Google is ‘crooked’ and a bully, CEO of Fortnite-maker Epic Games testifies in Play Store trial::Epic alleges that Google has been engaged in illegal price-gouging by collecting commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on in-app digital transactions.
I mean, he’s not incorrect, but there’s that saying about rocks and glass houses.
That’s right.
“Don’t decorate your glass house with polished rocks” or something.
“Don’t throw glass at your rock house.”?
Don’t put your house of rocks in a glass.
Yes thats part of it. The full saying is “Don’t throw glass at your rock house, unless you want a glass moat.”
I think I’ve done all of these things in Minecraft at one point or another…
But a glass moat sounds freaking metal 🤘 lol
Oh no! One terrible corporation is saying the other terrible corporation is terrible!
Let me play a very sad tune on this really tiny violin I found.
You might think Epic is a terrible corporation. But their ability to affect meaningful change on your daily life is effectively non-existent. Unless you are making a living being a Steam evangelist or something.
But Google has a massive amount of control over the internet. Between search, Android, Maps, ads, Gmail, etc. The level of “terribleness” they can approach vastly overshadows even the most evil stances Epic could take.
So, this “both sides are bad” take is a bit ridiculous.
The magnitude may be different, but that just makes this a “kettle meet pot” situation instead of the reverse. It’s still hypocrisy.
Pot calls kettle black.
Pot calls fellow pot black. 😝
the thing about that is, the kettle is black.
I’m against epic. Fuck them, hope they lose the lawsuit.
You know a company sucks when the public decides to side with fucking Google instead of them.
Actually Google wasn’t that bad in the past. They did a lot of good, open sourced a lot of projects, made a lot of Linux contributions, gave us AOSP, Kubernetes, Golang, Tensor Flow, etc.
They even had a moonshot program, working on a lot of emerging technologies, and were in general pretty cool. I think things started to go downhill when they announced Alphabet, back then they started to optimize their operations by minimising the costs and maximizing their profits. In general this made their shareholders pretty happy and the rest pretty sour.
So… When the name Google started only referring to the actual web services instead of everything the parent company was doing. Those types of things are still there, they’re just part of Alphabet (literally the old Google), which the media doesn’t really talk about anymore because the average person has no idea what that means, but they know Google.
Seriously, I actually agree with what they’re arguing in the lawsuit, but it’s one of those “worst person you know manages to make a good point” situations. You don’t want to actually agree with them, because you understand they have ulterior motives for having that position.
Despite Google being the bad guy in this, I certainly do not fucking want a shit-ass company like Epic to fucking win.
Why? What did they do?
They tried to beat Steam at their own game by paying studios a massive amount to release games exclusively on their platform. They brought “console exclusives” to fucking PC gaming and they can fuck off and eat shit for that.
They tried to entice gamers by giving them free copies of these games. They never, not once, tried to improve the quality of their application or give basic features that Steam has had for literally a decade. They don’t actually care about customer satisfaction or good quality of service. They went on a stupid spree of buying game studios and basically killing them, just like EA used to do.
(A good example is when they bought Rocket League, which had a perfectly functional Linux-native version, but when they bought it they were like “FUCK LINUX” and literally removed the existing Linux-native version of Rocket League. That’s when I stopped playing.)
They were in it to spend as much money as possible in an attempt to extract as much money as possible in a vain attempt to dominate the market. They failed at that miserably because these stupid chucklefucks don’t actually know how to run a successful business by being good to their customers. Being good to your customer categorically is not just giving away free shit.
And if that shitty narcissistic bullshit wasn’t enough, they also did dumb shit like buying the music site Bandcamp, doing literally fucking nothing with it for two years, and then selling it to fucking ad-men who immediately fired half the staff and started hollowing out the company.
I will never forgive them for killing bandcamp. The last place you could make sure a musician got 100% of the proceeds of buying their music (as opposed to Spotify which pays… $0.003 cents per stream. Also Bandcamp offered DRM-free fully lossless audio files (FLAC). There literally was not a better music service if you cared about 1. Paying artists fairly 2. Getting good quality audio and 3. Real ownership of the music itself where it can’t be taken from you by changing licensing deals.
Tim Sweeney can go die in a fucking fire and I hope that same fire burns down Epic headquarters with all the C-Suite inside. They’ve always been a shitty company who cared about money first, and customers and their employees dead last. That’s proof enough with their fucking idiotic spending spree followed up with selling stuff like Bandcamp and laying people off. They don’t even have sound business strategy, a bunch of fucking loser ass morons who failed upward.
don’t forget, devs from the rocket league also got laid off a few weeks ago
Yeah, Epic laid off tooooooons of people. They could have, you know, not pissed away so much money for so many years, and done better for their employees but Tim Sweeney is like “whoops fuck you I guess haha.”
God he’s got such a punchable dick face.
they bought a brazilian game company that made a very fun game and now they only do fortnite skins, they can just explode and the world could be a better place
edit:horizon chase turbo is the game, piracy it and play, it’s really fun, just don’t give them more money
Oh fuck I read about this game. This was one of the studios they killed? Brutal. Every day I learn new depths of scummery from Epic.
