None of that means Google wasn’t exploiting anticompetitive measures to ensure everyone has to pay their exorbitant 30% tax in their app store. At least, that’s what the State of California determined when Epic took them to court.
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.
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!
Months after the initial announcement, the prolific game and technology company announced today that the Epic Games Store is now available for iOS and Android devices.
My whole thread was specifically about Android. You know what? You’re looking to salvage a victory out of this based upon pedantry. If you’re that bad off that you need that, go ahead and take the win if you can call it that. I hope your circumstances get better in the future.
This isn’t your thread, it’s mine. You replied to me. My comment was clearly about Apple (among others). The OP was about Apple. There’s nothing I need to “salvage”. Have a nice day.
The iOS version also has nothing to do with their lawsuit of Apple, they lost that one. It’s due to an unrelated law in the EU, which is why this is only available in the EU.
I don’t need a link to the DMA. I’ve known about it since before it existed. If you think it is coincidence that it was created shortly after the Epic v Apple lawsuit while addressing the exact same problem, your logic has failed you. Still waiting on your source.
A bit hypocritical given you’ve been the one using “coincidence” as a source. What I’m trying to tell you is there is not any documented proof for what you are saying - fuck, maybe you’re right. But you can’t go around spouting “facts” because you find the timing too coincidental. There has been no mention of Epic Games in any court documentation regarding Apple’s violation of DMA.
A bit hypocritical given you’ve been the one using “coincidence” as a source.
I don’t think you understand the meaning of “hypocritical”.
you can’t go around spouting “facts” because you find the timing too coincidental.
I never said it was a “fact”. Just an incredibly obvious observation.
there is not any documented proof for what you are saying
Nor is there any for what you’re saying. Proof for either doesn’t exist but only an irrational person is going to look at the correlation staring you in the face and say it’s a coincidence (which is in fact what you’re doing, BTW).
The EU has had digital legislations since long before that lawsuit. Or do you think Epic is also responsible for GDPR?.
So you think that the European commission saw a lawsuit in a different country and decided “We need that” then rushed to write the entirety of DMA in less than 4 months. If you think DMA and Epic lawsuits are related the most possible order of events is that Epic saw what was going to be passed in the EU and decided to suit Apple and Google to get the same in the USA
Somehow related is pretty far away from claiming they are the same thing.
First of all they’re both consumer protection laws related to IT, which was my point that EU already has a track of enforcing these kinds of law, and it has nothing to do with one irrelevant lawsuit in the US.
But also GDPR is a law to protect customers data, after it was enforced and people saw the big companies were not untouchable other laws started to be discussed to further regulate them. Parallel to this the DSM was being enforced, part of which has the P2B Regulations, which regulates unfair contracts and trading practices. After both of these came into effect a new law, which is essentially the child of these two, started being discussed which would regulate how large companies corner the market and other abusive practices. To think that this law has nothing to do with GDPR but instead is because of a random lawsuit some random company lost in some random country is ridiculous.
Just because he says it doesn’t instantly make it false…It’s absolutely true.
I find it hard to believe someone so invested in this outcome knows nothing about it.
I don’t know who or what this sentence is supposed to be referencing. No one doesn’t know anything about this. We all seem to understand what the problem is except you.
One was a jury trial and the other wasn’t. Google had plenty of records of their internal communications but Apple had a different practice. This article by The Verge does a decent job at highlighting the differences.
Yeah. I’ve had Amazon’s for a very long time. There was never anything preventing epic from making their own store. Epic was trying to make Google play store host the download for the epic game store.
It’s a bit more than that, though. Epic lost their lawsuit against Apple but they won theirs against Google.
Google was colluding with OEMs to stifle competition on Android, and that practice was determined to be anticompetitive. Sure you could always jump through the Google-mandated hoops and install a third-party store, but then you could also always install other browsers on Windows even when Internet Explorer was the default, and that was also determined to be anticompetitive.
