Current marketing and physical retail distribution methods are "inefficient", says Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, who is "looking forward to" a more profitable all-digital future.
The Supreme Court seems to have given it's final verdict on Epic and Apple's legal battle in the US.
Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly.
oooo shiiiit
well, there ya go
but i think the biggest issue are the judges in these cases.
most of them have no clue about all them things.
ii wonder what the judge will decide Epic actually "won" or what the out come is.
Why are you saying the judge have no cases?
I think the judges shows lots of clairity that in a duality market (APPLE and Android) there's no competition when both are already agreeing on the price.
Do you think there would be deals if Wallmart was the only store where you could buy food?
How would the argument of "but there's competition between Cookies and cereal brands" would hold up when Wallmart could decide that each provider must pay a 30% comission just to display product in store?
There's already tons od laws to make sure that there's not only 1 physical store brand and that store owners can't be in cahoot with competition in order to fix price so why would this be different for Virtual storefront?
i didnt say that.
read properly next time.
and the digital market is more complex than supernarkets.
"Do you think there would be deals if Wallmart was the only store where you could buy food?"
This isn't even the same types of argument, you have a variety of different devices you can get content on, like Apple pr Google or PC or consoles, all these things plus more compete with each other.
The only winner in this decision are Epic, Microsoft and other people who are already rich. All these greedy companies are using the law to steal profits from each other and it's going to be the consumers who pay more.
All these devices we use are heavily subsidized by the profits these platform holders make from selling peoples products. If you think Epic is going to start charging less for their MTX now or whatever your crazy, consumers are not going to get anything back from the winners here. All consumers get is the privilege to pay more for devices.
Edit:
"Wallmart could decide that each provider must pay a 30% comission just to display product in store?"
Walmart does take a cut of every sale in their stores....thats how they make money. They also sell shelf space, the products that are are in the center instead of the top or the bottom pay to be there and to have higher visibility and easier access. They also sell access because obviously they don't have enough space for every brands products.
Using your Walmart analogy, how long do you think Walmart would stay in business if they just let anyone walk into their store and sell things without helping to pay for the upkeep of the stores and other costs? They wouldn't that's why things don't work like that.
That is what Epic wants, they want to use these devices with out paying to help maintain them.
@Gold _Drake
Sorry bad writting from my part I meant to say Why do you think Judges have no clues?
@Einhander1972
Last I checked tons of small developpers and consummer association complained about the 30% tax cut that Sony Steam, Google, Apple are charging so why do you say only Epic benefit from that decisision is beyond me. Heck I recall this article making the headline recently
https://www.gamesindustry.b...
As for Walmart Upkeep, I would like to remind you that it's Wallmart and other store who need to cut in THEIR profit margin if they want to match price seen in other stores and not the other way around like in the digital market where Game publisher must sign price parity clause to please Google, Apple, Valve and Sony
https://www.linklaters.com/...
https://www.ign.com/article...
Thst isn the issue here. Thr issue ws the secret deals Google was doing to lower its cut for certain big apps publishers and only them and the fact that a requiremenf for said deals was nof helping epic games sefup its own mobile store.
"Last I checked tons of small developpers and consummer association complained about the 30% tax cut that Sony Steam, Google, Apple are charging so why do you say only Epic benefit from that decisision is beyond me. Heck I recall this article making the headline recent"
Yes, yeah developers and other people who are selling things to you may benefit but the main benefit is these large companies who want to bypass fees.
But at the end of the day they are not going to start charging you less, they are going to charge the same but get more profits.
And the link you posted about the case against Sony is filed by Alex Neil a certified con artist who doesn't care about consumers they just want a huge personal payout.
And as for parity clauses again the money is going to come from the consumers one way or another, these people are fighting to take each others profits, if the parity clauses are blocked we'll pay more for hardware.
The idea that any of these changes are going to make things cheaper for the consumer are a joke, the only thing that changes is who gets the profits.
And as for Walmart, you missed what I was saying Walmart may lower the price on an item but they just charge the manufacturer of that item more to stock it on the shelves.
In some ways the digital stores are better because they don't charge an upfront fee to put an item on the store they instead charge a fee per sale. Which if they have to reduce the fee that charge for sales they would likely recoup that money by charging a fee to sell something on the ap store. Which also would benefit the rich companies over small developers who would be able to pay upfront fees that smaller developers may not.
Which is the reason Walmart only stocks the major brands and not a bunch of start up small brands, because the major brands can pay for shelf space.
