After Apple kicked Fortnite from the iOS store, there was an outcry of people who had previously spent money on it through Apple's in-app purchases and now wanted a refund.
Some of those users switched to playing Fortnite on a laptop or Android phone instead, but of course they were still using Sign in with Apple if they had originally created their account and paid for items on iOS. Apple is now locking out those users.
So I predict another wave of upset users, this time it'll be the people that purchased through Apple and were then attempting to play elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Epic now has a very good reason to collect a working email address from every past iOS customer, which they can immediately use to offer the customer a 20% rebate on future purchases if they buy directly through Epic and circumvent the Apple tax.
Plus as an added benefit, Japan has now started an antitrust investigation against Apple after various smaller Japanese game studios (most of them Unreal Engine customers) have come out in support of Epic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-03/apple-app...
And lastly, the combination of pressure on Epic together with the looming iOS14 update have made iOS a lot less attractive for mobile game studios, most of whom traditionally used advertisements to subsidize free players: https://www.consumeracquisition.com/game-over-ios-14-idfa-lo...
I found this quote which I think is quite fitting: "As the folks at Microsoft used to say in the early days of the Xbox, developers are the canaries in the coal mine. When they start dying, the platform is in trouble."
https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/04/the-deanbeat-apple-must-t...
Not just epic but any business really that obtains most of their customer base through sign in with apple.
Losing your entire customer base because of making apple mad is a risk that most businesses will now be unwilling to take.
Interesting point about the looming iOS14 update. Makes you wonder whether Apple will ultimately fall at their privacy sword, similar to how Google fell at its own "Don't do evil" motto. E.g. it's meaningless bravado when not applied to universally to all countries, aka China.
AFAIK Epic did their move by pushing "legal" iOS code, then doing an over-the-air update of adding non-Apple payment system.
Mozilla can't just push a rendering & JavaScript engine "over the air".
No, the code was hidden in the app itself, just disabled via server-side flag. After the app was approved they then flipped the flag to enable it.
Source: Epic admits this in their legal filings.
Just include both native renderer and webkit, and over the air switch which you use.
Plus I doubt Mozilla is in the mode to burn months of programmers time on a stunt right now.
As a long time Apple user, and open software advocate I'd literally cry tears of joy. I'd also have to throw Zuck a bone if FB joined.
I really just want Apple to separate their code signing (Developer) service with their advertising and distribution service (App Store).
As a user, it’s appalling to see developers taking the side of user-hostile companies in order to take down a company trying to protect users.
It makes me want to avoid any products from such companies and developers.
It would likely be unusably slow if they did. Apple doesn’t allow apps in the store with the required entitlements to make an optimized JavaScript engine of entirely Mozilla’s design.
Would Epic be willing to lead the fight against consoles as well (they charge 30%, too)? Oh, right...
epic is proposing a 12% rate to all the stores and asked Google for it as well, they have fought playstation policies against crossplay and won in the past.
"All stores" as in "actually all stores" or "Apple Store and Google Play Store only"? Their entire "fight" is very much targeted, and consoles (which are Epic's key partners) are not really targeted. Moreover, Epic goes out of its way to define consoles as something else.
--- start quotes ---
“The 30 per cent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 per cent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” he explains.
“There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30 per cent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.” [1]
"Consoles are unique in that the hardware is sold at or below the cost of manufacturing, and is subsidized by software sales, whereas iOS and Android are insanely profitable for Apple and Google from just hardware sales and ads." [2]
--- end quotes ---
Regardless of your opinion on 30% cuts in AppStore and Play Store, these are some really shoddy arguments.
[1] 2018, https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-31-30-percent...
[2] 2020, https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/127327654856984166...
Consoles will become more expensive but games will cost $60. Payment processing fees have to be passed onto the customer. Your $0.99 game with 30% cut is now a $1.30 game because of credit card fees. No more Steam cards at retailers.
All these statements require hard proof. Additionally, "you already earn more money than I'd like" is not exactly a valid case to make against a cut.
Apple is by far the most distinct case, so it perfectly reasonable to focus on Apple (Besides, I'm sure that Apple with its trillions can afford a legal defence). If Apple gets off, all other stores get off too since Apple is the most restrictive. If Epic wins, we can then discuss how to apply the legal doctrine to other cases.
The top 100 apps on iOS need to do a 'blackout' and pull their apps from iOS for a week. That will make front page international headlines globally and involve the entire planet. That's the kind of scale necessary.
Legislators from around the world will take notice whereas right now, probably very few know or care.
Don't discount how little the public knows or cares about these kinds of things, most people are busy with their lives they are not paying attention. Few even know or understand the terms of the iOS store let alone what it means.
So a focused PR campaign and 'major action' by a lot of players is what is needed. FB, Wikipedia, Netflix, CNN etc. etc..
I feel like it's a reasonable trade-off. Free apps don't cost you much (yes, $99 for dev tools is not much honestly. It keeps away spurious bots and spammy accounts). Paid apps cost 30% -- if the dev decides to charge outrageous prices then well, Apple will take an outrageous cut).
Most apps cost $1-$5 which is cheap. Of course, at a billion users it's hefty. But if you're grumpy about that then it just means you're grumpy about a shrewd for-profit company.
Combined with the ambiguity, lack of choice, threats to business - absolutely yes, iOS is basically universally reviled by developers.
Nobody on this planet accepts that the 30% is necessary for anything ergo, it's a massive chunk out of profits.
Most companies are not hugely profitable.
In many cases, Apple is making considerable more profit off of apps than developers themselves.
For a $1 spent, about 25 cents to Apple mostly profit, then 70 cents to the dev which will mostly be dev., ad. and op. costs.
It wouldn't surprise met that Apple makes more surplus from Fornite than Fortnite makes off the platform.
Their business model is munted. All because people are sheep. They advertised to moronic uni students who like shiny things, Their parents wanted to seem hip so they got on board.
I mean hell, you cant even use a cable they don't own.
Because I rather like the fact the iOS devices get OS updates for about twice as long as Android devices. Android security was also a pretty bad joke for a very long time—it has started to change, but there's only so much they can fix. Google would release an OS (or even a security) update, then you'd have to wait for both the OEM and the network provider to pass the update on to end users. Google are changing this with security patches, but there's still a lot of Android devices running old versions with no prospect of any new features coming any time soon.
In iOS land, there's no OEM or network intermediaries (something Apple insisted on in all deals with networks from the first iPhone), so generally takeup of a new iOS version happens really promptly - as of June 2020, 81% of iOS users are on iOS 13.* That's good for the health of the platform as app developers can build on top of new OS features knowing a reasonable number of actual users can use those new features.
Also, there are a whole variety of suppliers of Lightning cables. Go to Amazon and search "MFi certified lightning cable".
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/565270/apple-devices-ios...
30% is outrageous and basically no developers want to pay it.
Were it 10%, all those things you mention would remain the same.
Also, OP is stating that the only reason people buy iOS is because they're some kind of idiot fashionista sheeple etc. I was merely pointing out that there are compelling reasons to prefer iOS beyond, I dunno, the magic mind-control powers of the ghost of Steve Jobs.