Which is silly, since Apple has gone beyond colluding, and simply blocks everything they can within their walled garden. You’ve never even had the option to install other app stores or sideload apps on an iPhone. Meanwhile, you’ve always been able to on Android. For the past several years it will even hold your hand and highlight/show you what options you need to allow to do it within the OS.
I agree, but that’s what the courts decided. IANAL but I’m assuming it hinges on the pretense that Android is supposed to be an open ecosystem where partners and OEMs are given fair treatment, while iOS is a top-to-bottom “product” controlled by a single company that makes their own business arrangements.
In short, Apple deciding to block Epic from having their own app store, fine. Google bribing/coercing Android OEMs to prioritize the Play Store and not pre-install or facilitate the Epic Store, not fine.
I don’t think the courts would have cared if Google locked down their own Pixel phones to block out Epic, but it’s the act of throwing their weight around as the OS provider to their business partners (the OEMs) that they took issue with.
There are alternative stores on Android since forever.
From 1, Opening a secondary store on Android was always an option.
30% they claim is abusive is the industry standard, i.e. no one is taking advantage of their monopoly to enforce that, because even in markets without a monopoly that’s the amount charged.
Epic lost their lawsuit against Apple, which was the only company he was suing that actually enforced a monopoly in their platform.
Secondary stores are allowed on Apple in the EU as a result of DMA which has nothing to do with Epic.
From 5, Opening a secondary store on Apple is now an option regardless of what Epic did.
So you have one company that sued two others to be able to launch their store there, one of the companies wasn’t preventing them from doing so, and they lost their lawsuit against the other one. Completely unrelated to that, the EU forced that second company to allow third-party stores. Conclusion, Epic’s lawsuit has nothing to do with this announcement.
There are alternative stores on Android since forever.
I’ve already addressed this in other replies below. This goes beyond the existence of app store and into the abusive nature of them. Here’s some light reading for you.
Opening a secondary store on Android was always an option.
You’re just repeating yourself. Number go up, I guess?
30% they claim is abusive is the industry standard
Your parents should have taught you when you were 5 that just because other people are doing it doesn’t make it okay.
Epic lost their lawsuit against Apple
Well the EU picked up where the US failed. That’s why they have an app store. But Epic continues the fight regardless. As mentioned elsewhere, they won their lawsuit against Google with the state of California stating Google’s app store is indeed a monopoly. Epic is responsible for both.
as a result of DMA which has nothing to do with Epic.
Highly doubt that that is a coincidence. It has everything to do with Epic.
Apple is now an option regardless of what Epic did.
You’re repeating yourself again.
Conclusion, Epic’s lawsuit has nothing to do with this announcement.
I’ve already addressed this in other replies below. This goes beyond the existence of app store and into the abusive nature of them. Here’s some light reading for you.
Irrelevant, the news from OP is that secondary stores are now allowed on Android and iOS. Not defending Google or anything, but whatever abuse they did is irrelevant to this point. The fact remains, other stores exist on Android.
You’re just repeating yourself. Number go up, I guess?
No, 2 is a conclusion from 1. You didn’t even got through 1 properly trying to bring whatever bad things Google might do with their power, fact 1 is there are other stores on Android, fact 2, which is a conclusion derived from fact 1 is that Epic could have released their own store there regardless of the lawsuit. This takes Android off the picture from the remaining of the discussion.
Your parents should have taught you when you were 5 that just because other people are doing it doesn’t make it okay.
That’s not the point, if someone claims that a company is using their monopoly power to force a high tax on developers, but the tax is the same on every other store regardless of being monopoly or not then their argument is bullshit. Why do you think developers pay 30% to Steam? If they thought Steam didn’t provided value they would just not release there. But they do, therefore 30% is not abusive, it’s what developers are willing to pay for the service.
