partial_accumen
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I don’t need to come up with any revolutionary ideas, the open source folks are already creating without patenting their creations
The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP. As in, they can afford to give away lots of time and effort because they make their money with IP. If IP were to be eradicated as you’re proposing, all those contributions to Open Source by those largest contributors would evaporate. Here’s the largest Open Source contributors from 2017-2020.
Your comment was:
they’ve taken Apple, Google, and Samsung to the cleaners over this shit.
The article is talking about a new app store. A new app store wasn’t part of “this shit”. Yes, Epic sued and got changes to Google’s app store pricing, but that has nothing to do with this article’s topic. I’m not that invested in this conversation, but you asked why I responded and that’s why. I hope you have a fantastic day!
I’m pointing out that what the article is showing (Epic opening their own app store) was always an option for them. The court ruling on Google’s app store didn’t enable that. It was always an option. This isn’t true on the Apple side, though. A non-Apple app store on iOS would be a significant change.
Nothing prevented Epic from opening their own Appstore on Android. Heck, Amazon runs their own you can load on your Android phone if you want.
And while that does come with an expectation of more content the speed people expect it at is wrong especially since this game is basically being made by one person.
I appreciate the solo developer, and that they are doing most everything else right, but he opened this can of worms because he sold early access. He could have chosen to wait until the game was finished to release it, but I imagine wanted the money up front from early access to help finance the development.
If you release unfinished, you open yourself up to your customers wanting it finished, and also wanting a say in how it gets developed. I’m not saying he doesn’t have a right to sell via early access, but he brought this on himself.
You highlight another point in the unspoken contract:
- “After you buy the game, you can play it for as long as you own it with $0 additional dollars spent. At any point in the future you’re welcome to sell your copy of the game for whatever someone will pay you for it. That new buyer will be able to play the game forever paying $0 additional dollars.”
That’s gone too.
There used to be an unspoken contract with game developers and gamers:
- “I’ll release a finished game that you will never need to talk to me again if you don’t want to, and you can play it on any offline computer that meets the minimum specs. You will pay $X one-time for this and expect $0 spent on this game ever again”
- “I may release an expansion pack for this game at some point in the future. It will usually cost 10% to 30% of what you paid for the original game. You are NOT required to buy this. If you like the original game the way it is, keep playing it that way. If you are a new player, you will have to buy the base game and then the expansion pack to play expansion pack content”
- “I may, in the future, release a stand-alone sequel to the game. This game will have the same themes as the original, but I will increase the quality of the graphics/length of story/sound. You will NOT be required to buy the original game or the expansion packs to play this game. You will pay full price for this finished game”
Somewhere that evolved into shipping unfinished games, subscription based games, battlepasses, endless DLC, loot boxes, and forced online connections for single player games.
The game studios broke the contract. If they want endless money, that comes with endless work.
I don’t think the author is an Epic fan per se. The Epic argument appears to be a distraction from their main point, which appears to be their dissatisfaction with Valve’s support of Steam on Mac. As an example, even though Epic game store ( by a quick google search) seems to support Mac, they make no mention as to why they didn’t exercise consumer choice and simply use Epic game store for their Mac gaming needs.
I played the hell out of OW1. They turned off OW1 servers and required my actual real phone number to continue to play on OW2. Wouldn’t even let me use a VIP number. There is no time in this universe where I will want Blizzard/Activision or its advertising partners to have my real phone number. No interest in OW2.
It really is sad these days. You can see them holding signs written on the back of Form 10-K documents at road intersections say things like:
“Need dividends. Any amount helps. God Bless.”
But really, you have to just ignore them. You know anything you give them they’re just going to blow on equities in unproven klepto-corporate business models with over aggressive spending attempting to capture market share in industries paying abusively small wages to their destitute workers. You can try to help them like I did one time:
- Me: “Hey, here’s a couple of shares in a company that hires those recently released from prison for light industrial assembly work giving them a good reference for future employment. Its not worth much, but they do some good for the community.”
- Them: “Can I as a shareholder petition the board to fire the ex-cons, ship the assembly work offshore, and perform a stock buyback increasing the value of the shares?”
- Me: “I don’t think the board is interested in that as it violates the company mission”
- Them: “Then I don’t want those shares”
Pong for me too but on a Sears Sports Center pong console:
DEC PDP 11
Everyone else posting about Atari 2600, C-64, and NES. I think you may also win the thread on the only still supported platform with PDP 11 support extended to the year 2050.
As long as these are just cosmetics, why is this upsetting to you? If the microtransactions turn into pay-to-win, then I agree that would be a problem.