[simion314]

And this is a good thing, competition between this stores is good for the users, some users got free games, some developers got better deals.

The "needs to launch on startup" is FALSE , you can have this launchers set no to start at all and you launch the game and the launcher will start if needed (not all Steam games need Steam in background).

FYI GOG launcher is optional, you can just download the game from the website with a browser and then install it as in old times.

Competition is good and except the Epic drama I did not see anyone complaining the GOG, HumbleBundle, itch.io or downloading from Patreon is a bad thing for PC. I expect though if Apple blocks all launchers on the new OSX for ARM then an army of people will say that downloading a small game directly from Patron is too complicated and insecure for the average Apple user mind.

[danielheath]

It's not a good thing that I need 6 stores installed to play the games I've bought, each with their own updater pulling several gigabytes a week off the net just to keep the store app up-to-date.

I'd be interested to see whether any jurisdiction would hand down a consumer mandate for unbundling the DRM component from the storefront app; the former only updates occasionally.

[simion314]

Better to have the option of 5 stores that you can launch when and if you want then only have a Windows/Apple Store that will have more expensive games, will censor stuff based on "american values", will DRM shit so you can't say swap a .dll with something that works better(some old games that work bad on Win10 can be fixed by using a different directx.dll), you could not mod the games - basically you are telling PC people that a console is the best thing because it has 1 small advantage but it fucks you in 12 different ways(more expensive stuff and no freedom)

[Gorbzel]

Simply put, none of the things you’ve said are better are actually better.

Launcher apps are garbage, but you just move right past that to one single game that can be downloaded directly out of hundreds that can’t.

[simion314]

Fortnite is not the only game rejected by Apple. There are many small games that have versions for Windows,Mac,Linux and Android but not iOS.

You are ignoring that except the exclusives you can game most of your games on one store. I do not support exclusivity for one store either and I would prefer I always had the option to buy the products directly from the developer. Like my Intellij subscription I don't want that Microsoft or other big american company gets 30% of the money this hard working developers deserve because I am forced to use a middle man.

[phepranto]

I find it hard to believe that all stores combined patch a single gigabyte in a week, let alone every store patching multiple gigabytes. The size of the stores and their patches are negligible compared to installing any modern game.

[TeMPOraL]

Competition is good for the customer when the goods are commodities. Media - books, songs, videogames - are mostly non-substitutable goods: if you want to watch Star Wars, you won't settle for an episode of Friends instead. As soon as exclusive releases are allowed, customer benefits from competition evaporate.

[tasssko]

the commenter is right and you have missed the point. There is no competition in this space. You can only get Fortnite from the Epic Games Launcher.

[AnthonyMouse]

But the Epic Games Launcher is free and doesn't preclude you from using any other launcher/store for anything else, so how does that harm competition?

By contrast, if I want iMessage on my phone, Epic has to distribute Fortnight to me though Apple.

[Fnoord]

The irony is that Epic pays companies a sack of money to have exclusive right for a title, to have it temporarily only available on EGS. I don't like to be bound to any launcher or store. Apple doesn't force you to only use their own launcher; only on their own platform, or if you use their platform to complete the sale (which sounds as odd as it is).

[AnthonyMouse]

> The irony is that Epic pays companies a sack of money to have exclusive right for a title, to have it temporarily only available on EGS.

But that doesn't require you to use EGS for anything else, and the cost of using multiple game stores is minor, because installing them is free.

And how do you mean that Apple doesn't force you to use only their own launcher and platform? If I want iMessage, I not only have to buy their phone hardware, and their platform, and get it from their store, I also have to get everything else from their store even if I don't want to. To avoid this I would have to buy two separate phones at a cost of hundreds of dollars, with two separate phone contracts and phone numbers, and then carry them both around. Nobody is going to do that, whereas installing multiple game stores on your PC is the rule rather than the exception, exactly because you can easily have more than one on the same device.

[Fnoord]

The thing with games and such creative content (such as also movies and series) is the hype is after release. If you watch Game of Thrones a year later because that is when it is available, you end up with spoilers.

> To avoid this I would have to buy two separate phones at a cost of hundreds of dollars, with two separate phone contracts and phone numbers, and then carry them both around.

I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well. You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage [1]. Its true that some Apple software is specific to their platforms though.

Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where. An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with your disliking of Apple's practices. Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.

[1] https://airmessage.org/

[AnthonyMouse]

> The thing with games and such creative content (such as also movies and series) is the hype is after release. If you watch Game of Thrones a year later because that is when it is available, you end up with spoilers.

So you get it from whichever store has it early. That's kind of the point. But as long as that store isn't requiring you to buy their particular kind of device or preclude you from using other stores on your device, it's not the same problem.

> I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well.

It's a messaging app. It goes on your phone. And that would still require you to spend hundreds on an Apple device, then hundreds more on an Android device.

> You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage

Which not only requires you to buy both devices, now the Apple device has to be a desktop which you have to leave turned on and burning electricity at all times in order to receive messages on your phone.

It isn't not a problem just because you can work around it by walking up hill both ways in the snow every summer, it's a problem because people aren't actually going to do it that way.

> Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where.

None of that stuff is huge. It doesn't prevent people from doing it in practice.

> An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.

Yes, exactly, which then addresses your concerns with having multiple stores -- but only if you can have multiple stores and use a single interface for all of them.