Well the EU picked up where the US failed. That’s why they have an app store. But Epic continues the fight regardless. As mentioned elsewhere, they won their lawsuit against Google with the state of California stating Google’s app store is indeed a monopoly. Epic is responsible for both.
No they didn’t, DMA is an extension of GDPR and P2B Regulations, it has nothing to do with Epic.
Highly doubt that that is a coincidence. It has everything to do with Epic.
Like I told you in your other reply, laws as complex as DMA don’t get written in a short amount of time, it’s impossible for these to be related.
You’re repeating yourself again.
Again, I’m drawing a conclusion from a point before. From 1 you have 2 which means the lawsuit has nothing to do with Android, and from 5 you have 6 which means their lawsuit had nothing to do with iOS either, since those are the two platforms being discussed we have the overall conclusion that the lawsuits and this announcement are unrelated.
You haven’t disproven any of the propositions, nor found any logical error with the conclusion from those propositions (in fact both times you thought the conclusion was just a repetition of the proposition before). Just claiming I’m wrong is not gonna cut it, unless you have any facts that counter anything I said my conclusion stands.
Man, how about you rather try to not make the game an insufferable grind fest. I love the gameplay so much, but each time I decide to log back in and give it another go it doesn’t take long before that fun layer is peeled back and I see the grind lurking underneath.
the grind keeps attach rate though, it’s no good for them if you log in, have fun, do the stuff and log out again for six months
this is what all these GaaS are based around, I gotta grind this magical stick, I gotta grind Diamond, I gotta grind this battlepass or I’m losing money!
Honestly if I could play all of the game without having to grind like a fucking mad man, I'd probably regularly buy expansions and pay for a season pass.
I love the coop. I love the gunplay. I love most of the game except the grind.But I have kids and real life shit to do. I tried getting back into it during witch queen, but the amount of time I had to spend daily on it made it damn near impossible to play the dungeons and stuff. I had a little extra free time when I did that too. By the time I managed to hit the cap, I realized I was not having any fun doing it. So I quit. Had a clan I liked chatting and playing with. It was cool. But I'm just not going to keep paying for and playing a game that just feels like a tedious as fuck job.
you aren’t profitable to these GaaS companies, you have kids and real life shit to do. you aren’t gonna bring them in money.
The people bringing in the money do the grind. it’s what all these GaaS games are. I too would enjoy if these studios made traditional games that are made to be enjoyable rather than made to keep attach rates up. but that’s not what they set out to make.
I mean I was purchasing the expansions and the season pass. And on games that I feel I'll stick with for a while I even get some cosmetic stuff at times.
I doubt it is even a matter of them measuring the profit. I imagine that a lot of it is they (and many other gaas games that aren't pay to win) are trying to be the only game a person plays. To make them feel devoted to it. Like they would have wasted so much of they give up (sunk cost fallacy) and that by switching games they'll get behind in their main game. Because of they aren't profitable with a repeatedly paid game and season pass off of a person then they have some real bad management. In fact, me paying for a season pass and the expansions and using the server less should make me more profitable than most players except for the whales that buy all the cosmetics too. Especially when Fortnite and Warframe are f2p and profitable.
except for the whales that buy all the cosmetics too. Especially when Fortnite and Warframe are f2p and profitable.
🔔 🔔 🔔
people paying for the cosmetics, and the battlepasses are the profit generators for GaaS games. Destiny just keeps their expansion setup because it’s even more extra money
think about it. Fortnite is free to play, and it’s funded epic games basically singlehandedly since, all the aquasitions, unreal engine, their store. it’s all fortnite money, it’s all battlepass and microtransactions
Also not gatekeeping modes and content I already paid for if I can’t afford the newest expansion, and just straight up removing content that was paid for
I hate grind, but I used to enjoy just playing D2 weekly, way beyond the weekly content.