Except that developers don't need to use the App Store a sales/distribution mechanism.
It's like saying "In one country, there is only one car, and it is $50 000". In another country, the same car exists, and yes, there are other $50 000 cars ... but there are also any number of other choices.
And FYI even Google is engaging in anticompetitive practices.
Both platforms should be required to allow the installation of any app vendor point they want as the default app store.
Boy will your world be shook when you discover the Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo stores.
I almost forgotten that here people want to get paid without paying for their own tools.
It sounds to me like the _only_ reason developers are clamoring against the App Store is because some fraction of developers are unhappy about a high commission. It's on the same lines are some people out there unhappy about Apple's high prices. In both cases, you should vote with your wallets -- do not buy Apple devices or develop for Apple devices.
>Combined with the ambiguity, lack of choice, threats to business Would you say that there was abundant choice for developers before the iPhone? What would you develop for -- Blackberry? Nokia? None of those manufacturers had anything remotely close to the iPhone. Right?
Would you say that a 3rd party developer who writes a "flashlight" app is really a legitimate business? Ok, I'll acknowledge the beef with Spotify and the threat an integrated platform can pose in that regard. So what would you propose Apple do? Pay software engineers on their payroll to help Spotify sell music on the iPod (oops; I mean iPhone)?
>Most companies are not hugely profitable. >In many cases, Apple is making considerable more profit off of apps than developers themselves. >For a $1 spent, about 25 cents to Apple mostly profit, then 70 cents to the dev which will mostly be dev., ad. and op. costs.
All this goes to show is that Apple is hugely expensive platform to develop for. Massively expensive! I am sincerely trying to understand _why_ would any developer _need_ to take this expense if they cannot afford it? Can't you develop a web app instead?
Well, Microsoft did that, they developed the Spotify app for Windows Phone back in the day.
> I am sincerely trying to understand _why_ would any developer _need_ to take this expense if they cannot afford it? Can't you develop a web app instead?
I guess because such a large portion of phone users use iPhone, not developing for iOS means you remove yourself from competing about not only those customers but others as well. Say you develop a chat app (fat chance of that now but anyways), a large portion of Android users will say "It's nice and all but because some of my friends have iPhones I want to be able to chat with them as well."
So quite simply, you need to be where the customers are and customers want native apps not web apps. They don't want to open Safari or Chrome or Firefox, type in a URL and some login credentials. It's too much of a nuisance. So if you don't write a native app some one else will and then they take all your customers...
> Well, Microsoft did that, they developed the Spotify app for Windows Phone back in the day. I was trying to be _too clever_ in my reference. What I was trying to say is that there's no moral highground for the developer community to stand on and demand that Apple reduce their commission or allow sideloading on the iPhone. A similar argument demanding that Apple open up iPods for 3rd party apps would've never sounded reasonable when Apple had the largest revenue share or market share or whatever share of the digital music player market. The exact same situation applies to the iPhone as well.
What Microsoft did was because they had no leverage. Apple beat them to market and successfully attracted enough developers to write apps. Sure Apple's platforms benefit from having 3P developers, but that doesn't mean they should set prices based on what 3P devs feel is "fair". If devs don't like the iPhone they should've developed for Windows Phone.
>I guess because such a large portion of phone users use iPhone, not developing for iOS means you remove yourself from competing about not only those customers but others as well. Say you develop a chat app (fat chance of that now but anyways), a large portion of Android users will say "It's nice and all but because some of my friends have iPhones I want to be able to chat with them as well."
> So quite simply, you need to be where the customers are and customers want native apps not web apps. They don't want to open Safari or Chrome or Firefox, type in a URL and some login credentials. It's too much of a nuisance. So if you don't write a native app some one else will and then they take all your customers...
Yes I completely agree with all these points. That is precisely what costs 30% of your app's revenue. The argument around "fairness" doesn't apply because the value provided by the platform is massive. It's the same reason why any argument comparing the iPhone to a Mac or PC wouldn't apply either. You can always build a web-app that's based on open standards and pay the price of losing to a competitor who will build a richer native app.
I'm a legal expert or something. As a developer myself, I find the arguments presented by the dev community against the App store & it's commission self-serving and hypocritical. That's just the cost of doing business on an iPhone. It's expensive! So the best thing to do is to go out there and build for every other phone maker.
No. No, it is not.
I am a developer, and I support iOS and Apple’s practices.
I know this comment will be buried; It’s ironic how the people supposedly championing freedom tries to bury any dissenting voices.
> In many cases, Apple is making considerable more profit off of apps than developers themselves.
Apple pays out more revenue to developers than the Play Store.
Like Enron or something.
It seems to be hurting them more than Apple: Epic Games Asks Court to Allow Fortnite Back on the App Store: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/09/05/epic-injuction-fortnite...
> Meanwhile, Epic now has a very good reason to collect a working email address from every past iOS customer
One of the biggest reason I love using Sign-In With Apple is so that I don't have to give my email to any one else.
All of the other news, like hampering advertisers, is good for users but bad for companies and developers who like to prey on users.
I think it's all a mixed bag, and it might be naive of users to assume Apple is always going to protect them from things that go against their best interests.
Somehow Apple's arduous review process misses privacy exploits like when Facebook or Tiktok or some other random ad company does it. Shoot, they even rolled back some big privacy change in iOS 14 because Facebook complained about it.
I dunno, this will sound stupid, but my primary reason against the "closed ecosystem" is that I can't run a decent Tetris app on my iPhone. It must be the official N3twork licensed Tetris app or noooothing. That sucks.
I must have missed that news — could you share a link?
I could see disabling new signups, but breaking existing users...geeze.
When you restrict your logins to a single company’s OAuth, you’re giving that company incredible power over you- it’s generally not a good thing, except in, perhaps, corporate scenarios where revoking that power unilaterally is a good thing.
I have an infinite supply of email addresses so I can give a unique one to whoever asks and then kill it if it's abused. This way I don't have to tell Apple whenever I logon to Epic or fear that Apple will revoke my access to Epic because of a random adolescent outburst not really befitting of a company of that size.
I do question the justification of the 30% cut they all seem to take.
From what I see, the resilience of the PC through the years only shows that people want less consoles, not more.
As for PC resilience, there are hardly any desktops left at most consumer stores, just tablets, 2-1 laptop hybrids and laptops that are either Windows or Mac, both of which are a hit-and-miss for anything else other that the OS version that the vendor shipped with the laptop.
Fortnite sucks the air out of the room, as much as any #1 media property does to its category.
Besides, making an Unreal Engine game for iOS hardly ever makes sense. Those are always crummy ports.
You could argue Fortnite on mobile devices is itself a crummy port.
Do we need more virtual joystick games? Are we deprived of Battle Royales?
Ask film people whether we’d be better off without Disney, for example.
Listen Epic may be right in some ways, but if Apple just arbitrarily periodically removed the #1 apps from the App Store, I’ve got a surprise for you: it would be healthy for the app ecosystem.
It's really quite absurd to wave away every unreal game disappearing from iOS as acceptable because they were all bad games anyway. It's likely the second most popular engine in the industry, there must be thousands of unreal games released on iOS every year.
