|OT| Epic vs Apple/Google - Battle of the Tims

ISee · Aug 29, 2020

Samsung just pushed an add to my phone's notification bar, promoting Fortnite and the Epic Games App (whatever that is).
I never saw an add in my notification bar before and I'm on Samsung since the Galaxy 6.

First thing I did is to take away the rights of the Galaxy Store App to give me notifications.
Second thing I did was laughing because Epic must have paid Samsung real good for that stunt.
Third reaction: I'm out Samsung, I'm not paying 800€+ for a phone so you can send me adds.

Swenhir · Aug 29, 2020

ISee said:
Samsung just pushed an add to my phone's notification bar, promoting Fortnite and the Epic Games App (whatever that is).
I never saw an add in my notification bar before and I'm on Samsung since the Galaxy 6.

First thing I did is to take away the rights of the Galaxy Store App to give me notifications.
Second thing I did was laughing because Epic must have paid Samsung real good for that stunt.
Third reaction: I'm out Samsung, I'm not paying 800€+ for a phone so you can send me adds.

Shit like this is exactly why I loathe android. It's barely better than walled gardens and some things you just have no control over until you root and install a custom rom.

Le Pertti · Aug 29, 2020

Swenhir said:
Shit like this is exactly why I loathe android. It's barely better than walled gardens and some things you just have no control over until you root and install a custom rom.

Yeah while Android IS more open, but that openness is also companies to do as they please.

C-Dub · Aug 29, 2020

Android is a great OS, but the hardware manufacturers are just fuckers.

I'd still take it over iOS - at least I can sideload apps on my OnePlus 7T, which is more than Apple ever let me do.

Mivey · Aug 29, 2020

ISee said:
Samsung just pushed an add to my phone's notification bar, promoting Fortnite and the Epic Games App (whatever that is).
I never saw an add in my notification bar before and I'm on Samsung since the Galaxy 6.

First thing I did is to take away the rights of the Galaxy Store App to give me notifications.
Second thing I did was laughing because Epic must have paid Samsung real good for that stunt.
Third reaction: I'm out Samsung, I'm not paying 800€+ for a phone so you can send me adds.

Interesting, didn't get anything on my Tab S6. Perhaps Epic only paid to get the ad in certain regions or devices?

crimsonheadGCN · Sep 1, 2020

Fortnite vs. Apple: Parody Ad Disappoints Original Director, Ridley Scott - IGN

Director Ridley Scott weighs in on Epic's Fortnite video homage to his original 1984 Apple commercial after a legal battle broke out between the two companies.

www.ign.com

Le Pertti · Sep 1, 2020

To be fair, that parody ad disappoints everyone.XD

Swenhir · Sep 1, 2020

warp_ said:
ridley scott is of course an expert in disappointment after prometheus and covenant

Hah, point taken. Still, I'd argue he is vastly better at anything visual medium than a large amount of people in the game industry. Especially in the general direction of whoever put this together at Epic.

Swenhir · Sep 1, 2020

warp_ said:
oh sure, it's just him lamenting it wasn't a commercial about anything meaningful when his commercial was about buying a computer made me chuckle.

the rest of the commercial he praised, but he sorta had to since it was a direct shot for shot redo of his version lol

Yes and no. There's message and there's purpose. Epic has no message. The message back then was anti-authoritarianism and a celebration of individualism and free thought, something of that nature. Of course the purpose was PR and to make some corporate dough. Marketing as a whole is evil to me anyway but he has a point on the message.

Alexandros · Sep 5, 2020

Epic Games asks court to prevent what it describes as Apple's "retaliation"

Epic Games said late on Friday that it has asked a court to stop what it saw as Apple Inc's retaliation against the "Fortnite" creator after the iPhone maker terminated Epic Games' account on its App Store.

www.reuters.com

Here we go again.

Swenhir · Sep 5, 2020

Alexandros said:
Epic Games asks court to prevent what it describes as Apple's "retaliation"

Epic Games said late on Friday that it has asked a court to stop what it saw as Apple Inc's retaliation against the "Fortnite" creator after the iPhone maker terminated Epic Games' account on its App Store.

www.reuters.com

Here we go again.

The last three paragraphs say it all.

“This was a clear warning to any other developer that would dare challenge Apple’s monopolies: follow our rules or we will cut you off from a billion iOS consumers - challenge us and we will destroy your business,” Epic Games said in Friday’s filing.

Apple pulled Epic Games after the popular games creator implemented a feature to let iPhone users make in-app purchases directly, rather than using Apple’s in-app purchase system, which charges commissions of 30%.

