A jury saw secret revenue sharing deals between Google, smartphone makers, and game developers. The jury saw internal emails between Google execs that suggested Google was scared of how Epic might convince its fellow game developers to join or create rival app stores, creating unwanted competition for Google.
Fuck Epic and all that, but a silver lining that this has bubbled up because of it
It’s sad that any of this was ever allowed to happen in the first place, and that it took a giant corporation to break it up. This shit should have been stomped out 20 years ago when it was beginning.
I wish more people could recognize you can support specific actions without liking or approving of the entity taking those actions. It’s not a binary choice.
in this case, the specific action gives the entity an unfair advantage in the global market. Epic (with help from tencent) is suing US companies for antitrust laws, but tencent benefits from exactly that with stores like Steam and Google play outright banned in china. They have the entire chinese market to themselves and use the profit from that to push out further into the global market by doing stuff exactly like this.
depends how much chinese influence you want in the gaming market. They are already the biggest gaming company in the world.
It’s also a bit hypotritical for chinese companies to be suing US companies for antitrust laws when the Chinese government outright bans app stores like Steam and Google Play in their own country. They get to have their cake and eat it too, then use all the money they make in china to push out further into the world economy.
Yeah. Tim just wants his shitty App Store in more places so he can make his own anti competitive deals to force people to use it.
If the Epic Games store was a great feature rich platform on PC, Mac and Linux, then I would be inclined to take him at his word. But they have been running it for how many years? And it’s still bare bones and not offering anything compelling apart from subsidized free games.
Epic is ~40% owned by Tencent which is a chinese company that directly benefits from Chinese Governement sponsored monopolies. China legally banned US based stores like Steam and Google Play.
Epic is not here to do you favors, they are here to push Tencent and China’s global agenda.
All Valve would have to do is announce that they would be making sale and install of mobile games and apps through the Steam App and the entire industry would shit the bed.
So true brother. Wasn’t capitalism the embodiment of competition breeds innovation? The lack of regulators to keep up with technology has made this terrible monopoly and billionaire landscape
I pretty much like Epic. I’ve gotten tons of free quality games for free that don’t have micropayment or tons of ads. Sure they might not be the newest version of the game, but there is something to be said about playing a game free from ads and not feeling like a second class citizen for not spending more on a “free” game than most people spend on rent and groceries combined.
That’s cool and all, but the plan is to buy their way in by running at a massive loss then enshittify. Rather, even if that is not the current plan (it probably is), it will inevitably become the plan because it is a publicly traded company.
Yup. At some point even the play store was cool, somewhat nice to use and full of good free games. It always follows the same rulebook. Sadly people dont learn from history.
Just remember that they are trying to create a walled garden of exclusives, publishers are essentially bribed to publish their games only on the EGS. The money that funds these exclusivity deals, and your free games, are being funded majorly by selling gambling lootboxes to kids.
Also don’t forget that you are not being given ownership of those games, it’s pretty widely known by now that digital copies are not ownership, epic is fully able and capable to take those games from you.
Do you think the moment they decide that this “free game bribe tactic” isn’t working, they won’t just remove the free games given at the drop of a hat.
The money that funds these exclusivity deals, and your free games, are being funded majorly by selling gambling lootboxes to kids.
How the hell they would make so much money from gambling while not offering it in any first party games? Or the 12% from gacha like games is enough to fuel the entire game shop nowadays?
Yeah, I get there’s complications and scummy statements, but at the end of the day people complain a.Lot about a free, reasonably simple and low fee storefront that’s missing tons of features but… works fine? And they have like a 0% chance of ever getting a monopoly.
Hence I never really understand being so vehemently “fuck EGS.” Unreal has given me some sweet games, especially compared to some failures of custom engines. These court cases are another, even if they’re for their own benefit.
Which is understandable, but also feels overblown seeing how Steam has a defacto monopoly and “soft” exclusivity (eg they will allegedly delist you if you try to price lower on lower fee stores). And that there have been exclusives on other stores, albeit less common ones for big games.
I don’t think steam is perfect, but they have shown over the years they will go above and beyond to make a good experience for the consumer, including tagging all kinds of negative things on games such as specific DRMs and drastically advancing the ability to run windows games on Linux
No publicly traded company will ever develop that kind of track record even if you give it a chance.
The only exclusives AFAIK are Valve games (understandable) and games that don’t bother listing elsewhere. I also think Valve’s “no undercutting” policy is reasonable. They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose, and you can have sales happen elsewhwre at a different time (or the same) vs Steam, the only requirement is that you don’t undercut Steam.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior. Adding to that, Valve also invests heavily in their own platform, providing features like Steam Input, Proton/Steam OS, etc.