Good for the ecosystem? How many people could be, through no fault of their own, locked out of an entire platform because of this?
Metal + the Unreal shaders look wonderful almost 100% of the time
Apple's other actions are just retaliatory: threatening the unreal engine, terminating developer accounts from affiliates, and yanking Apple login. It's those actions that you shouldn't expect.
The precedence Apple wants to set is: break ToS, get kicked off the store. Break ToS and then try to take Apple to court, get kicked off the platform.
It's pretty obvious that Fortnite is just the pawn that Epic used to wage war. This is obvious to Apple too, hence their counterclaim for punitive damages.
This is the same concept as tenant rights. Just because you are renting someone's house doesn't give them complete control over your life. A landlord can't randomly barge into your house (even if technically belongs to them) and sell your stuff.
And before someone comments "But there is no tenancy here", well it's an analogy and it's the same idea. The reason tenant rights exist is because we recognize that having a place to live in is a basic existential need for an individual and therefore we place restrictions on what landlords can get away it, despite the fact that being a landlord is far from a monopoly.
Something similar needs to happen for these bottlenecking platforms that are basically existential requirements for a lot of companies. Also applies to payment processors btw.
Epic Games is free to build their own phone and app store platform. There is nothing stopping them. Other than the risk that people don't want to buy into whatever they build. But Apple had the same risks.
If this is truly a good faith negotiation (and not a stunt) on the part of Epic Games, they need to understand they're just losing the negotiation -- that's all. Business is business. Epic Games is just bad at it.
Epic games (AFAIK) started (the public portion of) this conversation by violating terms that Apple set forth in a contract that Epic games agreed to. Apple is defending their contract with their behavior. They have the stronger position unless the law comes to the aid of Epic games (which is what I'm assuming Epic games hopes to induce).
Sidenote: The only law capable of negating a contract is a bankruptcy. Neither party has declared bankruptcy. I have a feeling the law is going to be on Apple's side too.
Whats being asked isn't some massive change to their software. Its freedom for the developer and user to have a choice in payment platforms. As much as Apple tries to obfuscate it, the AppStore is not the kernel, its not the graphics layer, its not the file system, its not something that is needed to run software. The other OS components are already being abstracted away to some extent by cross-platform tooling, and the AppStore is way way easier than those.
On one hand, Apple will never take legal responsibility to audit software on their App Store and certify it free from malware, because doing so will be cost prohibitive and/or impossible. But at the same time, they want to claim its this 'utopia' that will get destroyed if users are allowed the freedom to pick a different store. How about you let us decide that?
Even at much smaller scale, you may need someone more than they need you, and they will negotiate like it - for legal and commercial terms.
Also, terms of service are usually negotiable - presuming you're worth negotiating with. GE has no problem negotiating with Google - you as an individual might have to take what their standard is.
How much of a cut is Steam taking when you sell software on their store?
How much of a cut will Epic be taking when you sell software on their store?
This is completely different to how much Mastercard charges you for selling stuff from your store.
I've owned and used Apple products continuously for over 30 years, and I'm not ashamed to say that I am rooting HARD for Epic on this. Apple doesn't give a shit about innovation when they are making money hand over fist. They are spending all their time nurturing their cash cow. It's time to butcher that motherfucker.
It's crazy but I didn't even notice this paradigm shift until they announced their credit card. Apple used to be the company to push boundaries and revolutionize computing in some way every few years. The last real "innovation" I feel Apple has come up with was the Retina display, pushing OEMs everywhere towards higher pixel counts and better overall user experiences. Before that we got everything from the iPhone and iPod and even iTunes, to USB and WiFi brought to the mainstream, to crazy, beautiful designs that worked well, like the iMac G4.
Just for instance working off local memory, The iMac hasn't seen a form factor update since what, 2012 when they slimmed down the curve? Which even then was a minor facelift of the 2007 design at best, which itself was an aluminum facelift. Before then we had new iMac designs every few years, between the G3 in '98, the G4 in '02, and the G5 settling on the current form factor in '04.
Not sure what you mean here. USB was used everywhere and around the time iPhone launched, microusb was used by a large portion of new phones. Apple is pretty much the only actively USB-avoiding company left. They still use a proprietary connection for their devices.
They certainly sped up the wifi on mobile trend, but I would argue with bringing it to the mainstream.
Some innovations I can think of are force touch, fingerprint sensor (arguably), Face ID, T2 chip / hardware security, Touch Bar, the heart sensor on Watch, and (possibly) wireless charging. Now, some of those, like the Touch Bar are widely reviled here, but whether or not you find it useful, it is an innovation.
Design-wise there's been incremental innovations, some of which haven't succeed (scissors keyboard). The Jet Black iPhone was a design innovation, or at least a manufacturing innovation, since they had to preprocess the metal surface so that the black dye would soak in beyond the outer layer.
You mean, Apple, like any grown-up company would do in their place, has rightfully shown Epic the door? Google kicked Fortnite from Play Store for the same reason. And had they tried this against consoles (where devs also pay 30%), they'd be kicked out of the respective console forever.
What's a "non-cry-baby" reaction in your opinion?
Epic hoped for preferential treatment just because they are big, and they've enjoyed preferential treatment on consoles. hey've run into Apple applying their TOS equally to everybody and are now somehow pissed.
They should have sued and never have done their "pay direct" thing if they wanted to stay operational on Apple platforms during the lawsuit. Apple couldn't retaliate at that point since any termination attempt would be reversed by a court order.
That would have made the chances of the lawsuit being thrown out over BS standing issues much higher
If they did that, any court hearing the lawsuit would throw it out because Epic would not have standing. Epic had to do it this way to have any hope of a court hearing their case.
0: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf
It’s the hazards of building your business on another company’s foundation.
There are millions of companies completely dependent on Apple, Amazon, or another organization. In tech terms, it goes back to affiliate marketing days. In real world terms, it goes back centuries.
No leader should make his company dependent on another company, but it happens all the time.
The only things that are different now is that the company is Apple, and that tech bubble social media outrage is a thing.
This is one of those mindkill kind of lines someone posts in all such threads.
Yes, everything in the world depends on something else. Do you also say this when companies rely on utility companies for their electricity and water? Or must I buy an island and set things up from scratch before I am allowed to start a lemonade stand? Or maybe move to a different planet entirely just to be sure?
An Apple login is handled by Apple. If they don‘t want to do business with you anymore, you‘re lost. They make the rules themself, there is basically not much you can do to appeal those rules directly. I can‘t do anything (well, court, but until then I‘m bankrupt) about it.
Blame the victim.
And that you literally cannot avoid external forces.
This isn't unique to Apple, and it's not arbitrary or capricious on their behalf.
My 3DS supports savestates & backups for games like Animal Crossing that let me maintain multiple towns at the same time, custom emulators that run my old Gameboy cartridge backups that I made, really amazing mods like Project Restoration for Majora's Mask, plus custom themes and easier storage management for things like pictures and songs. By comparison, an unhacked Switch still can't even back up all of its save games to the cloud.
If you don't want us to go after consoles as well, maybe don't tempt us? I'm sympathetic to the argument that being loss leaders makes consoles unique and special and different from a smartphone, but if the general consensus here is that they're exactly the same...