Apple had said it would allow “Fortnite” back into the store if Epic removed the direct payment feature. But Epic refused to do so, saying complying with Apple’s request would be “to collude with Apple to maintain their monopoly over in-app payments on iOS.”

"Challenge" Apple's monopolies. By the way, can I sell something at 0% Epic cut on the EGS? On account of its monopoly.

I do know that's fallacious and doesn't address the issue of walled gardens but damn their lawyers are doing a piss-poor job of selling that argument.

Alexandros · Sep 5, 2020

Oh dear, he started tweeting again.

Trisolarian · Sep 5, 2020

Monooboe said:
To be fair, that parody ad disappoints everyone.XD

Its just so soooo fucking lame.

"tart tycoon'... c'mon man.......

ISee · Sep 5, 2020

Trisolarian said:
"tart tycoon'... c'mon man.......

I guess it was designed to match the demographic of their Fortnite audience: Mostly Kids and Teenagers?

TioChuck · Sep 5, 2020

Alexandros said:
Oh dear, he started tweeting again.

Jesus.... Timmy must be bored out of his mind to keep going with this shit out in open like this, the dude love some infamy.

Alexandros · Sep 5, 2020

warp_ said:
i wonder if the population on other platforms jumped when ios stopped being updated? curious who benefited the most...offhand i'd guess sony or nintendo.

Well Epic says that iOS is Fortnite's biggest platform and that most users only play on iOS.

Read Epic’s new, full argument why a court should force Apple to reinstate Fortnite

We’ll see if the judge is swayed on September 28th

www.theverge.com

But in the new filing, Epic argues that more than its reputation has been harmed: “Daily active users on iOS have declined by over 60% since Fortnite’s removal from the App Store,” Epic claims. (It measured through September 2nd, in case you’re curious; by that point Fortnite had effectively split into two different games.)
FORTNITE ON IOS IS PRACTICALLY A THIRD OF THE ENTIRE GAME’S AUDIENCE
Epic says iOS is the biggest platform for Fortnite, too: 116 million registered users, or nearly a third of the 350 million registered users Epic says Fortnite has attracted in total. It also claims 63 percent of Fortnite users on iOS access Fortnite only on iOS, and that it’s the only way for many people to play the game.

Swenhir · Sep 5, 2020

Alexandros said:
Well Epic says that iOS is Fortnite's biggest platform and that most users only play on iOS.

Read Epic’s new, full argument why a court should force Apple to reinstate Fortnite

We’ll see if the judge is swayed on September 28th

www.theverge.com

I don't buy it. If that's true, that makes him even more of a maniac for pulling this stunt. This is aiming an automatic shotgun at your foot. What in the bloody hell is he even thinking.

The ego on that guy, seriously. He didn't have a thought about the players, about the developers, he exploits children for his bullshit, ugh.

Alexandros · Sep 5, 2020

Reading the document is quite fun. There are gems like:

Epic was willing to stand up to Apple because it was the right thing to do

Stone Ocean · Sep 5, 2020

Imagine unironically gambling a third of the playerbase of one of the if not the biggest game currently.

What kind of insane lawyers did Epic hire? Is there really no one on their firm that went "hey this is fucking idiotic how about we don't do that"

Mivey · Sep 5, 2020

warp_ said:
damn 73 million that use ios only is a lot! granted compared to 350 million it doesn't seem like as much but certainly not insignificant.

i wonder what amount of money those users bring in? has to be a decent chunk of their total, if only because making a purchase on ios is much simpler than consoles or pc. just tap your finger or show your face and it's done.

Explains why Timmy is so focused on getting a better cut from iOS, if it's a sizeable share of their overall revenue.

Arsene · Sep 5, 2020

Yeah shouldn't be a shock how popular Fortnite is on IOS.

IOS is an absolute juggernaut for causal gamers and its still a growing platform. ROBLOX has over a billion registered users and I believe like 400m+ were IOS alone (Should be noted that it was on PC since 2006 and is also on Xbox/Android, but these versions only came out back in like 2012-2014)). It was something absolutely crazy. I know a lot of my friends who do ROBLOX as their jobs develop their games with IOS users in mind first because it rakes in a ton of cash (apparently IOS users also spend more on average too lol)

It was kinda funny seeing people on twitter/reddit/etc act like Epic gambling their IOS players wasn't that big of a deal when it was PRETTY obvious that it was a BIG FUCKING CHUNK of their playerbase they were holding for ransom.. The longer they keep Fortnite off the platform the worse it'll get. Kids will move onto other games, IOS has a ton of great games like Fortnite they can play with their friends instead and Epic is only hurting themselves. Most of Epic's revenue comes from Fortnite, The revenue Apple makes from it is pennies to them.

