[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.