Fortnite seems to have been removed from the Play Store as well
play.google.com
play.google.com
Apple and Google are gatekeepers to all mobile devices (practically), but the value they add as gatekeepers is questionable. Certainly there is some value in their delivery (and much lesser so, their security) service; but their fees are not market set (since they are effectively monopolies by device type). If there were actual competitors, their rates would be much lower... around 2-5% probably.
It could be the best thing to happen in this space for a while.
Users expect to be able to do that, so it is a non-starter to run a commercial app store that Google's already turned into a second class citizen on Android.
Surely other app stores should be able to compete on an even playing field with Google, and be allowed to implement background installation, auto-upgrading and batch installation of apps.
This is a fine - even advantageous - for open stores like F-Droid, as the target market is users who explicitly don't want more Google spyware on their phone. But for large software companies pushing out profitable apps that require Play apis, it wouldn't be feasible.
What Apple is doing feels unfair, but making an antitrust case against them is going to be a stretch with current laws.
Note: Not a legal expert, this is just my understanding.
If you own an app and remove it from all App Stores, you’ll quickly see what value they add. It’s the millions of users who are able to download your product.
Amazing coincidence that both charge 30%, isn't it?
Most of the value is being provided by the app developers.
30 - 50% is an acceptable markup in the retail world, like a bricks and mortar store selling furniture, but the purchase of virtual currency is not the same as a retail transaction. It's closer to the sort of service a money changer provides, or even a credit card merchant. The fee for such as service should be in the range of 3 - 18%, not 30%.
That’s just clearly not true.
App store owners are compensated fairly by the 30% fee they charge as commission on sales. But the Fortnite case is not about sales. It is about the re-supply of virtual currency for use within a game. The customer is already established. There is no new selling or marketing or delivery required of the app store owner.
To recognise the differences between product sales vs ongoing consumable resupply, such as virtual currency, app store vendors should do what physical world vendors do and charge different fees that are commensurate with the value add.
Retailers charge 30-50% markup to cover the overheads of rent and sales staff. What Apple does with the app store is similar, and so their 30% fee is in step.
Forex dealers and banks charge 3% - 18% for financial transactions such as currency exchange and credit card financing. Given that Apple isn't even providing financing for Fortnite's virtual currency, a fee in the order of 5 - 10% would be reasonable in this case.
What's at stake here should not be the all or nothing duel that Apple has initiated by banning Fortnite from the App store. Apple should just evolve, and introduce a second tier charge for consumables.
Would it make sense for Walmart to charge one price (say $100) for every item it sells in every one of its stores? Of course not. Walmart and every other real world retailer charges different prices for different things, depending on how much value they add. Apple should do the same.
Wondering if instead Apple should look at pricing breaks when a customer spends over a certain amount on IAP or certain repeat transactions. In effect trying to differentiate the take they get for whatever initial bit but incentivize monetizing customers for the long haul. That has precedent with the subscription model they have been pushing to achieve similar pricing breaks as a compromise down to 15%
As you point out, awinder, it would be possible to rort the rules by charging zero for the app, and then making the bulk of the revenue come from the IAP, if the former costs 30% and the latter costs 0%.
Apple could overcome those technical nonsensibilities by simply defining a second tier lower charge of say 10% in a common sense way, and then granting second tier status to the kinds of transactions that deserve it in a common sense interpretation.
Without a second tier to app store pricing, Apple is not going to please all the people all of the time. Dissatisfaction is inevitable.
With a second tier, sensibly applied, everyone's a winner, all of the time.
When you say "devoid of content" is that a criticism because you don't agree with my proposal that Apple introduce tiered pricing? Or something else? Would you care to elaborate?
For example your walmart analogy isn’t an analogy of anything in this situation and you don’t explain that.
And of now you are talking about Apple using common sense rules to decide what is an is acceptable, which of course is what they think they have been doing all along. People disagree on what is common sense.
The pattern is that you appear to be making interesting but flawed suggestions and then not taking seriously people’s responses to them.
I’ll take the App Store experience thanks. Doesn’t matter to me what they charge. If developers want my money they’ll take the 30% haircut.
Google Play Store won out on Android simply because the multitude of stores was a nightmare for customers. They don’t want multiple stores, they want one store on this phone, that will also be on their next phone. Any ‘monopoly’ wasn’t seized by Google, it was pushed eagerly on them by customers craving consolidation and simplicity.
Same for me, I don’t want 5 blasted stores on my iPhone. I want one store and run by someone I trust. The same goes for my Switch too, I’m quite happy for Nintendo to run the store for it. If I don’t like how they run it, I’ll get a PS 5 or XBOX. That’s where the competition is. I have plenty of choices thanks.
On Android, the F-droid app store (https://f-droid.org/) comes closest but it has nowhere near the breadth of the Debian repos.
I think you're getting a bit hung up on the language -- "appliance" and "console" are trying to communicate basically the same thing, e.g., a device which on a technical level could absolutely be a general purpose computing platform but has been restricted from that by design.
And even assuming the antitrust/monopoly argument holds, is there some barely-known exception to “general devices only”?
I’d love it if I could load my own stuff onto consoles, but don’t see how this could be practically compelled in a way that isn’t massively impactful to _everything_, especially with security and piracy implications.
Nevertheless I think Apple are making some missteps. I think they made a mistake on the game streaming service decision. Epic can go take a running jump though.
That being said, I would be perfectly happy if an outcome of this was that end users were able to install whatever software they liked on game consoles.
So what ? There is no legal requirement that computers must have user-installable apps or comply with some standard around openness. Nor is there some rationale as to why computers should be treated differently to any other device that can run apps.
And if Sony decides to ship a browser with PS5 does it suddenly switch to a general purpose computer device and must allow competing app stores. And if they remove it does it switch back to a console.
The whole concept is completely nonsensical and unworkable.
The software limitations is where the arbitrary restrictions come in. But as you say there is no legal requirement for "user-installable apps".
But there ARE laws about anti-competitive behaviour. Whether they apply? The courts will decide soon I guess.
I can see it from the point where Apple makes Apps and yet also profits from their competitors Apps.
Mind you, I can also see a reasoning that by keeping an App in the market Apple can set a base minimum for quality, hence setting a floor for the experience for end users. But they could do that via their gatekeeping anyway too...
There isn't much difference between that and a modern gaming console (apart from the orientation being around games/interactive entertainment). Take my PS4, for example: beyond the games there's pretty capable light photo and video editing software, a web browser (based on Webkit, actually, and has a surprisingly pleasant and minimal UI/UX even when using just the controller and not an external keyboard and mouse), a ton of content apps (Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, YouTube, DAZN, etc) as well as Twitch and the Playstation Network platform (essentially social media). In my opinion the only thing holding it back from gaining more apps and completely eating up the lower end of the desktop market is that developing apps for it is prohibitively expensive (gotta order a dev kit). Even at that I still plan to keep it around as a very light desktop alternative when I replace it with the next generation.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devki...
Would you be okay with a Microsoft-owned app store that controls all app purchases and in-app purchases for all PCs?
1. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4020089/windows-10-...
Not a problem I personally experience but one many people have reported. This may also be less of a problem with COVID, I'm not sure.
You can certainly do that. But we are also allowed to wish/hope/verbalise/act to make the current thing better.
As for what "better" is? Ultimately that's decided by the courts but we can express wishes.
I hope what you mean is that someone else would be making the argument that the checkbox is necessary: claiming a crowd of people are a single inconsistent argument is disingenuous.
What do you mean by "held liable"? It can't be in the legal sense, because Microsoft has never been held legally liable for Windows malware, and Apple has never been held legally liable for Mac malware.
"In 2014 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered Apple to pay out $32.3m (£24.6m) to reimburse American parents for unauthorised app purchases made by their children."[0]
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/11/my-kids-spent-...
If Apple isn't the payment processor, they're off the hook.
But even if you allow filesystem access, it's only for 'non-system' partitions (e.g. sdcard). Unless you rooted your phone (also a pretty tedious operation with a potential to brick the phone), normal apps can't even read files on the system partition, let alone overwrite them, except their 'own' data.
This is good from the security point, e.g. you can run pretty much any app and simply remove it if you feel like it's suspicious and asking for too many permissions. Similar to running a random Docker image: you can try out software without taking risks of losing control over your system, allowing certain capabilities if necessary (e.g. ports, paths). There might be a Docker vulnerability of course, but it's pretty unlikely for you as an individual to be targeted by it.
But it's extremely frustrating when you know what are you doing and which risks you are willing to take, but have to jump through hoops to do things that are otherwise trivial on desktop.
In theory, you could request broad permissions, and have an interpreter sitting inside your app, dynamically loading its own code over the wire, so you'll never have to update from the app store (unless you want more permissions granted). But as far as I understand, this is forbidden by the Play Store policies (e.g. Facebook got told off for doing this https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/googl... ). Although I'd imagine it's easy to slip such code past reviewers, unless your app is very popular and worthy a more thorough review that can catch it.
Also I'd imagine there is some grey area there, e.g. your whole app could be a webview simply displaying web frontend -- surely it's okay to dynamically load javascript? Not sure how the policy works in such cases.
I switch between streaming services based on the content they have. I have Steam, Epic Store and Origin on my PC because of the games and deals each have. Why would I not load a new app store (if I used my phone for anything other than a phone, camera and note-taking device)?
Oh, wait. It’s what we all did and do with computers. This isn’t some mystical unknown.
(besides, last time I checked my macOS machine is neither virus ridden nor covered in toolbars)
Yes, if you go back in time you find OSes with hideous security models that made things like keyloggers possible. Mobile OSes today do not have those problems, and have strict permission prompts that gatekeep functionality.
Yeah, I’m sure there would be some shitty experiences if people could install whatever they want on their phones, it’s the price of giving everyone that freedom. But if desktop OSes in 2020 are anything to go by, it’s really not that big of an issue.
