Epic, go after whoever you want. Fight for every income possible, every real dollar coming from every imaginary video game outfit and emote. But for the love of God, stop asking me to care.
It’s been four years since Epic deliberately violated the terms of the Apple App Store on iOS and the Google Play Store on Android, instantly suing Apple and Google for the right to whip Fortnite V-bucks without paying the 30 percent discount.
And Epic won, at least in some versions of its various lawsuits – Apple beat it in the US but had to open the iOS platform to third-party stores in Europe as a result of the Digital Markets Act, and Epic asked US federal courts to declare Google has a monopoly on the Android platform. The consequences of this situation are still being felt.
But beating out two of the biggest companies on the planet in order to sell gaming skins to kids apparently wasn’t enough of a victory for Epic and its CEO Tim Sweeney. Today, Epic announced a new lawsuit against Google and Samsung, this time for making it too difficult to sideload Android games. It alleges that “Samsung’s recent implementation of the Auto Blocker feature was intentionally designed in coordination with Google.”
Autoblocker is a security feature on Samsung phones that triggers when you try to install an unverified APK file. It can be disabled in the settings menu to load third-party programs, which has always been possible on Android phones. Epic’s public post announcing the lawsuit says it takes “21 steps” to turn off the setting, an extremely generous interpretation of the process of downloading the official Epic Games Store app and finally opening it.
Epic Games
Epic Games
Epic Games
Epic calls the process “exceptionally onerous” and says Google and Samsung are engaging in “coordinated illegal anti-competitive transactions.” Good fucking grief.
Look, I’m not a corporate advocate. Google and Samsung (and Apple, why not) are massive international megacorporations that often engage in completely nefarious and, to use a more relevant and non-specific term, illegal practices. I work for a company owned by a huge private equity firm, and a quick search will show you that said company isn’t exactly clean either.
But it’s not like Epic is an underdog fighting for our inalienable right to purchase skins on the digital marketplace of our choosing. Epic took in six billion dollars in 2022, the vast majority thanks to microtransactions of Fortnite. Epic licenses the Unreal Engine to game developers around the world, and that’s a five percent cut of any game that generates $3,000 in revenue every three months. It is incomenot profit – if a $20 Steam game sells 50 copies per month, it makes Epic $50 per month, or $600 per year.
None of this is bad or wrong. Epic provides a service and charges users for it. Basic business, and not unfair or, uh, heavy. I don’t even object to Epic suing other companies. They are all fighting to get as many dollars as possible in markets valued in the hundreds of billions. It is neither “just”, nor “right”, nor “natural”, in the exaggerated sense of the Randian term. It’s business. It’s inevitable.
No, what I can’t stand is Epic’s holier-than-thou attitude. It embarked on a PR campaign targeting its own players – the vast majority of whom are children – as soon as it broke the rules and was intentionally kicked off Apple and Google’s digital storefronts. It invoked Apple’s own 1984 ad as a rallying cry for freedom, which might be the most cynical and tone-deaf thing I’ve ever seen in the video game industry. And this is an industry that once told me I was about to become the non-consensual sexual partner of a video game director.
Here I’ll point out that whether or not you think Apple, Google, and Samsung’s 30% cut of microtransactions is expensive, it’s the same percentage that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo charge for digital purchases on their consoles. And for some reason I can’t speculate on, Epic has refused to sue the holders of player keys on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. Platforms where loading third-party game stores would be virtually impossible.
Epic engages in deliberate manipulation of the court of public opinion first, then the court. His constant public statements and video game animations invite you and your children to choose sides in a fight that is not yours and never will be.
It’s exhausting, in the same way that TV stations and cable companies broadcast ads to viewers asking them to call their opponents and “demand” that the opposing party give them more money. This is a corporate pissing contest, and portraying it as anything less than that is insulting to the intelligence… which might explain why Epic primarily targets children with its messages.
Yesterday, Tim Sweeney said: “We want our children to grow up in a better world than this. » In 2022, Epic was forced to pay $520 million for manipulating children into buying Fortnite V-bucks and violating their privacy. Tim, forgive me if your words sound hollow. Or better yet, don’t – forgiveness from a billionaire game director isn’t something I particularly need.