Then they decided that literally everything needed to be a slog, and that being overpowered was bad, and they ruined my fun. I went from 80 hr weeks (I know this isn’t healthy) to 1 hour weeks over the course of a couple seasons. I still spent a lot of time after the launch of the latest DLC, but after that was done, and they upped the base difficulty by removing the effect of levels on almost all base content, I struggled to stay engaged. This season, I just gave up. I’ve got like 15 levels, when I usually have 200-300 in the battle pass.
I’m not saying they don’t have a grind problem, too, but it wasn’t what killed it for me.
The first I came to even know about the game was checking out a brand new game store with a more D&D-centric name and them currently hosting a game night for 40k so there were like 5 big tables with these gnarly modeled maps with hills and buildings while people were rolling dice, then pulling out tape measures and moving their units.
Shit looked like Risk but cooler. Then I noticed how expensive it would be to play and just never got into it lol
There are cheaper miniature games out there. Gaslands is Mad Max/ Death Race inspired and you use standard toy cars to play. There’s also Turnip28 that’s pretty much post apocalyptic Napoleonic Wars. There are cheap Napoleon era miniatures people modify for it, but I’ve also seen some goofier builds, like using toys and actual vegetables. I will say I haven’t really played either, but they are the two miniature games I often consider getting into.
I believe the kits are still entirely made in the UK rather than Asia like so many things.
The quality and designs are arguably the best in the world with techniques far more advanced than most rivals can compete with.
This doesn’t mean they don’t get greedy and stick on a huge profit, I believe they heavily rely on staff who love the hobby to run their stores too and pay very poorly.
It is like risk but cooler! And honestly you don’t need a 2k point meta army to start with. For the price of two or three $60 video games (guess I have to preface that now) you can have enough models for you and a friend to have an absolute blast.
Even the most terrible AAA games sell millions of copies these days. They more than make their money back with each one, the margins are slimmer but the volume is magnitudes higher than ever. Cry me a river.
This exact thought (volume) occurred to me when I saw the headline. They like to say that the price of games hasn’t increased in line with inflation, but I’d be interested to know how big the market was in the 80s, 90s, 2000s and today. I’d bet the market is orders of magnitude bigger today.
I’d be curious comparing these prices to median income or median disposable income. I’m guessing it tracks those numbers much closer than inflation, which wages haven’t kept pace with.
And the profitability has skyrocketed. The videogame industry is now one of the largest insudtries on the planet. A big driver has been normalisation of after-purchase items. Console players now pay to unlock their collar to the internet (ps+ and XBlive). Microtransactions add to this, and now battlepasses want $10+ every 50-90 days. Lootboxes normalizing near-gambling with overwatches success was a huge bar-lift in profitability expectations for shareholders.
Special editions are also hitting $90 and higher, plus those other expenditures. Ask “the gamers tm” and they’ll tell you you have to buy a special edition for $120 or you’re not a real fan anyway. Starfield has a $300 version. The Digital Premium doesn’t even come with the GAME! It’s another $35 after you already gave Microsoft $70.
Additionally, the work to make a new game has decreased. Assets are able to be salvaged from one engine to the next reducing the amount of work to make a game in UE6 after it was on UE5. the workforce has matured and can be taught as a class so there’s not nearly as many “self taught” making half a game. Roller Coaster Tycoon was made almost entirely by one dude. Obviously re-using assets is smart. But then to say you “built the game from the ground up” is false. Elden Ring was even praised for it
Marketing budgets have fuckin EXPLODED. A “Rule of Thumb” for indie devs is to spend HALF your budget on just marketing. Destiny allegedly spent 2.5× what they spent on development, for marketing. Publishing studios didn’t used to spend this much. “For every dollar on the game, spend another .25 to .50 on marketing”
Buying power has gone DOWN since ps1. You think I’m joking but federal minimum wage in the US is still 7.25. In 1994 (launch of ps1). It was 4.25 - adjusted for inflation thats $8.43. Meaning if you made minimum wage then, you’d be making more than minimum wage now, effectively. People are fucking broke and game companies want MORE money for games.
