Apple Updates App Store Review Guidelines to Allow Streaming Game Services That Submit Each Game to the App Store [Updated]

[AndiG]

Stop defending Apple in this. They’re very wrong here. And it’s hurting the brand.

But Apple will continue to change their AppStore policies. Slightly, but in a way that makes it harder for the antitrust authorities to regulate.

See, til yesterday Apple could have been asked „why are you blocking game streaming services?“. Today Apples answer will be „look we NEVER did this, we just have policies the streaming services have to obey“.

Even „Hey“ IMHO can now be categorized as a reader app. Get it? Apple never opened iOS for game streaming, it just adds that many rules that game streaming is no longer attractive. The lawyers are working like crazy right now to make the guidelines appear less anti competitive. But only slightly, just enough to keep hard regulations away from Apple.

 

[Bandaman]

But Apple will continue to change their AppStore policies. Slightly, but in a way that makes it harder for the antitrust authorities to regulate.

See, til yesterday Apple could have been asked „why are you blocking game streaming services?“. Today Apples answer will be „look we NEVER did this, we just have policies the streaming services have to obey“.

Even „Hey“ IMHO can now be categorized as a reader app. Get it? Apple never opened iOS for game streaming, it just adds that many rules that game streaming is no longer attractive. The lawyers are working like crazy right now to make the guidelines appear less anti competitive. But only slightly, just enough to keep hard regulations away from Apple.

Yes, they keep changing their policies. The inconsistency is a very serious issue and I hope the inconsistency bites them in the butt. You can't pamper to one company and then not allow others to do the exact same thing.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

Apple is shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[nordique]

I commended this move, but I didn’t realize it was a 30% *per game* on a service. So for xcloud, each game we’d have to redownload and each game is subject to a 30% cut

That....doesn’t seem right at all. What it should be is download the xcloud app and boom access your game pass library

 

[playtech1]

Apple's App store strategy is to defend its bottom line, with security and user experience being secondary goals.

A general purpose streaming app like Citrix and a tailored streaming app like GeForce Now or Xcloud are the same thing technologically, but the latter presents a too direct route to IAPs which will not be using Apple's payment service, via in-game purchasing, for Apple to accept it.

These services also compete with Apple Arcade and would probably beat it - Xbox Game Pass vs Apple Arcade is not much of a contest for anyone except the most casual of gamers.

Apple protecting its bottom line is the only reason these services are getting blocked.

Is that right or wrong? That I'm less clear about, but I wish Apple would ease up of its own accord rather than risk the whole ecosystem come crashing down through legal or political interventions.

 

[ader42]

Apple doesn’t want another platform inside it’s platform.

They are right to not want that, and within their rights to prevent it if they want to do so.

Can I run Google Stadia on Xbox?
Can I run Xcloud on Playstation?
Can I run Steam on Switch?

If you want to stream games, work within Apple’s rules and use something like shadow.tech

 

[Matt Leaf]

Apple doesn’t want another platform inside it’s platform.

They are right to not want that, and within their rights to prevent it if they want to do so.

Can I run Google Stadia on Xbox?
Can I run Xcloud on Playstation?
Can I run Steam on Switch?

If you want to stream games, work within Apple’s rules and use something like shadow.tech

Apple is not a video game company and makes no video games themselves. They are general computing platform, not a video game console.

 

[threesixty360]

1. Go to amazon.com in Safari.
2. Buy/rent a movie and pay for it.
3. Watch it in the Amazon Prime Video app on your iPhone.

not sure what you mean.
safari isn’t the App Store.

 

[threesixty360]

Oh yes, because Flash was the only way I could get unauthorized software on my computer.
Oh wait, no..... it wasn't

no flash wasn’t the only way. The difference was that flash was a platform. Which meant tons of software ran on it, not just one app.
And apple wasn’t responsible for the api’s on that platform. So they couldn’t fix issues or stop malicious software on a platform that their users had installed. Which then gave the mac a bad reputation as the software ran ok on windows. Because adobe didn’t care about the mac.

do you get it now? Why Trojan horse platforms are bad for Apple?

 

[playtech1]

Apple doesn’t want another platform inside it’s platform.

They are right to not want that, and within their rights to prevent it if they want to do so.

Can I run Google Stadia on Xbox?
Can I run Xcloud on Playstation?
Can I run Steam on Switch?

If you want to stream games, work within Apple’s rules and use something like shadow.tech

I can think of three distinguishing features of Apple compared to console manufacturers:

- number of consumers who use their product
- importance of their products to daily life
- market power

Those are the issues that start to get the authorities interested, which they are, and which mean Apple may find it has less room to set unilaterally set the terms of access to its platform.

 

[4jasontv]

I can think of three distinguishing features of Apple compared to console manufacturers:

- number of consumers who use their product
- importance of their products to daily life
- market power

Those are the issues that start to get the authorities interested, which they are, and which mean Apple may find it has less room to set unilaterally set the terms of access to its platform.

This is the problem with authority. None of those things are their business. The number of customers I have is none of the government's business. The importance of the product to my customers daily life is a combination of my ability to market and develop my product not some intrinsic value that my product holds. Unless I am using some sort of government granted monopoly like spectrum or running wires across public property than there is nothing about my product that the government needs to be involved with. Market power is the reward for making the product people want to pay for. It should be a reward that is encouraged no one that should be frowned upon.

Imagine if the government were to say that the number one app in the app store has to make its source code available for competitors. It works both ways. If Apple has to do something because they are successful than it should apply to every business in the industry, even if they are not successful. Not just OS developers and not just hardware developers. Everyone.