If you're arguing that this case is a slippery slope, try to come up with some consequences farther down the slope that don't sound kind of nice.
I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that Apple would stop producing the iPhone if sideloading was allowed. The smartphone market doesn't operate the same way as the console market.
The 30% per transaction only really makes sense for apps for which Apple has provided the advertising, distribution and processing -- the App Store.
I'd love to just provide a direct download for my customers who also happen to be Apple (device) customers.
It's not "their" product. It's mine, I purchased a license to use their software on my hardware. I'm not beholden to continue using their software
The App Store, however, is their store.
I also think there are more substantial differences. The most major being the difficulty in switching. Switching consoles means losing my data most of the time, but they're just save games, achievements and friends list. If my console melted down tomorrow, it'd be fine. Switching phone OS is a lot harder. Contacts and calendars are relatively easy to switch, but it gets hard after that. How do I get all my data off the old phone? Am I sure I exported my 2FA keys right? If my phone melts down and takes the cloud backups with it, my life is in a world of hurt.
I am also curious how first-party software will be handled. Is it okay to have a closed marketplace on your own software if that marketplace only serves your software? Just as an example, if I get an LG smart fridge that has a marketplace to download new widgets for the display, and LG only allows the sale of LG apps there, is that okay? I'm wondering if app stores won't just shift their model. Instead of "you upload an app, and we'll pay you what users pay us for it minus our cut" it will become "You grant us a perpetual license to distribute your application, and we will pay you 70% royalties on the money we earn". I wonder if that shifts any liability around
And an inability to play every game you've purchased. Even if you didn't buy the games digitally, it'd be amazingly difficult to resell your games to buy the same ones for a different platform. Heck, just look at all the groaning online about Epic store exclusive games because people didn't want to have to deal with Steam AND Epic launchers.
>I am also curious how first-party software will be handled. Is it okay to have a closed marketplace on your own software if that marketplace only serves your software?
Similarly, why should only Epic be able to sell skins for Fortnite?
Emulators exists (unlike Apple which bans any virtualization of MacOS under non-macs).
>it'd be amazingly difficult to resell your games to buy the same ones for a different platform
Selling is easy. 'Buying the same game' is often a nonfactor due to how the games market works (many games become outdated quickly, multiplayer servers go offline, etc.).
>>Is it okay to have a closed marketplace on your own software if that marketplace only serves your software?
>Similarly, why should only Epic be able to sell skins for Fortnite?
There's no duty to have a open marketplace, that is open to 3rd parties. Not having it is no different than offering different paid versions of the main software (imagine Fortnite Premium Edition with X skins, or iPhone only with Apple apps). However, once the marketplace is open to 3rd parties, there's a duty to allow fair competition, and that does limit Apple.
You can sideload apps with a free dev account for several years now. The only condition is that you have to resign the binary every seven days. There are even desktop apps that automate it.
> AltStore will periodically attempt to refresh your apps in the background, and you can always manually refresh your apps from within AltStore.
This is not how XBox games developed with XDK are actually developed and they can see all the hardware, instead of being into a UWP sandbox.
It is more to cater to indie devs as means to get something into the XBox similar to XNA used to allow, it is not meant for proper XBox games as such.
Also it hasn't been updated for a while.
Eventually the console makers will die due to lack of funding, and Epic will release their own console which will be more locked down than an Apple iPhone.
Microsoft and Playstation also allow for cross-platform play, and crucially unlike Apple, actually provide a significant amount of services to developers for their cuts, including but not limited to QA services, SDK and hardware support from actual MS/Sony employees, and marketing spend.
Additionally, while MS and Sony require all developers to use their stores or APIs for IAP, they allow developers (at least large ones) to heavily customize those storefronts, and charge significantly less than 30% for the enforced privilege of using their IAP APIs; the exact rates being a matter of negotiation.
Sony explicitly didn't allow for cross-play until 2 years ago [https://kotaku.com/sony-is-finally-allowing-cross-play-on-th...], even though it was technically possible before then [https://www.engadget.com/2017-06-24-rocket-league-cross-netw...]. In fact, the only reason Sony opened up to cross-play is due to pressure to stay competitive with rival platform Xbox. This was a take-it-or-leave it situation, but Sony was too big to leave. Nothing changed until Sony caved to social pressure.
If the argument is that Apple is a unique kind of device that Apple has a monopoly over, it would hard to argue that Sony and Microsoft don't enjoy the same monopoly powers. On the other hand, if argument is that it's easy enough to switch from Playstation to Xbox, then how is that different from buying a new phone?
In fact, I would bet that Epic sued Apple not because it's more monopolistic, but because they want to set a legal precedent that they can then apply to Playstation, Xbox and Switch, without threatening Epic's core business on consoles.
Would you be willing to agree that the relative importance of a smartphone in 2020 is far greater than the relative importance of a video game console in virtually everyone’s lives?
Nor does Fortnite.
Rather easily: players can own two consoles with nothing more than the hardware investment, and there's a long social experience of dedicated gamers doing just this. Owning two phones, however, requires two separate cell/data plans and duplication of every other regular-use app (productivity, e-mail, etc.)
The core distinction is that a console is a device, whereas iOS/Android is a platform.
multiple console platforms require multiple accounts with separate friends lists, paid online access, save games, etc. with WiFi calling, separate cell/data plans are not necessary. [1]
> The core distinction is that a console is a device, whereas iOS/Android is a platform.
a console gaming platform certainly seems like a platform. games, friends list with chat, applications such as video streaming, etc.
[1] https://thedroidguy.com/trick-drop-cell-phone-plan-completel...
I can't run my Switch copy of Warframe on my PS4. I have to install Warframe for PS4 on the PS4, and then I'll be playing only with other Warframe-on-PS4 players.
Similarly for every paid title I have on the PS4 if I move to Switch I have to buy those titles again, assuming they're available on the Switch. Many of the titles I have on Switch require a Nintendo Online account which is a paid service.
So I'm not sure what you think you're addressing with that comparison, other than desperately trying to find evidence to support your assertion that iPhone is somehow different to a gaming console in terms of being a platform or device.
But in that scenario, you can always walk out and walk into a competing grocery store and try to find a better price. The fact that you can walk is what makes it a competitive scenario, and not an anti-trust one. The question here is, is being able to walk away and use an Android (or other smartphone) product an equivalent (thus fair competition) - or is software in the iOS ecosystem unique enough that not being allowed to participate unless you follow arcane rules is unfair abuse of a monopoly.
I don’t understand how this is materially different from apples investments into Xcode, discoverability & promotion in the App Store/“marketing spend”, etc. Apple does tons of stuff with the big players behind closed doors, they highlight it every keynote and that’s just the ones they talk about on the “real human being” front.
> Microsoft and Playstation also allow for cross-platform play
Don't some games allow iOS / PC cross-platform play? Epic's Fortnite did, didn't it?
Appendix A1 (page 16) here https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishi...
It seems to run counter to everything I've heard when people compare the iOS ecosystem to consoles. Where can I learn more?
