HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ open-source-ux

This is the original Apple "1984" commercial (directed by Ridley Scott) that is spoofed by Epic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

In the Apple commercial, "Big Brother" is represented by a domineering IBM. It's rather ironic that Apple has been more closed, guarded and controlling than the PC platform has ever been.

⬐ bestham

You have to remember that the reality we live in is the one where CDP, Eagle and Compaq cloned the IBM PC BIOS and could offer compatible IBM PC clones with DOS from Microsoft. That happened during the summer / fall of 1982. The assertions made in the original 1984 ad were in many ways a straw man argument since the PC compatible clones really took of during 1983 due to low supply from IBM and freed the PC from the control that IBM had.

⬐ recursivedoubts

2015 me would be quite surprised to learn that 2020 me is rooting for an obnoxious gaming company to take down apple.

⬐ BoorishBears

In what way has Epic ever been obnoxious?

From spending millions on free developer resources, to retroactively making products free, to having an owner who's invested millions in conservation, it's so bizarre that it's popular to hate Epic.

I think their biggest mistake in the public's perception was daring to challenge Steam's semi-monopoly on PC distribution

⬐ BTCOG

Epic jacks people over daily for choosing different colors of characters and clothing, aka "buying skins." This makes Epic Games BOOKU bucks, and then they want to sidestep paying a 30% fee to be on a device that will capture them untold millions more in in-game purchases. The way I see it, Epic could go ahead and make their own mobile devices, spend years on creating their OWN appstore, and capture the market that way. Instead, they want to use someone else's platform and avoid paying them fees to do so.

⬐ BoorishBears

This feels like the kind of comment I'd find on Reddit

> The way I see it, Epic could go ahead and make their own mobile devices, spend years on creating their OWN appstore, and capture the market that way.

I mean this is in such bad faith how do you even argue against it.

Their whole point is Apple has locked people out of running the software they want to run on their phones unless you use their app store. They're leveraging this to extract money from devs.

Epic would gladly make their own app store if people could run the software they want to on the iPhone, they did it on PC to the same end.

-

Also complaining about different colors of characters and clothing being sold as "jacking people over"

Is that a joke? Once upon a time monetization that "jacked people over" was skinner boxes wrapped up in time crystals paid for with special gems that came up 99 bucks a pop.

The battle pass system is an excellent example of fair monetization. It doesn't affect ability to use the game, it doesn't unduly wrap rewards in some kind of RNG lottery, it's literally as tame as monetization gets.

It turns out people would rather spend $20 on optional stuff when they feel like it than paying $20 for every expansion to a game. Kinda crazy huh?

⬐ Shared404

The only thing I can think of is "Fortnite bad" and most of Epic's money comes from loot boxes iirc, which seems sketchy to me.

⬐ antiterra

I don’t think Fortnite has much in the way of randomized loot boxes, but instead sells cosmetic dlc that can be partially earned through playtime. There’s something that feels a little sketch about how they use time pressure to encourage money spend, but I do know plenty of people who just don’t bother with skins.

⬐ sushid

Which, to me, is hilarious. How dare they undercut a de-factor monopoly with lower fees for game publishers?!

⬐ danmur

Microtransactions are a pretty obnoxious business model.

⬐ boardwaalk

The way the gamer community vilified Epic regarding the Epic Game Store when it was only doing what Steam and existing publishers (re: exclusives) were already doing blew my mind.

It was and is really quite silly.

⬐ esyir

As far as I can tell, there aren't any legally binding steam exclusives. The pc was the device with oo mandate exclusives, and epic brought that there. They deserve whatever hate they get for that.

⬐ BoorishBears

It's pretty much a distinction without a difference...

Major publishers have had games to their stores, so there have been storefront-exclusives for years. Trying to slip in "mandated" is kind of redundant, it's self-mandated by the people publishing the game...

But of course, Steam's monopoly on a full-featured game front is just so strong they usually kowtow eventually...

For years EA games were Origin-exclusive, it wasn't until a few months ago they reversed course on that, and they still require Origin.

