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I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Epic’s main selling point was it’s lower storefront fee (15% vs 30%, if I recall). It didn’t offer any other benefits for consumers and I think Epic realised rather quickly that the people who are actually supposed to be paying money for all of this are the buyers and not the sellers, and thus they’ve resorted to strategies like making games “exclusive” or trying to bribe players with free games.
It’s essentially a payment plan here in the US. Switch to a new carrier, get an iPhone for free as long as you stay subscribed to their most expensive tier for a year. How it usually works is that the phone is sold to you on an installment plan, say $80 per month, and the “free” part of that is where they also give you an $80 bill credit each month. If you cancel early then you have to pay off the remaining balance of the phone in a lump sum.
This one isn’t though. There’s no law against it in the United States, thus it is legal.
Murder contracts specifically are illegal because they contract for an illegal activity. Giving your phone to Google isn’t an illegal activity. Yes, it sounds and feels like theft, but it doesn’t meet the legal definition of theft.
Inquiries Regarding Other Companies’ Games
We have received many inquiries regarding another company’s game released in January 2024. We have not granted any permission for the use of Pokémon intellectual property or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon. We will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokémon and its world, and work to bring the world together through Pokémon in the future.
The Pokémon Company
Firstly this is surprisingly high-quality coverage. I’ve never heard of this website but I’m pretty impressed.
Secondly, regarding the lawsuit in general, I think that patent and intellectual property law regarding game mechanics and software processes in general are badly in need of reform. There doesn’t seem to have been significant legislative action to address this in any major economy that I know of. The number of bullshit parents being filed, unclear and vague rules as to how copyright/patent law works with respect to software, AI, and game mechanics, is really leading to a lawsuit culture where the only way to find out what the bounds of the law are is to spend millions of dollars on lawyers to litigate it in court, when really, legislatures should be actively writing new and clearer rules to deal with these issues before people need to sue each other to find out.
The Internet of 2025 is just way too different and complex to operate using the copyright rules of the 1990s.
If I were in writing the rules, there’d be separate categories of intellectual property for software libraries, game mechanics, fictional characters, and so on, with clear definitions on what is and is not considered fair use of these sorts of intellectual property. It should not be possible to copyright the design of a widely-used software API or game mechanic. And any such protection on those things should be comparatively short in duration (not more than a decade) so that others can eventually re-implement the design, and probably do so better than the original inventor.