Console ecosystems are already open-by-law, based on past cases from the 80s and 90s. You can already publish a game to a Switch or PlayStation without ever going through Nintendo or Sony (so long as you don't steal any copywritten assets to do so). You can even publish your own software, that modifies anyone elses software (again, so long as you don't break copyright to do so).
Their eShop/online stores are not yet open, but the devices main software sources are open by law (things like the BluRay drive on a PS4, or the Cartridge slot on a Switch). This is how things like "unauthorized games" were legally published, as well as software editors/debuggers like GameShark, all existed 100% legally as far back as the 90's.
Apple is actually attempting to overturn precedent here, they're trying to claim their TOS is somehow more legally binding than everyone elses is, and trying to reverse battles already fought and lost by Atari / Nintendo / Sega, because companies didn't have easy way to retroactively punish users for fair use back then, like Apple can and does do today.
As far as I know, the courts didn't require that Nintendo, Sega or Sony make the consoles open - they just didn't make it illegal to reverse engineer the protections.
I'm curious what cases you think actually established this precedent? Keep in mind that a court saying "reverse engineering is not copyright infringement" is not the same thing as a court saying "a hardware manufacturer is legally obligated to permit the distribution of third-party software on its hardware".
> You can already publish a game to a Switch or PlayStation without ever going through Nintendo or Sony (so long as you don't steal any copywritten assets to do so).
I don't believe this is accurate, at least not in the sense of commercially publishing a game in a physical store or on Nintendo or Sony's digital storefronts. I'm certainly not aware of any games that have been published in physical stores without the publisher having signed a publishing agreement with Nintendo or Sony.
They did put commercial unlicensed software into US retailers, without any agreement from Nintendo or Sony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade (1992) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nin.... (1992)
(TL/DR: you are allowed to build and publish and sell unlicensed software for a console. You are allowed to break DRM to do this, so long as it's a clean-room reverse engineer (don't pull a TENGEN). You are allowed to do this for your own uses (sell your own games) and are allowed to do this even if that software edits other people's legally-purchased software (cheat engines / debuggers / mods / etc). You can legally do this without any license agreement from Nintendo or Sony)
This is how GameSharks/ActionReplays/etc were legally sold in every Wal*Mart / Target / Meijer / GameStop / etc in the US for a decade or more. Their boot screens all contain boot messages saying "this product is NOT licensed by Nintendo/Sega/Sony/etc" for this reason - https://nerdbacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GS3.jpg
These are still sold, legally at retail stores like GameStop and WalMart, even today: https://www.codejunkies.com/Products/PowerSaves-Pro__EF00111... (again, still 100% unlicensed from Nintendo)
But it doesn't mean those platforms are "open", otherwise under that definition the iOS platform is "open" too because you can legally jailbreak your phone and distribute jailbroken apps. I don't think that's what people mean when they say a platform is "open".
> This is how GameSharks/ActionReplays/etc were legally sold
I was more curious if any actual games had been sold this way.
copyrighted
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you don't actually need to do that to be legal. You just have to clean room reverse engineer the DRM. After that, anything you have legal access to, you can legally use.
You could just get past the DRM on the BluRay drive or SD card slot or whatever, and then assuming you have legal rights to use it, load up a full set of Unreal/Unity/Renderware/whatever middleware you want and be off to the races.
Again: This caselaw pre-dates always-on-DRM and Apple-angry-tantrum-responses stuff. So this stuff was 100% legal and clear in the PS2 / Xbox / GameCube days, when there was a clear separation between the two. Now that Apple has tried to muddy the water by pretending their DRM is a "platform" that "provides value", I suspect it will be easier to confuse folks
I'm not convinced that the console ecosystem would be destroyed if you forced them all to open up. Quite the contrary: I'd happily invest in consoles if I could build it myself with open hardware.
Did opening up destroy the PC market? No. But opening up another console market probably would destroy it; there's no reason to separate a hypothetical new PC market from the old PC market. So if you have a PC market and a PS4 market, and then you open the PS4, you have a PC market and another PC market, and then you just have the PC market.
Eh.. no, I think this is reductive.
In addition to being closed PCs, consoles are also an OS and collection of services that make playing games easier and make the process of configuring the device easy.
They also often come with unique hardware (3DS, Wii U, Switch, Vita) that offer dedicated features that don't make sense on PCs.
Most importantly, consoles are standardized PCs. It's not that they're closed, it's that if a game says it works on the Switch, and you have a Switch, that's it. That's all you need to know. PCs offer a lot more complication because there are multiple hardware variations and because the OS isn't specially designed to provide a lot of dedicated frameworks and interfaces to make running games and taking advantage of the hardware easy.
I don't think any of those benefits would go away if 3rd-parties were allowed to make compatible games without asking permission.
It would be a lot harder to loss-lead the hardware, sure. And it would maybe have some implications for quality-control if anyone could start selling unplayable games at Walmart. I'm sympathetic to those arguments.
But I think it's reductive to say that the only reason anyone would ever buy a console is because it's a closed market.
Yes, I'm familiar with the economic reasons for the existence of consoles. But look at the parent comment:
>>> I'd happily invest in consoles if I could build it myself with open hardware.
And poof, all the benefits of standardization are gone. This is just an ordinary PC. You put in the parts you want. And developers suddenly have to support every part anyone might want.
> I don't think any of those benefits would go away if 3rd-parties were allowed to make compatible games without asking permission.
As I read inetknght, he's talking about making the hardware open, not letting people sell games for it.
My apologies, I misread inetknght's comment.
Agreed, a user-built console without any standardization is just a PC, maybe with a different OS.
I disagree about unique hardware not making sense on PCs. Can you provide examples? 3DS and Vita are about the size of a raspberry pi and with some added sensors and controllers. The Wii's controller is pretty similar to the HTC Vive's wand which connects to a PC just fine.
> consoles are standardized PCs. It's not that they're closed, it's that if a game says it works on the Switch, and you have a Switch, that's it. That's all you need to know.
PC games often provide minimum/recommended requirements. PC games often compiled for the x86 or x86_64 architecture just the same as most modern consoles use. Rendering APIs, hardware controllers, and sensors are all standardized. What more do you need?
> PCs offer a lot more complication because there are multiple hardware variations and because the OS isn't specially designed to provide a lot of dedicated frameworks and interfaces to make running games and taking advantage of the hardware easy.
No; I absolutely and fully disagree. The OS provides an operating system. Consumer operating systems are specifically designed to provide a lot of dedicated frameworks and interfaces to make running any software and take advantage of any hardware.
Xbox uses x86 based hardware. The same goes for PS4. Modern controllers are well known to be just simply USB or bluetooth, both of which have PC interfaces. The only thing that ties games to a console is the proprietary vendor-locked API.
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go/
The fact is that besides some enthusiasts no one into games for money cares that they exist.
Sure, you could create these things in a PC format, but what I'm getting at is that nobody has. They don't make sense in the current PC market. Selling games that need special non-universal peripherals is really hard. Not impossible (Guitar hero pulled it off), but very difficult.
The HTC Vive is a good example of that. It's about as close to a general peripheral as you can get on the current market (and even it strays irritatingly close to "platform" status). But VR is a wildly niche market. It's nowhere near the market penetration of the 3DS or Wii.
