Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements)
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
If a company makes the device and it builds the infrastructure and it builds the ecosystem it's got the damn right to be not just the majority but the only party.
It can choose to do this.
The moment it allows others to operate on its platform, that changes things.
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Imagine Walmart entirely building the community. Their buildings, their land, their roads.
Don't want to shop at Walmart? Don't move to Walmartville.And you don't see a problem with this if Walmart owned 25% of the residential areas?
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@xaade And they get to keep lots of your stuff if you leave town.
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@xaade said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
If a company makes the device and it builds the infrastructure and it builds the ecosystem it's got the damn right to be not just the majority but the only party.
It can choose to do this.
The moment it allows others to operate on its platform, that changes things.
Which means that Sony would only be allowed to release its own games on Playstation, because the only way to release games on Playstation is through the Playstation Store or getting certified by Sony to release them on disc. Same with Nintendo and Microsoft. There is no official way of running your own code on a console. Even on an iDevice you can at least run your own code without being a certified Apple developer.
But then again, Epic is also taking Google to court over the same thing as Apple, even though Google Play isn't the only way to release apps on Android. Epic didn't even have the Android version of Fortnite on Google Play originally. But then they released it on Google Play to later intentionally break to T&C of Google Play and whine about Google's monopoly too (while keeping Fortnite available on the Samsung app store). So, yeah, I feel this has absolutely nothing to do about Epic fighting against monopolies, and is just Epic wanting more monies for themselves and establish themselves as the dominant cross-platform game store. And considering how shit the Epic Games Store is I have absolutely zero faith in them making anything better than Google Play/App Store/Steam in a lifetime.
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@xaade said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Anyone can install a non-Google store on an Android phone.Again, with Microsoft. It wasn't even that no one could install another browser. It was that their browser was bundled.
I don't know that this is really applicable here though. IE was mandatory with Windows. With Android, yes, most manufacturers bundle in the Play Store and the Google apps, but they're perfectly able to go grab AOSP which is Android without any of the Google stuff included and build a device with that. Amazon did that with their Kindle Fire tablets. You can absolutely make an Android device without the Play Store. It's just that most manufacturers don't, because their users will probably want it.
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It seems to me that bundling products is bad, period.
If you can only choose between (A+B+C) or (X+Y+Z), then you'll probably have to compromise on some of those points. If it's (A vs X)+(B vs Y)+(C vs Z) then you'll get to pick the best of each.
It's like going to a cinema where popcorn costs $8 (when it costs <$0.1 to produce), and they won't let you bring outside food. Yes, "it subsidizes the price of tickets", but wouldn't it would be better overall if tickets and popcorn both cost what they really cost? All the government would have to do is say "let competing popcorn shops in your cinema". That's called ordoliberalism.
In a theoretical perfect market with rational agents, popcorn eaters would go to another cinema and eventually the cinema would change their business model. But sometimes people aren't rational enough, or there's too much friction.
We've seen this kind of thing many times. Like phones tied to a specific network. That hardly happens anymore (I think), and we're all better off for it.
The counterargument would be that maybe it is intrinsically more efficient for the cinema to produce movie seats and popcorn simultaneously, and forcing them to divide it would hurt consumers. In the case of Apple, they could claim having the app store tied to the platform is good because it means they don't have to build an abstraction layer between the two and they can, for example, dynamically recompile or transform all software if they release a new CPU, etc.
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@anonymous234 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Yes, "it subsidizes the price of tickets", but wouldn't it would be better overall if tickets and popcorn both cost what they really cost?
Not really. Nobody's going to go pay $50 to go see a movie.
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@anonymous234 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
"let competing popcorn shops in your cinema".
That's not quite accurate metaphor, and I'm not sure there is a physical one that will explain it.
The reason being is that there's no infrastructure cost to Apple, whereas the cinema has to host the space.
The closer metaphor wouldn't be a competing popcorn shop, but a competing rental owner that popcorn shops can setup in.
For me, the Walmart community thing is more accurate.