Fucking hell, I had no idea and I love this game. This is where I draw the line, I’m joining the Epic hate train now.
+1 for such an extensive, well-founded rant
I will never forgive them for killing bandcamp.
It ain’t dead yet, but it’s not looking good. I second this sentiment, however. I love Bandcamp and was so pissed when they bought it, only to be more pissed when they basically threw it away like a used napkin. Fuck Timmy Tencent.
$0.003 cents per stream.
So… #verizonmath means I have to ask: Is this supposed to be 3/1000ths of a penny per stream? Or 3/10ths of a penny per stream? You labeled the amount with both dollars and cents :(
I suppose that’s true. It’s supposed to be 3/10ths of one cent. My bad on writing both, force of (bad) habit.
Also there’s Spotify and potentially a distributor also taking a cut of this payment before it gets to the artist. Spotify takes 30%, so 1/10th of each 3/10th of a cent, along with whatever cut the distributor takes.
On Bandcamp Fridays, you’re able to pay 100% to the artist.
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Jeez that is terrible. I did NOT expect to resonate with your pain as much as I did. Yikes.
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Fkn amazing username.
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They brought “console exclusives” to fucking PC gaming and they can fuck off and eat shit for that.
Honest question, why is this bad? I don’t understand.
I think you misunderstand. They didn’t bring games that were exclusive to consoles, to PC. They took the idea of exclusives to PC app markets. I.E. paying game studios for exclusive rights to distribute on PC. It’s anti competitive and a completely artificial limitation, since obviously, for PC games, the hardware is the same regardless of Steam or Epic app stores. And that violates a long standing core value for many PC gamers as an entirely open market.
Yes that was exactly what I was thinking. Thanks for clearing that up.
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paying studios a massive amount to release games *exclusively* on their platformHate the studios then, no one forced them to sell on EGS but it looks like guaranteed income and bigger share of sales in exchange for timed exclusivity is a good deal compared taking a chance to have more sales on Steam… One in the hand beats two in the bush, you know?
They tried to entice gamers by giving them free copies of these games. They never, not once, tried to improve the quality of their application or give basic features that Steam has had for literally a decade.Cut the crap, they have most of Steam’s actually useful features now, keep your opinion to yourself if you can only base it on your experience from years ago.
They don't actually care about customer satisfaction or good quality of service.Valve doesn’t either unless they’re legally forced to.
They went on a stupid spree of buying game studios and basically killing them, just like EA used to do.Eh… Valve does that too? Tons of devs see their creativity become useless when their studio gets bought by the big unorganized mess that is Valve. They release one game they were already working on and that’s the end of it.
but when they bought it they were like "FUCK LINUX" and literally *removed* the existing Linux-native version of Rocket LeagueOh no, they didn’t want to waste resources maintaining a version of the game that less than 1% of players were playing on 😢 How dare they make a good business decision.
Being good to your customer categorically *is not* just giving away free shit.They’re spending what would have otherwise been their marketing budget and it works, proof is you’re talking about it and that’s still publicity.
I will *never* forgive them for killing bandcamp. The *last* place you could make sure a musician got 100% of the proceeds of buying their music (as opposed to Spotify which pays... $0.003 cents per stream.Funny how you care about proceeds split for musicians but you never mentioned that they take half the proceeds on games that Valve takes…
They've always been a shitty company who cared about money firstYeah so… That’s what companies do, welcome to the real world kiddo, the alternatives are no different.
Yeah so… That’s what companies do, welcome to the real world kiddo, the alternatives are no different.
As if valve and gog don’t exist.
And you think they don’t care about money???
No, I think they care about customers enough for us to not be troubled about their “ulterior” intentions.
Still nothing compared to what valve did. People here are either young or naive.
Ellaborate pls?
Let’s see, popularised always online drm, loot boxes, gambling in video games, supported money laundering, established the 30% cut and more.
Unironically all that is wrong with modern gaming.
And hey, epic sucks ass but they haven’t damaged the gaming industry as much as steam, not even close.
They dared shake the cage to take some market shares from Gaben and some people are angry.
Based on some other responses, I doubt it’s as simple as you put it.
These days it pretty much is, they are angry about the state the program released in, never checked it again and argue based on the features it lacked at the beginning and that have been part of it for years now.
You know what’s funny? I’m old enough to remember the same kind of people arguing they would forever boycott Steam because it forced them to install a program and download games instead of just installing them from a CD and it meant the death of physical releases.
I mean, I agree with your point as well… Change isn’t appreciated.
But at the same time, the Rocket League and Bandcamp stories kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
As I mentioned elsewhere the Rocket League thing is logical from a business perspective. The original devs might not have minded losing money on the Linux version (time spent on maintenance vs number of players paying for it) but once a big business buys it they have numbers to meet and it makes no sense to use resources for less than 1% of users, especially when you can estimate that the bigger players will simply switch to another platform and you’ll lose the casual players that don’t bring in much profit.