I don't mean that those peripherals can't be built for PC, I mean that we don't have compelling evidence that it makes sense to build them primarily targeting PCs.
> to make running any software and take advantage of any hardware.
You can tune a game way more if you're not targeting 'any' hardware -- it's a lot easier if you're targeting one piece of hardware that works one way.
Take a look at the incredible work that emulators like Citra and Dolphin are doing right now. Reverse engineering the API is only one piece of that puzzle, another big challenge is dealing with the games that are designed to take advantage of hardware quirks and undocumented behaviors.
It's a huge simplification to say that those emulators/games are just based on the API and nothing else. They're often emulating wildly specific behaviors that wouldn't be standardized across multiple implementations of the same API on multiple pieces of hardware. That's why its a such a huge engineering challenge to build an emulator in the first place -- you're constantly balancing accuracy and performance, figuring out when you need to load and emulate specific hardware features.
> Rendering APIs, hardware controllers, and sensors are all standardized. What more do you need?
If you make a game for Switch today, you need to target one aspect ratio at two resolutions, and a very small, finite set of controller layouts. If you tried to release a PC game with those kinds of restrictions, you'd be laughed out of the market.
As someone who's currently working on supporting multiple controllers for a PC game, it's really stinking annoying. Even aftermarket XBox controllers will occasionally just report entirely separate button layouts depending on the OS they're being used with. I can't even just read the hardware codes and base the layout on that, I have controllers that map buttons differently depending on whether I'm in Ubuntu or Manjaro. Libraries like SDL2 help a bit with that, but even then the situation isn't perfect and you often end up making multiple control schemes that degrade gracefully when features are missing.
And from a consumer perspective, minimum requirements for PCs aren't really a scientific thing. People don't know what their GPUs are, they don't have that information in front of them when they go to a store. They buy games as gifts for other people who's PCs they've never seen.
Compare all that to, "does Billy have the Wii U? Cool, then Smash Bros will just work on it."
You could have something like that in the PC space if everybody got together and we had industry-wide standardization on certain requirements or parts for PCs, I can imagine that existing. But it doesn't exist right now, and it's not clear to me that most PC game developers would want that (I wouldn't), and it's not clear to me that current PC-gamers want that (I don't).
It's not a propriety vs Open thing. If someone wants to make a console that has all of its specs completely open and uses off the shelf parts, then fine. Consumers won't care either way. Consumers care about being able to look at exactly one logo on a game disk that indicates the game will play perfectly on every device that shares that logo.
The PC market is not even close to that goal, you're greatly overestimating how standardized even the average Windows install is, and that gets even worse once we start talking about more freedom-friendly OSes like Linux.
And the claim that consoles are just closed down PCs is absurd. Consoles can play AAA games at a fraction of the cost of your average PC. The hardware that goes into building a console is significantly different than a PC.
there was a time when consoles didnt require internet tethering, were media capable, and could be used for common PC tasks.
Still are. I watch nearly all my TV through my PS4.
If consoles were not price subsidized like now, their prices would go up and sales would be affected. Presumably there'd just be fewer people who could afford to buy the latest one. You might see lower or higher specs in consoles since the market would be a little more niche. Xbox might merge fully into Windows 10 and the line between console and gamer PC may disappear.
At the very least, I think we can all agree that the console ecosystem would change. Maybe "destroy" is too strong, but maybe not.
Mobile phones are how many individuals interface with the rest of the world.
Not to mention your case gets worse when there are way less restrictions on releasing games on Xbox/PlayStation/Switch than on iOS.
In other words, Xbox is already more open than iOS. I believe they opened it up with the Xbox 360 around 2007. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers#developerprograms
It took months of back and forth and the Xbox team had plenty of input from UX, to monetization, particularly when it came to users buying stuff on other platforms and using them on Xbox.
Sure, MS let us do what Sony and Nintendo would not, so I guess they're the most "open", but make no mistake, it's Microsoft's platform.
Consoles should also be forced to open up though, and there's no reason why that would "destroy the console ecosystem". They might have to raise the prices of the consoles, but everyone has to do it so it won't matter, and the consoles can also either be financed or monthly fees for online play can be increased.
Consoles opening up would be a good thing. I'm not sure why you say it would destroy their ecosystem.
Truth is Xbox does have independent developer programs and you can sideload games.
UWP runs in a sandbox castrated XBox environment.
> For games development, Xbox One, like other games consoles, is a specialized piece of hardware that requires a specific hardware-based development kit to access its full potential. If you are working on a game that requires access to the maximum potential of the Xbox One hardware, consider registering with the ID@Xbox program to get access to an Xbox One development kit.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/syste...
Truth is, iOS has the same. You have been able to sideload apps on iOS, without paying for a developer account, for years.
It need to at least be persistent or it didn't count.
Except you don’t! I really recommend looking at AltStore before judging the convenience based on how things were years ago when you last had the whim to look.
> AltStore will periodically attempt to refresh your apps in the background, and you can always manually refresh your apps from within AltStore.
It's not solution, it is workaround for the apple's creepy behavior.
Because you don’t want solutions, you just want to complain about Apple not doing exactly what you want when you want. Apple’s not your company if you expect them to cater to your whims, that’s never been their MO (for better or for worse).
> apple's creepy behavior
Really?
How is this true? Consoles predate app stores by many decades.
This is whataboutism for sure.
It moves the discussion to a less constructive, more re-hashed place.
Consoles are different because they're not sold as general purpose computing devices and do not have the market penetration size that iOS does.
There is a great argument for allowing all consumers to install whatever software they want on all devices they purchased - including consoles - by law. I'd like to see this - for over a decade, a lot of tech communities have pushed for this - but this isn't the conversation we're having today.
iOS is only 20% of the global smartphone market, PS 4 outperforms it on world market share.
So the comparison is pretty apt; Some are claiming phones are computers now, so why aren’t actual computers that have been walled up any different?
I don't believe any of those vendors take anything close to 30% of in-game revenue. And the reason is they compete with each other, quite vigorously, for the same set of users looking for the same set of products (consoles and games).
> or classify iOS as somehow different...
Right, because Apple is leveraging their dominance of an external market (high end mobile phones) to control pricing in the game market that "should" be more akin to consoles. But it demonstrably isn't. And that is a problem.
If you want to argue here, the proper argument is that iOS isn't a monopoly (and that Google charges similar fees). But don't argue that it's the same as a console, that just doesn't make sense.
Worked for one of the worlds largest video games publishers for 6+ years. Now I work for the largest games publisher in the world, so, if anyone would get a discount for being big it would be us.
It’s 30% platform fee for sales on the PlayStation or xbox platforms, 70k eur/y developer fee (and you still have to buy hardware which is double sometimes triple price from the consumer stuff).
Valve has the same 30% and the same “non-compete” w.r.t discounts on other platforms.
This is pretty standard, and is one of the reasons why people tend to release on epic or steam and not both.
The Microsoft store takes a mere 5%.
The Epic Games Store is at... 12% I believe. There's also no exclusivity from either Steam or EGS. The only condition is not using Steam to promote a game that will release first on EGS.
