Epic's "First Run" program does all the things they got mad at Apple and Google about.
You don't have to pay any license fees for Unreal Engine if you use Epic exclusively for payments. They give you 100% revshare for 6 months if you agree to not ship your game on any other app store.
Let's not kid ourselves, Epic never cared about consumer choice or a fair playing field, they only want the ability to profit without having to invest in building a hardware platform.
When Epic ships a phone or computer with the Epic Store as the only optional for installing apps or games, then we can talk.
Epic Store on Windows can't be accused of this monopolistic behaviour because Windows is not locked down and alternatives to the platform's distribution exists. Epic Store is one of those beneficiaries.
Windows and Epic's deals demonstrates there exists a market with competition and choices for developers and users. Developers can chose to take Epic up on their deal. Users can chose to use the Epic Store or not. The courts ruled that this choice does not effectively exist on Android because of all the dealings that Google did to prevent competition.
The whole point of this lawsuit is that Google suppresses alternative pricing models in the Play Store. You can not like a proposed alternative payment structure (as a developer), or not want to use Epic Store on Android. It would be great if the market could decide on what it wants here, instead of Google preventing any competition.
Tying Google's hands while giving Apple a clean bill of health isn't going to increase competition, it's going to solidify Apple's lead in the US.
The competition that actually matters is between whole platforms, it's only Epic's lawyers who want everyone to get fixated on the idea that the app store markets are the whole story (or even really a significant portion of the story). I could totally get behind efforts to prevent Google and Apple from together duopolizing the entire mobile phone space, but this is not that.
Ironically, forcing this onto Google might be the best thing for Android, as it's the openness the platform really needed to compete against Apple, but costs Google too much revenue to ever do it if left to their own decision.
iOS is based on Darwin which is BSD based, and Android is based on Linux, which is heavily inspired by Unix.
So technically, we are "all running some unix os on our phones"... perhaps you mean some open-source OS? Even then, Android markets itself as being open-source (although I imagine they must add some closed source stuff on top of it).
Apple XCode is required to compile code for Apple iOS. Android Studio is not required to compile code for Android.
Android Studio doesn't run on Android. XCode IDE doesn't run on iOS.
XCode IDE requires an MacOS device. Android Studio works on Win/Mac/Linux/Chromebook_with_containers.
Android Studio runs in a Linux container. XCode only runs on MacOS.
Apple does not allow, and per a recent ruling, and DOES NOT HAVE TO allow 3rd party app stores.
(There are already 3rd party app "stores" for Android like FDroid.)
Android already allows, and per a recent ruling, MUST allow 3rd party app stores.
In terms of Application stores, (after trying to trademark the phrase "app store" to anticompete Amazon) Apple gets protectionism for their walled garden, and Android may not have a walled garden.
The main thing Google got in trouble for is all the emails and deals they sent to device manufacturers to prevent competition with Play Store.
Apple inherently never sent these emails. There’s no deals they made because they were closed from the get go.
Google created a market of “android app distribution”, and then put its thumb on the scales so it always wins. That is why Google lost and Apple didn’t lose (as much).
Based on the legelese here, yea. I guess an equivalent is how you can be a for profit corporation with no issue, but if you're a non profit and you honestly mismanage some $10k as an accounting error, you get the book thrown at you.
As I recall, the original App Store argument was "It would cost a lot more than 30% to mint CDs and sell them in Waldenbooks, so we're doing developers a favor by _only_ charging 30% to distribute."
There are a myriad of points which make this metaphor a insufficient argument at best (at worst intentionally obfuscating the nature of digital publishing and digital marketplaces as having similar physical analogues) in favor of the current app store landscape:
1. AFAIK anyone can manufacture and distribute CDs
2. The argument that anything below the cost to manu CDs is acceptable only holds water if you have an inefficient market that doesn’t reflect the actual cost of digital distribution.
It was 30% vs whatever parties like Symbian asked at the time. Or other existing platforms like consoles where developers were left with less than 70%.
Safely distributing software was a pain in 2007 and did involve a lot of expensive publishing
It’s because no one wants to wade through the oceans of malware that exist online, and reputation is expensive to build.
I told my family many years ago now that they get no tech support for issues caused by downloading things outside of the App Store. I will download from outside of the App Store, but I have zero confidence that the vast, vast majority of people will ever be able to not get fooled, and if they do, they won’t be able to fix it.
With an Apple problem, my relatives call Apple, and the Apple tech support person remotes into their phone and walks them through a solution. Or gives them a refund.
And the thing with phones and computers these days is that they are your identity, they are your wealth, they are your life. You lose control of that, and you are in for a world of hurt. Someone can clean out your brokerage and bank accounts. The stakes are too high.
No companies (at least above the “tiny” category) care about anything, they are paper-clip machines and the only thing preventing them from extracting iron from our blood is the law.
I will find it deliciously ironic and welcomed if precedents set by Epic are eventually used against them. The even more hilarious news though is that apparently PC users hate their platform so much though, that exclusivity on Epic is perhaps more of a liability. I read the other day that that new open world Star Wars game had “disappointing” sales because of that.
It's strange to me, because there's literally more competition in the space, but people are unhappy about it. PC games used to regularly be Steam exclusive for years on end, and now games are often available on multiple stores within months or a year from release, but people are for some reason unhappy about this fact.
