It’s been a fortminute since we talked about Epic but fortunately, it’s back in the news. Not fortunately for Epic, though, as the company has now lost its appeal of the 2021 judgment in Apple’s favor.
“Apple App Store Policies Upheld by Court in Antitrust Challenge Brought by Epic Games”
Sadly, this means that Epic will be unable to set up its own store within iOS which it can use to directly gouge people for virtual goods. If you want to be gouged for virtual goods by Epic, you must go directly to its site. The Macalope has long been on the record as supporting App Store reform, but he has never believed the kind of reform that is needed would come about because of a lawsuit spearheaded by a company that runs its own store in some ways that would make even Apple blush but likens its fight against Apple to the fight for civil rights. On the plus side, the court also upheld the ruling against Apple’s anti-steering provision, so you may be able to go directly from the app to Epic’s site in order to be gouged for things that aren’t real.
What was Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, a man worth almost $5 billion, doing with his time right before this decision came down? Spending it on Twitter reliving not high school grievances against “the cool kids,” but junior high school grievances against “the cool kids.”
“Epic’s Billionaire CEO Jumps On Twitter To Complain About Elites”
A number of Twitter users have objected over the past few days to having blue checkmarks foisted upon them without their consent, making it appear as if they may have supported the efforts of libertarian trust-fund and government hand-out recipient Elon Musk to turn Twitter into his own personal litter box. Speaking personally, the Macalope would rather dive antlers-first into a swimming pool full of silverfish than be tarred with a blue checkmark on Twitter at this point. Sweeney, however, saw fit to take time out of his day to go on an extended rant about the complainants, calling them “losers and goons”.
Sweeney maintains the Twitter verification process should be “a meritocracy,” as if that’s what Musk comping “a few” famous people against their desires who were unlikely to pay for it is.
Ah, yes, certainly we can agree that the rich and famous–including the dead rich and famous–deserve more free things, even if they don’t want them, as long as it’s done to shore up the efforts of someone else who’s rich and famous. That is, after all, the very essence of a “meritocracy”.
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The old system was certainly not perfect. That does not, however, mean that complaining about being made to appear that you’re supporting the new system and its child monarch makes you akin to the people who shoved Tim Sweeney into a locker in junior high, forcing him to become an embittered billionaire by tricking children into spending their parents’ money on outfits in his virtual shoot-em-up.
Sweeney not being completely wrong about the way things are while also being mostly wrong about how they should be, also extends to the App Store. The App Store rules are also not perfect, not by a long shot. They are arcane, overly restrictive, and unevenly enforced, and Apple loves nothing more than to speak out of both sides of its mouth about them. The fact that the court saw fit to uphold the decision against Apple’s anti-steering rules is a positive first step, one that Apple is certainly going to try to work around in order to maintain its stranglehold on iOS purchases.
That said, Sweeney and Epic were terrible standard bearers for the effort to open up the App Store. The company only ever wanted to set up its own store–a store it can’t even run without running afoul of the FTC–in place of Apple’s, and it’s run by yet another in an inexplicably long string of embittered billionaires.
Say what you want to about the tactics of their companies, but at least Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella don’t spend so much of their days chiding others over their perceived grievances with the unruly masses.
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