Although, while we had good relationships with Microsoft at Ubisoft on a technical basis- I'm not sure about the business arrangement. If Valve is any indication then it was likely incredibly hostile.
Epic does only take 12%, it's an outlier, and is gaining traction because of it.
For publishers/developers getting a special deal, there's just no upside to sharing that information, even internally.
Since I can see total unit sales and total income and it’s broken down on SKU- then it would have been easy for me to see a discrepancy from what I was told our deals were by my masters at HQ but there never was one.
I think you assume too much of executives, they are consumers of our work, they don’t create any reports or such themselves.
A console is designed for a specific task (playing games and similar software), the market is somewhat competitive and you are free to buy a PC/Mac/Linux and get 99% of the functionality (minus a few exclusive titles). In fact consoles nowadays are just PCs running a custom build of a general-purpose OS.
The mobile market is different. There are only 2 dominant players (Apple and Google), they both have similar anti-competitive restrictions (side-loading on Android is a non-starter given the various security warnings, and even then the lack of officially-supported root access on Android means there are things official Google software can do that you can't do without resorting to exploits, plus Android requires you to accept Google's terms & privacy policy which does not comply with the GDPR). There are no other players; the open-source alternatives such as Pinephone are not viable alternatives as they cut you off from the vast majority of apps out there. Let's take a period-correct example, are there any Covid contact-tracing clients available for platforms besides iOS and Android?
There's a reason alternatives to iOS and Android haven't picked up, some of those reasons are because for those that care to side load apps they can already do it on Android (or can go further and replace their OS) so not much incentive for a third mobile OS. If there was a strong enough need for an alternative then that would exist already.
Google has hindered Android so that it doesn't allow third party app stores to install apps in the background, upgrade apps or batch install apps like the Play Store can.
isn't the expression toe the line? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line#Misspelling_as_%2...
No company owning a big general computing ecosystem should have this much disproportionate power.
I am glad that at least on a personal level I decided to diversify on my computing devices and just use their laptops now.
What needs to happen is that Apple and the App Store become separate companies, and other companies are also allowed to sell apps on iOS devices. Restrictive walled gardens like this need to be banned.
If it was a real fine, and not just wild speculation, it would definitely impact on their financials.
Well, yes. Thing is, Epic essentially started a war. Had they went and sued Apple... that's normal. They could have also tried this in the EU where they would likely garner some governmental help.
But the decided to violate license agreements, created smear PR campaigns and so on. It is unsurprising that Apple is hitting back.
Even if Epic wins, I'm not sure the public is better served by a store from a company that punches so low. Using they customers as fodder is not ok.
I would say that applies to apple lot more than epic , they have hurt their customers .
Apple could also have taken epic to the courts as well and got their way if it was fair. Remember apple did the actual ban and is hurting the users now .
I didn't sign up for coke's anti-union movements in south america because I like fizzy sugar water.
Replace software with retail in your example, it doesn't sound so abnormal
"Walmart can, at will, remove your entire line of potato chips from your (their) customers and your existance in their stores is just gone."
The store analogy also has very limited switching costs, for example if Walmart stops selling brand X of potato chips, it's inconvenient but not impractical to go out of one's way to buy them at Target. It would be different if buying potato chips at Target would involve throwing out everything one has bought at Walmart and buying the same Target-equivalent merchandise (ie. switching from iPhone to Android, one would need to buy equivalent apps).
Epic's problem is that they want a Epic Store on other people's devices.
If you include using 3rd party apps like AltStore, then yes it meets a reasonable definition of convenient, imho.
No! You need to move away from Walmart.
What a ridiculous thing to say.
1) You make it seem like Apple are some capricious God like entity that any moment will completely change the underlying terms and conditions you agreed to when running your business in iOS. Its simply not true. If you remove this one situation with Epic its literally never happened.
2) Consumer trust in Apple flows onto any company that is on the iOS platform. You expect Apple to give this away for free? It provides immeasurable benefit to most businesses insofar that a consumer is far more likely to purchase goods or services knowing that Apple have 'vetted' you simply by being on the iOS platform. By Apple being so strict and stringent on App Store requirements you know as a consumer they aren't doing things in the interest of the vendors which in turn benefits legitimate vendors.
3) Epic flagrantly violated the terms they had previously agreed to simply because they don't agree to the 30% cut. That style of negotiation is absolutely atrocious and Epic should be the ones being punished not Apple. If they felt so strongly about Apple's anti-trust liabilities they could have formed an alliance with other businesses and lobbied governments globally without breaking existing T&Cs. They probably would have won too and been able to get the cut Apple take to the same level that it costs Apple to run (say 15%). Instead they are trying to bully Apple into doing something that benefits Epic and Epic alone.
Epic are 100% in the wrong here.
Note I am neither an Epic nor Apple user.
They do it all the time. The terms are vague and they can interpret them, or change their mind at will. This happens daily in small cases, and more so in bigger one's were Apple, out of the blue, demands a 30% cut of some adjacent business.
Apple is in this for profit - if they can adjust the rules within legality for more money - the will.
Epic probably thinks that some conditions are illegal, and therefore void. But that would also mean that Apple broke the contract with Epic when they removed the app from the store.
Apple has removed apps from the App Store and blocked apps from being published or updated MANY times.
Inform yourself.
Every single time Apple removed an App from the App Store is because the new version was somehow in breach of the T&Cs.
You could say that the rules was applied unfairly to Hey but nonetheless the T&Cs were clear as day about off platform signup/payments because it protects consumer from sham companies.
When Catalina was released, they kicked out Luna and Duet after having copied their features in Sidecar.
When they released Screen Time, they kicked out similar apps from the App Store, despite being here for years.
The list is endless.
And they would get quite a few allies then. See an earlier proclamation and fight by Spotify: https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
For Epic, though, only 12% of their revenue comes from IOS, so they're willing to dump Apple.
edit: Their 2FA can do either SMS or email so that's a yes.
They also offer the software token method, but most kids will not enable it.
Just like they ended the Microsoft OS monopoly abuses. Dream on.
Twitter and Facebook entirely eradicated based around their API's.
In Apple's response to Epic, they make the case there is absolutely no way to define them as a monopoly, since even just for Fortnite, there are a half dozen competing platforms of which they note, the App Store isn't even the biggest one.
then a few years later Apple will win the appeal and get every penny of it back due to Commission's overstretch
Apple only has ~25% market share in the EU. Their "status" is as the minority player in the market. It's questionable whether this is high enough to violate EU antitrust laws, which have usually required at least 40% to show market dominance.
Dominance on the aftermarket is excluded to the extent that a customer:
1) can make an informed choice including lifecycle pricing, that he 2) is likely to make such an informed choice accordingly, and that 3) in case of an apparent policy of exploitation being pursued in one specific aftermarket, a sufficient number of customers would adapt their purchasing behaviour at the level of the primary market 4) within a reasonable time.
The case that established this precedent found that printer manufacturers did not have dominance in the market of "printer cartridges compatible with their printers" based on the above criteria. Whether or not this would apply to the iOS platform will have to be decided by a court.
[1] https://europeanlawblog.eu/2013/09/26/the-efim-case-no-domin...