ISee · Sep 5, 2020

Stone Ocean said:
Imagine unironically gambling a third of the playerbase of one of the if not the biggest game currently.

What kind of insane lawyers did Epic hire? Is there really no one on their firm that went "hey this is fucking idiotic how about we don't do that"

This was all Tim's idea.
The campaign, the apple add, the "tart tycoon" outfit, the calculation for media and fans applauding him.
Tim is trapped in a serious Jesus complex and nobody dares to wake him up and explain that all mighty Tim isn't the master strategists he assumes to be.

Trisolarian · Sep 5, 2020

Alexandros said:
Reading the document is quite fun. There are gems like:

Lol. I gave them like 25% of the benefit of the doubt before it turned out that he emailed Apple bigwigs to cut a deal.

Now? I learned a new phrase from the newest Dresden Files book; moral armor. Fits here well.

Once I learned that they cut a deal, it was over. Apple has far more ability to put the hurt on Epic than epic has the ability to put the hurt on Apple. Twist enough and a deal appears keeping the status quo for Apple. If Epic was willing to go down with the ship, different story.

ISee · Sep 5, 2020

Trisolarian said:
newest Dresden Files book;

There is a new Dresden Files book?!
Oh dear, how have I missed this?

inky · Sep 5, 2020

Epic loves painting themselves as some sort of tech revolutionaries... you know what real Revolutionaries do? They sacrifice their own well being for the greater good, they don't go back to papa-powers-that=be and ask for special treatment while still fighting that cause.

Tough it out Tim. It's for the good of everyone after all, right?

Trisolarian · Sep 5, 2020

ISee said:
There is a new Dresden Files book?!
Oh dear, how have I missed this?

Peace Talks came out on July 17 and Battleground comes out on September 29th! Its a duo logy.

fantomena · Sep 6, 2020

Swenhir · Sep 6, 2020

fantomena said:

I'm of two minds about this, because while he's right about Fortnite even from the grave, this still describes the functioning model of a walled garden, which is textbook authoritarian and has perfect capabilities of suppression and oppression of software that it does not like.

Mivey · Sep 6, 2020

Swenhir said:
I'm of two minds about this, because while he's right about Fortnite even from the grave, this still describes the functioning model of a walled garden, which is textbook authoritarian and has perfect capabilities of suppression and oppression of software that it does not like.

I think a walled garden is acceptable, as long as you have two conditions: First, the company needs to be completely upfront about what it is, you as a potential customer should know what you are getting into, and second, they must not have a significant, almost controlling share of the respective market.

It's arguable what this latter condition should exactly be. I certainly feel that the US American definition of "monopoly" is completely insane, as it doesn't even look at the actual market, but focuses on magical, fantastical ideas about how "beneficial" it is to the customer. By that idea, Amazon is fine because Amazon is seemingly keeping prices low for customers. Despite the fact that Amazon is milking people via things like Prime, and completely controls a majority of various markets.

However, with Apple I feel that bar is not really met. I can buy a decent phone, a great laptop, and various high-quality accessories, without ever needing to buy something from Apple. The closest I feel where they have a monopoly is actually the tablet market. If you want a premium, quality one, the iPad Pro is almost your only choice, the only competition here is from Samsung via their Galaxy Tab series, and perhaps more niche the Surfaces tablets from Microsoft.

Can see how someone might see Apple's position more critically, though.

Swenhir · Sep 6, 2020

Mivey said:
I think a walled garden is acceptable, as long as you have two conditions: First, the company needs to be completely upfront about what it is, you as a potential customer should know what you are getting into, and second, they must not have a significant, almost controlling share of the respective market.

It's arguable what this latter condition should exactly be. I certainly feel that the US American definition of "monopoly" is completely insane, as it doesn't even look at the actual market, but focuses on magical, fantastical ideas about how "beneficial" it is to the customer. By that idea, Amazon is fine because Amazon is seemingly keeping prices low for customers. Despite the fact that Amazon is milking people via things like Prime, and completely controls a majority of various markets.

However, with Apple I feel that bar is not really met. I can buy a decent phone, a great laptop, and various high-quality accessories, without ever needing to buy something from Apple. The closest I feel where they have a monopoly is actually the tablet market. If you want a premium, quality one, the iPad Pro is almost your only choice, the only competition here is from Samsung via their Galaxy Tab series, and perhaps more niche the Surfaces tablets from Microsoft.

Can see how someone might see Apple's position more critically, though.

I see and understand your argument about walled gardens, I just can't agree that they are at all a good thing. It's just a fundamental belief that our tools should never be locked in such a way you do not really have the ability to tinker with them. That being said, we've had these discussions before and I don't know that it's possible to go further than a "I disagree" there ^^.

