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Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

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Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#401

Post by ben_w »

syspec wrote: post #379
ben_w wrote: post #51

I think: 1. Multiple App Stores would be good for free speech, and for avoidance of USA cultural and legal hegemony. 2. How can this be done without loss of security for typical users? We don’t want phones to become botnets with microphones and cameras — imagine the opportunities for automatic criminal blackmail, theft planning, target acquisition, or 2FA interception. This is bad for the societies we live in even if…

Can you elaborate on red vs blue water? I have not heard that phrasing before

Sure — it’s a business phrase: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#402

Post by mytherin »

simion314 wrote: post #383
mytherin wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet explorer was actually a decent browser in its peak. The whole "dragging things down" happened later on because people kept on using really old versions of IE (mostly the one bundled with Windows XP). The main problem with Internet Explorer in its hay day was that they did not play nice with other browser vendors and implemented features outside of the standard. Those features were then relied upon by website…

I seen recently change logs like "reverting from webp to jpeg to support iOS users", so it seems to me that the lowest common denominator now is Safari.

No doubt it is, I'm just explaining why comparing Chrome to Internet Explorer makes a lot of sense. Having a single browser used by the vast majority of people is a bad situation to be in. Especially when that browser is developed by a company like Google.

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#403

Post by 29083011397778 »

mirthflat83 wrote: post #184
enragedcacti wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the apps that I need Correction: all the apps that Apple thinks you need, regardless of whether or not it aligns with what you need or want.

Please give me examples of apps I’m missing out on as an average consumer because I’m all for missing out on malwares

I'm floored that nobody else here on HN has pointed out that Syncthing is missing. Android, Windows, Linux, and MacOS all have native clients, but there's nothing for iPhone.

So much for "There's an app for that".

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#404

Post by Wowfunhappy »

teawrecks wrote: post #394
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are free of "third party DRM”, they are not free of first-party DRM, aka the DRM system integrated into Steam. If you buy Horizon: Zero Dawn from Steam, you won’t be able to actually start the game unless Steam is installed. However, if you buy the game from EGS, it work fine even if EGS is not installed. The EGS version is a completely standalone copy of the game that does not require any clients in order to ru…

Steam used to be this way, I remember running skyrim without steam running. Would it change your mind if you knew EGS planned on going the DRM route in the near future (including for titles you just listed)?

Not really, I just want to buy games and play them without installing a client. Right now, these types of downloads are available from Epic. If Epic stops offering DRM Free games, I'll stop buying them.

The nature of DRM-Free media is that once I've downloaded it, no one can take it away from me. I may miss out on future updates, but I always make purchasing decisions based on what's available today, and not what may be available in the future. (And I don't play online multiplayer.)

The EGS version of Tetris Effect was DRM Free at launch, but DRM was added in an update. This means I can't recommend Tetris Effect to anyone who cares about clients or DRM—but on a personal level I don't particularly care, because I already got my copy!

Separately, if e.g. GoG was the only PC game vendor, they probably would never have made DRM-Free games a core focus of their business, because why bother when you're the only game in town? And so, I'll always welcome new entrants into the market.

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#405

Post by danShumway »

falcolas wrote: post #331
danShumway wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> games go on sale on most platforms at the same time, for the same prices. No they really don't. Spend time shopping around, games on Humble, GoG, and Itch often have different prices during different sale periods. I just got Into the Breach at 50% off on GoG a day or two ago, it was full price on Steam at the same time. Different stores also cater to different niches: GoG prioritizes older games that wouldn't be up…

> I just got Into the Breach at 50% off on GoG a day or two ago, it was full price on Steam at the same time. Fair enough, the timing on the sale was not the same. However, the discounted price while it's on sale is. https://steamdb.info/app/590380/ > if they weren't trying to pull users away from Valve? They're not trying to pull customers off Valve, they're trying to add customers to EGS. There's a difference.

> They're not trying to pull customers off Valve [...] There's a difference.

Assuming this is true, is it a difference that matters? If the Epic games store didn't exist, Valve would not be stepping up and offering those games for free right now. The reason those games are available to you for free is because the Epic store exists.

As a consumer, I would have a smaller selection of discounted/free games each month to choose from if only one storefront existed. If Steam was the only platform, I wouldn't have been able to get Into the Breach at 50% off when I wanted to buy it.

Whether you think that's 'competition' or not -- I'm not going to argue over definitions, but whatever you want to call it it's good for consumers. You're still getting more stuff for cheaper just because another store exists.

