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Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, said that he wants a world where there is a single unified game store. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sweeney says that Epic has been working with developers and services providers to help make that happen.
In the interview, Sweeney says, "what the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms. Right now software ownership is fragmented between the iOS App Store, the Android Google Play marketplace, different stores on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, and then Microsoft Store and the Mac App Store."
Sweeney wants Epic to create a system where consumers can "buy software in one place, knowing that they'd have it on all devices and all platforms." This sounds an awful lot like a monopoly under the guise of being a metaverse.
Sweeney's remarks are a bit at odds with his own previous statements and actions. Since around mid-2020, Sweeney was advocating for more open online storefronts. Sweeney and Epic outright sued Apple over "monopolistic practices" concerning the App Store, a lawsuit that largely ended up going in Apple's favor.
Sweeney also recently proclaimed himself "a Korean" after South Korea passed a law that forces platform holders to allow for alternative payment options on their storefronts. Sweeney awkwardly proclaimed that he was "very proud to stand up against these monopolies with you." He continued on to say that he's "proud to stand with you and say I'm Korean." This isn't even the first time that Sweeney made such a statement. Back in August 2021, Sweeney made similar remarks shortly after the Korean court ruling.
Sweeney's awkward quasi-crusade against monopolies drew some much-deserved ire in November 2020 when he compared Epic's rejection of Apple's terms of service to historical fights for civil rights. At the time he said that "there were actual laws on the books, and the laws were wrong. And people disobeyed them, and it was not wrong to disobey them because to go along with them would be collusion to make them status quo." Just take a moment to understand just how messed up and outright offensive it is that a white multi-billionaire was unironically comparing his legal battle between two multi-billion dollar companies to the actual civil rights movement.
Yet, despite all this grandstanding against "monopolies" it seems clear from this recent Bloomberg interview that Sweeney is totally fine with monopolies, just so long as he's the one in charge of it all.
