Reminder: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has defended child pornography, saying that stopping it is "gatekeeping".
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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All mega corps are shit and run by assholes.
Except Costco. For now at least.
As someone who just tried to sign up for a Costco membership online and couldn't get past the first page of registration, on multiple devices, Costco is kinda shit too, lol.
It wasn't so much he was defending child pornography as he was saying leftists wanted to selectively take down a right-wing social media platform that right-wingers already successfully took from leftists and replaced with X.
That's definitely an opinion. A wrong one, but an opinion.
That's fine and all, but the same people saying Sweeney defended pedophilia are close to if not the same people who say you're defending pedophiles if you don't like payment processors strong-arming porn off of a bunch of different platforms. This is not an accusation against you.
I've literally never heard that claim until just now.
That's not surprising. There aren't a lot of people rising up to defend the porn games that got delisted on sites like itch. Don't worry, once all the porn is gone you'll be hearing people saying the same thing to you when you argue against using facial recognition to shitpost on the internet. Gotta protect the kids!
Thanks, John Google.
they talk about alternative stores as well but fail to do a great reporting on the issue ... a alternative appstore that need's google approve it's simply not a real alternative.
From https://keepandroidopen.org/ In August 2025, Google announced ↗ that as of September 2026, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google. This registration will involve:
- Paying a fee to Google
- Agreeing to Google’s Terms and Conditions
- Providing government identification
- Uploading evidence of the developer’s private signing key
- Listing all current and future application identifiers
Good news is GrapheneOS is planned to be available on Motorola phones. Probably time to leave Google and Microsoft behind.
So after all that, Epic just got the commission cut by 1/3? Wonder how long it'll take their savings to equal what they spent on legal fees and the revenue they missed while Fortnite wasn't on the Play Store.
edit: Ars' coverage says attorneys' fees were included in the settlement, so I guess Epic only needs to make up the missed revenue.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't this be used as a precedent for other app makers that are screwed over by google's monopoly?
If I'm reading the article correctly it's dropping for all app developers. Not just Epic.
1/5 is still a lot.
Alright so
Line must go up, so where are they going to recoup that loss of revenue?
Ads as far as the eye can see... and more!
So no change then?
There can always be more!
I suspect it'll be ignored like so much else in this hysterical market. The question is how can they spin the new metrics; creative reporting abounds.