Epic, on the other hand, bribes users to come via free games, bribes devs via paid exclusivity, and hasn’t meaningfully invested in their platform, they’re still lightyears away from Steam, and even GOG is way better from a features standpoint.
Which is showing more monopolistic behavior? Epic, and it’s not even close. The only “monopolistic” behavior from Valve is being really popular, and I think they’ve earned that.
They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose
To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior.
I mean, imagine if, say, Walmart or Amazon did this (assuming they don’t already). Every price is every other store has to be at or above theirs, or their product gets delisted, which is apocalypse for a supplier.
How does that not sound monopolistic to you? Imagine if Amazon took 20% more cut that Newegg and passed that to hardware prices for literally everyone.
EGS literally can’t be monopolistic because they have like no market share, but yes, they’re being anticompetitive and bribing in an unsustainable way. It’s not good either. And their store is barebones, no question.
But the double standard of bothers me. Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform and they’ve been fine in other areas so far.
To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.
That depends. For GOG and EGS, yeah, those stores don’t want to sell Steam keys, they want to sell keys for their own platform. But other stores like Fanatical sell Steam keys, and I’m not exactly sure how those work.
My point is that devs can sell keys on their own and take 100% profit if they want, they just can’t undercut Steam. And that’s pretty common in retail, if you see a product in store, it’ll be a very similar price to buy direct. It turns out, retail stores don’t like providing marketing just to get undercut on your website or a competitor store.
Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform
Neither does EGS just because they take a lower cut and give away free games.
AFAIK, Steam isn’t doing anything differently than other retail stores. If EGS were in Valve’s position, you can bet they’d be way worse.
Steam is full of de-facto exclusives that cannot be purchased and played elsewhere, meaning that you have to accept the Steam price, policies, practices, and their launcher in order to play those. Borderlands 2 was de-facto exclusive to Steam from 2012 to 2020, when Epic effectively rescued it from the exclusivity by paying 2K to give it away and add to the Epic store. If anything, Epic rewarding developers for doing what they’ve been doing on Steam is better than them not getting paid.
That’s a choice those devs made, not an exclusivity deal.
As for Borderlands 2, it looks like it was available on most consoles as well. It was released in 2012, which was before Steam even came to Linux, before the original GOG Galaxy, and way before EGS. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, The Witcher 1&2 were “exclusive” to Steam until ~2012 when GOG relaunched their website, so CD Project Red didn’t even bother selling their own games on their website. If they don’t, why would other devs?
I get it, I’m sad we don’t have good alternatives to Steam, but it’s not because of anything nefarious Valve is doing, it’s because their platform and policies are just better. I didn’t even have a Steam account until 2012 or so when they came to Linux, it just wasn’t necessary because everything I wanted to play was available elsewhere (e.g. direct from devs). These days I use Steam almost exclusively because they make playing on Linux so easy, not because I don’t have other options (I also play EGS and GOG games through Heroic, a community solution to support those stores on Linux because the stores themselves haven’t bothered).
An exclusivity deal is signed by both parties, so it’s just as much of a choice developers make. By the way, like Valve, Epic seems to favor Wine over native ports, given their donation to Lutris. Unlike Valve though, Epic isn’t iffy about others not using their launcher, so there’s an official GOG Galaxy plugin for Epic endorsed by Sweeney.
I don’t like them because they took games that were perfectly functional on Linux and MacOS and made them not function anymore. I paid for Rocket League with the understanding that I’d be able to play it, and now I can’t.
That was a side effect of them upgrading the game from DX9 to DX11 and from 32-bit to 64-bit. Also, are you consistent and dislike Valve as a company for doing the same with CS2 for Mac?
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Fuck Epic and all that, but a silver lining that this has bubbled up because of it
It’s sad that any of this was ever allowed to happen in the first place, and that it took a giant corporation to break it up. This shit should have been stomped out 20 years ago when it was beginning.
honestly, my opinion of epic is starting to improve more and more with every legal case they open, It’s about time someone with money stepped up.
They are bringing what everyone knew was going on into official record and forcing countries to do something about it. I’m rooting for em
Don’t fall for the trap. It’s one billionaire mad at the other. Epic has alot of puff but no real pazzaz for their store.
