> Epic is in my eyes evil company and they done a lot of bad things in area I care about.
Can you elaborate on that? It's hard to follow for me.
Also: You don't give money to epic, you also think the goal of spotify in that case makes sense. But you are willing to hurt a goal that you think makes sense because someone you don't like also thinks that goal is worth fighting for?
This seems unnecessary and a bad strategy.
Epic introduced the concept of exclusivity on the PC gaming scene. Earlier Steam (which arguably is monopoly) provided option to buy games but those games could be distributed from outside - and many games did so. Right now Epic locks some of the games in their EGS store. Few kickstarted games were "bought" by Epic into (and which I personally backed, but I have no access to unless I accept their conditions).
There is a lot to cover, if you're interested you could probably read a lot about people's game library being locked out due to some arbitrary reasons, cards details leaking out from EGS or people being charged twice and never refunded. Epic is a bully in a sheep's skin and they already proved that multiple times both in general and in direct way.
As for the goal - the goal makes sense for Spotify, not me. I wouldn't condemn them for trying yet I don't have a stake there. They don't do this so that I can pay less, they do this so that they can earn more. I don't see why I should put my mind on helping huge, wealthy company to obtain their goals. Same goes with Apple.
> Epic introduced the concept of exclusivity on the PC gaming scene
Which event are you referring to exactly? I think the first time I encountered something related to exclusivity on PC gaming was the first time I bought CS:Source and had to download and sign up with Steam to be able to run it, even though I got it on a CD/DVD. This must have been around 2005 or so I think.
Uhm but you’re aware that CS:Source was developed by Valve company behind the Steam?
The same goes true for Unreal Tournament. You want to play it you install Epic installer. That’s fine point. Rockstar and Ubisoft have their own launchers and it’s not an issue.
Issue is that Epic holds the 3rd party games, snatching them from early access etc. effectively limit previously open access.
What games are you talking about specifically here and when? Fortnite was also developed by Unreal by the way.
Also, Epic is not the first company to buy a game + its license and then only allow people to play it via their platform. Counter-Strike was a independent mod back in the days, before Valve bought it. Same goes for Day of Defeat and bunch of others games.
I'm sure we can find even earlier examples of this happening. For all I know, this happens with every digital medium, pretty early on, and it's not news that game companies are greedy (both Valve, Epic and every other AAA studio/company)
Counter-Strike was Half-Life mod, and Half-Life was developed by Valve, so it's still the same developer. And yes, the Epic is the first company on the PC to do that. Console exclusiveness is known fact, but you could _buy_ game outside of the Steam if you wanted to. Epic started to hunt for 3rd party games and lock them in exclusiveness deals.
> Counter-Strike was Half-Life mod, and Half-Life was developed by Valve, so it's still the same developer
That's not how that works. Someone else developed Counter-Strike and released it to the community. Then around ~2000 Valve bought it + license and continued to develop it (with original developers as well).
DotA -> League of Legends was something similar as well. Third-party mods that got bought up by a company and then made exclusive to a particular store.
If you thought that the PC industry is somehow becoming like the Apple App Store, I think you're living in a fantasy. You can still download and run whatever binary you want. On a iPhone, you cannot.
> As for the goal - the goal makes sense for Spotify, not me. I wouldn't condemn them for trying yet I don't have a stake there. They don't do this so that I can pay less, they do this so that they can earn more. I don't see why I should put my mind on helping huge, wealthy company to obtain their goals. Same goes with Apple.
I personally think this is quite a far reaching issue we can and should form an opinion on. I don't own an apple device but I think it's an important issue of user freedom. It is a much stricter version of the exclusivity you consider a problem.
But I overinterpreted your original statement. Sorry about that.
Also: Thank you for elaborating on the issues. I was aware of those points. I just don't share your judgement about those issues, but there's no real point in discussing them further as it's super off-topic :)
Can you elaborate on that? It's hard to follow for me.
Also: You don't give money to epic, you also think the goal of spotify in that case makes sense. But you are willing to hurt a goal that you think makes sense because someone you don't like also thinks that goal is worth fighting for? This seems unnecessary and a bad strategy.