The feature I recall liking most was the integrated software center. When I wanted an app, I just had to search the center, not comb through random websites. It was nice.
Of course, I could and did also install programs from random websites, as I saw fit. It never occurred to me that some day, I'd be forced to rely entirely on a built-in store...
The next question is though, given the incentives in place are entirely due to Apple, is that anti-competitive?
I think it is. It is also ruthless smart business to make money. Given societies rules about "make money" for corporations I can't blame them.
But I am allowed to wish it were otherwise.
It's hilarious to see people rooting for Apple as if they're the little guys.
The company that makes so much money here is Apple, not Epic. They should be willing to compromise. They gouge app developers and in turn its end users by charging a 30% ransom.
Smaller developers will be the casualties of a multi-store situation because they will be forced to support the them all.
There will therefore be no competitive pressure on benefits for developers.
This is all about more middlemen making money.
At worst, they continue their business as usual. At best the competitive pressure allows their business to stay the same but with higher margins. Most likely they would eke out a bit more money than the status quo by using another App Store competitor alongside the App Store if they choose to do so.
30% in pure profit would means a lot to regular companies/folks as well, not just the "big and greedy" ones. Just because you don't feel the pain doesn't mean other ones do.
And ultimately, some of this cost is burdened by the end user purchasing the app which is obviously harmful to everyday users such as myself.
Artists, on the other hand, only have to deal with a 10% to 15% cut when they sell their music digitally or physically through Bandcamp.
I'm a small and modest developer, and I feel like 30% and $99/year is too much. Mind you, Apple is a trillion dollar company that will take a 30% cut whether you're a worker in the 3rd world or a kid in college. I'm not sure I follow your "big and greedy" rhetoric at all here.
A large part of the security model on both systems is the ability to constrain what apps can do, and by ensuring those have happened.
The various privileged (in the security sense) sandbox entitlements on iOS can't be used by a malicious app because the malicious app can't get through the App Store. That significantly increases the bar for any malware. I assume the Google Play store similarly limits access to privileged system features, and I would fully expect the 3rd party stores do not.
Also personally: The Epic store is a terrible app, and signing up for it requires providing vastly more information to them than I ever wanted to, especially for only a single company's games, from a company that has no stated intent of reducing data collection and improving privacy. A company that also engages in scummy tactics like loot boxes, virtual currency, etc
What about macOS?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu...
The suggestion is usually correct, though. Google does a terrible job of vetting Play Store apps, but they do still have some automated safety checks, and they kick out known malware once it's found.
If you allow sideloading, you give up all of that. It's still perfectly safe if you trust what you install, but you have to make that assessment. Google can't save you.
This is exactly how I wish iOS worked. It's also basically how the Mac works nowadays, except replace "App Store" with "Apple notary service."
How would you suggest Google correctly communicate the risk?
And windows has a scary sounding checkbox when you download an .exe from the internet. So what? In the old days, it never warned you, and people were CONSTANTLY getting malware by downloading random stuff from sketchy sites.
I can hardly imagine anything more pathetic than listing 4 locked down, corporate controlled devices, and calling that "choice".
The individual stores thing is actually really annoying. If you play games on Windows you're familiar with this situation. They all want to run 24/7 and cram their UI in your face at every opportunity, and you just want to play that publisher's one game. They are trying to become chat apps, and web browsers, and it's just crazy. I think my computer will explode if it sees one more web page wrapped in a "start at login" script claiming to be an "app store" or "game launcher". (Why can't these things just let me "chocolatey install" them? I know how to keep Windows apps up to date. Just accept my credit card number from inside the app. Or, horrors, a web page.)
On Windows, the underlying cause of this is "because we can". Everyone that wants a game will install an app store to get it from without thinking, because the one Microsoft offers is too limited. (They don't use Steam because it's run by a direct competitor, and Steam games kind of have that feeling like there are 3 good games in there next to 100,000,000 "I downloaded Unity this weekend, give me money!" games.)
Where I'm going with this rant is that unlimited freedom is the worst form of app distribution -- except for all the others. (I guess I have zero qualms with "go get". It works 100% of the time. Apps can't explode files all over my computer. Google provides a CDN for free.)
Which is much worse than the mobile environment. But you could still have more choice and not require the store to be running to use.
Imagine being able to go to epic games website and click “download game” and get a phone pop up “do you want to install X?”
There’s positively no need for a “store” at all.
GOG and Humble Bundle work like this on Linux (though GOG has an optional Galaxy app). You login to a website, buy and download.
Epic chooses not to do that, because they want you to run their store. But Google doesn't prevent you from doing it; Epic just chooses not to allow you to.
(No pass for the racueteering play store/app store implied)
Also, to install games from those 3rd party platforms one still needs to install and launch those platforms. So this limits usefulness of the Galaxy.
Only the app from GOG shows games from other platforms, that's why I prefer to launch everything from there because when I launch my windows rig on weekends no chance I remember where I bought that game.
Whenever possible, I buy from GoG, but not because I want to use Galaxy. With GoG, I just download an exe, run the installer, and my game appears in this wonderful launcher called The Freaking Start Menu. It's great.
What do I get from using a client? I don't want my games to be integrated into a social network, I just want to play them, and not be interrupted until I'm done.
------
My second choice after GoG is usually itch.io, but my third choice is actually becoming EGS. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but a significant portion (maybe even a majority?) of EGS games don't actually need EGS to run. You can download them with an open-source tool like https://github.com/derrod/legendary, back up the files, and run them. I've personally done this with Journey, Beyond Two Souls, Control, and Detroit.
A handful of Steam games allow this too (one recent example is Ori and the Will of the Wisps), but it's much less common than on the Epic Store!
Big picture mode, controller mapping, remote play, and remote play together are amazing.
Not sure what's so hard to understand. You mention downloading, installing, and revel that it's in your start menu. And don't mention updating. With launchers, there's one less step (installing), and updating is a passive thing (for better or worse). And yup, they're placed in the start menu as well.
Single player games purchased a year after release likely never need to be patched ever again.
Unfortunately AAA games with multiplayer et al seem to need to be patch immediately upon release...
Recently I've started using OS search to launch apps on my Ubuntu workstation. One day I've tried the same with game launched. When you have extensive libraries on multiple platforms it definitely helps.
Also some clients support achievements. It adds incentives (or meaning, if you will) to play some good game even after completion of campaign or something like that. Yep, not for everyone.
BTW, you can download and install games from Steam using official console client [0]. Not sure if will allow to play [all] games, though. I had limited experience with that. I managed to download windows versions of doom and quake 2 for Oculus Quest from Ubuntu.
Yeah, SteamCMD can download but usually not run games—my experience is the only games that run are the handful that can run without Steam in general.
Their work with the Proton compatibility is bringing a lot of my old Windows only games to Linux too. I'll probably continue buying exclusively from Steam for this reason.
Yes, thank you! In fact Epic is one of the worst of these stupid stores about blasting you with corner-of-screen advertising even when you’re doing nothing with it.
Not sure about this. Does valve even make games anymore? /s
Go get is weird. I guess it’s still federated even with GOPROXY as a middleman, but I am still not sure how I feel about all of it. It makes sense from the perspective of ensuring things don’t maliciously break, but it feels less obvious what it’s doing than I’d hope, and that probably makes many uneasy.
I'd love to keep Google Play off my phone if there were a competitor who did a better job at surfacing truly great apps (rather than the garbage suggestions Google spams me with) and passed on a bigger piece of the pie to publishers.
To be honest, I wouldn't mind having the option to specify multiple stores that I trust the same way I do the Google Play store. I could imagine having Google Play, the Epic store, the Blizzard store, and Steam on my phone if that were necessary.
I am not worried about being spammed with stuff, as apps don't run until you open them, normally, and I already have granular controls over what notifications spam me on Android as it is.
This sounds like an absolute nightmare.
I want stores like Costco and Apple's AppStore because I trust those companies to vet brand quality and provide me a basic level of trust for the products. I'm happy to pay a 30% premium for that piece of mind.
On the other hand I would like the option to add another App Store who's "Brand of quality and trust to vet apps" I can compare to Apple's store... and so the layers go...
On the gripping hand, it is the "benevolent dictator" problem. A benevolent dictator really can be an efficient and great way to run things. For the people that agree with the dictator.
But who determines who the dictator should be and what makes them benevolent?
This would allow multiple actors to be present, while keeping things simple for the users.
The store design has a lot to do with which apps get attention.
This is exactly what F-Droid is able to do on Android, and what nearly all reasonably-popular Linux distributions have been able to do for decades.
It's basically how my Fire TV worked. I could search for a title in the home screen and it would tell me that it was on Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix or I could rent from Amazon or whatever.
Now if you were to take the package model and move it to Windows it would be the same mess we have today.
Many of us, including Apple, do not want ransomware, malware and viruses on their phone. It's not a computer. It's a phone.
IIRC FB and Uber both got caught doing things other companies couldn't do. Apple's vetting process is not foolproof either. Apps still do things I don't want them to do, on my own device.
Apple can still control the OS and device and sandbox the apps and app stores. It's not an insurmountable problem.
Google put restrictions on Android so that third party app stores can't install in the background, auto-upgrade or batch install.
> Google Play Store won out on Android simply because the multitude of stores was a nightmare for customers.
The Play Store is the only app store on Android where users can install apps in the background, auto-upgrade apps or batch install apps.
The reason the Play Store won out on Android is because it the only app store that Google allows to have the features app stores require.
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/resea...
https://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/...
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/new-android-bug-targets...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/popular-apps-on-google-play-li...
Asking because that's the impression I get, but may be wrong.
Just ask any android developer who develop for the Chinese market where Google is absent. It's a nightmare.
I want one just one grocery store! Want less common ingredients? NO! I just want one store! I want just one hardware store! Want some part they don't carry? Sucks to be you. Just one car store, etc...
