
Epic has published an in-game Macintosh commercial spoof in response to Apple - tbodt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYXnaKmXqGs
======
minxomat
Going after Apple's policies seems to require fanfare. Spotify made a whole
website: [https://timetoplayfair.com/](https://timetoplayfair.com/)

This follows other public denouncements by Hey.com, ProtonMail, Netflix and
others, all within a few months.

~~~
elliekelly
What’s Apple’s move when Epic, Spotify, Netflix, etc. all coordinate to
“blackout” iOS for a day? Or even for an hour? And why haven’t they yet?

~~~
sebazzz
Do you think that Apple would care? I'm sure plenty of customers would be
angry though - but not on Apple.

We - here on HN - are far from the average customer.

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open-source-ux
This is the original Apple "1984" commercial (directed by Ridley Scott) that
is spoofed by Epic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I)

In the Apple commercial, "Big Brother" is represented by a domineering IBM.
It's rather ironic that Apple has been more closed, guarded and controlling
than the PC platform has ever been.

~~~
bestham
You have to remember that the reality we live in is the one where CDP, Eagle
and Compaq cloned the IBM PC BIOS and could offer compatible IBM PC clones
with DOS from Microsoft. That happened during the summer / fall of 1982. The
assertions made in the original 1984 ad were in many ways a straw man argument
since the PC compatible clones really took of during 1983 due to low supply
from IBM and freed the PC from the control that IBM had.

------
recursivedoubts
2015 me would be quite surprised to learn that 2020 me is rooting for an
obnoxious gaming company to take down apple.

~~~
BoorishBears
In what way has Epic ever been obnoxious?

From spending millions on free developer resources, to retroactively making
products free, to having an owner who's invested millions in conservation,
it's so bizarre that it's popular to hate Epic.

I think their biggest mistake in the public's perception was daring to
challenge Steam's semi-monopoly on PC distribution

~~~
esyir
They didn't just "challenge the monopoly".

They made consumer experience worse by introducing exclusives to an ecosystem
that was previously largely free of them. Then they bought over exclusives
that were announced for other platforms.

That's pretty damn obnoxious to me.

~~~
BoorishBears
I replied to your other comment explaining this, games were already de-facto
Steam exclusives with very few exceptions.

Epic games became a new choice, and in an attempt to break the status wui,
offered incentives for devs to not join the de-facto PC gaming store in an
attempt to force them to give developers more favorable revenue splits

They've stated multiple times this is all about how Steam's revenue split
should be moved to 88/12.

-

Steam no longer provides the level of service to these developers as they did
when the splits were established anyways.

Once upon a time Steam was highly curated and publishing to Steam could
conceivably replace a "normal" publishing push just by virtue of how many
eyeballs each game got.

Now thiusands of games are announced a day, it's become a cesspool of crud not
worth even looking at, and at this point it's just a fancy frontend for
Steamworks, a download page, and payment processing (none of which is worth
30% of revenue)

~~~
esyir
>Now thiusands of games are announced a day, it's become a cesspool of crud
not worth even looking at, and at this point it's just a fancy frontend for
Steamworks, a download page, and payment processing (none of which is worth
30% of revenue)

Regarding this. Have you even looked at the steam frontpage recently? None of
the games featured there are crud by most measures. Mine has Satisfactory,
Darksiders Genesis, Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding and Among US. Some of
these might not be to my taste, but garbage not worth looking at is a tad
harsh. If you're referring to all games released however, refer to the next
line?

I actually like the way that they've managed to segment game distribution from
recommendation/featuring, and believe that for game distribution platforms,
combining a more liberal admission policy, but a more selective recommendation
policy seems to be a good approach.

~~~
BoorishBears
You think having 5 already wildly successful games on the front page somehow
means Steam is only accepting "good games", is that a joke?

You realize Steam was accepting under 1 game a day when it launched right? And
for many years after?

Like there was actual meaning to getting on Steam. It wasn't they couldn't get
games, they only wanted the best

-

If anything you are literally making my point in regards to discovery.

Once upon a time if you released a game on steam you were guaranteed some
modicum of traction by virtue of being a new game on Steam

In 2019 more games were added in 1 year than in the DECADE after Steam
launched.

(I mistyped in the last comment, it was meant to be thousands of games per
year, but you get the idea)

Every single game you described already has a massive following.

Gone are the days where you could launch with a small following and rely on
Steam to do half of what a publisher exists to do... market your game.

That was what was worth 30% of your revenue, having Steam pickup your game and
give it halo status.

Now Steam really is a crapshoot and saying your game is on Steam doesn't mean
it was curated, it just means it's on Steam.

The completely and utterly demolishes the value proposition of the platform as
a _publisher_.

------
amrrs
This is quite a clever move from Epic. Clearly provoking Apple and Knowing
what they'd do they got a lawsuit and the famous 1984 Apple Ad's Spoof video.
I think This spoof video is more than just mocking Apple. It's clearly playing
the underdog theme and winning the support of Fortnite and other Epic games
fans.

~~~
joezydeco
As someone that lived through the 1980s and the PC/Mac wars, this is _way_
more than mocking.

It's literally saying to Apple's face that they've become IBM in this
situation.

~~~
rogerallen
Agreed. Note that IBM could not even dream of doing what Apple has done with
the App Store. They had only just finished off their monopoly lawsuit in
1982...

------
kohtatsu
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4)

Direct link

Ah, there's an HN discussion already;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24148204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24148204)

------
NoNameProvided
Well played Epic, well played.

~~~
justicezyx
Tim Cook typing "gg"?

Gg is good game, when someone admits defeat to the opponent.

~~~
dariusj18
More like "glhf"

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allears
How long have they been working on this spoof commercial?

~~~
dogma1138
Probably about as long as they were working on their legal documents. This is
literally something that I would expect to see on an episode of Suits not in
real life.

~~~
joezydeco
You can see today's date on the screen being smashed. Epic had this primed and
ready to render the moment Apple kicked them off the App Store.

~~~
dogma1138
It could’ve been easily also pre-rendered not that it would take too long to
render this but since they knew when they’ll pull this stunt and they knew
that Apple would kick them off the store the same day or the next they
could’ve had a few pre-rendered versions with the possible dates ready for
upload.

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catsarebetter
How much more did they prepare beforehand lol

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sleepyK
Oh how the turntables have turned...

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rawland
This is epic.

