And then everyone praises him for standing up against Google and Apple for crippling/banning third-party app stores, like, cool... but clearly he's just chasing money, not doing it out of the goodness of his heart for us poor gamers
Yeah, that statement was a bit naive, but some companies do business ethically, and some throw ethics out the window in pursuit of profits. The latter is basically a requirement for publically traded companies, and still pretty rare among privately owned businesses. I hate to speak in defense of any company but in my opinion valve has been pretty consistently ethical. Don't take my word for it though, I'm just a random person on the internet, I could have missed some shitty practices.
Anyways my original point was that while of course all businesses are driven by profit, some aren't driven by it to the exclusion of all else.
Steam comes pretty fuckin close though. Valve has its issues with communication and speed, but since all of its employees are also gamers the company frequently furthers PC gaming in ways they didnt need to because Valve employees just wanted things furthered in that category IE built in modding support, digital games refunds, built in control remapping, steamdeck being a linux machine, etc
I think it's more of a gaben hate thing, since the epic store can't really make a dent to steams marketshare, even when they straight up give away games.
Sweeney is like a man-child who thinks that he should receive higher praise as his more popular counterpart simply because he takes the exact opposite stances on many issues as some kind of underdog. Blockchain economies, the legal gray zone of generative AI, Linux support; and kicking his superiors in the shin and crying to the world when he gets shoved in return.
Epic will always be a lesser store platform, and Sweeney will always be a lesser man.
Because it makes his job harder. He hates having to work for his money. He just wants customers to put money directly in his bank account without ever having to work for it. Other storefronts? Cheating him out of sales. Other payment systems? Stealing his money. Other operating systems? Making his life hard by forcing him to accommodate for something different.
He might be trying to create an in vs. out crowd mentality. If he makes Fortnite players feel exclusive and special, they may be more likely to choose playing Fortnite over other games.
Personally I think it's funnier that he claimed that steam just does not have the user base to justify it. As if he is in complete denial, because he probably fucking is.
Tbf the mobile userbase is the biggest gaming userbase in the world. I know a couple people in my life who only play games on their phones and have zero interest in conventional gaming.
So is the Nintendo switch, Epic released fortnite on every imaginable platform, including my samsung smartfridge, so let's be honest, the only real reason is that supporting the steam deck is directly supporting the store front they're trying to go against, otherwise the dozen or so million desktop Linux+Deck gamers would have been acknowledged by Epic long ago.
I wouldn't expect logic from the company that now acts like unreal and unreal tournament which made them the company they are today don't exist. Like seriously you delisted all of it. What is wrong with you!
They all work in marketing. Except for the three guys who made Fortnite and Frank, who maintains the launcher. Don't go into Frank's office unannounced, he often forgets to wear pants.
I'm not commenting on the Linux stuff itself. But the idea that Epic sued Google because they "dislike Linux" doesn't make sense on two levels:
Epic sued Google because they want to keep the extra 30% that Google gets from any IAP. It's a simple business decision, without any emotions attached.
Google doesn't care about programmers, Linux, or open source. They might have a long time ago, but not anymore.
Pretty ironic considering unreal engine 5 has excellent Linux support. Epic itself was one of the few pioneering companies that actually released Linux version of their games. So why backtrack now?
They don't have to make a Linux version. Wine is a program that allows you to run windows programs on Linux. The reason it doesn't work with fortnite is because fortnite anticheat blocks it. In order to let Linux users (including steam decks) play fortnite, they just have to change an anticheat setting not to block Wine. Fortnite uses battleye and eac, both of which have wine support