For example, where is the version of Pidgin which runs on Android and is compatible with iMessage without using some kind of farcical relay system? Who is the party that prevents this from existing?

> Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.

It turns out that if you apply "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" to the legal system, nobody would have standing and perpetrators could never be held to account. Fortunately that's not how it works.

[simion314]

Apple is even worse:

- as a developer you don't get "a sack of money" but you get a 30% tax (larger then Epic

- as a user you don't get free games, discounts or the option to wait for the exclusivity to expire. On top of that you will never(probably) have the option to touch the game files and mod it.

[Razengan]

This is the same as with consoles, and people are fine with it.

The App Store also pays out more revenue to developers than other stores, a major reason being that you can literally access all the users on iOS by publishing on just one store.

[simion314]

People are not fine with it, if you can't use a PC for gaming then you have 2 shitty choices (expensive games, different subscriptions to unlock features, pretty bad customer support) BUT this is a bad argument why Apple or other smarphone or PC seller can just lock things up, the judge should consider the potential hard done to users and not the history of game consoles.

[pjmlp]

If I want a store competition I go to shopping mall.

The only store that has a place on my devices is the OS vendor store.

[harpratap]

No one's stopping you from using only Apple store. Why force your choice on other consumers? Let people decide what's best for them

[pjmlp]

They have the choice to buy other brands.

[dr_dshiv]

They also have the choice to avoid smartphones altogether. What they want, though, is the ability to use apple hardware and non-apple software. The only reason they can't is because Apple won't let them, unless they pay a 30% commission

[coldtea]

The only reason the want to use the Apple hardware is because Apple makes it and comes with Apple software and Apple roadmaps.

If being more open magically offered the same quality all kind of third party open platforms would have flourished.

But even in the semi-closed Android you have 95% of mobile malware according to surveys, devices abandoned without updates after 1-2 releases, tons of crap trojan apps, widespread spyware, and so on...

A third party app store can be fine at first. "You can chose whether to use it or not" after all.

Then some major software only comes for that store, and now you don't have either a unified store, or a way not to use 2 stores (since you need the software).

Then each major vendor (Google, Adobe, Amazon, etc) make their own app stores on the platform. Because, why not?

Oh, and Facebook can demand you get their app from their store, where it comes with all kinds of private API abuse and surveillance (some of this might be solvable with stronger sandboxing, if it's not deemed "anti-competitive" itself).

Then there are all kinds of minor stores, luring your less tech savvy parents, siblings, etc, with BS offers, more malware, pirated versions of software, etc.

Oh, and there are "free" stores, you can just install, all kinds of shady stuff that ocassionally roots your iPhone with 0-days and is not revocable.

Suddenly app developers don't feel so good about this ability to have multiple stores. They mainly wanted lower Apple rates, but now they have to ship to different stores, track different vendor rules, and so on. And if they stick to a store or two, they're less discoverable. Now you have meta-services that ship your app to many stores and handle the hassle. But they can not do much for the free stores that give pirated copies of your app, or full title+branding+UI rip-offs of your app by small e.g. Chinese devs.

And if one of the big app stores gets popular, they now have control over the platform too. Apple wants to move forward with an API change? Not so fast, the big app store doesn't agree (similar to how Apple was beholden to the goodwill of Microsoft and Adobe back in the day).

[je42]

I wish I could up vote your comment more than once.

[dr_dshiv]

Apple owns the marketplace on their platform. When they undermine competing payment systems using their monopoly power then they appear to be acting anticompetitively in a manner that is against the consumers best interest.

This is only an issue when they use their monopoly power to undermine consumer interests.

[pjmlp]

Consumers get their apps, there is no undermining taking place.

Maybe I should complain that Sony abuses the PS4 market so I can't run Switch titles on the PS4.

[dr_dshiv]

Why is this any different from Apple saying that you can't download other software on your Macbook, unless you pay Apple 30% and buy it from their store?

[pjmlp]

One cannot buy a house besides a landing lane and then complain planes are taking off and landing all day long.

If iOS doesn't offer what they want, don't buy Apple, plain and simple, there is nothing more to discuss and the judge will set this straight.

[SomeHacker44]

For what it is worth, people actually in the real world do just that: buy property adjacent to a municipal airport and then cause problems for airport users... All the time. (Pilot for almost three decades.)

[harpratap]

In developed countries there are laws preventing sale of properties where noise may be so high that it's detrimental to one's health. So if the competition in market is hurting the merchants or consumers, it should be rightfully outlawed.

[yazaddaruvala]

When I bought my iPhone I knew that I could only use the AppStore. I actually bought the iPhone because of the AppStore, the strict rules Apple has for developers and I prefer that no side-loading can occur.

If you or any consumer feels lied to, misled or falsely advertised to, they should return their device to Apple.

If enough people choose non-Apple products then Apple might change its position. Until then, buy a different brand.

[sem000]

Exactly! HN is a small subset of Apple customers. The largest piece of the pie don’t care about any of this stuff besides that it works.

I specifically bought Apple vs Android for these reasons. I run my life and business form my phone, I trust Apple to provide me with a working experience and support when needed.

Imagine having to use another App Store outside Apples control, and an app causes my phone to crash. Who will support me? I have to go digging to the app developer, or the App Store developer, or Apple?

Apple went this route to specifically remove the fragmentation of the PC market, and what you see similar in the Android market. The closed system provides better quality. That is why Apple is where it is today.