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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" (finance.yahoo.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 118 points 7 months ago (13 children)

I was almost forgetting Tim's whole deal seems to be antagonizing more successful companies than his.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

    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 Rocket League recently achieved one million concurrent players.

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months 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.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Being obviously self-interested doesn’t make him wrong about app store monopolies, whether Apple, Google, or Valve.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (6 children)

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    I would use other words, but I don’t think you are actually interested in understanding market power, coercion, or network effects. It is a little tricky, but if you’re not just shitposting in bad faith, Lina Khan has a great paper on digital platform monopolies and Matt Stoller has a good podcast on Valvle’s monopoly in particular. Or does Matt Stoller also not understand what a monopoly is, according to you?

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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