If nothing else I at least one two stores. One for regular apps and one for porn apps. You can see steam now has lots of adult apps.
I don't want 5 blasted distribution methods on my (Android) phone. I'm perfectly happy with 5 different sources, though. Put plainly: I want repositories, not stores. I get to use the same tool (app) to manage all of them, and I can add different sources if I'd like.
You must be representing the first generation that is anti-competition and pro-monopoly. It makes no sense that you would really want to have fewer options to buy a product. If the problem is trust, then clearly what you need is regulation, not a monopoly.
Now that's an interesting (though highly impractical) idea!
Imagine both app stores on every phone, providing the exact same service. There's probably no room for price fixing here, because Apple's market share is far smaller than Android's, so Apple would have a significant incentive to reduce the fees (and snatch some of Google's customers.
Now add two or three other "app store providers", and things get interesting.
For example, there's absolutely positive value for users in filtering spam. This tends to be negative value for spam senders, but that doesn't detract from the user value.
Apple's version of gatekeeping is a balance between providing a user experience that they control and design, and managing/controlling competition.
It reminds me of the internet filters at large companies. Keeps out the filth and bad actors at the detriment of being on a truly free internet. That makes sense when it's the companies computers.
But not so much when you own the device.
In the Android world, you still have an option. The option isn't good, you might end up limited, the user have to enable a scary checkbox, but you have an option. If Epic wants, they can create a micro store for android. The same thing they do with PCs today.
But you can't do it with an apple device. You have no option, no workaround. That's the monopoly that needs to be destroyed.
Even if both companies behaviors are detrimental for developers, Apple is way, way worst.
That all said: Sadly, this is not about freedom but about money. My bet is that Apply will lose the restrictions for Epic and they will drop the case.
This is probably going to fundamentally change the landscape. Congress accused the big players including Apple of anti consumer behavior. Not being in control of your own device (Read: not being able to side load software without paying a fee.) will be the downfall of the app store.
Maybe for the more expensive apps, but not for the $0.99 apps that consumers love. For those, 2-5% doesn't come anywhere near covering the credit card processing costs.
When I first used it, I wouldn't use very much and I would get notices from time to time that $10 was added to my account. When my usage went up, they did $20 for a while, and at one point I hit $50.
I think this is reasonable and if it makes the overall cost of a service lower I am all for it.
No developer or company is happy with the way Apple runs the App Store. Their commission is outrageously high, their approval process is slow and often arbitrary, and their tooling is god-awful. We all just put up with it because the iPhone/iPad install base is so large, we don't really have a choice.
That being said, I'm very reluctant to demand regulation that interferes with a private company's right to run its own products. After all, maybe Apple's attitude is precisely why their install base is so large.
But God I wish there was a competitor that knocked them down the leaderboard a few pegs. Android is great, but the ecosystem is too fractured for the market to force Apple to change.
The App Store isn’t made with developers in mind. It’s made for the average user. And right now the average user is pretty damn happy with Apple.
probably not. Visa takes a bigger cut than 2% when you buy a hamburger.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_...
2. Nobody gives a shit if this is better for developers, do they? Epic could charge +30% on IAP and use the Apple IAP system which is orders of magnitude better than anything else in the market. Developers set the pricing, and Apple handles security, authentication, refunds, etc. Consumers know it's a consistent experience across the platform.
3. The only benefit anyone seems to be able to come up with here is "choice" and a misguided belief that prices would come down as if by magic. Video game publishers took up to 60% of video game sales in physical stores, but the ARP of a video game has risen since 2008 and the advent of Steam and other online stores.
4. Seems like Apple has built a successful hardware/software play at least partially based on the fact that consumers don't have to do bullshit things like entering credit card details into some third party payment gateway to buy things, or deal with different refund policies from different folks. Consumers have flocked to the platform and now its success is being used as the basis of an attempt to strip it of its competitive advantage.
5. Same thing happened in the UK with sports coverage. The English Premier League was only broadcast on Sky until a few years ago. £29.99 a month got you all the live televised top flight soccer. Now to watch all of the televised soccer in the UK you need Sky Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and BT Sport. And Sky Sports prices have not decreased in real terms. (Oh, and BT's tech infrastructure is hot garbage.) I don't know anyone who loves the experience of having three different services to deal with and paying more money. Nobody is bleating about "choice" now.
6. I object to this on exactly the same terms as I object to Spotify's bitching that IAP margins -- which have been the same since before Spotify launched -- are too thin. They operate a business where they pay sixty cents of every dollar they make to rights holders for fuck's sake. Why are they bitching at Apple telling them that if they want to do a monthly subscription and net £9.99, they need to charge £14.28? Why can Spotify try to tell Apple that the HomePod -- a fucking speaker -- should let Spotify onto the device natively (when you can already connect via Bluetooth)?
7. Nearly every online store has serious arbitrary limitations placed on it by the operator of the store. Many of these are to do with the user experience, but many of them are a means of paying the bills for something they fund (hosting, marketing, app review team, developers working on APIs). It helps them sell phones, but it's intertwined with the user experience.
8. Gruber's point stands: if you think it's OK for Microsoft to prevent Sony from selling a PlayStation game streaming service on the Xbox Store, I don't see why you have an issue with this. It's not the same as Netflix: it's more like an app store within an app store.
You're totally within your rights to think that! (My advice to you: don't start a business literally built on top of Apple's platform!)
> a couple automated API calls to process a monthly payment.
This sort of oversimplification makes it hard to take your argument seriously. I'm pretty sure you don't believe that, but just in case you do…
This article[1] suggests that Apple made $4.2bn from the App Store in the 10 years between 2008 and 2018.
Here are some of the things I would put into the cost lines for Apple's app store P&L (the company operates a combined P&L):
1. Multiple data centres dedicated to the app store and routing third-party notifications. That's both hosting of the apps and ongoing cost associated with e.g. push notifications, software updates. Each of these data centres has energy, staff, hardware costs. That is to say: there is both opex and capex here, which means Apple isn't only netting ongoing costs from revenue but also thinking about the cost of the capital invested in infrastructure up front.
2. The card processing charges associated with customers buying the app in the first place, and subsequent in-app purchases.
3. The cost of Apple's App Review Teams (three dedicated offices: Cork, Shanghai, Sunnyvale). That's 300 people.[2] There are costs behind them, too (for example: recruitment, HR, management).
4. Product and engineering costs associated with the team Apple has working on internal systems and services dedicated to app review.
5. An apportionment of costs associated with customers seeking technical support in-store and online due to third-party apps.
6. An apportionment of costs associated with the development and maintenance of services and APIs which Apple develops and makes available to app developers. (For example, sign-on with Apple.)
In 2018 the app store had seen 130 billion apps downloaded[3], with an average app size of 38mb[4]. That's 4.94 exabytes of data excluding updates.
Microsoft for many years charged Xbox developers for certification of games and patches, in part because of the bandwidth costs of distributing those patches to its customers, but also because providing this sort of service is mired by multiple perilous overheads -- which, I have to say, people on the web tend to misunderstand/ignore/dismiss.
Fortnite has nearly 150 million installs on iOS. It's 1.8 gigabytes. That's 270 million gigabytes, and the game is free. 30% of users don't spend a dime in Fortnite. That's 81 million gigabytes of free bandwidth for Epic, before you forget about the fact that Apple promotes the game etc.
Neither party is a saint here. Apple and Epic both get a lot of out the app being in the store. But Epic has multiple options to resolving this without trying to rob Apple's platform of a significant part of its USP.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273179/apple-icloud-itu... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/how-apples-app-review-proces... [3] https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/market-data/data-behind... [4] https://sweetpricing.com/blog/2017/02/average-app-file-size/
Installer infrastructure used to be nearly free. I absolutely disagree that Apple or Google are providing significant value here. The app discovery ship has sailed and no one is going to find your small apps on those platforms. The review processes might benefit users, but is a detriment for developers who aren’t guaranteed the ability to distribute apps they’ve invested in.
Steve Ballmer wasn’t stupid for laughing at the App Store. He just wildly underestimated the stupidity of the average developer. No one would have taken the App Store deal in the 90s and Apple would have been laughed out of the industry. Now everyone throws caution to the wind and marries into a system where they have no voice and no leverage. It’s absolutely crazy.
So you think the “average developer” is “stupidly” doing what they need to make money?
Does Epic deliver any “value” by selling skins? How they any different than Candy Crush?
Imagine if Walmart was the ONLY retail store on the planet and took 30% of all revenue while selling their Great Value products in industries that have 30% margin (ex: music streaming).
It’s time for regulators IMO.
This feels pretty subjective. My point was that you were suggesting the App Store is just a card processing gateway. It's significantly more than that.
> Installer infrastructure used to be nearly free.
And viruses and malware were everywhere, and many folks hated using their computers. People forget how far we've come since the days of malfunctioning and virus-riddled PCs being the butt of jokes.
> I absolutely disagree that Apple or Google are providing significant value here
Eh? App review? Literally a general purpose computing platform with close to zero malware / spyware? User satisfaction for iPhone amongst the highest for any consumer product in history.
> The review processes might benefit users
Ah. Yes. That's the core of this I think: Apple cares about Apple, then Apple customers, then developers. Developers seem to care most about developers. Customers seem to care most about customers.
> developers who aren't guaranteed the ability to distribute apps they've invested in
What? If your app conforms to the rules of Apple's app store, you are absolutely able to distribute the app.
> Steve Ballmer wasn't stupid for laughing at the App Store. He just wildly underestimated the stupidity of the average developer.
Tough gig to argue that every single app developer on the app store is stupid and you and Steve Ballmer are the smart ones.
> No one would have taken the App Store deal in the 90s
I want to write this in capital letters: every. Single. Consumer. Would. The app store is better for consumers. It's better to have one trustworthy company (Apple) with my credit card information. It's better to have a simple hardware-based authentication for payments like TouchID or FaceID. It's better to have no malware and spyware. It's better to have apps which don't crash or have showstopping bugs. It's better to have refunds controlled by one predictable entity. All of those things are made possible or significantly easier by the App Store.
