I’m really tired of seeing this idiot quoted.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney supports the $900 million lawsuit against Valve, arguing Steam is "the only major store still holding onto payment ties and 30% junk fee"
Submitted 1 day ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/epic-games-ceo-tim-sweeney-111609426.html
Comments
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 6 hours ago
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Tim… suing everyone else wont make epic store a great place to buy games
Look to GOG for inspiration…
Tuscy@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
He’s just salty because the only games people “purchase” are the weekly free ones.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I don’t even bother with those anymore. I never play the free ones I have, because I’d have to use Epic’s software.
fishos@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Not even. I’ve bought games on Steam that I forgot I had in Epic because Epic is just that trash. Fuck Epic for trying to start their store by bribing developers for exclusivity on their platform. Bitch ass tactics to begin with and then crying and whining when their mob mentality strong arming didn’t work. Best believe if their shit had worked and they became popular those greedy assholes would be asking a higher percentage once everyone was locked in.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
He’s still right in this instance.
HailSeitan@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Exactly. The number of people on Lenny who simp for Valve’s monopoly just because Epic (along with every game developer, big or small) stands to benefit is kind of shocking.
luthis@lemmy.nz 1 day ago
Has epic games developed anything like Proton? Valve isn’t just a store.
IntrusiveThoughts@fedia.io 1 day ago
What do you mean? Isn't Kratos dancing orange justice innovative enough?
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
They developed the Unreal engine. Not sure how “like Proton” you meant, but it’s used by lots of games and is quite a complex and well-regarded 3D engine.
DireTech@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Epic makes tons of money off licensing Unreal to developers and have since before their store was a thing.
Proton makes direct zero profit, though it does make Steam the best store for anyone on Linux.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
That Whataboutism is Not really relevant to the lawsuit.
Just because they made someone useful to expand their control over the games industry, that you happen to like, doesn’t mean them abusing their monopoly position isn’t still bad.
Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
>Open source, publicly available tool to aid in Linux adoption
>“some[thing] to expand their control over the games industry”
Found the Sweeney fanboy. Just because Timmy-boy can’t install kernel-level malware on Linux doesn’t mean Gabe Newell is going to use it to conquer the Earth, bud.
lofuw@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
🤡
gens@programming.dev 1 day ago
Wine?
danekrae@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I didn’t know epic games developed that.
tharien@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Isn’t Tim the guy that advocates for pedophelia through AI generation?
HailSeitan@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
And Hitler was a vegetarian, but that tells us literally nothing about whether we should abuse animals in factory farms
underisk@lemmy.ml 21 hours ago
Sure, but I think wanting to fuck children does kind of paint a vivid picture about your general moral character in a way your dietary preferences might not.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Stop, stop, I already have so many reasons to hate him, I don’t need more.
Hazzard@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
Well… duh. The guy runs a competing storefront who’s only claims to fame are:
- Spending a bunch of money for timed exclusivity and free giveaways, rather than building out core features.
- They give devs a better cut than Steam to win a moral victory.
… that’s it, that’s all the reasons to use Epic, unless you want to play Fortnite or participate in an Early Access period where they chose Epic to reduce the overwhelming amount of feedback like Hades.
Auster@thebrainbin.org 1 day ago
I was almost forgetting Tim's whole deal seems to be antagonizing more successful companies than his.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
He wants access to massive user bases for fortnite without having to pay anything to the platforms. That’s why he’s so intent on attacking Steam, Apple and Google. Steam would be a massive increase in revenue even with a 30% cut going to steam for epic, but mutual benefit isn’t in vogue at the moment.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
But Epic is super successful. Its Unreal Engine has almost the entire gaming landscape in a stranglehold and is making big gains in film productions.
Fortnite is one of the most successful games on Earth and EGS exclusive recently achieved one million concurrent players.
Auster@thebrainbin.org 23 hours ago
I mean Epic the storefront, not the umbrella company, as the "company" in my original quote. If we are to be pedantic, there is also Epic the game publisher.
Also Rocket League was bought by EGS and turned exclusive after it already had a following, so the numbers for it seem kinda artificial. Though that and Fortnite would also fall in the publisher branch from what I understand.
The storefront itself is seldom news-worth, except for the freebies and that time they added a shopping cart with a few years of delay. And their freebies strategy seems to not be working out as EGS has yet to see a profit from some recent news.