I wish more people could recognize you can support specific actions without liking or approving of the entity taking those actions. It’s not a binary choice.
in this case, the specific action gives the entity an unfair advantage in the global market. Epic (with help from tencent) is suing US companies for antitrust laws, but tencent benefits from exactly that with stores like Steam and Google play outright banned in china. They have the entire chinese market to themselves and use the profit from that to push out further into the global market by doing stuff exactly like this.
it’s also bankrolled by Tencent.
Is that a bad thing?
depends how much chinese influence you want in the gaming market. They are already the biggest gaming company in the world.
It’s also a bit hypotritical for chinese companies to be suing US companies for antitrust laws when the Chinese government outright bans app stores like Steam and Google Play in their own country. They get to have their cake and eat it too, then use all the money they make in china to push out further into the world economy.
There’s no stopping that train now, Tencent or no.
Traditional devs need to be ready to compete, and breaking up monopolies makes for a market more prepared to do so.
I think that is the problem, though. The Chinese market is inherently anti-competitive.
Yeah. Tim just wants his shitty App Store in more places so he can make his own anti competitive deals to force people to use it.
If the Epic Games store was a great feature rich platform on PC, Mac and Linux, then I would be inclined to take him at his word. But they have been running it for how many years? And it’s still bare bones and not offering anything compelling apart from subsidized free games.
Epic is ~40% owned by Tencent which is a chinese company that directly benefits from Chinese Governement sponsored monopolies. China legally banned US based stores like Steam and Google Play.
Epic is not here to do you favors, they are here to push Tencent and China’s global agenda.
Any benefit to you is incidental to them trying to make a profit. Don’t be fooled into thinking they are fighting for you.
All Valve would have to do is announce that they would be making sale and install of mobile games and apps through the Steam App and the entire industry would shit the bed.
I’m still confused how Apple won the same lawsuit against Epic that Google lost.
What makes this even more funny is that Android is more open than iOS or any of the gaming consoles out there.
Still good to see these anti competive practices come to light.
Yea, but when you dig a bit, it’s all Google Play Store and Services, with a bit of Play Integrity on top
Good, better that the smaller evil company wins rather than the bigger evil one.
So true brother. Wasn’t capitalism the embodiment of competition breeds innovation? The lack of regulators to keep up with technology has made this terrible monopoly and billionaire landscape
I pretty much like Epic. I’ve gotten tons of free quality games for free that don’t have micropayment or tons of ads. Sure they might not be the newest version of the game, but there is something to be said about playing a game free from ads and not feeling like a second class citizen for not spending more on a “free” game than most people spend on rent and groceries combined.
That’s cool and all, but the plan is to buy their way in by running at a massive loss then enshittify. Rather, even if that is not the current plan (it probably is), it will inevitably become the plan because it is a publicly traded company.
Yup. At some point even the play store was cool, somewhat nice to use and full of good free games. It always follows the same rulebook. Sadly people dont learn from history.
Just remember that they are trying to create a walled garden of exclusives, publishers are essentially bribed to publish their games only on the EGS. The money that funds these exclusivity deals, and your free games, are being funded majorly by selling gambling lootboxes to kids.
Also don’t forget that you are not being given ownership of those games, it’s pretty widely known by now that digital copies are not ownership, epic is fully able and capable to take those games from you.
Do you think the moment they decide that this “free game bribe tactic” isn’t working, they won’t just remove the free games given at the drop of a hat.
They are currently installed locally, and I even played at least one while the internet was down.
How the hell they would make so much money from gambling while not offering it in any first party games? Or the 12% from gacha like games is enough to fuel the entire game shop nowadays?
Yeah, I get there’s complications and scummy statements, but at the end of the day people complain a. Lot about a free, reasonably simple and low fee storefront that’s missing tons of features but… works fine? And they have like a 0% chance of ever getting a monopoly.
Hence I never really understand being so vehemently “fuck EGS.” Unreal has given me some sweet games, especially compared to some failures of custom engines. These court cases are another, even if they’re for their own benefit.
Probably a large part of the hate is because of the all exclusivity deals that they made at the time.
Which is understandable, but also feels overblown seeing how Steam has a defacto monopoly and “soft” exclusivity (eg they will allegedly delist you if you try to price lower on lower fee stores). And that there have been exclusives on other stores, albeit less common ones for big games.
I don’t think steam is perfect, but they have shown over the years they will go above and beyond to make a good experience for the consumer, including tagging all kinds of negative things on games such as specific DRMs and drastically advancing the ability to run windows games on Linux
No publicly traded company will ever develop that kind of track record even if you give it a chance.
Not a chance, agreed.
I do fear for Valve’s future though. I feel like the basket should be a little more split in case they enshittify.