> It's absolutely crazy
Crazy might look like dismissing all the huge benefits consumers love because one developer was unwilling to either accept the commission one of their marketplaces charges, or increase their prices to offset it.
It’s hard to be sure whether this is an honest mistake or not, given the generally well informed community.
The law exists that the strongest might not always get their way. Literally anyone hitting it /should/ have the same claims, rights, laws, and the same process as the very rich and strong when up against these enormous "legal persons". It's an ideal and we won't achieve perfection in trying to get there and there are tradeoffs with other ideals.
But let's never lose sight of the ideal of equality before the law and the strongest should not always get their way.
It's just so important. Without it, we end up with people as the enemy of the state with its monopoly on violent enforcement, then on to revolution and all that horror. I think it's an ideal that is slightly more important than the desire and profit of google and apple claiming the right to tax success and profit as though they were nation-states and the welfare of other big, well-funded profitable companies that don't like that. Regulatory capture is a disaster and an even bigger one that it first appears, be you leftist, rightist, collectivist, rugged individualist or, more hopefully, someone not so easy to label who thinks about individual issues and wants an outcome approximating what you think is best for everyone. We're all united against corruption, I have no doubt, we only disagree on whether particular cases are or are not that. The unity opposed to corruption is a thing that gets lost quite often as the division are imposed on us.
If the rate mattered, Google would have lowered it to compete with Apple for developers.
Let’s not forget, you can frame this as a “cost” to developers, but it can just as easily be framed as a convenience fee to consumers, I as a consumer am happy to pay it.
I agree that fees seem somewhat high but we might be underestimating the cost it takes to check all the apps. One reasonable change of law could be a requirement for cost and revenue transparency for app stores and if we are hell bent on lowering prices maybe even a stipulation that margins must remain reasonable or even that stores must be run by a separate nonprofit with its own goals and guidelines.
However, all of this seems to be more in the realm of congress and law making rather than the courts. I don’t think that there are many good legal grounds for epic here. Everyone is paying... they can’t really claim damages in a competitive market sense as they are not worse of than any competitor.
You can only get nothing for 2-5% because that barely meets the payment processing fees (of course, a large company can negotiate a lower rate). If you’re saying 2-5% plus payment processing fees, then that might be possible depending on the solution and what’s provided to users and developers.
Epic gave Apple over $360 Million dollars in the last twelve months just to list the game in it's app store, and over $150 Million to Google to do the same. By any measure, having to hand over half a billion dollars is just an insane cut of revenue to have to give two companies that had absolutely nothing to do with conceiving, designing or developing such a successful game.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/technology/apple-fortnite...
Also, with the outrage over companies needing to layoff/cut hours during(now) Covid-19 because they didn't have a warchest saved up... Having a cashpile seems like a fiscally responsible thing to do for a company.
How does Samsung's devices division manage it?
edit: Samsung does a bit of software, trying to push its own applications with subscriptions and bundling crapware pre installed with the phone.
Precisely, and they also profit off the phone.
And yet Apple double-profits off both the phone and the apps, and they shovel the cash away.
The protest by these companies is entirely sound.
If Samsung were to make a whole development and gaming platform, they would charge developers on their platform too. and they'd really need the money because that's truly a ton of work.
The protest is only about the service fee, 30% is too much.
Is Epic taking that risk, or doing any of that work to reach this vast market?
No.
If/when my 11P EOL's half-way through the 20's I hope we'll have good enough homebrews to get Linux running like people do now on the 7.
Uh, you know Epic makes a 12% cut of all games sold in their store, right?
> By any measure, having to hand over half a billion dollars is just an insane cut of revenue to have to give two companies that had absolutely nothing to do with conceiving, designing or developing such a successful game.
Epic Games probably got help from Apple to port their game and their engine to iOS. I somehow doubt they did all the work with zero assistance from Apple, it's a whole game engine deeply tied and optimized to the system. They'd probably work with Apple just like they work with Sony/Microsoft on consoles.
Further, if you want to target mobile devices, you can distribute on Android.
People are making it seem as if Epic is an underdog with no options here. They make hundreds of millions of dollars from distributing Fortnite on the app store -- and it's a free download. Apple doesn't make a cent from helping to market and distribute this game (and I'd imagine 90% of users are free only).
Epic has the following choices:
1. Don't offer IAP at all
2. Offer microtransactions via web browser
3. Accept Apple taking the 30% cut of current pricing
4. Increase their pricing to accommodate Apple's cut
5. Withdraw the app
Also, I disagree that a person/company that runs a platform is entitled to being able to run the only native app store simply because. Want to know why Apple has set up the App Store in the way that they have? Because it is most beneficial to them that way. This doesn't mean that we have to tolerate it so.
Epic can walk away and deprive Apple of hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. Epic can increase their prices. Epic can accept the margins.
> I disagree that a person/company that runs a platform is entitled to being able to run the only native app store simply because
It's not "simply because". It's demonstrably a superior experience for consumers.
> Want to know why Apple has set up the App Store in the way that they have? Because it's most beneficial to them that way.
I'm a former Apple employee and I can tell you that this is true insofar as it's beneficial to Apple to not have shitty apps, viruses, and malware on iPhone.
And Apple could be honest brokers and not skim off the top of something they are only superficially entitled to in the first place. We can go back and forth offering our "perfect world" options all day. Both companies have options which solve this problem unilaterally, neither will take them since there is so much money involved.
>It's not "simply because". It's demonstrably a superior experience for consumers.
OK, then the demonstrably best policy for Apple is to both provide a safe platform for consumers which somehow doesn't involve price gouging the people that provide software for their platform. I do not advocate separate stores, I only mention alternative stores as a method to headoff these issues while conserving their current skimming policies. Removing the skimming policies is far superior, clearly, for the reasons you mention.
>I'm a former Apple employee and I can tell you that this is true insofar as it's beneficial to Apple to not have shitty apps, viruses, and malware on iPhone.
The idea, though, that "massive profits" didn't enter into the minds of of those who set these policies, whether as a first or last reason, is not realisitc. Apple literally makes hundreds of millions of dollars off of a product they had 0 to do with developmentally; don't try to tell me they do this in the name of not having shitty apps, viruses, or malware. They do it to profit off of it.
> Apple could be honest brokers
There is nothing dishonest about what Apple is doing, as far as I can see.
> superficially entitled to
I went to some lengths to imagine the infrastructure costs Apple experiences for the App Store here.[1] People seem to quite quickly move from a position of "Apple does nothing to merit a cut of revenue from their marketplace" to "Apple doesn't deserve that much revenue" which again feels subjective.
> neither will take them since there is so much money involved
And because neither side has done anything materially wrong in my opinion. Epic is, I guess, within its rights to openly try to break the rules of the app store and then file a law suit when their game is pulled. It's tough for me to imagine that they're coming at this from "above the line" because they released a fucking video about it minutes after the suit was filed, but whatever. Apple is within its rights to pull the game, contest the law suit, win, and continue charging 30%.
> OK, then the demonstrably best policy for Apple is to both provide a safe platform for consumers which somehow doesn't involve price gouging the people that provide software for their platform.
This is not price gouging as far as I can tell. That would be opportunistic pricing which the developer or consumer has no option but to pay. (In the US the term has been in the media a lot lately because of toilet paper pricing after quarantine started.) For more than a decade, Apple has had the same policy of a 30% cut from IAP in its marketplace. Epic has been on Apple's platform for a while and accepted these charges, and (just checked) charged more for V-Bucks on iOS than PC. I think they were aware of the situation, and again they've earned hundreds of millions of dollars from the arrangement.
> Removing the skimming policies is far superior, clearly, for the reasons you mention.
Again this is not skimming. It is totally fair for Apple to charge a fee for an app to appear in its marketplace. I don't think even you believe that they should charge nothing at all, I think you just disagree with the cut that they take, right?
> The idea, though, that "massive profits" didn't enter into the minds of of those who set these policies, whether as a first or last reason, is not realistic.
The genesis of the App Store is pretty well known: Steve resisted it, hated the idea, wanted people to build web apps (which Epic still can, and can charge as much as they like for with Apple making nothing from). He was eventually persuaded by his exec team and at the announcement he said:
"We don’t intend to make any money off the App Store. We’re basically giving all the money to the developers and the 30 percent that pays for running the store, that’ll be great."
So: the policy was set pre-launch. I think it's clear that nobody at Apple expected it to get this big ("Maybe it'll be a billion dollar marketplace some day" sounds so quaint now, looking at $50bn of payouts to developers in 2019).
What you could accuse Apple of is sizing their 30% fee proportionately to their expected transaction volume (e.g. "We think it'll do $1bn in transactions at maturity, so we'll get $300m a year. That's enough to pay for all the infrastructure and give us a margin for error.") and then not changing that fee even after the proceeds from the store becamse so great that they outstripped the increase in costs ("We do $50bn of business a year and now make $15bn in revenue from our cut. Our infrastructure costs are far higher than we initially anticipated, but we're making way more money than we ever thought we would.").
But what's clear is that the policy was not incepted in bad faith, has not been changed to reflect the massive growth in the store (other than reducing Y2 subscription rake), and is totally consistent with the prices other marketplaces charge.
> Apple literally makes hundreds of millions of dollars off of a product they had 0 to do with developmentally
Which is exactly how marketplaces work. If you want to sell your product to the folks in this store, you pay the fee that the market sets. The great news is that if you don't want to pay Apple's 30% fee, you can distribute your app in other people's stores on other platforms (PS4, Xbox, Switch Store), allow people to install it directly where the computing device is open (Android phones, Windows), or through your own store (Epic Store).
