Epic, Spotify, Tile, Protonmail, and Basecamp form coalition against apple

[wanderingfool2]

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

My position here is that, if you could not figure out how to not lose money by having Apple take 30%, you didn't set your subscription price at a point that would have covered that, and that's on you.

The issue becomes when Apple decides not to factor the "30%" into their own products.  It's also ridiculous in saying it's a companies fault if they can't take a 30% cut...all that would do is inflate prices for a consumer.

 

Your concept of being able to pad ones self only ends up the consumer level with inflated prices.  Look at Amazon, if on all transactions they had to pay out an additional 30% to Apple they wouldn't survive (or prices would be inflated).  I would actually argue that many many companies would not be able to survive with a 30% loss in revenue

[piratemonkey]

this is weird man. there's a pseudo revolution irl, now online too

[Commodus]

3 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

From the looks of this thread people actually believe silly confrontational actions like this by corporations are about "fairness" or "protecting the consumer"

 

Corporations are bound by one rule, and that is to maximize profit by any means necessary. Not doing so is malfeasance, this is a crime

 

Epic games does not "have your best interests at heart," and they are not doing this for the benefit of consumers

I imagine these companies see themselves as also helping end users, but they are being somewhat disingenuous by portraying themselves as freedom fighters. The main goal is to avoid paying Apple and Google a 30 percent cut and make more money, whether it's through lower prices or higher profit margins.

[piratemonkey]

8 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

From the looks of this thread people actually believe silly confrontational actions like this by corporations are about "fairness" or "protecting the consumer"

 

Corporations are bound by one rule, and that is to maximize profit by any means necessary. Not doing so is malfeasance, this is a crime

 

Epic games does not "have your best interests at heart," and they are not doing this for the benefit of consumers

I feel like this has been covered. Everyone expect for protonmail (proton's not for profit remember) are all corporations that don't want apple taking almost  a third of their mobile income. They could pass on savings to consumers for more goodwill, but that's unlikely

[Kisai]

37 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The issue becomes when Apple decides not to factor the "30%" into their own products.  It's also ridiculous in saying it's a companies fault if they can't take a 30% cut...all that would do is inflate prices for a consumer.

 

Your concept of being able to pad ones self only ends up the consumer level with inflated prices.  Look at Amazon, if on all transactions they had to pay out an additional 30% to Apple they wouldn't survive (or prices would be inflated).  I would actually argue that many many companies would not be able to survive with a 30% loss in revenue

If everyone is paying 30%, then it's not a loss in revenue, and if you were subsidizing your customers, it was you who was being foolish.

[parthm]

12 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

From the looks of this thread people actually believe silly confrontational actions like this by corporations are about "fairness" or "protecting the consumer"

 

Corporations are bound by one rule, and that is to maximize profit by any means necessary. Not doing so is malfeasance, this is a crime

 

Epic games does not "have your best interests at heart," and they are not doing this for the benefit of consumers

even if epic isn't doing it based on values, if it helps both the consumers and devs and sticks it to large corporations like apple which make deals with big players like twitch or amazon or themselves but straight no to small creators then whats the freaking problem? i dont get the argument here. why do people defend it in this way? yes capitalism is good for progress but lets be real here for a second. apple is a 2 trillion dollar company that puts it above most countries in the world! 30 percent for every transaction? really? 

[piratemonkey]

Just now, epicdotexe said:

Yeah silly consumer tribalism, lol.

 

"Benevolent corporation A is going to STICK IT to EVIL corporation B "

 

Ad if every corporation isn't equally interested in curb stomping consumers for profit

I feel like you're on the verge of insulting people, please don't

 

4 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

More than unlikely, it's illegal. If they think they can sell more of a "product" (if you can call purchasing pixels which cost the company less than $0 to "produce") such that the increase in units sold offsets the decrease in profit per item, then maybe you'll see a "price decrease." 
 

You would like to think it's a joke but "the more you buy the more you save" is really something people believe

How is it "illegal"? there's cost to developing a product no matter what (salaries, hardware to host stuff in Epic's case etc etc.). I don't think in Epic's case there was ever a price difference between the mobile and pc costs for microtransactions, so silly me for thinking there would be I guess.