As for Bandcamp I would have to look into it but I seem to remember that they had financial troubles before, I might be mistaken though! If they did maybe once they got bought Epic realised that salvaging that ship wasn’t worth it or they wanted to acquire some of their tech and weren’t interested in the product itself, hard to tell and hard to tell if it would be in better shape even if they hadn’t bought it…
Worth noting that harvesting organs from non-consenting people would also be logical from a business perspective, provided it were legal. Free high value produce!
Not to put words in the mouth of the previous commenter, but logic is an extremely different argument compared to their argument of ethics- I don’t think they were confused about why it happened but rather concerned that it happened despite the ethical issues around (potentially, Im not familiar with the Rocket League situation) removing a game from a platform that many people bought it solely for :)
Regardless, I think it makes sense for people to be upset as, to your point, the most logical business decisions often run counter to the ethical or emotional considerations of the customers.
Yeah, I’m confused about the price gouging too. Not sure what they did exactly. I remember fondly that Apple had an issue with then and how they advertised app purchases, but not with Google Play Store.
Projection is a thing Epic. Be less Republican.
Takes one to know one? Or something silly.
Their crooked bullies.
Our strategic entrepreneurs.
You don’t have to support Epic’s ultimate goal of increasing their profit, to understand that the monopoly power this lawsuit is fighting is even worse. Apple and Google should not be able to gatekeep what kind of apps we get to use - any argument in favour of them basically boils down to “they let us avoid malicious apps” but you can have democratic orgs decide that instead of oligarchical cartels. And I don’t necessarily mean the government, although government regulation would be a welcome move, I mean even more democratic:
In Finland, some of the largest grocery chains (think Walmart) are collectively, democratically owned - in other words, they operate in the same boring, stable, functional, and efficient manner as other grocery shops without being undemocratic(!). The average Finnish person has say in what products are being stocked, can be elected managers of stores, and the coop gives members 5% of their spending back (i.e. revenue sharing), among other things. [1] For reference, in the UK, we get a measly 1% back from grocery shop purchases, or from Amex with their cashback.
Sure, Epic won’t give us this democratic org, but they do help us challenge the gatekeepers that are way more invested in working against giving us anything like this.
[1] https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2023/10/11/inside-the-walmart-of-finland/
I wholeheartedly believe google is breaking the law to maximize profits, but I also feel like this headline is designed to make it seem as though the people suing are just butthurt and that their primary complaint is that they don’t like google personally and feel that their opinion as to whether google is kind and nice should be legally actionable.
No, seriously. Fuck google. Go FOSS or take your shitty closed source fucking scam and go to fucking hell. To everyone else, Take the pennies you pay and support the writers and the REAL hosters and not the infamous title stealing hedgemon scamper spies.
Discard closed source anything or you deserve the inevitable end of the world happening TO-FUCKING-DAY
Sure Timmy. Timmmmmmeeeeeyyyyyyy.
No shit Sherlock. Every company is. How they make stupid cash monies.
“Don’t be evil.”
I believe they removed this from their company policy a couple of years ago.
Yes they did. I wonder why…
It is still in their code of conduct.
Google Removes ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Clause From Its Code of Conduct - Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
But it’s still there.
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Unlike on iOS, nobody forces them to use Google Play to distribute their app. Just don’t use it. On iOS that’s not an option, but here what’s the problem?
The problem is that they crushed the competition with a fairly good free product for years. Setting all alternatives back, then they started prioritizing revenue, slowly, over time. Now Google free to use products are part of our routine, part of our lives, and the alternatives are either paid, poorly developed or have a low user base. Do you have an alternative to YouTube that has the same amount of content? It was the same issue when we left Teddit, but at a much lower scale and that was still painful (and it still is)
And that has to do with being able to sideload how, exactly?
How did they crush f-droid? What did they do to set alternative app stores on Android back? We aren’t talking about YouTube here, your entire comment is just making shit up about Android stores because you are bad about other parts of Google.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on Monday portrayed Google as a ruthless bully that resorts to shady tactics to protect a predatory payment system.
Sweeney’s more than two-hour stint on the witness stand in San Francisco came less than a week after Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended before the 10-member jury the way his company runs its Play Store for Android apps.
Much of Kravis’ his cross-examination appeared design to cast Sweeney as an executive primarily interested in bypassing a long-standing commission system to boost his video game company’s profits.
He attributed the disappointing response to Google machinations that made it a cumbersome process to do outside the Play Store and the use of pop-up “scare screens” warning of potential problems with the software.
Epic then filed antitrust lawsuits as part of what Sweeney framed as a crusade on behalf of all game makers as more play occurs on smartphones instead of consoles and PCs.
During his questioning of Sweeney, Google lawyer Kravis laid out the 30% commissions that Epic pays to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for transactions on the PlayStation, Xbox and Switch consoles without complaint while still raking in billions of dollars in profit from those platforms.
The original article contains 780 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
