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Comment by petmon | Hacker News Reader

How does Apple treat Roblox and Minecraft differently than Fortnite?

It's more how Apple treats Roblox vs. Xcloud or Google Stadia. Roblox is basically a bunch of different games made by different developers (they just happen to all use the same engine) in one app that aren't reviewed by Apple which is in contradiction to their guidelines for game services which requires all games to be listed separately in the App Store. Epic is pointing out how they don't treat every app the same.

Near as I can tell, they don’t. This appears to be ignorance, rumor, or malice…

> “There’s experiences within Roblox that we did not look at as a game,” Kosmynka said.

Worth reading the whole article, but you could’ve just googled this before accusing the poster.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/7/22425774/epic-apple-roblox...

I read the article, but it didn’t make clear what the relevance of game vs app was. It’s not like Apple makes games use in-app purchases but exempts apps (or vice-versa). Can you explain what the significance of Roblox being classified as an “app” is in this context?

> not like Apple makes games use in-app purchases but exempts apps

Well, Amazon or Wechat for eg. There’s lots of exceptions carved out for various scenarios that benefit Apple.

Anyways, here’s a detailed explanation of the Roblox case, once again found via googling:

https://pausebutton.substack.com/p/why-is-roblox-allowed-on-...

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