Apple Can't Escape Dutch App Store Antitrust Lawsuit, EU Court Rules

[turbineseaplane]

If Apple didn’t offer in app purchases developers would be screaming.

Now perhaps, but Apple didn't have to offer it in the first place.

Worth considering that it could be a better and different place had that happened.

As you know, what Apple does has a large impact on where things go in these spaces.

If Apple decided non IAP was simply "better" for its customers, devs would fall in line.
It would be a remarkably "Apple" (the old Apple at least) move actually.

All that aside, I still maintain that they should be requiring a pay one time option* from all Apps, even if they offer IAP.

*again, this could have limitations by iOS version(s)

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If Apple didn’t offer in app purchases developers would be screaming.

They added IAP’s in 2009, two years after the App Store was introduced, because developers that were making big money this way elsewhere wanted to do the same on the iPhone. With all of the hubbub about the commission structure that EVERY company that sells third party content uses, directed at Apple, it’s guaranteed that if the Free + IAP model that EVERY company that sells third party content was using was rejected at Apple, there would have been legal challenges.

Apple was able to avoid legal challenges by bending over backwards over and over again until “A company having complete control over the things a company develops and produces” became illegal in some regions, specifically only if those companies had reached a very particular amount of success PRIOR to the implementation of the novel law.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

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.

Considering this has to do with dating apps so it’s. Android people who dates will be unreasonably constrained if iPhone users can’t use the same features and pay competitive prices.

So stating ”…compared to their efforts on Android” makes zero sense

 

[Sophisticatednut]

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.

Before that we had the common sense to provide free demos of said games for people to test. And unfortunately Apple was very hostile to any such implementation so it just became more logical to pursue a subscription model and micro transactions

 

[Sophisticatednut]

They added IAP’s in 2009, two years after the App Store was introduced, because developers that were making big money this way elsewhere wanted to do the same on the iPhone. With all of the hubbub about the commission structure that EVERY company that sells third party content uses, directed at Apple, it’s guaranteed that if the Free + IAP model that EVERY company that sells third party content was using was rejected at Apple, there would have been legal challenges.

Apple was able to avoid legal challenges by bending over backwards over and over again until “A company having complete control over the things a company develops and produces” became illegal in some regions, specifically only if those companies had reached a very particular amount of success PRIOR to the implementation of the novel law.

Legal challenges based on what? Only one might be their initial minimum price rule or communicating to the customer.

Consoles and most online stores before never allowed any kind of IAP purchases without it being listed in their store as DLC or similar stuff

 

[63W]

I find these lawsuits absolutely astonishing. I was an iOS developer for a number of years, and I always thought that 30% was actually very good value for delivering tiny developers, global distribution, global marketing, and a global finance payment operation. Just seems to be crazy EU politicians using Apple for clickbait basically.

Dont you just love reading peoples posts as if their experience was exactly the same as million other developers??

 

[Sophisticatednut]

It IS just 637 million Euros. A lot of money, yeah, but not something that’s going to bankrupt them. Plus, the EU laws are very specifically written against non-EU companies, so there’s no skill of lawyer that would help in that kind of situation. Send in the second string and let them get some game time.

Eu laws aren’t specifically written against non EU companies. Apple simply need European lawyers and not the largely useless American ones or whoever is providing Legal counseling. Either Apple isn’t listening to them or they are being scammed through the nose.

That’s because they’re on the wrong side of “Governments wanting more money out of Apple”. There’s no way they could ever be on the right side of that! And, as governments have the power to create laws that specifically target Apple, they can’t be on the right side of “The thing we just created that defines your starting position as ‘on the wrong side of it’.”

Then Apple wouldn’t be challenged by laws and consumer rights organizations that have laws and cases against them if they just stopped applying U.S. laws in foreign jurisdictions. None of these laws were written for Apple by the Dutch