In 1994 when you bought a PS1 game you got THE WHOLE GAME. That was it. There was no merch drop pip-boy for the special edition. There was no Day-One patch. There was no “pay to get multiplayer”. There was no in-game shop to buy skins for the characters. All these features were intentionally cut to resell to consumers post-launch.
Games cost less to make now, but budgets went up. Buying power is down. Please stop defending corporate bullshit excuses about wanting more money, forever.
It was a specific example to show how AAA games reuse assets, not mtx. A low hanging fruit of that could be like…any sports game.
A similar example of good reuse could be EA and a specific Female Character Mesh they’ve had for awhile and they just keep reusing her. The photo example I found searching was Falck from BF 2042. Her hitbox and mesh is in Battlefront 2, as a First Order officer; and in Battlefield 5.
I dont outright hate reuse of things here and there - it saves money and time.
This drives me crazy every time I see it so I’m glad to see others recognizing this. Yes game production has gone up, but the market has massively increased. Your costs are fixed; doesn’t matter if you sell 10,000 copies or 10,000,000. More people are gaming than ever so when I see all these attempts to squeeze more money from consumers to address rising costs I have no sympathy for the publisher.
"And here's the thing — maybe it will work," she added. "Xbox has a deep portfolio. [Oblivion Remastered] was obviously a huge success, and they can continue to outsource that work to external companies and make a lot of money releasing their older games — older games from an era when Xbox knew how to build them."
Shots fired. Despite Microsoft constantly claiming Xbox is here to stay and they're working on the next console, it's very clear they're trying to transition off hardware back into Windows so they don't lose that too since Linux is dominating the handheld market. Even if they do make a new console, theyll put as much effort into it as the Xbox One.
the xbone was the last console I bought. Soured the pot so bad on what I enjoyed about console gaming. I already had a PC, but still enjoyed the couch casual sessions that seemingly don’t exist, and haven’t for over a decade
I’ve just had my gaming PC hooked up to my living room TV for the last several years. I have a lower power desktop on my room for anything that isn’t gaming. I can’t imagine buying one of the modern consoles just for their limitations alone.
Plus I just wait a few years and 95% of the explained make their way to PC anyway.
Microsoft is trying to make Xbox into Windows: Where 3rd parties make the hardware and then license the platform from Microsoft. It’s a vastly more profitable model. Especially if they get all those end users signed up for a subscription service.
The problem is that the world thinks of “Xbox” as a console (and a specific kind of controller). To pull this off Microsoft is going to have to re-brand Xbox entirely by making people think of it more like a game-specific app store that runs on Windows and special handheld hardware. It won’t be easy.
There’s a bigger problem with this plan though: No real coordination with the Windows OS team. Windows on handhelds sucks. The past twenty fucking years of Windows development has been almost entirely focused on improving enterprise features with very little attention paid to end users or gaming.
Growth in Windows gaming has come despite Microsoft’s investments. Not because of them. In fact, I’d argue that if it weren’t for Steam, Windows—as a gaming platform—would be a fraction of what it is today.
Don’t get me wrong, though! I love this new Xbox roadmap! Windows gaming has been holding back Linux desktop adoption for far too long. The latest benchmarks that show games on SteamOS vastly outperforming the new Xbox-branded handhelds pretty clearly demonstrates all that bashing of Windows by Linux nerds was deeply accurate.
It turns out that Linux on the desktop really is superior! 🤣
So basically they’re trying to do what Trip Hawkins did with the 3DO in 1993. In order for that to work, you’re going to have to convince people to pay PC hardware prices first. Two issues:
Third party manufacturers aren’t going to sell at a loss,
Sony will continue to sell their consoles at a loss, which means everyone will just buy their consoles instead.