Epic is doing it right, they're busting a monopolized industry and playing exactly the right amount of hardball to do it. -

And as an aside, the statement "The pc was the device without mandate exclusives" seems to be implying PC was the gaming platform without platform exclusives... I mean yeah? And it still is?

Epic was saying you could only use their store, they weren't saying you could only use PC...

PC is very much last place for AAA attention, hence games coming out months later and in much worse shape, in no universe would a publisher ever go PC-only for a game because of Epic games or any other storefront trying to nudge them

⬐ esyir

First up, monopoly is a false argument here. Consumers have choice, and Steam doesn't prevent games from launching on other platforms.

Compare this to Epic, which directly impacts consumers by limiting their choice of platform. Epic's work here is a reduction in consumer agency, not an increase. Furthermore, Epic has shown direct anti-consumer activity, with interference in games explicitly available for the Steam audience. As such, from their previous and current behavior, I can see the Epic store only as a long-term negative, with the worsening of user experience and the introduction of even more "store exclusives" into the ecosystem.

Add in the permissionless acquisition of private user steam data files, and we now get security issues in the mix.

I'm more amenable to origin. They make the games, they can have it on their own platform. They don't go out targeting games with multiple distribution platforms to buy exclusivity.

⬐ BoorishBears

You seem confused on the definition of a monopoly.

In the real-world, it doesn't mean you actively break the knee caps of anyone who tries to do what you're doing.

It means you have singular control over the industry though, and that's exactly what Steam had, to the point no one has been able to compete with them.

EA wanted to have their own platform with Origin and Steam is so big and so immovable they were forced to come crawling back..

You're free to be upset that someone had the audacity to play hardball with them, but Steam's very existence is what reduces choice of game storefronts, not Epic, it's hilarious to pretend otherwise.

Epic games has stated repeatedly said the moment Steam goes to 88% cut for devs, they will stop exclusives. It was the reason they've given from the start. Thats about as far from anti-consumer as you get

⬐ esyir

You say monopoly over and over as though I made that argument. Rather I think it's fairly irrelevant here. Rather the actual consumer experience, and consumer agency is to me far more important. This has been explicitly degraded by Epic, unless exclusivity is now good for consumers.

You celebrate this as "playing hardball" at the cost of consumers, but probably would outraged if steam were return fire.

As for their claims on we're just trying to help the devs get better cuts, I'll believe them when I see an explicit legally binding document. Right now, I trust Epic about as much as I trust tencent.

⬐ BoorishBears

There has been no customer agency as Steam had a monopoly what are you not getting?

A multi billion dollar publisher can't avoid being on Steam after years of struggling in what universe do you think that means devs have agency to not be on Steam.

> You celebrate this as "playing hardball" at the cost of consumers, but probably would outraged if steam were return fire.

You realize the return fire from the people with their finger around the throat of an industry isn't the same right?

- It's kind of annoying replying with the same thing to both your comments.

You clearly know nothing about this industry past playing video games.

As someone who worked in it and worked on launched titles, please hush up until you actually do some research and learn about what role publishers and store fronts and value adds all play here.

This isn't Reddit, there's a slightly higher expectation of knowing what you're talking about.

⬐ esyir

They didn't just "challenge the monopoly".

They made consumer experience worse by introducing exclusives to an ecosystem that was previously largely free of them. Then they bought over exclusives that were announced for other platforms.

That's pretty damn obnoxious to me.

⬐ BoorishBears

I replied to your other comment explaining this, games were already de-facto Steam exclusives with very few exceptions.

Epic games became a new choice, and in an attempt to break the status wui, offered incentives for devs to not join the de-facto PC gaming store in an attempt to force them to give developers more favorable revenue splits

They've stated multiple times this is all about how Steam's revenue split should be moved to 88/12.

-

Steam no longer provides the level of service to these developers as they did when the splits were established anyways.

Once upon a time Steam was highly curated and publishing to Steam could conceivably replace a "normal" publishing push just by virtue of how many eyeballs each game got.