For example, Borderlands 2 (on PC) was Steam exclusive for something like 7 years and nobody seemed to mind. Borderlands 3 (on PC) was EGS exclusive for 6 months and people got very upset about it.
How is it not better to have a game available on two launchers within 6 months than to have a game available on only one launcher for 7 years?
That’s because people don’t actually give a rats ass about competition directly. They care about _cost_ AND _convenience_. Steam is great on both fronts and you don’t have to create yet another account or have another buggy pos launcher on your computer.
I'm not sure why people would actively want their game to require either EGS or Steam, though, even if it's convenient. EGS has business practices that drive a lot of people crazy, and Steam has an awful security track record and was also convicted of anticompetitive pricing. (Though people seem to like Steam's business practices even with that conviction, which also always struck me as a little weird.)
It seems like not requiring either one would be the more neutral, agreeable position to take.
It’s like putting an android apk file on your website for an app.
If you’re giving it away for free to friends, sure.
If not, how do you sell it? How do you stop people stealing it? How do people find out about it?
Obviously, you the answer is usually “you write your own installer / updater” and do your own marketing.
Maybe that’s fun, and there’s something to be said for owning the entire stack… but it’s a loooot of work and probably not a reasonable financial decision to make.
>If not, how do you sell it? How do you stop people stealing it? How do people find out about it?
we solved that issue long ago: make the APK a thin client to the actual service you keep on a server. Devs don't care where you download your APKs anymore. that's what the 90+% piracy took from us: the idea of premium, offline games.
advertising is tricky, but if we're being honest with ourselves: google play has only been a hinderance to discovery these days. My ideal pipeline is uploading to F-droid and throwing an APK release on Github as well.
yup. And that cost/convinience is how we get trapped in the FAANGs of tech. The steam gamers are naive if they think the same can't happen to Valve. Gabe won't live forever.
and as a last bit of irony, we're already seeing those backdoor deals being opened up as we see how there was a point to the price fixing argument Wolfire accused of. They could have just let Overgrowth sell on their website, and now Valve is playing a game of cat and mouse on whether they re getting mass arbitration or class action.
>and you don’t have to create yet another account or have another buggy pos launcher on your computer.
Steam is another account I don't care much for personally. And steam has always allowed for third party accounts to be needed. You think then GTA 6 launches in 2029 on PC or whatever that people are gonna complain about needing a Rockstar account?
A lot of that "discourse" is just turf wars and entitlement.
Because Steam is good and EGS sucks donkey balls. It's slow as shit, crashes randomly, and is missing boatloads of features. People don't object when a different store brings actual value, like GoG. They object because Epic's version of competition is just dump trucks of cash thrown at game publishers - that doesn't help the consumer any.
It's not unlike everyone here that loves to champion Apple even when the article is about Apple being the most openly evil it can possibly be, except so far Valve hasn't really done anything like that.
This is silly too though, it's no different to Steam both are consumer hostile systems where you own nothing. It's just Steam had the early years where it built up good will through some sales.
Their vision, which I disagree with, of customer choice, is that its store is an alternative to Steam. Probably they justify their exclusives by not being a monopoly, which gets weird: steam has the monopoly numbers, but epic has the monopoly practices.
They got a few customers from their giveaways - they should stick to those and further improving their store, maybe some people will actually want to use it.
There's no such thing as "monopoly practices". Being a monopoly isn't illegal. Exclusivity deals aren't illegal. What's illegal is using your powerful position in a market (a monopoly) to prevent competition. It's really the "prevent competition" bit where companies get in trouble.
An exclusivity deal from an upstart could be how they actually enable competition to exist.
I fail the see the correlation. Epic is synergizing with its platform that is a tiny fraction of its market and its engine that is also not a monopoly (Unity still the most used engine). This context does indeed matter a lot. Hard to lock out competition when your competition is 8x the market share.
>Epic never cared about consumer choice or a fair playing field
of course not. But enemy of my enemy. As of now their arguments benefit the consumer. If they ever do form a monopoly and keep doing these tactics, we can talk lawsuits.
Makes sense that privilege was taken away, given that Google is facing legal consequences for abusing their position in the mobile app distribution and payments markets.
There's nothing wrong with limited exclusivity deals if you are not a monopolist. And the problem with Google was not their exclusivity, but that EVERYBODY was forced to do it or jump through hoops with side-loading.
There were lots of times Microsoft filed amicus briefs against patent trolls and the like, claiming the need for a "free and open internet" or "open standards in the X space", while still in the hot seat for bundling Internet Explorer.
Large companies will clamor for freedom and consumer choice when it benefits them. They will put a hammerlock on consumers when it benefits them.
- Not fully understanding something, but having an opinion about it, with no attempt to learn more.
- "All companies are evil" yawn
Next time, can you try a more exciting criticism of Epic? We've been going through these lawsuits for four years now, every easy original thought has been thought and poasted about, you need to think a bit harder for your next comment.
I also disagree with GP's post because you don't need to use any of Epic's software. At the same time, I don't think your response is in line with HN's guidelines and is unnecessary.
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
You don't have to pay any license fees for Unreal Engine if you use Epic exclusively for payments. They give you 100% revshare for 6 months if you agree to not ship your game on any other app store.
Let's not kid ourselves, Epic never cared about consumer choice or a fair playing field, they only want the ability to profit without having to invest in building a hardware platform.