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@xaade said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
The reason being is that there's no infrastructure cost to Apple
Ah, yes, the apps just appear magically onto your device when you get them in the app store without the need for several data centers around the world the download them from as well as the cost of power and data for running said data centers.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@xaade said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
The reason being is that there's no infrastructure cost to Apple
Ah, yes, the apps just appear magically onto your device when you get them in the app store without the need for several data centers around the world the download them from as well as the cost of power and data for running said data centers.
There's no infrastructure cost to allow a competing store on your device. The other store owner would create and maintain that infrastructure.
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@xaade Oh, right. Misread as other companies being able to use the App Store infrastructure for free (like Epic wants).
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@xaade Oh, right. Misread as other companies being able to use the App Store infrastructure for free (like Epic wants).
From what I read, they primarily want Apple to allow competing app stores on iDevices.
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@e4tmyl33t But why did they throw the same lawsuit on Google Play too? There's no app store monopoly on Android. Feels a lot like "I want my product on Google Play and App Store, but I don't want to pay them for the privilege." to me.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Feels a lot like "I want my product on Google Play and App Store, but I don't want to pay them for the privilege." to me.
It's exactly this.
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There are two key competing valid requirements:
- There should be the possibility to have alternate sales channels for goods to prevent anyone from charging monopoly rents. No sane and honourable individual wants to grant anyone the ability to do that.
- Any app-store-front application needs to be extremely carefully vetted because of ass-hats. No sane and honourable individual wants malware on a device pretending (from an application capabilities perspective) to be an app-store-front.
Apple is good on the second point, but has solved it by being really quite bad on the first one. Google are less strict (specifically side loading remains possible without having to jailbreak the device) and so have fewer problems from the first point; their recommended approach would be very much to present the competing requirements and ask more widely what the best balance would be. (They could also say that app-store-front applications always need to be hand-vetted prior to distribution via Google Play because of the transitive malware problem, and that this means that updates to them are always going to be slower to go through.) Apple's hard-line stance against alternate app-store-front apps makes such negotiation impossible. Which is where the lawsuits come in.
tl;dr: I think Google will be able to settle with Epic at some point and that Apple will force the whole thing into court.
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@dkf said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
I think Google will be able to settle with Epic at some point and that Apple will force the whole thing into court.
Both Apple and Google should tell Epic to get fucked.
Epic clearly realise there's a benefit to being on those platforms. Especially Play Store as they can and previously did distribute Fornite on Android without it. They're being charged what seems to be the market rate for that benefit.
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Especially Play Store as they can and previously did distribute Fornite on Android without it.
That's an important point IMO. Nothing is stopping them from going back to distributing the APK on their own and doing whatever they want with in-app purchases.
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In a vacuum, all an app-store-front application needs is to pay for its own hosting and bandwidth costs (which could be as simple as "pay us a monthly fee, plus a percentage on downloads and size, regardless of retail price".
But something like Play Store is not in a vacuum, its owner needs them to not just pay for themselves, but also cover the costs of everything that's provided for free on the ecosystem (various Google apps, etc;).
And then, greed comes in, and being self-sustaining is no longer enough: We now want to the store to make lots of money. That's where the "You're making money off your app, give us 30% of it" card comes in. I wonder if that could be solved by mandating that all platforms support several competing stores... But that's where the arguments start about what a monopoly is. People say "there already is competition! You can choose between iPhone and a multitude of Android ones!"
So on the one end, we have the argument that it's not a monopoly because iPhone is only X% of the market, etc. But from the point of view of an app vendor, what they see is several local monopolies. If they want to reach customers who bought an iPhone, they have no other choice than go through Apple. If they want to reach other customers, they must support Android (which thankfully allows sideloading). And it's worse than the whole Epic/Steam/UPlay etc.,, because a user has a much greater chance of creating several user accounts than of buying both an Android phone and an iPhone.
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The main problem with the "industry standard" argument is that this standard was never challenged in court. Like with many other things before, it's entirely possible we might soon find out that dozens of different companies have been grossly violating the law for decades and nobody noticed until now.