Don’t hold your breath yet there’s a long road ahead with the appeals process then the Supreme Court will have the last words and I don’t see this court going against the big corporations earnings.
I’m been known to be wrong some times and truly hope I am on this one
This is terrible news for consumers, while Epic and others get richer we'll now have to pay more for our devices.
How? Android phones like Samsung Galaxy are not subsidized by purchases from Google Play Store. And Google can’t quit on Android because of how much money Google makes from Google search on Android.
Google pays Samsung billions to have their store on Samsung phones.
Samsung also offers it's own store.
Einhander1972
samsung has it's own store but how many know about that store? its like comparing MS store to other well known stores
No. The cases argued were different.
Epic sued Apple for a monopoly over iOS. Apple said iOS competes with Android, MS, Nintendo, Sony, etc for Fortnite. Therefore there is market competition and no monopoly. The judges agreed.
Epic sued Google over a monopoly on android devices. Because Google was found to have shady deals preventing phone manufacturers from putting competing stores on phones as a default app, among other shady dealings, they found google has a monopoly on android marketplaces specifically.
Basically, Apple being a walled garden actually kind of protected them
Android isn’t a walled garden tied to hardware like iOS. Android is like Windows or Linux for PCs. Any phone manufacturer can use Android and any seller can have their own store on Android. But Google used its muscle to tie up 90% marketshare for apps on Android. That’s monopolistic behavior.
Phil and slimey company sitting up and plotting.... expect to hear how Sony is anti-gamer for refusing to have GamePass on their ecosystems they may very well do this to avoid 2027 . I can imagine his email to Satya...."we got them" lol.
The Epic Game Store has two free titles they are giving away this week.
that statement is inefficient to the terms of reality.
Yeah because i can see an all digital future being more efficient.'What's that? Because of some unforeseen glitch every single one of your games are erased? How am I going to pay you back for the hundreds of gigabytes of data that you collected over the years? We can only give you one third of your data back.Why you ask? Well the rest of it is corrupted and can't be retrieved. Sorry but those are the breaks when you have an all digital system. Well screw you too sir. Goodbye.'
Apparently everyone at epic is delusional.
So I see Gamestop hating them.
It IS inefficient and that's why companies like GAME and HMV are going under. The problem is that nobody is suggesting a better way of handling things. Core gamers are worried about not truly owning any of their stuff if it goes all digital, stores are worried about making a loss on any game that isn't super popular and developers want to have their cake and eat it too (high prices, all for them).
Hitman and Far Cry 3 both dropped to a quarter of their initial price, on consoles, within a little more than 6 weeks. They need to fix that issue first, picking a price that's less likely to fluctuate and more likely to hold.
Secondly, publishers need to realize that if a high street store doesn't stock a niche title, people who want to buy that title will buy it from where it's available. GAME, especially, had a massive influence over this industry in the UK and it was all because losing a big stockist would hit sales. With that hold gone, digital prices will drop, but it'll also mean developers no longer have to fight (or make changes to a game, or announce delays on PC) to have decent space on shelves.
We're a way off on that one yet, but with every passing year things are getting better.
Lastly, and this one could take a while, everybody needs to grow up a little. Developers need to stop treating their fans like they're stupid. The recent Rayman debacle? Yeah, that sort of crap happens every day, big and small, and it's all because the developers know we'll buy the game anyway. They also need to drop a little of the greed. If they can figure a way of dropping prices, rather than increasing them, the industry would be much better for it. DmC would have seen much better sales at half the price, because it's less an initial investment and less reason to justify minor niggles and fan disappointment.
But we, the gamers, need to all grow up as well. I make about 50% of my living writing about video games, and I don't take it nearly as seriously as some of the people on here and on other sites around the net. There's a current trend of games failing to live up to expectation and for the fans to say "well, they should have listened to us."
We need to trust that the people that make the games know what they're doing, and that they know a hell of a lot more than we do. If something isn't the way the fans moaned about wanting it, there's a good reason for that. If Square Enix are making Final Fantasy 13-3, it's because they've looked at the figures and they know they can A/ make it profitable and B/ make it enjoyable for the people that have enjoyed the series.
We then have to admit to ourselves that, yes, some people enjoy things that we don't. We need to admit that the industry is growing and the core gamer from twenty years ago might not be the best person to give an opinion on the way things should be today.
With an acceptance that sometimes things will happen in the industry that don't make sense to us or that don't appeal to us, perhaps we can help make a transition to a new system easier and, ultimately, we'll all benefit.