 

And depending on how you look at it, the more you buy can mean saving (at least with a special discount or sale). Unit prices would be lower, but of course you're paying more

[parthm]

1 minute ago, epicdotexe said:

Yeah silly consumer tribalism, lol.

 

"Benevolent corporation A is going to STICK IT to EVIL corporation B "

 

As if every corporation isn't equally interested in curb stomping consumers for profit

ok sure take my wording and criticize it. check the rate for epic store and every other store for devs. check the amount of free games consumers get. if the market becomes open for other players then the price drops. if epic starts becoming the monopoly then steam/apple etc have to drop their prices to compete and if they dont then well their loss but consumers gain. if epic increases its prices, we get options and the consumer/dev isnt in a worse position from where we are right now. it also allows future players to adopt a similar strategy to epic to compete. so whats the freaking issue here? 

[piratemonkey]

1 minute ago, epicdotexe said:

Questioning people's ultra-consumerism habits is almost always met with hostility

 

Consume products, and get excited for next products! Oh, and Epic Games LOVES its customers.

double standard a bit much? you want stuff to be free, yet you come out here and criticize everyone of being "ultra (consumeristic)". 

[parthm]

9 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

Questioning people's ultra-consumerism habits is almost always met with hostility

 

Consume products, and get excited for next products! Oh, and Epic Games LOVES its customers.

if you arent trolling well then you have a weird sense of the world or morality idk.

never been hostile towards and frankly dont care enough to do so either.

this conversation with you seems futile so unless you wanna logically counter my valid arguments and have a decent discussion im out.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

< removed by moderation >

 

 

16 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

(it does introduce quite a bit of security issues as well, in that you now have to code the rest of the operating system to allow it...which does allow for more chances a check will be forgotten and now you have a new exploit).

Yes, computers are hard. The good news is that they don't need to produce computers; if it's too complicated for them they can always stick to monitor stands.

 

 

15 hours ago, Escanor said:

Did't Epic block proton mail on there service ?

I think that's outdated, as reported in the previous page.

Still, I don't think this is an alliance between best friends, but rather an alliance of everyone facing a common problem, as heterogeneous as the group may be.

Edited September 26, 2020 by LogicalDrm

[piratemonkey]

2 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

I don't want anything to be free, I don't play video games. Lol.

 

 

 

25 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

I wonder if you've ever considered that a digital license key costs nothing? $0 is what a digital game SHOULD cost.

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 minutes ago, parthm said:

if you arent trolling well then you have a weird sense of the world or morality idk.

never been hostile towards and frankly dont care enough to do so either.

this conversation with you seems futile so unless you wanna logically counter my valid arguments and have a decent discussion im out.

I'm pretty sure we've established that morality means nothing when it can be completely reversed in a matter of minutes because there is no agreed upon standard in most situations. Which was just demonstrated by that user rather quickly. No point in responding to that person any further. 

[piratemonkey]

9 hours ago, epicdotexe said:

Yeah, I asserted that they are worthless, not that I want free games

<removed>  twisting words and being a dick isn't winning you any friends. As far as I'm concerned, you have no valid arguments, and moon logic, so I have no reason to continue this discussion

Edited September 26, 2020 by SansVarnic
Removed content.

[AnonymousGuy]

I see Tile in that list and think "they just mad that Apple about to release their own tags that shit on Tile"

[pas008]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

If Apple was the only choice for the consumer then I might agree that there should be an option...but Android is a full fledged platform that people could go to (people, not devs. for those trying to use my words to say devs have a choice).

 

Under your logic, I could argue that all software should be open source (since it's anticonsumer locking the user to the programs functionality).  An example would be games, while there are quite a bit that support mods, it's not up to the developer to be forced to support mods.  People are free to make their mods by hacking the game, but it shouldn't be the developers responsibility to do so.

Lol not even the same

 

I should be able to do whatever i want with it

I own the i device

 

Sideload or use another store etc

 

They entrap their consumers 

After you spent few hundred plus in apps you going to leave? 

Once you on the echo system there is no other option!

