Would an oligopoly (at worst) need to be strictly as bad as a monopoly though? I don't really care that the fight is mainly the one of greedy billionaires, as long as it reduces the prices for consumers.

Plus Epic does not really proposes the same kind of walls as Apple do. The worst they can do are exclusive titles on some typically somehow open platforms (and yep I guess they would take a deal to have an authorized store on a closed one, but for now I'm not sure such beasts exist anyway -- and again, why would it be worse than a monopoly?), they don't even sell only that, and the people they get exclusivity from had the choice to do something else anyway (without renouncing to whole platforms)

I mean, if you're against the monopoly it makes little sense to be for an oligopoly. Either you have tunnels that lead between different walled gardens, not really changing much except which company receives your money, or you tear down the walls of all walled gardens and users might just get attacked as they try to make their way over to the other walled gardens (that being 'free fortnite vbucks' scams).

At least more gardens means more multiple redundancies.

Just like many comments on HN keeps arguing that Apple is better than Google because of privacy then Epic is the good guy in this because more walled gardens are better than only one even if it is still not open.

> Let's not pretend that one greedy billionaire is the good one here.

Who's doing that?

If Apple's AppStore isn't protecting users, why not let there be competing AppStores and let users decide which serves them best?

fine by me. If there's an EGS on IOS/Android, I can continue to ignore its existence and use the app/play store, while people who opt into that garden do what they need to do.

I don't care about which billionaire benefits the most, I care about options. IOS has zero options (that don't void your phone) if your app isn't approved by Apple.

> Let's not pretend that one greedy billionaire is the good one here.

Out of curiosity, are you responding to me or digesting my point? I’m not pretending anything.