Reverse the situation and pretend for a sec that Apple can't get any revenue from the App Store. Their arguments would be that Epic uses them for distribution, updates, tech support, app review, and that Apple incurs all of the cost of acquiring iPhone customers. Epic is making hundreds of millions of dollars from the success of a platform and store that they had 0 to do with developmentally.
Neither is true: Apple has helped Epic, and Epic has helped Apple. Everyone has a different interpretation of the value derived from both sides of the arrangement, but the only job the courts have is determining whether Apple has either created and then abused monopoly power (very unlikely I think) or is guilty of some other antitrust breach.
> don't try to tell me they do this in the name of not having shitty apps, viruses, or malware. They do it to profit off of it.
They really do. Imagine a fictional regulator gives Apple two choices:
1. Be the only App Store on the platform, exactly the same as today, but the store must be a proper not-for-profit (so Apple doesn't lose money in any area -- even things like the apportionment of App Store revenue which contributes to marketing) -- let's say $500m of revenue,
or
2. Be one of many App Stores on the platform, and make exactly the same revenue as they do today ($15bn revenue per year) with the same margins, and let developers distribute apps any way they please,
Apple will absolutely pick option 1 every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. The moment the iPhone becomes complex, more susceptible to viruses, or less secure in the eyes of its users, it becomes much less valuable and they lose money hand over fist in hardware sales.
Ideally, Apple would charge a fee proportional to what it costs to hosts the apps on their store, software vetting, etc. I do not think that having no charge is realisitc, in that expecting Apple to pay for all of that is not sustainable, or fair. That said, a 30% fee approaches price gouging when other stores charge around %3, if the Epic filing papers are accurate in this regard.
If you, as a developer, pay ~$200M to Apple for the simple right of access to a market, along with other niceties the App Store may provide, it is hard to say that you help Apple out and they help you out, since the disparity in gain is so large.
I don't disagree that Apple has other incentives for their App Store, only that in this case, and in many others like it, the overwhelming focus is on the revenue stream. $15B is nothing to sniff at.
Presumably Apple believes it's proportional, but doesn't share their cost base, and many people think it's disproportional, without seeing the cost base.
We get into shaky ground here IMO. Imagine it's possible to distil the app store into a single P&L (it's not because it touches so many aspects of Apple's revenue halo), and it ends up as an endeavour which looks something like this for Apple:
Revenue:
GMV $50bn
Net revenue $15bn
Costs:
People ($100m)
Hosting & IT ($450m)
Overheads ($75m)
--
Net profit $14.375bn
Net margin 95.8%
Revenue:
GMV $50bn
Net revenue $1.5bn
Costs:
People ($100m)
Hosting & IT ($450m)
Overheads ($75m)
--
Net profit $875m
Net margin 58%
What if Apple isn't willing to make concessions on healthcare plans or working conditions which 3% marketplaces are?
How do you -- and how does anyone -- make determinations about what is appropriate here?
For me the nail in the coffin for this line of argument is: we've done the exercise of supposing that we can distil one specific aspect of Apple's business into an isolated P&L. Now do the same thing for Fortnite.
What margin do Epic make on IAPs? We know it's 70% on the app store + whatever the tiny, tiny cost is of the few people making the texture packs and models which kids buy in droves (billions of dollars). I'd imagine that if you consider the revenue they take before their payment to Apple as "GMV" and then do a margin analysis on their net revenue, you end up with % margin getting towards Apple's levels for the App Store.
So: can I sue Epic and force my own content, using my own payment infrastructure, into their game? They have a 100% monopoly on loot sold in-game in Fortnite right? They're charging users predatory prices when you look at the margins they make.
Nobody seems to be able to specifically quantify what's unfair here. I'm not criticising you but I don't see in any argument a clear articulation of what Apple does which is unfair in a way that is easily remedied throughout the software world (i.e. what % rake are Epic paying on Xbox store?)
> If you, as a developer, pay $200m to Apple for the simple right of access to a market
From the interaction we've had I have found you to be really articulate and bright, and this seems like a very basic misrepresentation: it's not paying for right of access to a market. Fortnite made $2m USD per day on the day it launched to Apple's customers on the app store. They also became Epic's customers, but when we talk about a "disparity in gain", Epic is making $1.4m USD per day that they weren't making before.
> the overwhelming focus is on the revenue stream
I think we agree on this but on slightly different terms: Apple prioritises its overall revenue, and I would imagine that if regulators tell it to either reduce their cut or face adding other app stores or alternative payment methods into the existing app store if they want to keep their 30% cut, they will preserve the user experience and reduce their cut.
UE4 itself is free until you make $1mil lifetime per game, and then 5% after that, IIRC.
But unlike Google and Apple's store, there are plenty of other stores on Windows, and making your own store is really easy. It can literally just be a website with downloads.
My point is that Epic does the same thing.
Apple created the app store. The iPhone brand is built on security, reliability, and ease of use. I can completely understand why Apple strongly resists people trying to disrupt that. It's not in Apple's interests because it'll diminish the appeal of their devices, and it's not in consumer interests either.
What is not fair is that they are the only service allowed on Apple devices. They place themselves in a situation where they can set the cut without any negotiation allowed.
I find Google's situation more fair (because it's at least possible to load apps/games with other stores or no store at all), but they still actively work against third-party stores by degrading the experience that the user has with those stores compared to Play's store.
So you draw a distinction between the fairness of Apple making money from your use of their marketplace and the fairness of Apple making money from your use of their device? I don't see it. Apple made the app store and you think it's fair that if you want to use it you should pay. Apple makes the iPhone but it should not be the case that if you want to use it you should pay?
What if alternative app stores on iPhone had to pay a 30% cut of all revenue to Apple?
> What is not fair is that they are the only service allowed
Are you at risk of conflating 'equal' and 'fair'? It's definitely not equal, but it doesn't seem unfair to me. It seems fair that Apple should be able to build a platform they would want to use and ensure that it is safe, secure, and held to the standards they like.
There is a good analogy here around sovereignty of nations. One common legal argument for war is that a nation has violated its own sovereignty somehow -- usually by attacking another or hurting its own population.
Apple the Nation has a high tax rate for corporations and individuals who live there. It is non-negotiable and there is no way around it. But citizens can come and go freely, and if they are unhappy living in Apple land they can move to a different country.
What is it that makes Apple's behaviour unfair?
https://gamasutra.com/view/news/367690/A_datadriven_primer_f...
Also publishers FUND your game as well which is why they take a larger cut, like how a vc would.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
The stat you cited was for two years, not one. Further, they paid $99 for a developer account "just to list the game" (and any other games they want to list). The fees you are mentioning are only for transactions that occurred on the Apple device. Their "v-bucks" can be bought on other platforms and are cross platform (for some platforms - Switch and PS4 do not allow cross-platform in-game currency). But strangely Fortnite gave no discount on their Windows app, for instance... (almost like they set up this whole ridiculous charade just to play the crowd).
Now add that anyone assuming Apple is actually getting that full 30% is deluded. Apple sells iTunes cards at Costco often $100 for ~$80. They have lubricated the market to encourage grandparents, etc, to give their relatives gift cards, and created a system where people feel confident enough to buy. Those gift cards become vbux. Without Apple's and Google's system, they would never have made a fraction of what they've made.
I hardly think Apple is innocent in this -- their position on cloud gaming is absolutely wrong -- but the horde that is suddenly falling in line behind Epic is uproarious. Sweeney is playing this crowd like a fiddle.
But it has everything to do with distributing the game. Also it has a lot to do with outsourcing the maintenance of the mobile platforms — designing hardware, OS releases, etc. Epic did not design their own hardware, their own silicon, build entire global supply chains, design UX, etc. Apple and Google did. Do they not deserve a cut?
I'm not here arguing the percentage of the revenue, just that that some percentage is clearly warranted here. Their relationship with Apple and Google is clearly a partnership, meaning it has to benefit both sides. Same way it works with consoles.
Apple and Google are claiming the right to tax the success of others as though they were nation states and had been granted that right by popular mandate.
A percentage? Of revenue? From companies that refuse to pay a percentage of profit in acutal tax to governments who actually do have that mandate to impose the tax.
Evil is what evil does. Call it out.
If you sell a product through ANY distribution channel whether it be online, brick/mortar store, influencers etc you need to pay a fee. It's been this way for centuries.
This is literally what OP is arguing for...
Because they're the only option. I mean there's no reason why Epic couldn't host the app on their server that people could download. It's not without precedent. But it's just not allowed for mobile.
> designing hardware, OS releases, etc. Epic did not design their own hardware, their own silicon, build entire global supply chains, design UX, etc. Apple and Google did. Do they not deserve a cut?
Seriously? You think Epic should have to pay for the hardware that we consumers buy for thousands of dollars? Apple has some of the highest hardware margins in the world. They don't need software developers to pay for the hardware that we've already paid too much for. These aren't consoles sold for a loss.
Sure. If they want to complain about the cost of using someone else's hardware.
Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc do it.
Didn't they move to the Google Play Store (from their own download manager) specifically because sideloading was too hard and scary for customers that it was having an impact on Fortnite installs?
Having the option wouldn't be enough for Epic even if it were available on iOS, because it wasn't enough for them on Android
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
The problems mentioned below are really only possible because Google kind of leaves everyone to the wolves when it comes to sideloading.
> Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.
Where did the $1k I spent on my phone go?
If you or any customer feels like the hardware's capabilities (i.e. no side-loading) was miss-advertised, I would highly urge them to return the hardware to Apple, sell it, or at the least not re-buy an iPhone next time.
The difference is Apple sells a user experience. Sure, you have to purcahase a physical thing to access that experience, but that is the nature of what you have purchased when you buy an iPhone.
I think this boils down to a mismatched set of perspectives on the business Apple has created. Apple breaks the typical “buy hardware from X, install software from Y” flow and instead turned their iPhones into a portal into their own user experience universe. They did this because it provides a fundamentally unique experience when compared to other platforms. It’s a differentiating factor for them. Again, I would argue that Apple doesn’t want to be a hardware company. They want to be an experience company. In order to do that, they have to develop and sell cutting-edge hardware to you and me.