In the interest of being constructive, going beyond that distaste for the concept, I'm very much okay with your definition of when it might be acceptable. There being an alternative to walled gardens.

A thought to challenge that definition though : if you consider that walled gardens are to be such a different choice that their existence must not be in a position of monopoly, I still would argue that if they are the sole competitors to more open platforms, their existence does harm because they aren't acting as a counter-power in the same realm as the others.

To put it more plainly, there's no competition to android. Nobody to try and be more open and more honest than google there, to challenge them. While Apple does sell the same devices, they almost don't exist in the same category because of how different the OS's are. If iOS was open, I feel we might be in a much better situation because they would be applying pressure upon each other in those aspects of openness. Right now, google has no competition in the business of open mobile OS.

Mivey · Sep 6, 2020

Swenhir said:
I see and understand your argument about walled gardens, I just can't agree that they are at all a good thing. It's just a fundamental belief that our tools should never be locked in such a way you do not really have the ability to tinker with them. That being said, we've had these discussions before and I don't know that it's possible to go further than a "I disagree" there ^^.

I never said they are a good thing. I was saying when they are acceptable, in the sense of legally acceptable.
I hate walled gardens, I will never buy a device that doesn't let me put whatever I want on it easily enough, and will never understand the desire of people to do so. I also agree that they don't provide real competition, merely the outwards appearance of it.

Swenhir · Sep 6, 2020

Mivey said:
I never said they are a good thing. I was saying when they are acceptable, in the sense of legally acceptable.
I hate walled gardens, I will never buy a device that doesn't let me put whatever I want on it easily enough, and will never understand the desire of people to do so. I also agree that they don't provide real competition, merely the outwards appearance of it.

Ah, that was my misunderstanding then. I'm glad we agree, and I understand your perspective there.

beep boop · Sep 7, 2020

I have to wonder if the returns from opening up the walled garden will be profitable enough to those outside the 1% chart topping apps to offset potential piracy issues. As I understand it, there is a significant discrepancy in app profitability between Android and iOS, which has often been attributed to the latter OS being more closed.

I’m not a fan of walled gardens, but there’s an argument to be made for them that if not contradicts then at least hedges the narrative Epic has been pushing.

I can’t help getting the feeling that what Epic is doing will largely benefit the big companies rather than the small ones.

lashman · Sep 7, 2020

beep boop said:
I can’t help getting the feeling that what Epic is doing will largely benefit the big companies rather than the small ones.

bingo

Alexandros · Sep 7, 2020

warp_ said:
i think the big companies will benefit more, mainly cause they move more money through the ecosystem, but that doesn't mean the smaller pubs won't see any benefit. though it is worth noting that this would be definitely more of a publisher benefit than a developer benefit other than the very big and very small devs for the most part.

And most likely zero consumer benefit.

Sadrac · Sep 7, 2020

beep boop said:
I have to wonder if the returns from opening up the walled garden will be profitable enough to those outside the 1% chart topping apps to offset potential piracy issues. As I understand it, there is a significant discrepancy in app profitability between Android and iOS, which has often been attributed to the latter OS being more closed.

I’m not a fan of walled gardens, but there’s an argument to be made for them that if not contradicts then at least hedges the narrative Epic has been pushing.

I can’t help getting the feeling that what Epic is doing will largely benefit the big companies rather than the small ones.

I think it would benefit more the companies that use the free to play model, which is not affected by piracy.
This would mean even less emphasis on the premium model on the platform, which I would not like to see.

beep boop · Sep 7, 2020

warp_ said:
like em or not, epic is giving 20% off vbucks prices without the 30% platform fee. so you can't say zero. not to mention it could lead to the addition of currently blocked services on ios devices like stadia and xcloud and geforce now.

edit in case anyone gets worked up: yes that first line is a bit of a troll

I get that you're partially kidding, but it really is so transparently a pure marketing tactic. They didn't discount it on EGS until the Apple/Google debacle. Now, they're made it 20% cheaper everywhere even though they're definitely giving a non-zero cut to Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. Theoretically, if they can afford to sell it at 8 USD on consoles, it should be even cheaper on the EGS but it isn't.

Of course, it’s nice that there’s a lower price now across the board. Have they said if it’s permanent?

Edit: It is permanent, according to their explainer. So if we’re to take them at their word, they’re passing on discounts and they’re only paying a 10% platform fee elsewhere. That would be interesting. Seems pretty wild that they managed to renegotiate that everywhere.

|OT| Epic vs Apple/Google - Battle of the Tims

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