this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

don't forget, devs from the rocket league also got laid off a few weeks ago

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

+1 for such an extensive, well-founded rant

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

$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 :(

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
  1. Jeez that is terrible. I did NOT expect to resonate with your pain as much as I did. Yikes.

  2. Fkn amazing username.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Yes that was exactly what I was thinking. Thanks for clearing that up.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Still nothing compared to what valve did. People here are either young or naive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

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.