Don’t get me wrong, not trying to say this is good or bad — just observing a sublety that I think gets missed when passionately arguing about hardware ownership and the rights that come with it.
Google didn't even invent Android, they purchased it. (Of course Apple purchased NeXTSTEP too.) And Google is not even the biggest Android hardware manufacturer.
The bizarre thing is that most apps on both iOS and Android are free, so they pay very little for the so-called "maintenance", even if these apps are hugely popular. This is very different from a game console, where every game earns money directly. Fortnite is hugely popular, but for some reason struggling little indie paid apps are forced to subsidize the platform for immensely popular free apps?
Imagine a game console where 84% of the games were free. We can't compare these platforms to consoles.
the computing culture from the PC era (1990's-2006) has been utterly destroyed. a computer used to be a thing you owned and which you therefore controlled like any physical property. install any software you want. you own it, so you dont have to keep plugging quarters into it like an arcade game. but not the phone. even though a cheap phone is a supercomputer compared to a high end gaming PC from 20 years ago.
everything Richard Stallman predicted 40 years ago about the worst case scenario outcome of propietary software has come true. the computing revolution was originally about empowering the user. information wants to be FREE. slowly we lost that, and now everything is about how much money can our corporate overlords squeeze out of us.
I FIGHT FOR THE USER
Many many other highly technical folks on this website agree with your points and would side with you if it came down to it. However, that group of people (and surely the other groups who feel the same way) only represent a microcosm of the total user base for a device like a smartphone.
Millions and millions of people didn’t buy their phone because they wanted a handheld general purpose computer to tinker with and install any software on. They purchased their devices simply for the utility, the access to content, and user experience they provide.
The systems and businesses that create each of those sides are very different, and misaligned in terms of the freedom you wish to have. Apple has chosen to fight for what they view is an optimal user experience for their target market.
I pose a question: can the two expressions of technology not exist together? Not on the same device, but in the same world as separate entities?
(I know Tinder is on other phones and the percentage could change - but you get the idea).
And Epic is making how much ... off what, beyond the game itself?
Epic gave nothing to Apple. Apple gave Epic $840 in proceeds from sales it couldn’t have made without Apple’s work.
I think you know that the margins Apple charges for the apps they retail are not a listing fee, and pay for a significant collection of services.
I’m not commenting on whether Apple’s margin is too high or not. Just that this comment is a misrepresentation.
Well we don’t know for sure there’s a very good chance the negotiations have been going on behind the scenes and they finally broke down far enough that Epic decided to pull the trigger and force the issue.
Even if Apple and Google have wargamed the move and found out they would definitely lose, would they do anything without first being confronted? I'd bet they wouldn't, because that would be several hundreds of millions in lost revenue. It's better for them to stay quiet, perhaps try to appease under the table those who have deep enough pockets to challenge them (e.g. Amazon), keep milking the cow for as long as possible.
In 2019, the App Store had a gross revenue of 54 billion. Apple's cut should be 30% of that, or 16.2 billion.
Multiply that over several decades, and also consider that gross revenue of the App Store is growing at around 10% per year - we are talking about over 200 billion of revenue for Apple over the next decade, minimum.
So yes - this is a big deal!
So the only loss is the time they're off the store, plus legal. They just need to get this lawsuit started, maybe lose a couple weeks profits from the iOS store, and they've created the possibility of permanently increasing profits by 20%.
If Epic wins and are allowed to offer alternate IAP for 20% discount, that increase profits for Fortnite on iOS by 10%, but all the other Fortnite platforms lose 20%.
Maybe Epic will raise the virtual prices of Fortnite goods over time to make up for it, eg a skin will be 1500 vbucks instead of 1250. But I'm guessing Epic has larger ambitions, such as making V-bucks systems for all games that use Unreal Engine.
[0] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/fortnite-statistics/#2
I’ve read it a number of times but here’s the top link from today’s search for this - https://9to5mac.com/2019/04/08/iphone-apple-watch-teen-surve...
More like cannibalization between several large and ruthless corporations, and mostly because those who should have protected this market from being cornered into its current corrupt state, miserably failed at that (time and again).
Many may be hopeful about the results of this move, which is no doubt part of Epic's strategy. However, I expect that the results will mostly just favor the bottom line of whoever wins this fight. I'm rather convinced that it won't be much of an improvement for end users.
Maybe end users will benefit for a short while after a victory by Epic, until the company decides to "cash in" on their win and end users will (again) get pretty much what they had up till now. Because that is apparently what Epic can charge its users.
The debate needs to be on whether or not they should take a cut on in-app purchases, and/or what that cut should be, and/or if they should allow third-party processors where the store owner doesn't see profit.
Why anyone supports Apple is a mystery to me. What if the web forced you to use Apple Payments? What if Microsoft forced all installs to go through the Microsoft Store?
Apple took focus from the web and then extinguished openness. It's tyranny.
Apple recently rolled out "Sign-In With Apple", which creates burner e-mail address that you can seamlessly use with 3rd party services. As a privacy-conscious consumer, this was great! On top of that, Apple forced all of its developers to support "Sign-In With Apple". This is one of the many reasons I continue to use Apple's phone and OS, because it gives me some peace of mind.
Apple Payments, similarly, gives me some financial peace of mind by providing me with one centralized place where I can view and cancel my subscriptions/purchases. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten to unsubscribe from a service that I don't use. With Apple's in-app payments system, I can keep tabs on everything. It's like a user-friendly financial reconciliation layer.
Both of these Apple services place some amount of burden on the developer, and I'd even argue that the first example was pretty broadly celebrated by privacy-minded HN readers. The strongest devil's advocate argument is that the second example provides the same value to Apple customers, and that's a distinguishing feature of its platform that it ought to be able to maintain.
There's a strong argument to be made that one ought to be able to side-load apps and install competing app stores on their iPhones (I tend to agree), but that's somewhat orthogonal to this particular issue, especially considering the Google Play Store action.
Apple spins this as privacy, but it's really a salvo they fired against other companies. Notably Google and Facebook. Apple seeks to weaponize its userbase in the war over attention.
Apple wins by inserting themselves as middleman into every transaction they can.
A "Sign in With Apple" user isn't your customer anymore.
If you think they value privacy, you should consider the telemetry they collect on you and the conversations they record.
Yes, as a customer, I don't wish to provide my email / identity with every service I use. If it takes Apple being the "middleman" to have the power to control how a business interacts with me as a customer, then so be it.
> If you think they value privacy, you should consider the telemetry they collect on you and the conversations they record.
I used to work at Apple on their services team, and I can tell you right now that Apple has virtually no useful telemetry information that can be tied to an individual user. iOS telemetry data is tied to a periodically recycling identifier that's un-correlated with your iCloud identity.
...that works right up until Apple bans you, or one of your favorite services, or just demands you pony up 30% of all the money you spend online.
You think that's unlikely? In the 80s, Microsoft was the hero and IBM was the villain. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Google was everyone's favorite. During the Arab Spring, Facebook was a popular tool for liberation.
Every corporation will become evil if it becomes successful enough. Give Apple centralized control over web authentication and they'll be just as ruthless as they are with the app store. We're watching a shift in public perception happen right now.
The only long-term defense we have is decentralizataion, and you're fighting that. Why? So you won't get spam that you never see?
They worked at Apple and probably have a different perception than someone who works uphill against Apple.
And if you'll excuse some unsolicited feedback, your arguments will bear way more weight if you do away with the histrionics.
It wasn't a personal attack, unless "They worked at Apple and probably have a different perception" is a personal attack.
I don't harbor any ill will against you. Characterizing my words that way is disingenuous.
> This is a nuanced issue.
From my perspective, it's black and white. Apple is clearly taking advantage of market forces and is hurting small players.
> your arguments will bear way more weight if you do away with the histrionics.
The arguments that are heard are the ones that engender empathy. We've been at the point of logical discussion for years, and that hasn't gotten us anywhere. Now the outrage has come to a boil, and I won't censor myself or pretend this is a friendly game of sports.
Apple is a trillion dollar vampire. I'm letting my representatives know that.
You're probably on the wrong forum, then. Either that or you'll have to understand that not everybody sees this as black and white, and maybe understand exactly why.
> Apple is a trillion dollar vampire. I'm letting my representatives know that.
I wish you and your crusade the best of luck.
Another commenter framed it well: that Apple behaves both as a consumer union as well as a protection racket, sometimes hiding behind the former in pursuit of the latter. It's definitely worth questioning if 30% is a fair transaction fee, but OTOH that's how much every app store charges in the market today, including Epic's very own.
> You think that's unlikely? In the 80s, Microsoft was the hero and IBM was the villain. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Google was everyone's favorite. During the Arab Spring, Facebook was a popular tool for liberation.
Yes, and IBM eventually withered away into irrelevance and Microsoft hasn't created a business with dominant market share since Office. Facebook still is a tool for liberation, just for the "wrong" people, and Google still provides a robust Search and Maps product. One day, both of those companies might find themselves no longer the dominant player — just like DEC, IBM, and Microsoft.
> The only long-term defense we have is decentralizataion, and you're fighting that. Why? So you won't get spam that you never see?
I understand that, decentralization has a lot of merit — it's what affords us the option to not use Apple at all and have nothing to do with its walled garden. We still have the option to not use Apple today. The day this stops being true is the day that we all have to worry.
There are many people in this world who think they would pay a steep social penalty if they switched away from iPhones. Now part of me just wants to blame them for having shallow friends or whatever, but I try and keep that part of me in check.
Yeah, but to suggest that you don't have the option to switch away from Apple just because you might have friends that don't like using anything except for iMessage is a real stretch. You don't have to be a part of shallow iMessage groups, any more than you have to be a part of Instagram. They're both frivolities.