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@Medinoc said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
If they want to reach customers who bought an iPhone, they have no other choice than go through Apple.
If they want to reach customers who bought several devices, they have no choice other than through the manufacturer.
@Medinoc said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
And it's worse than the whole Epic/Steam/UPlay etc.,, because a user has a much greater chance of creating several user accounts than of buying both an Android phone and an iPhone.
For sure.
On PC everyone complains there are too many options. On mobile too few. So we need to legally mandate precisely the right amount of competing stores.
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@Medinoc said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
So on the one end, we have the argument that it's not a monopoly because iPhone is only X% of the market, etc. But from the point of view of an app vendor, what they see is several local monopolies. If they want to reach customers who bought an iPhone, they have no other choice than go through Apple. If they want to reach other customers, they must support Android (which thankfully allows sideloading). And it's worse than the whole Epic/Steam/UPlay etc.,, because a user has a much greater chance of creating several user accounts than of buying both an Android phone and an iPhone.
This has also been the case with game consoles for 30+ years, and somehow everyone still managed
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
On PC everyone complains there are too many options. On mobile too few. So we need to legally mandate precisely the right amount of competing stores.
Reminds me of Microsoft mandating that manufacturers of x86-based PC set UEFI to allow installing other OSes, and manufacturers of ARM-based devices to disallow it. To me it really sounded like "we allow installing other OSes on PC because we're forced to, we disallow it on ARM stuff because (due to not being a monopoly there) we can get away with it"
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
This has also been the case with game consoles for 30+ years, and somehow everyone still managed
Because they also allow installing games from physical media that have been bought at physical stores.
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@dkf The physical media still requires approval from the console manufacturer, just like selling in their digital store. You can't just make your own game discs and sell freely.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
The physical media still requires approval from the console manufacturer, just like selling in their digital store. You can't just make your own game discs and sell freely.
But it does mean there's price competition. Not great price competition, but it exists. That sort of thing matters.
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Apple don't have enough of the mobile market to be considered a monopoly.
That only makes sense if "mobile" is fungible. As it's not possible to run an iOS app on an Android or vice versa, it makes sense to treat them as separate markets.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@dkf The thing is that Apple are following the industry standard rates. So that would be pretty much every app store (except for EGS) charging "monopoly rents", even on platforms with a choice and competition between stores (PC/Android/Mac).
Yes, when everyone in an industry is charging the same thing for their products, it's called "price fixing" and is generally considered illegal collusion and monopolistic behavior, particularly when it's significantly above the marginal cost of production of the product.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@anonymous234 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Yes, "it subsidizes the price of tickets", but wouldn't it would be better overall if tickets and popcorn both cost what they really cost?
Not really. Nobody's going to go pay $50 to go see a movie.
Movie tickets cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10. No one's subsidizing that by buying $40 worth of popcorn...
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@e4tmyl33t said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@anonymous234 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Yes, "it subsidizes the price of tickets", but wouldn't it would be better overall if tickets and popcorn both cost what they really cost?
Not really. Nobody's going to go pay $50 to go see a movie.
Movie tickets cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10. No one's subsidizing that by buying $40 worth of popcorn...
Not directly, but figure that on average about half the moviegoers will grab a popcorn, a drink, and one random other item (nachos, candy, whatever). If the prices on all those were reduced, the ticket prices would have to go up, and they'd have to go up more than the money lost from the concession stands because of the way ticket price payouts are calculated (with X% going to the studio and such) in order for the theater to make up the difference and break even.
Edit: More info: https://theweek.com/articles/647394/when-buy-movie-ticket-where-does-that-money
Looks like for a typical theater, 60% of the ticket price is given to the studio for any given movie, with that shooting up to potentially 90% for a particularly hot new-release film. Then things like advertising may also come out of it.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Yes, when everyone in an industry is charging the same thing for their products, it's called "price fixing"
Or, y'know, just what the value of that product is considered to be.
@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
That only makes sense if "mobile" is fungible. As it's not possible to run an iOS app on an Android or vice versa, it makes sense to treat them as separate markets.
