DeadlineX

Yeah software is definitely more complex. But modern languages are easier and have more syntactic sugar. And being a junior dev is mostly boiler plating or copy and pasting. A lot of devs don’t even get into the real complicated stuff. I’m a mediocre dev with no degree and I’m constantly surprised at the terminology people who’ve been doing for years don’t understand.

He’ll, kids shows have been essentially advertising platforms for decades. Shows and movies exist to sell toys and make profits.

lol yeah it’s definitely Tesla! The Alaska looks amazing. I actually hadn’t seen that one but it definitely looks awesome. I looked it up and I think it was the nikola badger. The name doesn’t seem familiar but the look of it seems like what I was thinking.

Honestly I feel there have been a lot of ev startups that never deliver. I do think the rivian truck looks pretty nice as well.

Oh man I didn’t even think about magic. Yeah that’s definitely a big on. I was lucky enough not to fall into that hobby.

I didn’t even know rivian had even made an actual vehicle until I saw one last month. I thought they were still vaporware. Wasn’t there another trunk company that was supposed to have made a truck like 6 years ago? Did they ever do that?

Yeah you’re not wrong about that. Although some people went hard into the beanie babies. And the Pokémon cards actually.

If you were into warhammer you resigned yourself at a young age to never having money. Those things eat up an ungodly amount of money.

Nothing is new here.

This isn’t that different from when I was a kid twenty years ago. Only instead of phones (though we all had phones back then too, even if they weren’t smart), it was game consoles, or Pokémon cards, or beanie babies or whatever.

It’s also easier to be a software developer now than 10 years ago. Modern languages do a lot more of the work for you.

I guess it is, I just mean it’s not about the App Store itself, so much as the continued costs. I think it’s more the in app purchases that is the problem. Google and Apple don’t allow in app purchases without paying them a huge cut.

Epic doesn’t really have a problem using the app stores. They just don’t want to pay such a massive commission for no reason. Google makes it difficult to use other app stores, and Apple doesn’t allow it. This means that you either pay them in perpetuity for every micro transaction, or you don’t get to push your app.

So I guess my point was just that the app stores are the ultimate root of the issue, but it goes a lot deeper than just the app stores themselves to the predatory pricing structure major companies impose. If this is successful eventually, or if the Apple appeal is, we have the potential to see a real shift in the way compensation for developers is handled. I’m being optimistic of course, but it would be nice.

I think the way 2k does it is a good model. They release in epic exclusively for like 6 months, and tben steam and epic after. Idk what the different requirements are for the various game stores, but the build version should be the same for a software that large.

It’s also the publishers job to handle marketing, so that would fall under their purview rather than the devs at least. With 2k’s model for the ‘lands series, they get the best of both worlds for the most part. The only customers they lose are the ones who are staunchly against using multiple game portals or just really dislike epic for one reason or another.

For a small developer, I do agree though. It comes down to whether they think a larger audience will benefit them. Sometimes being a large fish in a small pond is better, sometimes not. I won’t pretend I’ve got personal experience marketing and selling a game, but I do believe (and not just because I’m a developer) that the dev companies and publishers should get more of the pie than the platform they are selling on.

They aren’t cheaper in epic, but more money goes to the publishers and developers. It sucks when a game studio you like goes under.

I’d argue they aren’t profitable because of steam. Everybody uses steam, and most people will wait 6 months to get the epic exclusives after the exclusivity runs out.

That’s fair. I didn’t want to go into too much detail, and there is some information on this in the posts linked article. I still think Google will win this though. While both companies have revenue in the billions, Google has revenue nearly a hundred times epic. That seems to usually factor in to who wins these things.

I’m just baffled by how many people are saying “Google?! Let’s put Apple on trial instead!” Apple has already gone through this and will likely again. This information is spelled out pretty clearly in the linked article. In my opinion, they should all be on trial. As much as I love steam, valve should be on trial too. 30% cut for the platforms the majority of people use (effectively locking devs into using those platforms) is an insult, and it’s untenable for a lot of smaller devs.

These predatory pricing practices are equivalent to highway robbery to me. If we keep saying, oh Apple should be on trial not Google! then these companies win. They want us to be in conflict with each other so we don’t notice the other hand moving.

Edit: and I know you agree with me, so I hope this isn’t coming off hostile or directed at you. If it is, then I apologize.