There is actually a very valid case here against Apple.
My worry is that if Epic fails, it will make it harder for someone else to win the case.
I don't know if Tim Sweeney is doing this for the people, like he says he is. Maybe he is just doing it for the profit of his own company. He may even be doing it for Epic Games Store IOS.
What ever the reason, he has been going about this the wrong way.
Fortunately Apple has as big an ego as Sweeney does. While some of the false representations may not be directly relevant to the case, you don't ever tick off a judge by making false representations.
Either way, this probably isn't going to have an outcome for at least a couple of years.

The case against Google on the other hand is on shattered thin ice. Samsung is one of the major Android phone sellers, and they have their Galaxy Store on every device they ship, no extra clicks. Installing other app stores isn't that hard either. That being said, this will probably drag out for years as well.

I don't think Descendant Studios were very good in negotiating dates.
I haven't read all the court documents, but it sounds like like they entered into a contract with Little Orbit LLC that they would release Decent in 2019.
When it became apparent that Decent was not going to be released in 2019 Little Orbit LLC put pressure on them to get it done. This lead to to member of Descendant Studios to, according to Little Orbit LLC, make disparaging remarks about Little Orbit LLC. Thus the defamation part of the lawsuit.
Descendant Studios claims that Little Orbit LLC signed the contract late, delaying their ability to get it completed on time.
In the court filings, Little Orbit LLC was late in filing some required paperwork, which has held up the case.
Part of Descendant Studio's defense is that the CEO did not know the some of the terms in the agreement with Little Orbit LLC.

I don't know the validity of these claims, but from partial quick reading of the court filings, it sounds like both companies lack proper organization. If you are going to launch a lawsuit, you think you'd have everything in order first. If you are going to sign an agreement for help from another company, your CEO should know what is in that contract.

I'm not sure why people are worried about the longevity of their drives with it "defragging" every startup.
According to Microsoft, when disk optimizer runs on an SSD, it just executes a trim command. It isn't supposed to move data around on a SSD. Moving data around on a SSD doesn't really help performance.
Now it might be that people don't trust Microsoft to be telling the truth. It might be that people don't trust Microsoft to properly detect their drive is a SSD, or maybe they don't understand how Windows 10 is supposed to work with drives.

"Apple has a well-earned reputation for security"
Starting with a flat out lie isn't a good start to the story.
Then I go to read that you have to use Safari. Who uses Safari unless they are on iOS, and thus have no choice?

OSX/MacOS has a long history of extreme poor security. Mostly stemming from using out of date third party tools. We aren't talking partially out of date either. One third party tool hadn't had its version updated for 8 years. The group maintaining the tool were constantly updating it and making security fixes, but Apple didn't consume them.

There have been times that reporters have asked hacking groups about if they go after Macs. The general consensus was there aren't enough Macs, and they don't pose enough of a challenge.

It is sad to hear you are shutting down in 12 months, but that is kind of expected when you get bought by EA.
Hopefully the 2 ex Bioware employees now at Wizards of the Coast will come out with the good games you used to make.

Lucky and stupid are not the same thing. Apple has survived in spite of constant stupid decisions. We aren't talking about slightly stupid decisions, we are talking completely stupid.
We are talking about being the market leader in computers and loosing it.
We are talking about being able to become tge market leaders again and squandering it.
We are tslking about being the market leader in music devices and squandering it.
We are talking about the ability to be the world leader in cellphones and squandering it.
We are talking about being the world leader in music and squandering it.

.This isn't stumbling, this is showing a level of incompetence that most companies couldn't afford to do once. Just look at Nokia. Apple has done this at least 8 times.

They are going from an unimaginable stupid development cycle, to an extremely stupid one!
Sure that is an improvement, but not much of one.
How do inept people keep ending up as team leads at large companies?

Is that Overwatch 2 for mobile?