I’m not a fan of alternate app stores.
But I’m happy to see someone force this issue. So we can stop dancing around it and settle things.
1. Apple acts like a sort of consumer union, coordinating behavior of a massive and lucrative audience so that apps have to meet certain minimum standards to reach it.
2. Apple acts like a protection racket, extracting a piece of the consumer surplus because they can.
It seems that you like the benefits of #1, and I agree with you. The problem is that in the Fortnite case, it appears to be a case of #2 posturing as #1. Does anyone truly believe that Fortnite players are better off paying 30% more to Apple?
If Apple's payment processing fee was more in line with the industry e-commerce standard, this would look a lot more like #1 than #2.
Forced?
So you want a company to take an arbitrary 30% of my livelihood?
This is why Congress has to act. Consumers don't understand the damage these companies are doing.
I’d love to have the option to sideload apps on my iPhone. I understood that I couldn’t do this when I bought it however, and don’t really see any compelling arguments as to why Apple would lose - there seem to be many, many arguments based on fuzzy-feelings like “I don’t like it” and “I feel 30% is too high” and “but it’s morally wrong” and “well if you imagine it this way it’s really a monopoly” and “no, I have decided that arbitrarily this would only apply to ‘general purpose’ devices”, none of which sound like legal arguments.
I assume Epic is putting this up to lose in order to gamble that the law is changed in response to that suit, in which case they’d be fighting presumably against at least the lobby power of Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and many other interests.
As would developers.
Computing used to be free as in speech. You could host an `.exe` file on your website and point customers there to download it.
Now most people use phones and >50% of Americans are out of your reach.
Don't claim that security sandboxing, privacy, and protecting users is why this has been done. With the appropriate design, users can be protected and the freedom to compute can remain.
Don't push the blame on the web not being a sufficiently native platform. Cross-platform APIs could have been built. It would have saved centuries of human effort writing both Android and iPhone apps. Think of all the human innovation capital wasted. Maybe some of these people could have been solving cancer instead.
Don't compare this to Nintendo. If I write a video game in C++, I can distribute it on PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, Android, iPhone, Steam, and on my website. Most gamers own more than one of these platforms at a time, making it easier to reach them, but they tend to have only one type of phone. Additionally, Nintendo is not a general purpose computer. I don't do dating, online banking, taxes, or groceries on the Switch. We don't hand out Switches to school children.
The App Store's unhealthy product placements and ratings led to a race to the bottom. Apps are $0.99 with a lifetime of free updates. And Apple takes a 30% cut. They dehumanize engineers and small businesses.
In a time of pestilence and famine, Apple's grain silos are overflowing. Yet they take from the mouths of the very people that helped build their platform with back-breaking and thankless effort.
Sure, phones are not desktops of 2001, but for many people that is a good thing. In fact, despite several attempts by different companies to create open phones, most people Demonstrate that they would rather buy and use closed ones. If you want true open OS on your phone, you probably have a niche desire.
Personally, I would rather the App Store be more selective on whether apps really worked or not. More open certainly has appeal, but more low quality apps to wade through doesn’t appeal much.
It's a walled garden, and that's what I intentionally purchased when I brought my devices. These software developers and service providers have a presumption that my money is simply there for the taking, but if they want to get it, they have to come to me, and I have very intentionally chose the platform I want to use. If their services were so important to me, then they could just withdraw them from the appstore, and I would obviously have to go out and buy a different device.
In general, I think free-form app distribution should be the way to go for any device under the general-purpose computer category. Multiple walled gardens can be spawned on top of that.
> In general, I think free-form app distribution should be the way to go for any device under the general-purpose computer category.
Then launch a company, provide that to the market, and see if that’s something consumers want. There are already plenty of companies that provide that though, so you might struggle to compete.
General purpose computing is also not a legal category of product, nor is it really what you’re making it out to be. Playstations, Xboxes and my car stereo are all general purpose computers. The issue isn’t whether the device in question is a general purpose computer, or an embedded system. It’s whether a company is allowed to create an operating system where they can control what software is distributed to it. As iOS does not have a monopoly, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be up to consumers as to whether it exists or not. Personally, as a consumer, Apple make a phone that I want to use, and part of the value I see in it is their control over app distribution.
My argument is that they are not. I know certain individuals have likened them to general-purpose computers due to the underlying processors getting more and more like desktops'. But the majority of users do not use them as general-purpose computers. So I actually used the term to differentiate smartphones from things like video game consoles.
Even though I still stand by my support for free-form app distribution, I understand that from a consumer perspective, Apple's current practices may not tip the scale between good and bad. (And as a developer, I also do not want to submit my apps to 10 different stores neither)
But at the very least, I hope Apple can (eventually) improvement their one-size-fits-all pricing model and payment methods. They need to provide devs with more flexible ways of rolling out app updates, and give price cuts to apps that barely use any Apple resources.
Then I’d suggest you come up with a different term to use, because the phrase ‘general purpose computer’ has been in use since at least the 1940s as far as I know, and it’s definition is quite different from yours.
I think the meaning you’re trying to use is that a PlayStation only runs PlayStation games/apps, that only Sony gets to decide what PlayStation games/apps are released, and that the users know this when they buy one? Therefore customers know that they can’t run arbitrary software on it when they purchase one? Because that’s exactly true for the Apple App Store as well. Customers are well aware of the limitations of the system, and it is used by Apple as a differentiating factor in their marketing.
> Even though I still stand by my support for free-form app distribution, I understand that from a consumer perspective, Apple's current practices may not tip the scale between good and bad.
But such channels are already open to you as both a developer and a customer. Furthermore, those channels have a majority market share. Why is it necessary for all platforms to suit your preferences?
> But at the very least, I hope Apple can (eventually) improvement their one-size-fits-all pricing model and payment methods.
I would agree. It is something they have already been improving over time though. I’ve had plenty of run ins with App Store rules myself, and I hope they continue to improve. But I also really hope the App Store is something they keep putting effort into, because even with the cut, it’s an absurdly valuable sales channel. I personally quite grateful that Apple have collected such a large amount of high spending customers for me to market to.
For everyone defending Apple, consider your main desktop/laptop computer and how you would feel if all of the apps you installed not only had to be downloaded from Apple/Dell/Lenovo/Microsoft but also 30% of any software or subscriptions you bought on that device went to one of those companies. Apple sells devices with high margins on top of all of this. Which is probably why they are the most valuable public company in the world besides maybe Saudi Aramco.
As far as politics goes, you can forget about it in America at least. The senate can’t figure out how to deal with the economic fallout from this pandemic; the idea that they’d be able to pass a law on this is genuinely laughable.
That something else could be bashing Apple and Google.
It can force regulators to act.
It can put pressure on politicians to create new laws.
I have apps not listed in PlayStore but works just fine.
How would Google actually block it?
It's actually even slightly easier to install APKs on Android than installing non-Mac-App-Store software on macOS — with Android it prompts you right when you open to allow or disallow installs from the source you downloaded from, whereas macOS makes you dig around in Settings the first time. I tried installing the Epic store just now on Android, and it was a fairly seamless experience.
I'm sure it gets fewer sales, since the Play store is bundled with most Android phones and the Epic store isn't. But it's pretty different than an outright ban: the Play store is charging you the 30% Google tax for reach/audience, but you're free to list on an alternative store if you choose to.
After Epic store launched on the PC in 2018, Epic used their platform's growing popularity to bait and/or strong arm (it's unclear to me) indie developers into exclusivity contracts on Epic's game store. This action caused a massive uproar in the gaming community because with those exclusivity deals, Epic made developers break existing preorders.
This isn't about freedom or choice or walled gardens. It's about cutting off a slightly bigger slice of a billion dollar pie.
They took the deal, they didn't get their life/safety threatened.
There was some really shitty behavior by developers who took the pot of money who had already made promises to crowdfunders previously. That's on the developer though, and they should be judged appropriately for their actions.
As my post says: it's unclear to me which tactic was used with which developers, or how those contracts influenced the promises developers made to preorder customers.
We don't know mostly because those contracts are secret.
The developers agreed to the deal. If that meant they had to do something shitty (Like not-provide steam keys to backers who paid for that during a crowdfunding campaign), you should be upset with the developers. They made a promise and then they went back on it.
I don't think it's fair to hold Epic's feet to the fire because a developer took the money. If someone offers you a lot of money to break a promise (and you take it), this is a reflection of your character.
Epic didn't make anyone do anything. They made the choice.
If somebody offers you a lot of money to do something immoral, and you chose to accept it that makes YOU immoral. It also should cast a shadow on the person offering you the deal because they too know what they are asking of you is immoral.
I don't think anyone in this deal is acting in the best interest of users. Some of these options may be better than others for indie devs.
In this scenario, much of the uproar that happened was developers breaking promises, and the blame for that being placed on Epic as well. Epic merely offered better deals(in the form of a better revenue split) and cash offers to developers that are notorious for being poorly funded. I don't see how this is a bad thing.
In fact, I'd make the argument that there being more competition in the PC video game marketplace is a good thing that will benefit the consumer.
There have been good deals for developpers, and good deals that developper shouldn't have taken but still took despite their previous engagements to their funders, but Epic literally had no position to strong arm anyone into anything, and they didn't bait anyone - no one signed then realized "oh damn, I didn't think money for exclusivity meant money for exclusivity !".
Epic just said "hey look at this bag of money, I give it to you if you put your game here".
no one thinks corporations don’t do what’s in their best interest monetarily
If this were just about money, it would be totally irrational. Epic does have money to gain if they're successful, but they have a lot more money to lose if they fail. It's kind of a suicide mission to simultaneously take on two of the most powerful corporations on Earth. No rational purely profit-seeking corporation would follow this strategy.
I'm amazed "feeding starving artists" is turned into a bad thing.