Then comes Tim, that if I had to guess, is trying to dig any resentments people have with Steam to try to bring its userbase to EGS.
HailSeitan@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Being obviously self-interested doesn’t make him wrong about app store monopolies, whether Apple, Google, or Valve.
IronpigsWizard@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Has he (Tim Sweeney) shown up in the Epstein files yet or are we still waiting?
OscarRobin@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Out of all the digital stores Steam arguably offers by far the most actual functionality and features for its cut. It’s still too high, but it’s possibly the least egregious example vs Apple, Google etc
db2@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Reminder: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has defended child pornography, saying that stopping it is “gatekeeping”.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 1 day ago
is that Valve’s policies and position as the leading distribution service in PC gaming means publishers are effectively blocked from selling games and add-ons at lower prices on competing stores
I still don’t get this. As far as I can find, Steam doesn’t allow steam keys to be sold cheaper elsewhere, but they don’t bother with prices of games in other stores.
And doesn’t Epic have a bunch of games exclusive to their store?
orclev@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I still don’t get this. As far as I can find, Steam doesn’t allow steam keys to be sold cheaper elsewhere, but they don’t bother with prices of games in other stores.
This is tricky. Officially Valve doesn’t have any rules about game prices on other stores. Unofficially evidence has been put forward by way of emails between developers and Valve that seem to show that Valve unofficially requires price parity with other stores and will punish games that offer lower prices elsewhere.
The charitable interpretation is that their policies are worded confusingly and some of their agents are misinterpreting the rule requiring Steam key prices to be uniform as applying to non-Steam keys. The uncharitable interpretation is that Valve knows such a policy would get them in hot water with anti-monopoly laws and so they’re careful to make sure it stays an unofficial policy.
DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
If I’m remembering correctly, price parity only applies to keys sold off platform, rather than the game itself because they don’t profit from the keys being generated.
klymilark@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lol 22 hours ago
That’s… Weird, given I usually get games on sale from Humble if I’m getting them on steam. Might just be full price?
Steam, and Epic, both have exclusives. Steam is more incidental (some devs just don’t bother releasing elsewhere), while Epic had a deal going on for devs that released exclusively on Epic for the first 6 months of the game’s life. Don’t remember what the deal was, but it was a marketing thing to try and get people over to Epic. After the 6 months was up most devs also released to Steam.
Auth@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Is that true? I’ve seen devs list their games off steam for steamprice -30%. Often you can go to a devs website and buy the game $10 cheaper. However I still buy it via steam because i feel like i’ll forget about the game if its just a key in my email.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
The only reason I had an epic account was for their free giveaway. And now that I’ve switched to bazzite, amc considering their poor Linux support, I’m inclined to just cut bait on them.
deathmetal27@lemmy.world 32 minutes ago
TBH, I would take their stuff even if I get it for free.
BlackVenom@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
They thank you for your support
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
although I like a lot of what Valve does (I have a lot of Steam games, valve games, have a steam deck oled, use steamvr, etc) they are a fairly flawed company. sweeney is so great at shooting himself in the foot though that any opinion he has people will by default believe the opposite of (and probably should)
ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 23 hours ago
DRM free, launcher free games or fuck off.
OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
This.
DizzyMoth@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
The only interesting argument I heard about this demand was that when you buy game you are tie to respective store, and you cannot buy content like dlc outside that store. I wpukd be amazing for the customers if thus wasn’t the case
goatinspace@feddit.org 16 hours ago
Is that the Epic that agreed to six-year $800 million partnership with Google recently?
Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No instead epic charges 12%, and if you use unreal engine but don’t sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales. Sure those number are lower but egs isn’t out here “empowering” devs
lofuw@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Epic would charge Steam’s fees if they had Steam’s marketshare.
Everyone thinking they care about creators or customers is a fucking moron.
ulterno@programming.dev 8 hours ago
Epic would charge Steam’s fees if they had Steam’s marketshare.
while at the same time providing worse service.
Ever noticed the difference between Epic checkout vs Steam checkout? And that is the part one would want to make the best, because that’s what gets the money in.turmacar@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Are they close to feature parity with Steam yet? Like after a quick search of it looks like they added cloud saves but that took years.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
if you use unreal engine but don’t sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales.