Isn't that how all private companies work? If you walk into a mom-and-pop corner shop with no "shoes or shirt" you'll be removed as well—whether or not you think it's some kind of righteous protest.
When I worked in retail and scouted prices at the completion they would ask me to leave the store.
And it would be a poor business model if it were capable of ending your business, no?
And I didn't think Google was involved here?
Not to mention that if you DO manage to build a successful competitor to GPlay, you’ll have to worry about Google’s “white hat” hit squad at Project Zero.
Epic is suing Google at the same time for the same reason as Apple. Maybe they're not "involved" if you mean that Apple and Google are colluding against Epic, but they're both the subjects of the same discussion.
I don't really care about Epic's stake in the matter; they are clearly making plenty of money. A smaller company with a different idea that treads the line with their in-app-purchases would be in a tough place.
Even if they do get fined this amount, it would have been worth it for them to abuse their position with the developers.
I feel like this was posted to serve the narrative Epic is trying to dispense. I’m on the other side of the fence and I was an Epic fan until they started to pull this crap.
So a couple of things here, if you violate a contract with a company what do you expect the outcome to be? They knew exactly what they were doing, implemented a payment system and got the boot. If they didn’t want to get the boot they could’ve just not.
Isn't this why people pay the Apple tax? To have them protect you (their users) from 'bad apples'? Everyone liked their over bearing approach to their eco-system until it directly affected them, and now it's too much? Have your cake and eat it too?
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/android11-...
Also, businesses generally don't have to do business with other businesses that are suing them.
Meanwhile Apple is actually innovating and producing useful things.
Also, there seems to be an odd concentrated anti-Apple effort going on right now. Basecamp was on it recently when they immediately didn’t get what they wanted, and I believe I’ve seen similar messages from other companies in the same vein. I wish I could get a refund my hey.com account, but too late I guess.
Basecamp, incidentally, seems to be another company that did great things in the past, but is now having trouble finding new innovations. Hey.com is a web-only email client that costs 100 bucks per year. This is hardly worth the posturing they’re putting out.
Not soon... Apple is loved by a good majority of EU citizens, and while that's the case, the EU won't fine them. Fines are for 'evil corporations' as deemed by a voter...
Laws in the EU are far less strict and precise to begin with than US laws that you might be used to. The EU competition commission has wideranging powers to fine almost any company as it sees fit for even no reason at all. But to maintain its own existence, the public (voters -> MEPs) need to think it's doing a good job. A good way to do that is to fine companies voters think are evil.
It doesn't really come down to if the law is precise or not, but how it is applied.
Like any breach of contract, it should be dealt appropriately.
Apple also has noncompetes in its employee contracts, even though such provisions are illegal in CA. Should we prevent Apple employees from moving to Apple competitors in violation of those illegal non-compete provisions?
> The Court finds that with respect to Epic Games’ motion as to its games, including Fortnite, Epic Games has not yet demonstrated irreparable harm. The current predicament appears of its own making. Epic strategically chose to breach its agreements with Apple
How can purposefully violating someone's contract be a prerequisite for bringing a lawsuit against the organization whose contract you're violating? Where is the legal argument backing up "They needed to do it this way"?
The difference is important, the temporary restraining order's effects are only limited to that August-September time window, and the hearing itself had limited argument, and very little preparation time (Epic presumably thinking Apple wouldn't be so aggressive, and would want to drag things out, which they do, but they're also probably hoping to force a settlement as soon as possible). Part of Epic's legal team's arguments was that there is binding legal precedent that "self inflicted harm" was not disqualifying of any of their claims in an anti-trust suit due to the standing hurdle (of note: a similar anti-trust suit filed by an Apple user was thrown out without a trial on grounds that the customer was not able to sufficiently demonstrate Apple's practices harmed them; standing is a very big hurdle), but Epic's lawyers messed up and forgot to file that case brief in the documents they submitted before the restraining order hearing, so the judge made no determination then. They indicated it would be included in the injunction hearing filings. Basically, everything the judge has determined so far could change at the end of the month.
I think you've misunderstood this part of the hearing. The cases they attempted to cite said that the doctrine of "unclean hands" is not a valid defense in an antitrust claim. It's unrelated to standing or whether their injury was self-inflicted for purposes of the TRO and the judge said in her ruling that it wasn't relevant to her analysis. [1]
> a similar anti-trust suit filed by an Apple user was thrown out without a trial on grounds that the customer was not able to sufficiently demonstrate Apple's practices harmed them
If you are referring to Apple v. Pepper note that this ruling was reversed by the Supreme Court and the case is still ongoing. [2]
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364265... (Footnote on Page 5)
[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-204_bq7d.pdf
So far it hasn't been. It appears obvious their approach was to first inflict PR damage & garner public support prior to commencing legal action.
Which case is this? Epic’s complaint [1] only mentions the word “standing” once and seeks broad restraints on Apple’s “conduct” that go beyond the enforcement of one TOS clause. I can see why strategically, Epic thought it was best to build the record by breaching its contract with Apple first, but it’s not clear that this was an essential precondition to the lawsuit.
[1] https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf
The entire purpose of government is to serve us, and we should change the rules if we think that a 30% money grab of all developer's income is unethical.
Its the same reason we support Net Neutrality. We instituted (or tried to anyway) controls at the government level to prevent ISPs from abusing their position.
Yes Epic is. They willingly violated their TOS to the point of even communicating that they were going to violate their TOS. Surprise, surprise if you break the rules don't be shocked when they are enforced. They also are attempting to user their Engine and customer base (against their will) to fight a battle that they don't want to be a part of.
This isn't Apple just erasing a company because they felt like it, and Apple isn't the antagonizing party at all. Don't coflate the necessary need to protest against actual issues like corrupt governments versus not getting your video game the way you like it. It weakens the word and idea of actual protest.
Apple may be allowed to do everything they’re doing by contract and more.
I’m a big Apple fan but they are just... crazy on this. They seem to be going way too far and just being outright spiteful. Far far more than Apple usually does. And they’re scaring a big chunk of their developer base in the process.
I don’t know what they’re thinking, but I think they’re heading towards a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Epic has already shown that they will go to great lengths to get what they want, would you trust them with your customers medical data?
As a user, I desire a curated platform.
As a developer, I want to have access to all the users of that platform by publishing on just one store.
> Apple is a company that needs to be brought down a peg or two
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
> it's far too 'valuable' in terms of its market worth
Because many consumers agree with how Apple does things.
Why is that simple fact so offensive for some of you?
Nobody is being forced to buy Apple products or develop for them, they choose to.
Microsoft and Google, on the other hand, are much much harder to avoid even if I don't choose to directly buy any of their products.
Apple can, at will, remove your entire foundation or business, your (their) customers and your existence on iOS is just gone.
Apple is a company that needs to be brought down a peg or two, it's far too 'valuable' in terms of its market worth, and needs a huge kick up the ass as Microsoft once had to show them some respect.
And the EU will levy the world's biggest fine at Apple, I predict north of $5 billion if not $10 billion for abusing their status with this being a notable case.
Certainly, for public opinion, it means you now have to "tow the line", no protesting allowed. If you dare challenge us, we WILL REMOVE YOU.
Horrible company.