Steam needed that competition. Valve's 30% cut of sales is ludicrous considering that they do not manually audit, validate, or curate the software on their store. They don't even handle security properly—there have been multiple instances of Valve ignoring vulnerabilities in Steam.
I think Epic and Tim Sweeney have acted with remarkable consistency.
- Grow the dev team enough to accelerate time to launch--QA extra engineers, heck, the devs even used the money to pay for porting the game to other devices!
- Guarantee that they could continue to fund development of the game after launch. Bugfixes, DLC, etc.
- Have enough left over to "try again" and launch a sophomore game regardless of the performance of this one.
You'd think that fans of indie games would love this. Who could possibly be opposed to having an indie dev get funds that would enable them to graduate to managing a small indie game studio instead of a ramen diet & 20 hour work days in the living room.
And yet they got enormous amounts of hate from so-called indie game fans and members of the gaming community. And yes, the devs were aware that the hate was coming from a disproportionately small number of people and that most people don't actually care at all. But still, the psychological toll of having to deal with the harassment was enough to make them strongly consider not taking the money--even though it was the right thing to do both from a financial pov and from a development pov (because it would guarantee they could finish and support the game).
The crazy thing is that even if you hate epic you should love these deals: cheer for your favorite dev, then wait a year and buy the game on Steam, doubly sticking it to the man.
It would be choice and competition for the consumer if users could access any game through either platform and choose their favorite.
$20 to a charity of your choice if you show affirmative proof of (within 7 days¹) a contract showing strong-arming². Email is in profile if I don't notice HN reply. When you make your comment showing strong-arming, I will make two comments one saying "this is strong-arming" and one saying "this is not" and we can see what the community votes up.
If there are at least 5 votes and the former wins, you get to pick the charity. Otherwise, it goes to AMF.
¹ just so that there is a day the money goes out. If you need more time, just say so.
² Email is in profile, you can set up a call with me or send me an email of the contract if you don't want to share the contract publicly.
Everyone should get the same rates with no lock in or out. In media terms if Netflix can stream a movie for $0.40 per stream then every other provider should be able to stream it under the same terms.
Exclusivity agreements are anti-competitive. We've seen them grow unchecked and it's created the same unhealthy relationship between distributors and creators that lead to the forced sale of movie theaters away from the movie studios.
Epic Games is obviously just out to profit more. But this is a war that we all benefit from if they win.
Sure I'd love to see someone like the EFF change this. But the reality is they don't have the funding to go directly against Apple and Google on this. Epic Games does.
Tim isn't doing it for developers or publishers, he wants a piece of the steam pie.
If he was serious about being competition he would come out with a better platform and compete.
When MS came out the windows store, Tim said "they’re trying to force this thing on the industry and it’s woefully inadequate for the tasks they’re trying to serve it for"
https://www.pcgamer.com/tim-sweeney-microsoft-uwp-is-still-w...
Yet, the epic store, was... IS STILL woefully inadequate. They built a terrible store that has no functionality, no currency options, no linux support, nothing more than a front for a dozen games. Then turn around and buy exclusives under the disguise of "we're doing it for developers and publishers, we are the good guys, screw all you gamers out there who don't care!!!"
(I'm aware they have tried to fill some of these features, but they have ALONG way to go)
They could have come out with something better, and been competition, but they have nothing to compete with.
----
Tim also said: "I believe Microsoft has every right to operate a PC app store, and to curate it how they choose."
Tim is now: "Oh Apple and Google shouldn't be allowed to run their own app store how they choose."
As I wrote in the Apple thread: I think Epic are the ideal entity to do this since - so long as Apple or Google won't actively erase apps from people devices - they already have large install base and it's unlikely to grow much more.
Those who managed to install the latest update are already able to use epic "apple/google tax"less payment system so that protects their revenue for a while.
If either of those para-monopolies start erasing apps from people's phone's that would only add to the narrative that Epic, Spotify, EU et al. are already pushing: these two entities have built a global extractive platform that keeps partners and consumers hostage by their fees.
Epic Games can show just how much the on-going appstore tax prevent new business models from taking hold. They shown an incredible ability to entice people to separate from their money, even convinced Disney?! to partner for branded content.
Alongside Epic Games licensing of the Unreal Engine at-or-below cost (12% [1]), I believe Sweeney's commitment to growing a "Metaverse" market at the expense of Epic's short-term profit.
This comes alongside EPIC(.org)'s comparisons about American vs Chinese & emerging markets competitiveness, linked today [2].
[1]: https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse [2]: https://epic.org/foia/epic-v-ai-commission/EPIC-19-09-11-NSC...
> The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple app stores. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for users. While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play.
Note, however, that not just anyone can publish a game on EGS, so you'd have to already be an established developer.
Anyways, Neptune's Pride is very very fun and I can't wait to play it again!
If there ever would be some legal pressure on Apple& Google to open up their platforms, it is important to make this point known to legislators.
Android could potentially get pinged for pre-installing Play Market and not offering a choice.
Google Android does.
Removing Fortnite from the iOS store wholly removes the ability for people to download and play Fortnite on iOS devices, unless they're jailbroken.
Removing Fortnite from Google Play does no such thing. It's still readily available to download and play from other app stores and/or Epic directly. No need to jailbreak or root.
This is a huge difference in paradigms that'll probably go overlooked with headlines of "Apple and Google remove Fortnite from app stores".
I think this is why Epic is so ready to "take on Apple" (see: their Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite ad). This'll be a legal battle that's exciting to see, especially in the current/brewing anti-big-tech political climate.
> The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple app stores. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for users. While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368079/fortnite-epic-an...
Remember that courts tend to be very lenient towards business practices, so it takes egregious behavior to convince them to step in. This bolster's Epic's position.
They didn't make this in the time it took Apple to reject it. It's all pre-planned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6B4glqJFz0&feature=emb_rel_...
(FWIW I despise many of Epic's decisions, particularly their hostile attitude towards Linux as a platform, so no, I'm not biased towards them.)
Besides that, Epic themselves play Gatekeeper through the Epic Game Store and pay big money to ensure they are the Gatekeeper (excluding retail and other platforms), made on kids by loot boxing them.
It will be better for all developers if the gatekeepers lower their rates, but epic really doesn't strike me as a white knight here.
They are of course really hard to make ...
Apple or Google may cave in this particular case because Epic has some leverage with their userbase, but I'd be shocked to see either of them lower the rates for anyone other than Epic. I think it's going to take legislation to fix this.
The app store is a two way street. For most developers, apple can hide behind "no one's forcing you to be on our app store". And they are right, apple doesn't have a monopoly, but they have a lot of users, and what they really have is a lot of users who spend money on their platform. They have the customers you want.
But there is the flip side, which is that apple needs apps to be in the store, and sometimes needs specific ones. For most companies, apple doesn't need your app. The only parties that stand a chance at making waves are those who do control apps apple can't do without, e.g. "what do you mean I can't get Fortnite on my iPhone?"
No one in the situation is gonna be perfect, because at the end of the day, this is a fight for who provides what value and should get what money. It's sort of a Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla situation.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/08/13/google-reportedly-b...
If Apple was told to open its App Store they could literally just shut down their App Store instead the next day and in a few days or weeks consumers all around the world would put too much pressure on any legislator to revert their changes, because not a single consumer cares about Epic, but everyone cares about their iPhone to remain as awesome as it is today, ad part of it is Apple's walled garden.
Customers are plainly choosing the open platform.
The fight was bound to happen but I’m fascinated by the timing.
It would be great for Huawei if this whole closed appstore ecosystem would be broken up and give customers the freedom of choice.
If lowering the cost of app sales royalties to all 3rd developers is the only result of this, I'd say this will be worth it.
That precedent is being set anyway, the Epic Games store still exists on Android, and you can get Fortnite through it, and this dispute can't do anything but bring more attention to that fact.
Of course, that kind of does show a way in which they are better for devs and consumers than Apple, since dispute over store terms with devs are less of a total barrier to delivering/selling (for devs) or getting access to (for consumers) apps on the platform.
"The enemy of my enemy is my ally."
"The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries"
https://schlockmercenary.fandom.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_...
If a software developer has an issue with the distribution channel, then they can make their own, including the R&D and operate expense for the hardware. I know, really unpopular take. Bigger question is are Apple and Google (with hardware/software ecosystems) deserving of Bell-style regulation? The US already has a playbook for this.
You can choose RC cola or Faygo - always an option. Maybe Faygo offers a great new flavor(no payment fees) and tons of Users see that benefit outweighing other features? That's the market. Make the compelling value prop and you win.
Epic already has a distribution channel, payment processing, the whole 9 yards, what they don't have is anyway onto the hardware that you own.
Epic does have a way onto the phones: provide an easy way for User's to jailbreak them as part of the ingress to the Epic distribution channel.
"In 2010 and 2012, the U.S. Copyright Office approved exemptions that allowed smartphone users to jailbreak their devices legally,[62] and in 2015 the Copyright Office approved an expanded exemption that also covers other all-purpose mobile computing devices, such as tablets"
So all Epic needs to do is assume the cost and investment of managing the inter-dependencies of the hardware with various other pieces of software, including their distribution channel.
That doesn't add up to anywhere near 30%
This is the entire point of the case, that you have little to no alternative.
Every other aspect of how Epic played this has been brilliant IMO.
Apple is not a monopoly but Apple and Google together have just shown the incredible power they wield.
You just don't start a law suite by violating the terms, then go ahead and cry about it.
I am not sure about Apple.
Mahatma Gandhi did that, and society nowadays thinks he was within his rights.
Uber also did that, but isn’t universally acclaimed for it (¿yet?)
(There’s a large legal difference in that the Gandhi was a person and Uber a company, but Uber somewhat got away with its actions. That’s an indicator that society isn’t unanimous in condemning those actions)
This could and, I think, will be similar. This strong protest by Epic will lead to change.
Whether their cause is a good one is orthogonal to this.