Sounds like abusing market power.
borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
100%. Valve needs to start suing Epic for their game engine monopoly. It’s not about Valve it’s about protecting gamers.
Quazatron@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Yep, time to wipe my Epic account.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Shoddy article buries the lede: Epic isn’t suing Valve. UK residents are. Epic is just rooting for them because Epic makes a product (Epic Game Store) that competes with a product by Valve (Steam). Epic is not behind the lawsuit. They are just cheering for their competitor to be taken down a peg.
Literally nothing whatsoever stops Epic from releasing their Epic Game Store app on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android as these are open platforms that allow anybody to release an app (or app store) and offer it to their customers. However, Epic Game Store only actually exists on Windows, and it’s on iOS in the EU. Everywhere else, they’re keeping it from consumers out of pure spite in order to leverage the courts in their favour.
All of this started because Epic chose to defy Apple and the rules they agreed to in order to get Fortnite onto the iPhone’s App Store, in that they could not use an alternative payment provider to sell “V-bucks,” the in-game currency Fortnite uses. V-bucks cost Epic nothing to make as a virtual currency. Fortnite itself has expenses, but Fortnite is also a tech demo for the Unreal Engine. It exists, on a business level, to sell the capabilities of Epic’s in-house physics engine, the Unreal Engine. A bit hypocritically, Epic takes a cut of games sold that use the Unreal Engine. It is not free. Fortnite players use the V-bucks to buy skins and other cosmetic experiences in the game. And Epic, tired of giving Apple a 30% cut of something that costs them nothing to produce, thereby giving each company 100% profit, added an option to pay Epic directly, either less money to get the same amount of V-bucks, or the same amount of money to get more V-bucks (I don’t recall and it’s not what matters). Apple suspended the Fortnite game until Epic fixed it. Epic refused to, so the app was de-listed, and the developer account was banned.
Epic then pulled out of the Mac ecosystem as well, which had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. Macs do have an App Store that looks like the one on iPhone, but just like the Windows Store in Windows, it’s not required to install apps on a Mac. Most Mac users get their apps from the web, same as Windows users do. Like the Windows Store, the Mac App Store is just a convenience (both of them handle updates very well, for example). Not offering Fortnite and/or the Epic Game Store on the Mac has always been a choice Epic made, not any limitation imposed by Apple.
Epic is not just Fortnite, though. They made the Gears of War games for Xbox back in the day. Fortnite itself is actually a mashup of several games. The original Fortnite was a paid survival crafting game. I’m not sure it exists anymore, or if the freemium multiplayer Fortnite swallowed it up entirely. Like in Fortnite’s main mode, you could build, but you could build freely (safely) during the day, and mobs would attack at night. Fortnite also contains elements of Unreal Tournament, Epic’s prior multiplayer online shooter that last received a release in 2004; Rockband, the music game developed by Harmonix (which also created Guitar Hero), which is now called Fortnite Festival), and other acquisitions. Epic also made Unreal, a single-player game that Unreal Tournament was based on. They likely released a few other games I can’t recall. But since Unreal and Unreal Tournament, they’ve also licensed the Unreal Engine to other developers, and it’s been used in numerous games, including the original Deus Ex.
ryper@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
However, Epic Game Store only actually exists on Windows, and it’s on iOS in the EU.
Your information seems to be outdated. On the EGS download page I get an “Install on Windows” link with text below it “Also available on Mac OS, Android, iPhone (EU only) and iPad (EU only).”
neclimdul@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Yeah, I think that was not the case during their recent lawsuit with Apple. So relatively recently that changed and was limited for a “good” reason.
No Linux support though so whatever. Useless to me.
AlmightyDoorman@kbin.earth 1 day ago
While i agree with the sentiment v-bucks are not 100% profit. People buy v-bucks for skins, these skins have to be produced by people who typically don't do that for free. And for ongoing sells of v-bucks fortnite has to get regular updates, one of the selling points of fortnite are the regular seasons and events, these are not free to produce. Obviously they do all of this to increase profit but 100% profit ratio is a strange take.