And here I thought it was actually, "People using Two-factor Authentication are putting their security at risk."
Honestly, both Facebook snd Twitter have been found exposing the second factor contact information to external entities risking our security in the process. This secondary factor already being bypassed by finding the phone number of people and intercepting the time limited codes.

Epic Games: Please use our store, we know it sucks, but we will give you more of the money.
Gearbox: More of the money! YES!!!
Epic Games: *looks at Borderlands 2 sales* We can't preload that to that many people our store sucks too much.
Customers: Screw EGS, I'll wait for the sale on Steam
Epic Games: Wait, pre-sales of this game are sucking so badly that we can handle that load. Hood news everyone!
Epic Games: Everyone?

Creston wrote on Jul 31, 2019, 11:19:
Can't fault his math, but I find it curious that he says he can stay on the front page of the EGS for a longer time than with Steam (Certainly a possibility), but then he releases around the same time as BL3.

No offense, buddy, but which of these two games do you think is going to be front and center?

Maybe thats the plan. Release with BL3 and hope that both bring enough people with money to actually buy the games. After all, isn't EGS just filled with poor steamers, 13 yo with no money and people waiting on the next free game?

Someone else has already stated a short list of their long list of high profile product shutdowns. My worry is that he mentioned music and video.

I consider digital video a complete failure now. Apple Video is useless unless you bend over for an iDevice. Play For Sure, or was it play absolutely nowhere? Disney Anywhere shutdown, except for the US. Ultraviolet is gone soon. Flixster is shutting down the last pieces. Netflix, Prime, Crave, HBO Now, CBS All Access, Hulu you have no idea if the program you want to watch will still be there tomorrow. Even if they own the full rights, it can disappear, or be altered.

Microsoft's R&D team back in 1997 found out through extensive research that password change requirements were mostly harmful to security.

Non-technical people it was safe to get them to change their passwords every 2 years. It could be pushed as low as 1 year, but it would start creating security problems.

Technical people it was safe to get them to change their passwords every year. It could be pushed as low as 6 months, but it would start creating security problems.

Even with this research, the Server Team still recommends changing domain passwords every 30 days. I know at one point the Windows Server default was to change every 45 days.

DrEvil wrote on Apr 17, 2019, 11:49:
Everything that was actually promised was there at launch unless you believe conspiracy theories or pretend English doesn’t have context and subtext.

Yes, content matters, let me show you the lies of Sean Murray. Most of the videos people link to were within the last month before No Man's Sky released. As this had a disk release it meant that the game went gold (was completed) at least a month before. A quick search shows it went gold on July 7, 2016. Released August 8, 2016 for PS4, August 12, 2016 PC.

After it went gold, Sean Murray started to do press interviews and appearances on TV.
A short list of what he talked about:
-Being able to fly between galaxies if you want
-Something amazing at the centre of the universe
-You can run into other people on the same planet
-You will be able to play with your friends
-Name things and other people coming to that planet will see your names permanently
-Massive space battles with two sides that you can join in with one side
-Making friends with races
-Large number of unique procedurally generated spacecraft
-Planets rotating around the sun
-Landing on asteroids
-Destroying entire space stations
-*Early tech demo being used to represent final game up to, and post release*

Okay, so people were amazed when they made it to the centre of the universe and the game and there wasn't anything, the game just reset. I know since then they've added more, but the released game didn't have that.

Some of these other things have been added since, but Sean was saying these were already in the game, after he knew exactly what had made it in, and what had been cut.

Using the early tech demo to represent the final game was a complete and blatant lie! It is one thing to capture in game footage and try to find the stuff that looks the best, it is another thing to use something that while at one point it looked like that, doesn't represent the final product.

Now some of these things are minor, but it doesn't change the fact that he lied about them. Also, with the naming of things, why did he lie about that. I don't know what it is now, but they made the design choice that names would only be kept for, I think, 1 week. Why say it is permanent, when you know it isn't?