The only exclusives AFAIK are Valve games (understandable) and games that don’t bother listing elsewhere. I also think Valve’s “no undercutting” policy is reasonable. They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose, and you can have sales happen elsewhwre at a different time (or the same) vs Steam, the only requirement is that you don’t undercut Steam.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior. Adding to that, Valve also invests heavily in their own platform, providing features like Steam Input, Proton/Steam OS, etc.
Epic, on the other hand, bribes users to come via free games, bribes devs via paid exclusivity, and hasn’t meaningfully invested in their platform, they’re still lightyears away from Steam, and even GOG is way better from a features standpoint.
Which is showing more monopolistic behavior? Epic, and it’s not even close. The only “monopolistic” behavior from Valve is being really popular, and I think they’ve earned that.
To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.
I mean, imagine if, say, Walmart or Amazon did this (assuming they don’t already). Every price is every other store has to be at or above theirs, or their product gets delisted, which is apocalypse for a supplier.
How does that not sound monopolistic to you? Imagine if Amazon took 20% more cut that Newegg and passed that to hardware prices for literally everyone.
EGS literally can’t be monopolistic because they have like no market share, but yes, they’re being anticompetitive and bribing in an unsustainable way. It’s not good either. And their store is barebones, no question.
But the double standard of bothers me. Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform and they’ve been fine in other areas so far.
That depends. For GOG and EGS, yeah, those stores don’t want to sell Steam keys, they want to sell keys for their own platform. But other stores like Fanatical sell Steam keys, and I’m not exactly sure how those work.
My point is that devs can sell keys on their own and take 100% profit if they want, they just can’t undercut Steam. And that’s pretty common in retail, if you see a product in store, it’ll be a very similar price to buy direct. It turns out, retail stores don’t like providing marketing just to get undercut on your website or a competitor store.
Neither does EGS just because they take a lower cut and give away free games.
AFAIK, Steam isn’t doing anything differently than other retail stores. If EGS were in Valve’s position, you can bet they’d be way worse.
Steam is full of de-facto exclusives that cannot be purchased and played elsewhere, meaning that you have to accept the Steam price, policies, practices, and their launcher in order to play those. Borderlands 2 was de-facto exclusive to Steam from 2012 to 2020, when Epic effectively rescued it from the exclusivity by paying 2K to give it away and add to the Epic store. If anything, Epic rewarding developers for doing what they’ve been doing on Steam is better than them not getting paid.
That’s a choice those devs made, not an exclusivity deal.
As for Borderlands 2, it looks like it was available on most consoles as well. It was released in 2012, which was before Steam even came to Linux, before the original GOG Galaxy, and way before EGS. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, The Witcher 1&2 were “exclusive” to Steam until ~2012 when GOG relaunched their website, so CD Project Red didn’t even bother selling their own games on their website. If they don’t, why would other devs?
I get it, I’m sad we don’t have good alternatives to Steam, but it’s not because of anything nefarious Valve is doing, it’s because their platform and policies are just better. I didn’t even have a Steam account until 2012 or so when they came to Linux, it just wasn’t necessary because everything I wanted to play was available elsewhere (e.g. direct from devs). These days I use Steam almost exclusively because they make playing on Linux so easy, not because I don’t have other options (I also play EGS and GOG games through Heroic, a community solution to support those stores on Linux because the stores themselves haven’t bothered).
An exclusivity deal is signed by both parties, so it’s just as much of a choice developers make. By the way, like Valve, Epic seems to favor Wine over native ports, given their donation to Lutris. Unlike Valve though, Epic isn’t iffy about others not using their launcher, so there’s an official GOG Galaxy plugin for Epic endorsed by Sweeney.
Allegedly? There is plenty of evidence of that in the Wolfire lawsuit. See for yourself from page 160 here.
I don’t like them because they took games that were perfectly functional on Linux and MacOS and made them not function anymore. I paid for Rocket League with the understanding that I’d be able to play it, and now I can’t.
That was a side effect of them upgrading the game from DX9 to DX11 and from 32-bit to 64-bit. Also, are you consistent and dislike Valve as a company for doing the same with CS2 for Mac?
Yeah that parts awful.
To be fair, a lot of the games on EGS are nicely DRM free (so no trouble in proton), but Rocket League is not one of them.
Rocket League seems to work fine with Proton GE.
Via EGS? I just assumed DRM for multiplayer broke it or something.
I think it’s anti cheat, not DRM. But recent protondb reports don’t indicate any problems. I haven’t checked areweanticheatyet