> However, the discounted price while it's on sale is.

Same question as above, does this distinction matter? Would we say that Xbox and Playstation aren't competing with each other just because games generally sell for the same base price on both platforms? In reality, the price I paid between two stores was different. Why does it matter what the base price of the game would have been in a theoretical world where it wasn't on sale?

The end result of all of these situations is the same: as a consumer, I'm getting a greater variety of games at lower prices. The end result is that when I buy a game, there are pretty good odds that it might be discounted or offered for free somewhere at the exact moment that I want to buy.

And this is even ignoring the other perks you get from multiple storefronts such as the fact that you don't need to install a client to download games from GoG and Itch (not a service that Valve/Epic offers), or that GoG is going out of its way to track down rightsholders and get older games updated to run on newer systems (also not a service that Valve is prepared to offer), or that Valve is prioritizing Linux compatibility layers (which neither GoG or Itch have the resources to prioritize), or that Epic is subsidizing smaller studios and paying to get exclusives like Journey off of consoles and onto PCs (which is a service that nobody else is prioritizing right now).

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#406

Post by himinlomax »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #397
himinlomax wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Online banking or smartphone public transit passes aren’t just luxuries, they are extreme luxuries. True, you could just shoplift your food instead of paying for it with money earned by going to a job. Not sure what your definition of "luxury" let alone "extreme luxury" is, but it clearly is a unique one.

That’s a ridiculously myopic response. Most of the world doesn’t have adequate access to sufficient education, clean water, basic disease prevention, birth control, etc. But here you are acting self-righteous about online app-based banking and comparing the lack of convenient apps with poverty induced food theft? You need a reality check.

Poor people need a bank account, fact. They need to get to their job, fact. Public transport is the most affordable way to do so, fact.

Or do you believe many entry-level jobs pay in cash and are at walking distance from places working class people can afford to live in?

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#407

Post by zepto »

huhtenberg wrote: post #343
zepto wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally - the argument isn’t anything to do with developer’s not paying the 30% - it’s that a whole load of parties want to run their own stores without having to maintain the platform.

What "platform" is it exactly they don't want to maintain?

If epic doesn’t need a platform, there are OEM’s who will make them a bare metal smartphone.

Everything on top of that is the platform on top of which they are building their system.

Anyone who thinks the App Store is just stripe plus a file server simply doesn’t understand what is involved.

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#408

Post by Kuinox »

KitDuncan wrote: post #287
Kuinox wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate against linux for a gamedev is understable.

I understand not actively supporting it, but why hate or actively try to work against it?

Personally, I tolerate/support linux only because it's the only OSS alternative to windows (Yeah I know about OpenBSD).

I absolutely dislike some of linux philosophy like "everything is a file" which I find plain wrong.

But I agree that he go too far and hurt users only due to engineering taste.

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#409

Post by parasubvert »

Slartie wrote: post #279
parasubvert wrote: post #226

It is an incredible lack of imagination that people actually think this is the end of history with regards to mobile device operating systems, and we should just declare Android and iOS And their ecosystems public utilities that should be regulated by the government. Because that really is the only recourse here to give people what they want. Markets aren’t created by god, they’re created by customers. If you want to…

> No government will force that - there’s too much risk for malware and spyware as it is. Since when does any government anywhere on this planet care about "risk for malware and spyware" on operating systems? If they did, they'd turn up the heat on software developers in terms of responsibility for blatant security violations and security-related software bugs. The fact that no government does any of that tells us th…

In the US alone, there have been have been several congressional hearings and FTC reports on malware and spyware over the past 20+ years. Microsoft was under significant political and commercial pressure in the 2000s to clean this up, and they answered the call.

Re: Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google

#410

Post by wayneftw »

pb7 wrote: post #316
wayneftw wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like having choices and you think choices are bad for people then perhaps you'd prefer to live in a place like China. This lawsuit is taking place in the USA where people overwhelmingly value freedom of choice. Speaking of China - Apple gave the Chinese government their own app store. Perhaps Epic should point that out as well. It would make for a great headline: Apple gives China their own app store, bu…

For someone who preaches choice so much, you sure are against going with a different choice like, say, Android.

Not at all. I have and use both because half of my customers use one and the other half uses the other.

That’s the problem though. When half of the people in United States have no choice but to leave their digital home in order to get some rights to use their own equipment without begging Apple... that needs to change.

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