Effectively he wants the same deal as there is for PC gaming - eg multiple stores available that users can choose from - to be the case for mobile (and possibly consoles as well).
What he wants is the right to build his own App Store so that he can charge his own "tax" and (hopefully) become a monopolist.
Windows 10X just didn't happen due the current situation having changed schedules to everyone.
The same way multiple grocery stores benefit customers. It gives them a choice.
> What he wants is the right to build his own App Store so that he can charge his own "tax" and (hopefully) become a monopolist.
That makes no sense because once the door is open for multiple app stores, there's even less of a chance to become a monopolist. To become a monopolist Epic would have to build their own smartphone platform and get enough market share to effectively control the market, like Apple has done.
Also, when using the generic term it's app store, not App Store. Apple does not have a trademark on the generic term app store [0], they have only registered for that trademark and they will lose even that if challenged. Apple is so petty though that your iPhone automatically capitalizes it anyway.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_store#%22App_Store%22_trad...
I, a customer, am not getting a price discount for a game on the EGS, despite the lower middleman cut.
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 updated for modern machines, itch has really experimental 'true' indie games. Neither one of those storefronts could handle the volume and diversity of both categories at the same time.
Unless you're only playing AAA games or something, I don't get the assertion that multiple storefronts don't increase consumer value. From my perspective as a user, they very clearly do. Having multiple storefronts has been a huge boon to the indie market.
> which is marketing, not competition
What on earth is the difference? Would Epic be offering those games for free if they weren't trying to pull users away from Valve? That's what competition is.
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.
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).
If that's even true, it's a moot point then since there's no price competition when there's only one app store too.
Having a choice of who to do business with is always good for the customer.
Competition is good, but they're not competing for customers - they're competing for developers, to the detriment of customers.
Since when are exclusives an issue outside of console gaming? Even in console gaming - nobody cares that much. And furthermore, console gaming is not even nearly as important a market or as ubiquitous or as useful to society as smartphones are. The fact that some things are wrong with the gaming market doesn't really say much.
Anyway, app publishers like Spotify and Netflix have already offered lower prices when you signup outside of Apple's app store.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Giving customers a choice between shopping at Walmart, Target or Best Buy will always benefit customers more than only giving them the choice of Walmart.
There is simply no way in hell that you're going to convince me that having less choice is good at any level.
Hmm... I wonder why that is? Must be some mysterious phenomena involving price competition between stores...
Oh wait, yes they did. To the same degree, and with a similar frequency.
This is much, much different than the position of Apple or Google. They don't have to pass an exclusivity contract with anybody since they have a de-facto monopoly on their device. Want you game to be playable on iPhone ? You need to pay Apple rate, you can't just decide to go an publish your game on steam or any other platform.
Nobody is complaining that you can't have iTune on another platform. But for third-party developer, it means that you have no choice but to agree with Apple and Google rates. Granted, the situation with Google is a bit different since you can technically install another store, but remember that Microsoft was forced to stop pre-installing IE on Windows and offer user a choice of browser. I hardly see how this is any different than the current situation of Apple / Google.
So you're not forced, except when you are... I think the GP meant people is forced to use their store to play certain games. Games not developed by Epic, which were meant to be released in other stores and operating systems. You can choose not to play those games. Many people do in fact just that. But that was not the point.
Of course Tim Sweeney does not force random people at gunpoint to use their store. That's never going to be the case because there's laws forbidding him!
Epic literally bribed devs to do deals that went back on promises, people are not just upset about exclusivity, they are upset about exclusivity of stuff they PAID FOR on other platforms, there were kickstarted games, games pre-sold for Steam, etc... that suddenly became Epic exclusive, and devs went and explicitly said they wouldn't even return the money.
It became an obvious pattern, whenever a game "became" Epic Exclusive, someone would be screwed by it, it is why people are so mad at Epic.
And before someone says that this is their way to compete... well, yes, a crappy one, their store suck, doesn't provide basic features, has no reviews for example, has a ton of dark patterns, it is super hard to get rid of your account or fix your account and so on.
By that logic, I'm literally "bribing" the grocer every week to get groceries
You offered extra money to the grocer to sell to you something that was already sold to someone else that had already paid? I would count that as a bribe, and yes, it is a corrupt thing to do.
Epic is literally paying people to go back on their word, or in some jurisdictions, literally commit a crime by not delivering on purpose something that was paid for, in some places that is called interference, in others it is called fraud.
You can just install all game stores on Windows and there is no downside to doing so, and no real difference between installing the Epic store and purchasing a game there and buying the game on the game publisher's website.
Also currently Steam has a dominant position and 30% cut, and if the Epic store succeeds it will result in a more competitive situation with at least two game stores probably taking a 5-15% cut, which is a drastic improvement for everyone except for Valve, which makes Steam.