Anti consumer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pas008]

21 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

You know most people just want to download Snapchat and Instagram, maybe TikTok. The number of people who care about "sideloading" anything, much less have absolutely any interest in it, is maybe one tenth of one percent.

Linkplease

[SansVarnic]

20 hours ago, epicdotexe said:

More than unlikely, it's illegal. If they think they can sell more of a "product" (if you can call purchasing pixels which cost the company less than $0 to "produce") such that the increase in units sold offsets the decrease in profit per item, then maybe you'll see a "price decrease." 
 

You would like to think it's a joke but "the more you buy the more you save" is really something people believe

20 hours ago, epicdotexe said:

Rofl.

I wonder if you've ever considered that a digital license key costs nothing? $0 is what a digital game SHOULD cost.

20 hours ago, epicdotexe said:

I don't want anything to be free, I don't play video games. Lol.

20 hours ago, epicdotexe said:

Yeah, I asserted that they are worthless, not that I want free games

I find this interesting, none of your points of argument make sense.

You want things for free, yet you demand others to not participate in consumerism.

You claim that downloading pixels is not a product. But then you turn around say you want nothing free.

 

Contradict much???    Hmmm???

 

Software developers producing a product takes time and know-how. A skill that is a good chance you dont or may not have, most people that make these arguments have not the understanding of how the product is made they make the same claims you do thus my presumption your lack in this area based on your commentary. If you do have the skill in programming then I apologize, but then that adds up to you not having an understanding only. Knowing and understanding are not the same thing.

 

Because a product is digital does not diminish the value of said product, the packaging does not define a product, the content or context does.

 

I think you need to take to a step back re-examine your state of thought.

Also you conduct in this topic is sub-par and not in line with this forum's fundamentals nor is it acceptable. We have an expectation of etiquette here, please use it.

[piratemonkey]

4 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

-snip-

You're splitting ends here man. Sure you can resell old stuff, but that's because you can't get it digitally. Software available now will always be available in some capacity. 

And get off your dick about digital licenses being free. Just because it's digital doesn't mean you shouldn't have to pay for it. For example, with your work. Just because it's digital doesn't mean you shouldn't be compensated. 

[Guest]

This is probably just so Epic can get a store on iOS. 

[hollyh88]

On 9/25/2020 at 6:30 AM, spartaman64 said:

Well people can't dismiss this as just greedy epic games anymore

ehm yes yes we can. they violate terms of agreement because they wanted ALL the money. apple said no. and then epic sued em. 

all epic wants to do is not pay any cut anymore. which is funny cause they still ask for cuts on their platform and their engine. and even if they want a lowered cut their argument mostly points towards apple having a monopoly. which is even more funny cause they themselves are doing that with their epic game store. they litterally have nothing to stand on. they are hypocrites. 

[Tristerin]

When will consumers do the same thing - thats where the real power lays.  This is just a minor skirmish compared to what changes consumers can demand, and receive or bankrupt popular companies, if they come together.

[Bombastinator]

4 pages of this thread so I might be repeating something someone else already said, but if you look at the companies involved there is a pattern:

 

I don’t know what backwhatsit does and ProtonMail seems to be sort of an outlier to this, but epic, Spotify, and tile all have one thing in common:  they are services fewer people are using.  Companies that are no longer growing.   Epic because their game is no longer the new hotness, Spotify never really made it to the top of music streaming, tile is seeing competition, and ProtonMail is privacy email. I don’t LIKE that ProtonMail is in their group, but I can see how they might be. 
 

One of the harsh harsh things about modern herd based stock ownership, is that there is a large section of value that is only interested in growing businesses.  If a business doesn’t grow, they’re no longer interested. So they leave and the business value shrinks. Anything will be done to keep up the perception of growth and maintain that herd.

[williamcll]

The enemy of my enemy is ?

[SansVarnic]

11 hours ago, epicdotexe said:

<snip>

For sake of argument you are being pedantic on this subject. I wont go off on a long derailing thing here but you are arguing Apple and Oranges. And @piratemonkey makes a good point. Buying the license and buying a physical product are two different things, buying the license still gives you access to the product within the agreed ToS of which this method has been established decades ago. You are mixing two arguments into one.

 

This applies to more than just gaming, why I did not mention gaming.