No. Otherwise the same logic gets you Xbox, Playstation and Switch as separate markets and not competitiors in the same market.
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@loopback0 When I can't run SSB Ultimate on my PS4, that's not competing in the same market from my perspective...
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Apple don't have enough of the mobile market to be considered a monopoly.
That only makes sense if "mobile" is fungible. As it's not possible to run an iOS app on an Android or vice versa, it makes sense to treat them as separate markets.
Most popular apps have versions for both. Just like (again) video game consoles: You can't play a Switch game on Xbox or PS4, but there are many games with ports on multiple systems.
e:
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@loopback0 When I can't run SSB Ultimate on my PS4, that's not competing in the same market from my perspective...
So for consoles to be one market, every game needs to be on every console?
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@loopback0 Yes, obviously. If they're not interchangeable, they're different markets.
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@Mason_Wheeler That's obvious in the same way that water is obviously dry
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@Medinoc said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
So on the one end, we have the argument that it's not a monopoly because iPhone is only X% of the market, etc. But from the point of view of an app vendor, what they see is several local monopolies. If they want to reach customers who bought an iPhone, they have no other choice than go through Apple. If they want to reach other customers, they must support Android (which thankfully allows sideloading). And it's worse than the whole Epic/Steam/UPlay etc.,, because a user has a much greater chance of creating several user accounts than of buying both an Android phone and an iPhone.
The funny thing is that people on this thread don't seem to see that in this context, but when the context is, "You have many ISPs to pick from, there IS competition, just move to another house" they get it. The competition between phone platforms, doesn't affect the result of the app stores on those platforms where there is no competition per platform.
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
That only makes sense if "mobile" is fungible. As it's not possible to run an iOS app on an Android or vice versa, it makes sense to treat them as separate markets.
No. Otherwise the same logic gets you Xbox, Playstation and Switch as separate markets and not competitiors in the same market.
Each of them is a separate market, and these markets compete against each other. Much like cities compete with each other for new residents and investors.
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Mason_Wheeler That's obvious in the same way that water is obviously dry
You can play a lot of the same games on PCs and consoles, but no one considers them the same market, because there are so many ways that their basic catalog is different. Heck, you can play Fortnite, the game that started this whole mess, on PCs as well as mobile devices, but we categorize mobile as something different from PCs, because there are so many things you can do on a PC that you can't do on a mobile device.
These distinctions are completely natural and uncontroversial. So why should we artificially lump different mobile devices with very different catalogs together into "the same market" simply because their hardware is superficially similar?
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Apple only have 25% of the mobile market.
No, they have 45% in the USA, which is the only thing that counts for US anti-teust regulations. Non-USA percentages don't matter.
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And Epic keeps on whining about how unfair it is that they were kicked out of the App Store and how much it is hurting their business.
Epic Games Asks Court to Allow Fortnite Back on the App Store
Just a week after Apple terminated Epic Games' developer account, Epic has filed for a preliminary injunction that would both allow Fortnite back...
Are they expecting the judge to make a different judgement than the last time they asked? "If we keep asking the court the same thing over and over surely they must eventually side with us!"
In the filing, Epic Games says it was willing to challenge Apple "because it was the right thing to do" and "it was better positioned than many other companies to weather the storm."
But apparently not that well positioned to weather this particular storm...
Epic mentions that it's "likely to suffer irreparable harm" if Fortnite is not made available on the App Store and that "the balance of harms tips strongly in Epic’s favor," citing that daily iOS active users have already declined by over 60% since the app's initial removal from the App Store.
You know, Fortnite can be made available on the App Store while Epic and Apple fights in court, BUT EPIC KEEPS REFUSING. This is still 100% on Epic.
Apple told Epic that it's ready to "welcome Fortnite back onto iOS" if Epic removes the direct payment option and returned to the status quo while the legal battle plays out in court, but Epic has refused.
I think Epic is gonna get this thrown out of court because the situation has not changed one iota since last time. And then the judge ruled that this is a problem caused by Epic willfully breaking the App Store policy. Epic does not agree with the App Store policy, but until Apple changes it they damn well have to follow it.