The multi-player part was what really ticked people off. The PS4 cover did not list multi-player. It wasn't until launch day that they put a message up on their web site saying that there was no multi-player. Until that point, multi-player was heavily hyped by Murray in many interviews.

While I don't think the response of death threats was warranted, there is overwhelming evidence that Murray lied, continued to lie, then lied in his defense of his lies.

* REMOVED *
This comment was deleted on Apr 11, 2019, 16:29.

Avus wrote on Apr 8, 2019, 10:57:

Kajetan wrote on Apr 8, 2019, 09:59:
"Steam killing PC gaming" is THE most ridiculous nonsense i have heard in this context.

Valve was solely responsible for the indie boom, providing a 70% percent cut of all revenue to a developer where there was NONE before, only milestone payments and sometimes royalties for the big studios.

200% agreed. Steam was there when even the fxxking MS abandoned PC game and created XBox division and most "AAA" developers like "E fxxking A", Ubisuck... were concentrating on making console games. Did you remember how many sh!tty console port PC got within original Xbox to Xbox360 period. How many time Ubisuck said PC game is dead.

I will say the 2 things that kept PC gaming "alive" in the "dark age" were: Steam and World of Warcraft. And now all these fxxking devs and Steam haters are saying how bad is Steam when PC gaming is strong and console is sucking.

BTW, do anyone know how much MS/Sony's cut for PSN/Xbox store?

Having troubles finding the current numbers.

It used to be that Microsoft/Sony would take $10 per game sold. That is one of the main reasons console games used to be $10 more than their PC counterparts.

Microsoft added small ($5) and Indie ($3) flat fees later. These smaller prices had to only be digital distributions though.
Sony also added some lower price points. I have never seen anything public saying what those prices were.

Sony has been praised for their not charging for patches for digital downloads, and reasonable pricing to attract indie developers.
It is never said directly, but it sounds like Sony still just charges the flat fee and doesn't take anything extra for being in the store.

If you look at the shelf distribution model, you used to have to figure in 50% going to stores and distributors. So for a $60 game, $30 would go to retailers, $10 to Sony/Microsoft, leaving $20 for the development studio - taxes.

Beamer wrote on Apr 4, 2019, 07:00:
As I've posted on every single thread:

1) EPIC CANNOT GIVE YOU PRICE COMPETITION! THE MARKETPLACES DO NOT OWN PRICING, THE PUBLISHERS DO. Bolding, so hopefully people read it, but neither Valve nor Epic control pricing.

2) Epic is not reducing options, nor choice. The truth is, you've only ever had one option and no choices. Steam has been your only choice for nearly every game. Seriously, look through your library and see how many are available without Steam. You'll probably find less than 20% available elsewhere (at least when they launched.)

3) PRICES ARE NOT BEING "INFLATED LONGER." Again, pricing is controlled by the publisher. It will be change every bit as often as pricing had been changed before Epic, when that game was solely on Steam. The number of marketplaces has no impact on pricing, because, again, it isn't the marketplace picking prices, but the publisher, meaning they have one pricing strategy across every single marketplace.

As you have posted everywhere else, so it must be true.

1) This is 100% false. As part of these exclusive deals, combined with the lower selling charge, Epic can request the publisher to have slightly lower prices. They can even lower the selling charge as part of the deal. If the store becomes big enough they can even use refusal to list games as a negotiation tactic.

2) While I agree on not reducing choices, I do not agree on Steam being the only other choice right now. *Looks at his GOG library with many games that released on Steam the same day* It could be argued that Epic is fragmenting the market too much, but as they support other publishers, and most other stores do not, I don't agree with the fragmentation view.

3) Marketing 101, for hundreds of years limited time exclusives have been proven to keep the original price of goods up for an extended period of time. While this will not help Epic, it can help the publishers if they are willing to sacrifice initial sales and are confident that they have a good product.

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Apr 3, 2019, 10:46:
Epic store exclusive! That's bullshit. I only buy exclusives from Steam, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Microsoft, Bethesda, Origin, and Playstation.