Same thing on mobile if Epic succeeds in the antitrust lawsuit with Google/Apple stores instead of Steam.
Others have complained about Steam's lack of curation causing discoverability problems. It was at the height of this controversy that Epic launched their store promising better curation. Again, this helps consumers because not all consumers are alike. Some consumers do not want arbitrary moral decisions to block game availability, while others want this so that they do not have to wade through "garbage". Others, still, want to make that decision for all consumers.
Do you wish that the Mac App Store were the only way to get apps on your Mac?
Free games are a marketing practice, nothing more. It's not a sustainable business practice, and it's paid for by Epic's exploitative Fortnight lootboxes. The "free games" will become part of a paid monthly subscription (or just go away entirely) when Epic feels like they have the audience they need.
And me? The value those free games might provide me is not worth the cost - being marketed to by a company whose values are quite the opposite of my own.
It's a marketing practice that would not happen without competing stores. The end result is user benefit.
> it's paid for by Epic's exploitative Fortnight lootboxes
Why does it matter to me how it's paid for? Does not allowing competing stores change where Epic or Amazon get their money? The end result is that I benefit from Epic and Amazon getting to compete.
> being marketed to by a company whose values are quite the opposite of my own.
I find Apple's values to be opposite to my own (selling low privacy devices and lying about it, preventing me from doing general computing on my devices, etc.). With competition, I would at least have a choice of finding an app distributer like F-Droid whose values are closer to mine were I to be stuck with an iOS device.
You still haven't answered the question about whether you would prefer if your Mac didn't allow you to install apps outside of it's app store.
Also, if there are more stores it's less likely that entire categories of games will be unavailable to you (or available but worse due to reduced budgets) due to all game stores having rules banning them, and in general game stores are less likely to be able to enact policies that serve them at your expense.
They don't. The prices, between MTX and multiple release versions, have gone up if anything.
> they will be better
Pretty close to unuantifiable. What quantification we have, critic scores, aren't showing any movement in the ~decade since Steam got competition (Origin, GoG, etc).
The only benefit seems to be for the shareholders and corporate executives thus far.
Even if I buy a game broadly available on multiple platforms, I’m not getting a discount on it for going to EGS, despite their lower cut.
Apart from Epic there are many other distribution opportunities on the PC platform. This is not the case on iOS. You either make a deal with Apple - and a very lousy deal at that, or you're not on iOS (the same problem exists on game consoles).
Also, actually running your software may be a challenge because the boot loader and OS are locked down, but you could have known that when you bought the device.
(This is similar to “right to repair”. That isn’t about being allowed to repair your devices, but about making it easier to do so. You’re free to repair your device, but it currently often is almost impossible)
Great!
> Also, actually running your software may be a challenge because the boot loader and OS are locked down,
Oh, so you're not free to run what you want on your device.
exclusive games aren't the same as a monopoly platform. Exclusive games is a choice the creators of the game made. A monopoly platform is when that choice isn't available. If apple doesn't want your app on iOS, they can remove you with no recourse.
If Epic doesn't want your game on the Epic store, you have the choice to use steam, or to go alone and distribute independently.
People keep bringing this up as a negative, but ignore a) that many games are exclusively on Steam and b) Epic gives guaranteed revenue to developers, derisking development.
There is absolutely nothing wrong imho with companies wanting to make their own stores, set their own rules, with whatever exclusivity, to make money for themselves, AS LONG AS there is (fair and equal) competition in the market so if people (developers and/or customers) do not like the rules, they can go elsewhere.
Competition is good!
On Linux, the Epic Store does not compete and therefore it does not add choice for me.
Being on Steam does not guarantee the game will be on Linux. It sounds like your real problem is developers not bothering about shipping their game on Linux.
Epic. Dev and publisher for Fortnite. What do you need to install and run to be able to play Fortnite? Epic Games Launcher.
With Fortninte on Steam the dudes that don't want to be bothered with 2 launchers can use only one(you still need Epic accounts like in all MMOs).
One of the most popular games is Minecraft and it did not need to be on Steam to get popularity, so it is still possible to host downloads for your game on your servers.
If Apple fought against one or many extractive ecosystems that would be a good thing even though Apple itself does profit and plans to continue to profit from their own extractive ecosystem. ...same with Epic.
People hated Ubisoft trying to cram their platform down their throats because it was a buggy mess. People are disgusted with the EGS because, likewise, it is a disaster.
You don't need a Steam Workshop (a bonus, for sure,) to distribute games. You don't need the Marketplace for Game Economy stuff (a bonus, sure.) You need a way to buy and launch games quickly, which even EGS struggles at.