer the single app store approach. Multiple app stores fragments the user experience, ultimately harming the experience of owning an iPhone. Especially when apps become exclusives to different sto…

You're conflating having a single app store with having a consistent user experience. Mac OS didn't have an app store for most of its existence and it's doing fine. Android is particularly bad in that regard, not just because of the ability to side-load alternative apps and app stores. The main issue is that OEMs heavily modify the OS for their devices, something that isn't an issue with Apple's business model.

I'm not so sure it's a conflation. Having a single app store makes for a more consistent user experience when moving from device to device.

You can tell people about apps and they know how and where to get them. See an app you like on another iPhone? You can probably install it on yours fairly easily. There's less confusion around the entire ecosystem because of its simplicity.

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

#306

Post by dkonofalski » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

zwily wrote: post #284

dkonofalski wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not parasitic of Valve, though. Valve created the storefront and platform that has all of those customers baked into it. EA is not just paying 30% for the privilege of selling their game, they're paying for the customer base that they haven't had to work to establish on that platform.

s/Valve/Apple/g

Yes. Exactly.

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

#307

Post by readams » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

Apple could allow you to add additional sources inside the existing store interface. We can already do this with apt and yum on Linux for example. They won't do it though because they want to increase friction to maximize their money. They don't actually care about users.

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

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Post by justapassenger » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

jaegerpicker wrote: post #151

justapassenger wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn’t users friend, or defender of the people. It’s biggest company in the word, that tries to make most amount of money by monopolizing markets. And privacy sells nowadays, so they exploit that to grow even more. Of course users get something in return, but that’s not the reason why do that. It’s one of the greatest PR campaigns of modern world, to have people believe that biggest company in the world cares ab…

This is a pointless statement, does Epic have consumers back? LOL hardly. This lawsuit is about Epic cashing in on Apple's work. No one believes Apple the corp is the defender of the people. Apple is great on privacy compared to all the other options, not because they are good people (they may not be or they may be who knows?) but because it's in their best interest to be. This is about two corp's fighting over their…

Epic of course doesn’t have customers back - it’s most likely more scummy than Apple.

Only thing that markets discovered so far, that has somehow customers back is free market and competition (and it’s far from being perfect of course), and they happen to push for it.

It’s just a case where customer interested happened to be aligned, even tho companies fight it for profit reasons (as with privacy and Apple - good for customers, but not being done because of it).

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

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Post by CivBase » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

Facebook isn't the good guy. Apple isn't the good guy. Epic isn't the good guy.

Every now and then their interests align with those of the users, but ultimately they all serve their own interests and will happily stand opposed to the users whenever it suits them best.

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

#310

Post by jayd16 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

jonwinstanley wrote: post #17

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…

> No computer platform should be allowed to prevent sideloading or other stores from competing What about platforms like Playstation or the computers built into Teslas etc, should we allow sideloading on those? How do you define a platform?

I think burden to the platform is relevant. Part of the security model on the console platforms is that no user code can be run. To support side loading, many assumptions would change overnight. This is a significant burden to Sony and the game devs.

Apple and iOS, on the other hand, support side loaded code. It's just a matter of who pays for what.