I would argue that the guiding precedent is more likely to be the PeopleSoft case where the DoJ lost because they tried to define the market too narrowly. At the time of the Microsoft case, they had 90% of the market. Apple has under 50% domestically and under 25% world wide.
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Apple Threatens to Terminate Epic Games' Developer Accounts on August 28
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I would argue that the guiding precedent is more likely to be the PeopleSoft case where the DoJ lost because they tried to define the market too narrowly. At the time of the Microsoft case, they had 90% of the market. Apple has under 50% domestically and under 25% world wide.
I love how Epic's concern over this is highlighting the fact that Apple is providing major infrastructure to allow Epic (and all devs) to even operate in this space. Those fees seem a little more justified now, don't they?
Given the potential for irreparable harm if Apple follows through with this by August 28, they should be able to hear back quickly in the form of a TRO, which would be in place while the court considers a preliminary injunction.
(They’d probably go for the least destructive option for both parties, which would be keeping Fortnite off the App Store while forbidding Apple from terminating any Epic Games accounts while they work through the case.)
Nope. That only applies to subscription model and only if user remains to renew the subscription for two years. Basically it all depends on the user and not the service. Amazon pays half Apple fees whenever and whatever transaction occurs.
If Epic decide to remove their ios development tools from Apple's servers in a tit for tat move, this could hurt Apple a lot because it would mean 3rd party game developers no longer having access to unreal engine development tools and if game apps in the store can not be updated and as a result start to give gamers problems, customers will stop playing such games which means Apple will not be getting it's 30% cut of in app purchases from gamers.
Granted Epic might be at fault here from breaking the app store T&C's but if Epic fight back hard, Apple in my opinion will be the loser because without Epic's development tools (if Epic decide to pull them from Apple), games in the store will eventually crash because developers will no longer be able to fix problems because the tools to fix it wont be there anymore. Apple losing 30% on every game in app purchase is going to effect Apple more than it will Epic.
Granted Epic might be at fault here from breaking the app store T&C's but if Epic fight back hard, Apple in my opinion will be the loser because without Epic's development tools (if Epic decide to pull them from Apple), games in the store will eventually crash because developers will no longer be able to fix problems because the tools to fix it wont be there anymore. Apple losing 30% on every game in app purchase is going to effect Apple more than it will Epic.
This is pretty much where we all are at. I don't have a firm opinion on all this its moving and as I fact find the details. The source of the 30% commission that others utilized rooted In 2007 Itunes doesn't help Apple defense over time that they could have had a more commission % variance involved with their stores. I don't like EPIC was so gung ho to do all this either. But it seems to be a freight train with no breaks at the moment and does furnish us stuck in the heat locally (yes Silicon Valley) some entertainment, Cheers all.
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Breaching terms of service and contracts is not a reason for Apple to make a move? Would you kick out a tenant that didn't pay rent or let them stay?
The Unreal engine will still work fine on Apple's devices. The engine itself is not banned. Epic's developer account might be banned, but it is easy for Epic to establish a new one if they need to. And the developer tools that Apple provides if free for anyone to use. So Epic could easily maintain their Unreal engine on Apple devices without their main Epic developer account. We're talking a couple of minutes of account setup and Xcode installation here, nothing major.
Epic is trying to make it sound like Apple is forcing Epic to not to be able to support their Unreal engine for their platforms. That is complete rubbish from Epic's part, but then again, that's not surprising, considering all the rubbish that has been coming out of Epic Games for quite some years now (Epic vs Steam, and in general Tim Sweeny's opinions about anything and everything).
Maybe try to see the entire picture instead of swallowing Epic's bait like it seems you've currently done.
apple provides all the frameworks necessary for game making. Unreal and Unity and most third party engines use Metal for mac and ios games and also use some of the native frameworks for ios/mac specific features.
…you realize Apple would presumably immediately terminate on discovery any subsequent accounts Epic Games created in order to evade the initial termination, right?
This really is a curious argument from both sides.
On the one had Epic has a point. 30% is a massive amount to be giving to another party (when you have the infrastructure in place to take payments yourself). The way Apple applies App Store rules is also shockingly inconsistent with different types of content and let's not forget the special "exception" that allows for Amazon's Prime app. Apple can quite literally make up the rules as they go along.
However I've never got this notion that you MUST be in the App Store and play by their rules. Apple's wording with the Hey issue was very telling:
Apple considers iPhone users Apple customers and that's the end of it. Developers are welcome to a free ride accessing THEIR customers if the rules are followed.
So if you don't like that your platform or App is based around the customers of another company it's simple. Leave. If enough developers leave then the iOS ecosystem will die a very quick death (granted, it would make Android the hyper-dominant platform...). Or Apple will come grovelling back to gain App support 🤷♂️
Ultimately Epic went out of their way plotting to humiliate Apple which is fine but they should've known the end result would be getting cut off from everything Apple. Or "You hate our platform so much we'll help you get off it by requiring you to follow every sentence of our agreement". Apple don't owe Epic anything. What is slowly panning out is that Epic needs access to Apple platforms (thanks to Unreal Engine) more than Apple needs Epic. Apple would prefer developers to code exclusively within the Apple ecosystem and toolset anyway.
TL;DR - Know what you're getting into with closed ecosystems and if you don't like it there are plenty of open ones.
