Tim Sweeney: belief

Transcript context

…Mm-hmm. The manual to the Apple II included a listing for all the ROMs, the source code to the ROMs. You could understand exactly what was happening there, and you could learn from it. It included a hardware schematic of the entire computer so you could learn how to make a peripheral and plug it in an open ecosystem, and that’s the awesome Apple. That company would be the best company in the world again. I think the current one is just on the wrong side of history and needs to change. Well, I hope Epic and Apple find a path forward together and flourishing together, and Apple embraces competition better. One of the things I admire about this conversation that you mentioned, Steam a bunch, with kind word supportive and basically never mentioned Epic Game Store. I love that. So I really love that. It really embodies the fact that you want variety, you want freedom for people to choose the best thing, and, in so doing, create this large network of humans interacting freely with each other. Okay. That said, one of the competitive pressures that Epic has created a few years ago was by launching the Epic Game Store. And instead of Steam’s 30% revenue cut, you went with 12% revenue cut creating the competitive pressure saying, “Listen, this shouldn’t be that high of a cut,” which I thought was amazing. This is a brilliant idea, and I think it still is a brilliant idea. It’s wonderful. Now, in preparing for this conversation, I looked on the internet, and I saw there’s a lot of criticism of EGS, Epic Game Store. First of all, I should say, the internet is full of drama and criticism. There’s not enough celebrating of awesome shit. That if I can ask the internet as a blob one request, can we just celebrate awesome shit and also criticize, but just like there’s not enough celebration. Anyway, the two directions of criticism is just straight up, “The launcher interface is clunky and lacks a lot of the features of Steam.” And then the second set of criticism is the exclusive contracts which were made with some of the games that are on Epic Game Store. So, first, huge props on the 12%. Maybe you could speak to the vision of that. And second, can you comment on those two criticisms?…

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