Just putting this out there: wouldn’t a multiplayer-focused game like Borderlands be relatively shielded from the lads out on the high seas? Sure fitgirl could hook you up for a single-player campaign, but who tf wants to play Borderlands solo?
Makes sense, but if it’s only $10 it should just be free. $10 isn’t worth the bad PR and they should want this tour thing in as many hands as possible.
I have no problem with someone getting paid for their work. In fact, I encourage people to get paid for their work. But if you decide to sabotage your own product for the sake of attacking people who refuse to pay for it, you just make your product worse for everyone who did pay for it and you do nothing to actually solve the piracy issue. In that case, you’re reaping what you sow.
The modder, PureDark is talking about putting in anti-theft mines into their mods. Exactly like the Mad Max game where you can’t win and it makes it impossibly difficult if you’re playing a cracked copy. Below is the quote from the article, emphasis mine.
PureDark also responded to how quickly the Starfield mod was cracked.
"It was expected since it was something I put together within a day or two, but I did get enough patrons so it’s done its job. So from now on I will place hidden mines in all my mods to make it harder for these people.
Wow a day or two of work and you earn probably 200k+ from it, crazy. Guess he is hurting for cash or he see’s the end of the cash train as other people start making equivalent mods. Or maybe he is afraid of bethesda/nividia/amd coming down on him.
It’s a day of work to implement the DRM, not the mod itself, which he did release day 1 for free on Nexus, only the frame gen version is behind the patreon wall, additionally he’s released many such DLSS+FG mods for various games (which all come with the sub) so he has a lot of experience implementing it and has clearly gotten it down pretty well.
Every game has its own challenges but Starfield was particularly easy (according to him) because of how FSR was implemented
That… is not at all specified what kind of “mine” it would be. You’re assuming it’s innocuous, everyone else is assuming it’s malicious. But we’re all making assumptions.
Which has never happened in the history of forever and I’m sure this will go just fine after he spent a whole two days implementing DRM in the first place.
Sorry, I dont mean to laugh, but where have you been?
The bulk of gamers only care about their instant gratification. If they actually were capable of taking a stand then there’d be a lot less awful companies pulling in billion dollar+ game releases.
“We can say that, during his time at Telltale, Zak was one of the most talented, balanced and inclusive game directors we have ever worked with, and that is evident in the games he has delivered.”
That statement doesn’t read as the defense they think it reads as.
It reads as “all of our other game directors are somehow actually worse.”
Yeah, I read the IGN article earlier today and telltales statement actually put me off them if I’m being honest. None of the devs/publishers come out of this looking good.
For those wondering if this is under exaggerated, it’s not. Now my experience is on the Switch.
This issues I saw in my time before I got refunded was as follow. Texture Flickering and Shadow Flickering (hard to see as a screen shot so this is the worse I saw)
Well I’m glad you laying it out for us, I’ve got a better idea what I’m dealing with. And it really does miff me on how unnecessarily wasteful the game is with storage
Ditto, I sadly didn’t go online so no comment there. Well I mean I tried once and I couldn’t connect so I just jumped into instant action. But yeah the storage requirements are a bit unrealistic on Switch. I don’t think you can even play it on OG switch without a Micro SD Card.
But you’re actually probably at least partly right. I’m sure they’ve done at least some upscaling and stored at a higher res which may actually take up more space.
The controls are “fine” for the most part. If you were on an Xbox controller it would work. Space Battles in Battlefront II are an improvement, but the same treatment was never made to Battlefront 1. If I had to complain about anything, it’s that the auto aim needs to be more sensitive and when you blast an enemy it auto locks on them like the console games. Mouse and keyboard this would be annoying but on controller it’s necessary.
Looking at the 34GB install, I’m guessing it’s some kind of massive emulation layer; it’s scary to say but I feel like we’ve just run out of game developers that can genuinely code against the machine itself to optimize install size and performance.
When you look back on the meager specs of old consoles and what they got running there, it now feels more and more impressive.
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