Once again the EU is trying its best to stifle innovation and punish American companies because they can't innovate themselves.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Can't Escape Dutch App Store Antitrust Lawsuit, EU Court Rules
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
And how much would you have been willing to pay if there had been an alternative of the same quality? Like on Windows, for example?
No further questions.
14 million? There are only 18 million living in The Netherlands. Does every granny and toddler now also use an iDevice?
This only means that the Dutch court has jurisdiction over the Dutch language App Stores. Not that Apple is guilty.
I presume they are going after Google as well then for the Play Store. As far as I'm aware they also charge 30% fees?
Are you serious? I have shipped over 70 products the past 15 years with the majority being games.
Apple does NOT market the game for you. It disappears in the hundreds of apps released every day. You have to pay Apple for marketing and advertising and you have to pay for user acquisition which is no longer a feasible model. The best you get is a “featured” opportunity by Apple, which is a very temporary highlight. I only got this for the release of two mobile games, and only because I had major IP attached to it, a $300K+ each minimal guarantee I had to pay out of my own pockets (independent studio), next to the hundreds of thousands for the actual development.
In all my years in the mobile space, Apple was a poor partner who actually screwed up major releases tied to box office opening weekends because they didn’t review it on time, or failed to review properly.
A global finance operation you say? If Apple didn’t enforce their own, there are dozens of world-wide payment options that are basically turn-key solutions. Slightly more friction because Apple blocks a tight integration.
30% is nuts. It kills any outlook on profits. Don’t forget that 99% of the games out there are not profitable, and only the top 20 or so are break-out hits, spending a majority of their daily income into user acquisition and retention.
I’m sorry but you come across as someone who doesn’t have the relevant experience. 30% flat fee is extortion when you have to pay several other stakeholders afterwards.
Ironically it is also Apple who actively tanked the mobile gaming industry by killing the perceived value of content. Before the App Store, games were purchased. Now you have to give them away for free or you kill your game at launch. You then have to apply all kinds of tactics to make people decide to go for an IAP.
They rectified this with e-books on time which are still bought like games used to be sold.
Same issues are now prevalent with apps - it’s not just games. Developers are forced to move to a subscription model to survive, because the AppStore has become an endless pit of SKU’s.
Developers no longer extract value from Apple here. It’s just a release channel. The problem is that Apple forces the devs to use this only channel. This must end, world-wide.
It’s like being forced to rent or buy from only one ****** landlord that owns the world.
Separate sovereignty so no, even if such a concept as double jeopardy exists in EU law. It's no different than in the US where you can be tried by the Federal and well as state courts for the same crime.
If developing for Apple is such a bad proposition, why do it? There are other options besides iOS games out there.
If you are not happy with Apple then find other development opportunities. Apple does not exist to please any one person.
If selling in Europe is such a bad proposition, why do it? There are other options out there.
It’s an individual decision. Those who complain about it are likely to get that question directed towards them.
Totally get where you're coming from i7.
Apple really should heed this advice and reconsider participation in the EU market.
As many have said, Apple has many other options of markets to sell in.
I agree. And also google and Microsoft and Facebook should leave the eu market.
I’d be good with Facebook shutting down altogether.
Apple created the hardware, and the OS, ,and the dev tools, and the App Store and cultivated a group of millions of the most money spending people in the world.
And you want them to market your apps for you? What Apple SHOULD do, is let people know they’re not going to market their content for them. That way, they can completely avoid Apple altogether and try to sell ads to Android users where, if they like your game, they’ll just tell others how to pirate it.
And, actually, after the FIRST experience with them not marketing your app, you decided “You know, they don’t market my App, but I’m going to try again, maybe they will THIS time!” And you did this with 70 products, each time going back to the company that won’t market for you. It would appear to me that “not marketing for me” is not as much of a deal-breaker as you’d make it out to be.
Or, is the problem also that they didn’t create the content for you?
This should not be overlooked.
Whatever model Apple goes with has enormous impact on how this industry works.
They chose "free + IAP" specifically to siphon off the IAP side of things and make WAY more money.
It was not at all a "what's best for the consumer" decision.
I would really like to see them enforce a rule that says even if you have IAP, you must offer a "buy once for the length of the iOS version (or a couple versions)" option.
What they DON’T want to say is it’s because of how much money they made compared to their efforts on Android (IF they even tried on Android). I would figure that they think Steve Jobs just came up with the name Apple computer and then the ENTIRE world did all the product development and marketing for them.
Folks that think of themselves as business people that expect business to be easy and for everything to be provided just as they like it don’t really understand how business works.
Free + IAP’s started on PC’s before the App Store was a thing. After seeing success, publishers brought it to mobile, consoles, everywhere else. Why? Because they want to make money.
I’d argue that Apple didn’t “choose” this model. It offered the model, which already existed elsewhere, and I think developers discovered they make more money this way than the other and so went with it. If developers made more money off of one-off purchases they would go with that. It’s still available, but the fact that almost all developers go the other route isn’t because Apple is pushing it, it’s because customers are.
If Apple didn’t offer in app purchases developers would be screaming.