I WILL NEVER ACCEPT EPIC STORE!

I never accepted the Ubusoft, Blizzard, Microsoft, Bethesda, or Origin stores and will not accept the Epic store either!
I have some of those crappy launchers installed to get the free games, but will not buy from them.

Sure, that means no Sims 4 for me, but in the end it's just a game and there are so many other games.

saluk wrote on Mar 19, 2019, 01:38:
Your terminology is bogus. A "raycast" is just the general process of sending a ray from a point in a direction and doing something when it hits something. Raytracing uses raycasts as part of the math.

The raytracing in dx12 and currently supported by RTX is true raytracing in every sense. If you tell it to produce a ray for every pixel on the screen, and feed in the proper materials for the objects, and allow each ray to bounce and refract as much as it should, you will get exactly the same kind of render that say blender or max produce.
...

Or if you are making a quake2 mod, just do it all

First off, the Quake 2 mod doesn't do it all, it actually shows off how hard it is to convert over current games. Missing player weapon flashes, sparks, player and opponent shadows. Though in fairness, they say player weapon flashes should be easy to add. There is even light artifacting caused by the de-noise filter.

My terminology comes from the graphics community, which is extremely picky about terminology because of how different the implementations are between the approaches.

I had however not kept up on the terminology, as what was originally called "ray cast ray tracing" is now called "path tracing."

RTX works a lot differently from what Blender natively does. Blender does real ray tracing. RTX does path tracing. I say Blender natively, as Blender supports external rendering engines and a path tracing engine could be plugged in.

Quoting one of the blender developers when asked about RTX,
"
It is a path tracing engine. Ray tracing engine can not do caustic, soft shadows, global illumination, etc... while a path tracing engine will give you all of these without any cheating. Both of these engine types shoot rays from the camera but the similarities end there.
"

Some people argue that path tracing is superior. From Wikipedia:
"
Path tracing naturally simulates many effects that have to be specifically added to other methods (conventional ray tracing or scanline rendering)
"

While the majority of the graphics community are still behind ray tracing because even though they need to cheat a little bit, path tracing creates grainy images, no matter the number of passes used. The only way around this is to smooth out the image, but then you are introducing other graphic artifacts. Also path tracing suffers from not properly scattering light from volumetric things like heat from fire, something ray tracing has no problems with.

Though some people still point out that when trying new cheats in ray tracing, they generally use a path traced image as reference.

Ray tracing is still used in the majority of films and TV where CGI elements blend with filmed elements. However, many fully CGI movies and TV shows have now gone with various forms of path tracing.

Depending on who you talk to, the real future for TV and movies is volumetric path tracing. This solves the problems of light scattering caused by non-visible elements, but also currently has quite a speed cost to the solution. It still doesn't address the how grainy the image is.

CJ_Parker wrote on Mar 19, 2019, 12:52:
Sounds pretty desperate and the most probable root cause is that AMD can not deliver a high performance GPU for the next gen shitbox conslows.

AMD and the conslow makers are stuck with the shitty GCN architecture (Navi being the last iteration). PS5 and the next shitbox will be the most disappointing "next gen" ever.

So the only way to mfake next gen games look better is via h4XX and tR1XX like VRS coupled with adaptive resolution scaling.

The other reason is most likely to mitigate the performance degradation that comes with their super-shitty UWP apps. With VRS you can at least gain back a little bit of that performance loss.

This sounds more like what Microsoft and nVidia are using to enable real time Ray Cast Ray Tracing. While current RTX cards can support up to 3 light bounces, this is recommended to be set on a per material basis for performance.

Also non-RTX cards I assume would handle all the lighting calculations on the shader units. Sound like VRS was needed for the new lighting, and they are just extending it to be used by programmers.

As for reducing shader quality, that has been an nVidia thing forever. They used to constantly replace shaders in games that were 32-bit, with 16-bit equivalents, "Where it wasn't noticable."