Now thiusands of games are announced a day, it's become a cesspool of crud not worth even looking at, and at this point it's just a fancy frontend for Steamworks, a download page, and payment processing (none of which is worth 30% of revenue)

⬐ esyir

>Now thiusands of games are announced a day, it's become a cesspool of crud not worth even looking at, and at this point it's just a fancy frontend for Steamworks, a download page, and payment processing (none of which is worth 30% of revenue)

Regarding this. Have you even looked at the steam frontpage recently? None of the games featured there are crud by most measures. Mine has Satisfactory, Darksiders Genesis, Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding and Among US. Some of these might not be to my taste, but garbage not worth looking at is a tad harsh. If you're referring to all games released however, refer to the next line?

I actually like the way that they've managed to segment game distribution from recommendation/featuring, and believe that for game distribution platforms, combining a more liberal admission policy, but a more selective recommendation policy seems to be a good approach.

⬐ BoorishBears

You think having 5 already wildly successful games on the front page somehow means Steam is only accepting "good games", is that a joke?

You realize Steam was accepting under 1 game a day when it launched right? And for many years after?

Like there was actual meaning to getting on Steam. It wasn't they couldn't get games, they only wanted the best

-

If anything you are literally making my point in regards to discovery.

Once upon a time if you released a game on steam you were guaranteed some modicum of traction by virtue of being a new game on Steam

In 2019 more games were added in 1 year than in the DECADE after Steam launched.

(I mistyped in the last comment, it was meant to be thousands of games per year, but you get the idea)

Every single game you described already has a massive following.

Gone are the days where you could launch with a small following and rely on Steam to do half of what a publisher exists to do... market your game.

That was what was worth 30% of your revenue, having Steam pickup your game and give it halo status.

Now Steam really is a crapshoot and saying your game is on Steam doesn't mean it was curated, it just means it's on Steam.

The completely and utterly demolishes the value proposition of the platform as a publisher.

⬐ esyir

I don't see how you've typed this much while getting something that fundamental wrong. Steam isn't the publisher. It never was. For the record, this applies to the EGS too. It's the platform and distribution service, and the roles between the two are different.

⬐ amrrs

This is quite a clever move from Epic. Clearly provoking Apple and Knowing what they'd do they got a lawsuit and the famous 1984 Apple Ad's Spoof video. I think This spoof video is more than just mocking Apple. It's clearly playing the underdog theme and winning the support of Fortnite and other Epic games fans.

⬐ joezydeco

As someone that lived through the 1980s and the PC/Mac wars, this is way more than mocking.

It's literally saying to Apple's face that they've become IBM in this situation.

⬐ rogerallen

Agreed. Note that IBM could not even dream of doing what Apple has done with the App Store. They had only just finished off their monopoly lawsuit in 1982...

⬐ kohtatsu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4

Direct link

Ah, there's an HN discussion already; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24148204

⬐ NoNameProvided

Well played Epic, well played.

⬐ justicezyx

Tim Cook typing "gg"?

Gg is good game, when someone admits defeat to the opponent.

⬐ dariusj18

More like "glhf"

⬐ allears

How long have they been working on this spoof commercial?

⬐ dogma1138

Probably about as long as they were working on their legal documents. This is literally something that I would expect to see on an episode of Suits not in real life.

⬐ joezydeco

You can see today's date on the screen being smashed. Epic had this primed and ready to render the moment Apple kicked them off the App Store.

⬐ dogma1138

It could’ve been easily also pre-rendered not that it would take too long to render this but since they knew when they’ll pull this stunt and they knew that Apple would kick them off the store the same day or the next they could’ve had a few pre-rendered versions with the possible dates ready for upload.

⬐ catsarebetter

How much more did they prepare beforehand lol

⬐ sleepyK

Oh how the turntables have turned...

⬐ rawland

This is epic.

⬐ minxomat

Going after Apple's policies seems to require fanfare. Spotify made a whole website: https://timetoplayfair.com/

This follows other public denouncements by Hey.com, ProtonMail, Netflix and others, all within a few months.

⬐ elliekelly

What’s Apple’s move when Epic, Spotify, Netflix, etc. all coordinate to “blackout” iOS for a day? Or even for an hour? And why haven’t they yet?

⬐ cinbun8

They would lose revenue.

⬐ sebazzz

Do you think that Apple would care? I'm sure plenty of customers would be angry though - but not on Apple.

We - here on HN - are far from the average customer.