On the one had Epic has a point. 30% is a massive amount to be giving to another party (when you have the infrastructure in place to take payments yourself). The way Apple applies App Store rules is also shockingly inconsistent with different types of content and let's not forget the special "exception" that allows for Amazon's Prime app. Apple can quite literally make up the rules as they go along.
However I've never got this notion that you MUST be in the App Store and play by their rules. Apple's wording with the Hey issue was very telling:
Apple considers iPhone users Apple customers and that's the end of it. Developers are welcome to a free ride accessing THEIR customers if the rules are followed.
So if you don't like that your platform or App is based around the customers of another company it's simple. Leave. If enough developers leave then the iOS ecosystem will die a very quick death (granted, it would make Android the hyper-dominant platform...). Or Apple will come grovelling back to gain App support 🤷♂️
Ultimately Epic went out of their way plotting to humiliate Apple which is fine but they should've known the end result would be getting cut off from everything Apple. Or "You hate our platform so much we'll help you get off it by requiring you to follow every sentence of our agreement". Apple don't owe Epic anything. What is slowly panning out is that Epic needs access to Apple platforms (thanks to Unreal Engine) more than Apple needs Epic. Apple would prefer developers to code exclusively within the Apple ecosystem and toolset anyway.
TL;DR - Know what you're getting into with closed ecosystems and if you don't like it there are plenty of open ones.
One of the biggest game companies makes most of their money on apple platforms? Lol no.
They are going after apple because just a portion of their revenue comes from ios.
Metal is a graphics api. Its no game engine. Tools like unreal and unity are great because they hide the details of the underlying graphics api. That way they can target multiple platforms.
scenekit and spritekit and gamekit and realitykit are all frameworks to make games. you don't need an "engine" (which is getting very hard to define) to make games. you can even make games with nothing but UIKit
Look at it a different way, we all know Apple iTunes more or less killed CDs to a great extent, but totally overlooked the 2007 Apple iTunes commission rate for selling music has been used by the industry for selling everything at 30% though app stores.
So way before iOS Apple Ap store, they did it. Now a lot of people in the industry don't like this generalized commission being applied to everything, it been brewing for a long time. yes the App Store Wars!
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I think my favorite part of the notice from Apple was listing all of the services, tools, extensions, APIs, etc that they offer developers in exchange for the 30% cut.
It shows that companies are ignorant of their successes and forget that without platforms like the App Store or Google Play store they wouldn't have anywhere close to market share they enjoy today.
It shows that companies are ignorant of their successes and forget that without platforms like the App Store or Google Play store they wouldn't have anywhere close to market share they enjoy today.
That would be an un-competitive behaviour and retaliation against a company. Apple would not suffer, the developers would who use the engine. This entire mess and show by Epic is to push their own store. It is part of a plan. A few months back they started to advertise their epic store, by giving away free games and now they do jump on Apple and Google. I am sure the final phase of this this is to push their own EPIC Store on all platform ( which by the way takes cut from revenue just like the App Store). This whole agenda onEpic’s behalf is hypocritical. They are not standing up for small developers, the only problem they have is that the money doesnt go to them and they want to use Apple’s platform to take a chunky share of annual revenue, like a leech.
Funny to read all this comments Apple delivered the evidence that it is evil and totally abusing it‘s market position. Will be interesting if Apple will be stopped by a court.
Apple delivered the evidence that it is evil and totally abusing it‘s market position. Will be interesting if Apple will be stopped by a court.I believe so, and I think they’ve used this once before to remove an app that was actually dangerous and doing things it shouldn’t do. If Notability had a special mode where if you typed “MAME IS GOOD” it would drop you into an interface where you could install Arcade ROMs... no, they still wouldn’t remove it from your device, you just wouldn’t be able to get any updates from the App Store.
I think for any company to be worried about this, they’d first have to flaunt the rules by hosting pornography or any of the other things Apple says they shouldn’t do.
I think one of the greatest things that’s occurring out of this is that people are recognizing Apple products and their ecosystem for what they really are. Armed with this new information, they can make better decisions in the future over the products they want to support and purchase!
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I'm pretty sure Epic could find a way to download the latest version of Xcode to maintain their Unreal engine...
Games revenue within these stores dwarfs App revenue. Makes sense that one of the largest game devs that also runs a store outside of mobile would want to try to win some of that.
I wonder if Valve will join suit. They've also been directly impacted by Apple's anti-competitiveness.
Developers have and still will develop for iOS. Epic is just being greedy and wants a bigger slice of the pie. They don't let others bypass their app store..
A smaller developer would probably have had his account terminated by now.
One obvious flaw in this analogy is that the store and the payment processor in this example are often two separate companies.
Apple owns both the App Store and the only payment method you can use in that store.
Actually, Epic may be in MORE trouble from those developers that depend on Epic’s tools. They all see what’s going on and they are aware that Epic’s actions precipitated Apple’s (which are listed clearly in the guidelines for being on the Apple Store). There may be lawsuits coming from those developers towards Epic (and I’m sure a few have already had backchannel discussions) indicting that Epic Games is potentially affecting their livelihood by behaving in a reckless manner.
Which is another reason why I think this will all be over before the 28th. Epic Games is likely telling those developers with higher tier access not to worry, they will get the latest version of the Unreal Engine on time as planned and their will be no impact to their upcoming releases.