HailSeitan@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
The commentor was saying that skins cost Apple nothing to produce, not Epic, which is why the Apple App Store profit margin is estimated to be around 78%. I think you misread the comment.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
What everyone else is saying, but god to I hate the fortnite art style.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
More like Tim Weenie.
UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
(And also pretty much the only store that matters for non-exklusive titles Tim)
dukemirage@lemmy.world 1 day ago
How easy it is to rage bait Gaben stans.
Adeptus_Obsoletus@piefed.social 1 day ago
“He is one of the good ones, he only has, like, 500 yachts” ~Reddit
woelkchen@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
“Tim Sweeney is our Robin Hood.” ~Adeptus_Obsoletus
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
You can look this shit up you know. 3 yachts each retrofitted into marine research vessels and one under construction as another research vessel. The one under construction will house 75 scientists. His marine research company, inkfish, releases all findings publicly and for free.
But nobody knows this shit because he isn’t burning money on a fucking PR firm.
Look, he’s sitting upon an empire largely propped up by the fucking invention of lootboxes, the marketing of them to children and whales, and all the second and third hand markets and gambling sites that have sprung up around this shit. I’m not going to sit around and suck his dick.
But inkfish isn’t even the only “public good” organization he’s founded. And he’s also just directly donated money to existing things as well, such as considerable money into pediatric ICU in New Zealand.
On the scheme of ultra rich, he is one of the better ones.
Grimy@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
The lawsuit - filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London - alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
It claims that as Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam, if they’ve bought the initial game through the platform it is essentially “locking in” users to continue making purchases there.
This, Ms Shotbolt argues, has enabled Steam to charge an “excessive commission of up to 30%”, making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content.
The case is what is known as a collective action claim, which means that one person goes to court on behalf of a much larger group of people.
In this instance, it has been brought on behalf of up to 14 million people in the United Kingdom who bought games or additional content through Steam or other platforms since 2018.
The claim is backed by legal firm Milberg London LLP, which brings group action cases against large companies.
A separate consumer action case, filed in August 2024, has been brought against Valve in the US.
From another article because this one has half the info and reads like it was commissioned by steam. The effects of a company go further than your enjoyment of their product. I’m seeing a lot of people lick the boot just because it tastes good.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 14 hours ago
The additional content thing is fucking stupid.
I can’t buy the base game on EGS and then buy DLC elsewhere, either. Otherwise I would have bought the DLC on sale off of Steam or GOG for base titles I claimed free on EGS.
DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
That argument is stupid for anyone who understands how games utilize DRM and DLC. As long as DRM is not involved, there is literally nothing stopping you from getting the DLC from somewhere else. Things are slightly trickier with DRM, but not impossible.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Gamers hear that Valve has been overcharging them for years, and think Epic is the villain.
Everyone’s collective dick slobbering of Valve and billionaire Gabe is embarassing as fuck.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
Valve doesn’t overcharge me.
They provide an excellent user experience. They have one of the few stores where you can actually get reliable user reviews. Their return policies are generous. I’ve never had any problems with fraud or scams. Their search and recommendation functions are pretty good.
To me, that’s a great deal and they’ve earned every penny of their markup.
smeg@infosec.pub 17 hours ago
And if their percentage was unreasonably high, their competitors would sell at lower prices. Strangely, they don’t. Which tells us that Tim’s complaints are nothing but bullshit.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Vale literally and probably does and has. 30% of revenue is not a reasonable fee for basically anything. That’s a Mafia markup.
Like lmfao, it takes dozens to hundred of devs like 5-7 years to make a game like Baldur’s Gate, and you think that Valve deserves 30% of all of their sales for managing the same basic storefront they built 20 years ago.
That’s absurd.
curiousaur@reddthat.com 18 hours ago
How has valve been overcharging when devs and publishers set the prices on steam?
masterspace@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Because of Valve taking a 30% cut of revenue of every sale.
Soup@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
“They charge developers too much!”
“Ok, Tim, so how exactly do you make money for your company, then? Because giving away all the free stuff seems like awfully bad business.”
Never thought I’d be defending a company charging a lot of money but since Steam actually does provide an excellent, stable service with bonuses like Linux development and the Steam Deck I mean, I really ain’t that mad, especially they still offer really good sales.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
So you should be able to undercut them, right? Right?
MashedTech@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Apparently the epic games store isn’t feeling so good, Mr. Stark .