And still, it would be nice to know how large % of the Fortnite playerbase is actually on iOS to have things in perspective, because Epic sure are acting like 50% of it is on iOS and not a more realistic number like 5%.
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Apple don't have enough of the mobile market to be considered a monopoly.
The "market" under consideration is "credit card payment processors."
Apple is bundling "access to iOS users" with "Apple's credit card processor [which charges exorbitant fees to companies selling things to iOS customers.]"
Except for the Play Store (which isn't a monopoly method for accessing Android customers because Google allows other storefront apps), nobody else demands you use their payment processor and pay their fees.
Consoles and Steam don't have this rule, which is why you can buy download codes at GameStop.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Are they expecting the judge to make a different judgement than the last time they asked? "If we keep asking the court the same thing over and over surely they must eventually side with us!"
This is part of their full argument for a preliminary injunction, scheduled for a hearing on September 28th. Before Epic was asking for a temporary restraining order (lasting until that hearing and decision) to restore not only their games but also their separate developer tools accounts. As you said, they weren't given a restraining order for their games because Epic brought it on themselves, but they did get a restraining order for their separate developer tools accounts which didn't intentionally violate their agreements with Apple.
Just because Epic lost the one (intended to prevent immediate and irreparable damage) doesn't mean they're going to lose the other (the longer injunction decision) or a final decision on the actual suit. These are all separate parts of the process, one that will likely draw out for a long time.
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Apple countersues Epic Games for damages in latest escalation of Fortnite/App Store battle
As the battle between Epic Games and Apple continues on, the latter has officially filed a countersuit against the Fortnite...
LOL
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@loopback0 said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Mason_Wheeler said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@loopback0 When I can't run SSB Ultimate on my PS4, that's not competing in the same market from my perspective...
So for consoles to be one market, every game
needs to be on everydeveloper must be able to sell games, without limitations, to every console?It's a free market IIF selling to a console isn't dependent on the manufacturer of the console.
PC gaming is a free market in this sense, since Microsoft effectively can not prevent anyone from making a game. And if they tried, well, there's Youtube video instructions for dual-booting Ubuntu.
(Whereas independent titles on a console requires hardware modification, last I checked.)
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The ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games continued on today, with a preliminary injunction hearing taking place this morning. We're...
Epic continues to fail at explaining how the App Store is a monopoly, and how the industry standard 30% fee is excessive in this case specifically. The judge was not impressed with the "Because consoles are different
." response. To be continued in July I guess, unless Epic keeps on being an ass in the mean time.
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Epic keeps up their pathetic campaign, this time teaming up with Samsung and different strains of influenza. Of course.
As Epic Games' dispute with Apple continues on, the gaming company has teamed up with Samsung to send "Free Fortnite" swag out to...
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Tim Sweeney is going on the offensive by building support for Apple's side and undermining his own in Epic v Apple.
When asked whether he would have accepted a special deal from Apple for a lower App Store commission, Sweeney said "Yes, I would have," which seems to weaken Epic's argument that its decision to kick off a legal battle with Apple was done to benefit all developers.
Apple's legal battle with Epic Games is continuing on, and during the second day of the trial, Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney continued his...
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@Atazhaia Classic underdog story you say?
Classic underdog story.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Tim Sweeney is going on the offensive by building support for Apple's side and undermining his own in Epic v Apple.
When asked whether he would have accepted a special deal from Apple for a lower App Store commission, Sweeney said "Yes, I would have," which seems to weaken Epic's argument that its decision to kick off a legal battle with Apple was done to benefit all developers.
Apple's legal battle with Epic Games is continuing on, and during the second day of the trial, Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney continued his...
It's a lawsuit. Sweeny needs to be arguing that his company specifically was injured by Apple's practices. Not "developers in general." His company specifically.
"This will benefit all developers" is a PR argument that probably happens to be true. The legal argument, though, has to be that Apple's fees are illegal to charge to Epic because they hurt Epic.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
a PR argument that probably happens to be true.
classic underdog story.
