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Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by flingo on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:07PM (#24312322)
Apple's iOS ToS specifically forbids downloading and executing code by the app. (with a definition of "code", and "execute" somewhere in the document)

While you could technically hide this from them during the review stage, apple can stop any app from functioning on any iOS device connected to the internet by revoking the certificate, if they discover it at a later stage.

Are there noteworthy apps that break this term in the wild?

Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by quelltext on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:22PM (#24312415)
This clause is impossible to apply to games.

Any level of a game contains at least some logic like NPC behaviors, event triggering etc. and I'm sure scripting is a standard component of every single game.

Have you heard of Thimbleweed Park? It's basically a VM executing an adventure game language (like the creator's SCUMM VM in the past).

That's on the App Store.

Now if we specifically look at the downloading part, that would mean games on iOS cannot download new levels, which I think is done by a lot of games.

Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by nightcracker on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:02PM (#24312647)
The clause is impossible to apply period. It's undecidable.
Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by flingo on Saturday August 29, 2020 @11:58PM (#24321252)
I don't think my original comment was clear about how I view the ToS as a hammer Apple made for themselves to wield. Not for the good of anyone, but apple.

Their goal here being to cover their ass and have a rule, that you already "agreed" to follow, to point at when they want to get rid of your app. Apple's legal tech has always been years ahead of their electronic tech, I'm honestly curious to see if epic's got some sort of counter to apple's usual legal shenanigans.

Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by cavanasm on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:18PM (#24312756)
In the court hearings, Epic explained how they implemented their payment processor change addition without catching Apple's notice. The app simply asks the Epic servers for a list of payment processors available to display to users, and at review time it was only the Apple one. A week after the update, they added another entry to the DB, and now there's a second option, without modifying app code.
Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by RonanTheGrey on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:36PM (#24313219)
The Simpsons game regularly downloads game updates, and much to my chagrin because the updates are gigantic.

This is extremely common in games, less so in productivity apps.

Re:Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account by zycon on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:50PM (#24318503)
But it allows downloading and executing interpreted code. See paragraph 3.3.2 of Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

So you can have significant portion of your app in say javascript, which you can update OTA.

E.g. react native apps have most of their functionality in js and can use services like code push to update themselves without app store and it doesn't violate Apple ToS.