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Comment by thefreeman | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, though I actually use and like Steam, I absolutely hate how the walled garden / vendor lock in approach is making its way into PC gaming. There are games I 100% would have bought except for the fact that they force you to buy it through Origin. The only way to play without it is to use a pirated version.

Part of me wishes they could outlaw these types of things, but I don't really see any way you could logically force someone to make their platform available to competitors.

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Lock-in is the holy grail of all software vendors. If they can achieve a pervasive lock-in, they're golden. We should always have that present in mind when we're discussing the actions of software companies, because it's a conflict of interest. It means consumers need to be extra vigilant about demanding data portability and cross-compatibility, since software vendors are not going to be happy to provide them voluntarily.

Almost every action Microsoft has taken in the last 20 years has been about furthering their lock-in. The Xbox exists solely to promote DirectX, which tightens Windows' foothold; other consoles were (and are) mostly based on a derivative of OpenGL, which made it easier to port games to non-Windows platforms.

.NET exists solely to ensure that more business software requires Windows, and Windows Phone exists to ensure that more mobile software requires Windows. Java's write once, run anywhere philosophy is one of Microsoft's main targets, and has been since Java gained popularity in the early-mid 90s. Cross-platform compatibility is the bane of software vendors within their sphere of influence. Since MS primarily sells operating systems and office software, everything they do is about ensuring it's difficult to use a different operating system or office software.

You can go through a similar history for almost every major software vendor. It's in their monetary interest to make it difficult for users to switch platforms, which means it's in their interest to keep your data locked up and/or obfuscated.

Maybe. But the examples aren't solid.

Xbox sales were #1 for years - had to be a profit motive there regardless of software 'lock-in'.

.NET maybe, but Windows Phone? Last place in phone sales. How does that lock anybody into anything?

IE supports Java - no lock-in possible there.

Sometimes companies complete by writing software people want to buy. Microsoft has demonstrably done that, and in a market where they are clearly incapable of locking anybody to anything.

The Xbox barely kept up with GameCube sales, and was ultimately a grossly unprofitable adventure.

Any business' end-goal is profit. With the Xbox, this is through both vendor lock-in and "owning the living room". Some MS exec once also talked about using it as a way to transition the masses of console gamers to PC, but that was probably just a "nice to have" at best.

> Xbox sales were #1 for years - had to be a profit motive there regardless of software 'lock-in'.

No. You're confusing sales with profits. The Xbox division lost Microsoft over $3 Billion '03-'12. This has been covered extensively but see eg) http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h...

Profit, other than perhaps hope of long-term profit derived from spending their competitors out of business, was certainly not their motivation

> .NET maybe, but Windows Phone? Last place in phone sales. How does that lock anybody into anything?

Wanting to use something as a lock-in tool doesn't make it one. I'm pretty sure Microsoft would prefer Windows phone to be at place 1.

>IE supports Java - no lock-in possible there.

IE runs Java applets through a third-party plugin, and Java runs on Windows because the Java guys write and distribute a VM that supports Windows. Microsoft already got itself in very hot water for trying to strongarm people off of its platform entirely (Netscape antitrust case), so they're not about to try that again. You can make software for Windows, but Microsoft is going to use their clout in legally "fair" ways to make sure you don't damage their lock-in. Java was a very serious threat to MS, which is why they created .NET and built an enterprise sales apparatus around it.

Sun lost its way and Microsoft ate up most of the custom enterprise software market with .NET. A pity really; the future could've looked much different if Sun had successfully and aggressively countered .NET. MS made sure it didn't happen because write once, run anywhere meant that Windows wasn't going to be very important anymore. .NET touted similar features, but the catch was they only wrote a VM for MS platforms, incidentally.

Pre-reply: Yes, Mono exists, Microsoft made minor contributions here and there to it, but it is now and always has been a second-class citizen in this space, and Microsoft will ensure that it always will be. It seems Mono typically gets support for an API just as it becomes deprecated and its new big brother starts to emerge on Windows. That's intentional.

The Xbox doesn't exist to support DirectX, most AAA games write to bare metal for better performance.It exists because Microsoft wanted a living room presence the way the Soviets coveted a warm water port.

There is no bare metal on Xbox, you always go through DirectX. The difference is that the Xbox version of DirectX has much lower overhead than the Windows version and provides access to all the functionality of the GPU, not just whatever's in the comparable PC version of DirectX.

Vendor lockin should be outright illegal it benefits no one but the vendor and in fact harms everyone else.

Why is vendor lock in NOT illegal? (Besides lobbying)

I totally agree with your sentiment. But, how exactly would you enforce it? All they have to do is say "The games make use of Origin technology and won't work without our software". I am not really sure how you could prove otherwise or compel them to somehow provide it without the feature.

You have a good point.

This paints it as more of a societal problem than a legal one, and I think you're correct in hindsight.

I think about my gamer friends, and they've resigned themselves to vendor lockin because "What choice do I have if I want to play with my friends?", something I've come to call the Facebook Argument.

However, when I think about [some of] my colleagues, many of them don't like vendor lockin when it's applied to them, but aren't against implementing similar features in their own projects with a different name, and I have a hard time believing they don't see it for what it is.

Edit: typo

Lots of things that only benefit one party are legal, why should they be illegal?

Why don't you use your ability to purchase software from somebody else (or use open alternatives) rather than increase the ability of governments to threaten and imprison people? While there are societal benefits from regulating monopolies, making "anything that might annoy a consumer" illegal is a dangerous path and does little but erode freedoms.

Probably because of the massive power asymmetry between vendor and user.

Suppose my only option for earning a living depends on software from Vendor X, who has used lock-in techniques to eliminate their competition. At this point there would be nothing to be done except make vendor lock-in illegal.

It would be easy to do, too, simply by requiring either A. up-to-date, detailed documentation of file formats and protocols necessary for data migration, or B. support for an interchange format that provides the same features as a proprietary format.

I'm still not understanding why it should be illegal. We can start with an assumption that Vendor X eliminated their competition by fair practices or they would already be subject to antitrust regulations. If Vendor X uses their position to unfairly prevent competition (either in their own space or others), they are already breaking the law. If they aren't doing that, I fail to see why just having lock-in should be illegal.

This is not to say I'm a fan of vendor lock-in. Quite the opposite, actually. But I do know laws like this will always have unintended consequences, will always be manipulated by those same large companies ostensibly being regulated to give them advantages over new entrants, and, as a result, will always make the competitive landscape more difficult than it would have otherwise been. How big does your market have to be? How big does your company have to be? Is the broadband chip on your phone subject or just your whole phone? What about trade secrets?

The advantage of the antitrust laws is in the lack of specificity. It takes a complete trial to actually show wrong-doing.

Because a case can always be made that the lock in provides some benefit, such as providing a consistent user experience. What you are really arguing is that the benefits they can provide through controlling the experience end to end are clearly outweighed by the negative aspects. While this is probably apparent to most people, proving it as a legal argument may be much harder.

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