 

[4jasontv]

no flash wasn’t the only way. The difference was that flash was a platform. Which meant tons of software ran on it, not just one app.
And apple wasn’t responsible for the api’s on that platform. So they couldn’t fix issues or stop malicious software on a platform that their users had installed. Which then gave the mac a bad reputation as the software ran ok on windows. Because adobe didn’t care about the mac.

do you get it now? Why Trojan horse platforms are bad for Apple?

No. They don't get it. That's why all of these threads are so long.

 

[4jasontv]

Yes, they keep changing their policies. The inconsistency is a very serious issue and I hope the inconsistency bites them in the butt. You can't pamper to one company and then not allow others to do the exact same thing.

Changing policies is what companies do when they see new idea come to market. They change policy to allow that technology to be adopted in a way that benefits everyone. Changing policy is good. The alternative is to say no to anything that isn't the way it used to be.

 

[I7guy]

Apple's App store strategy is to defend its bottom line, with security and user experience being secondary goals...

The reason the App Store is successful is due to the user experience. The profits before customers meme would aptly apply to the former Enron.

 

[LinkRS]

xCloud has code it downloads and runs locally on the device. It's one of the reasons why MS was freaking out about UE4 dev certificate for Mac OS/iOS.

If this is true, I would have to side with Apple on this. If you have to download a program (stub, launcher, whatever) for each game that you stream, then you are basically side-loading apps. I was under the impression that xCloud and Stadia only streamed and uploaded controller and state data during play. On the other hand, you can't expect Microsoft to require each developer for a game available on xCloud to have to create, build, and maintain an iOS version.

 

[0092762]

not sure what you mean.
safari isn’t the App Store.

Ok then:

1. Download Amazon Prime Video app form App store
2. Purchase/rent a movie in the Amazon Prime Video app and pay using Amazon, not Apple

There you go, you just completely circumvented Apple and they got nothing.

 

[dba415]

This is the problem with authority. None of those things are their business. The number of customers I have is none of the government's business. The importance of the product to my customers daily life is a combination of my ability to market and develop my product not some intrinsic value that my product holds. Unless I am using some sort of government granted monopoly like spectrum or running wires across public property than there is nothing about my product that the government needs to be involved with. Market power is the reward for making the product people want to pay for. It should be a reward that is encouraged no one that should be frowned upon.

Imagine if the government were to say that the number one app in the app store has to make its source code available for competitors. It works both ways. If Apple has to do something because they are successful than it should apply to every business in the industry, even if they are not successful. Not just OS developers and not just hardware developers. Everyone.

Anti-competitive laws exist because they generally benefit all companies & consumers instead of the select few. Imagine if Windows did not allow iTunes on their OS because they already had Windows Media Player. Apple might not even exist today.

 

[cmaier]

Apple is not a video game company and makes no video games themselves. They are general computing platform, not a video game console.

Yes they make at least one video game themselves

(Trivia question: who can name it? I can actually think of two)

 

[Marshall73]

pretty sure people are going to try xcloud on their iphones for 2 weeks then stop because it isn’t that great of an experience

You have clearly not used xcloud, I have used this on a woefully underpowered Galaxy Tab A 10 inch with an Xbox pad and it’s great. Gonna be all over this on my iPad Pro 12.9 if it comes out.

 

[Dking02]

I have a simple solution grab a android device. Screw Apple dumb policy I don’t see Netflix , Hulu, hbo Max , and etc making different apps for each movie.

 

[LinkRS]

My initial thoughts on this policy revision, was that it seems ridiculous. After thinking about it, and taking in Microsoft's response, I had a thought. If all a game streaming provider has to do, is create an App Store page for each game offered on their service, which would launch the streaming service app, not a separate app then is is really just cumbersome for the provider. They would have to maintain individual store pages and submissions as their catalog changes. You, as the customer wouldn't even need to use the App Store to find the game, and you could still access it from the single client. On the flipside, if you were browsing the App Store, and found a game offered on the service, it would provide you a link to the service app. This would actually benefit the streaming service provider, as it would give them more visibility to iOS users.

However, I did not read this policy revision as working that way. It seems to me, that Apple expects all streamed games to also be native on iOS, which is not what xCloud or Stadia are about. So if that is the case, this does nothing for Microsoft/Google.

Rich S.

 

[jonblatho]

Don’t discount the concept entirely; it’s pretty common for iOS security notes to mention maliciously crafted audio files as a path to arbitrary code execution. It’s happened several times in the past year, actually.

I see this post has garnered some dislikes. Here are some links for every update since iOS 11.0 — that’s just the past three years — that has fixed an issue where maliciously crafted audio or video files may lead to security issues like arbitrary code execution and memory disclosure. I found 13 unique CVE IDs listed:

• iOS 11.2.5 / CVE-2018-4094 (audio, arbitrary code execution)
• iOS 12.3 / CVE-2019-8592 (audio, arbitrary code execution) / CVE-2019-8585 (video, arbitrary code execution)
• iOS 13.0 / CVE-2019-8592 (again?) / CVE-2019-8705 (video, memory disclosure)
• iOS 13.1 / CVE-2019-8706 (audio, arbitrary code execution) / CVE-2019-8850 (audio, memory disclosure)
• iOS 13.5 / CVE-2020-9815 / CVE-2020-9791 (both audio, arbitrary code execution)
• iOS 13.6 / CVE-2020-9884 / CVE-2020-9888 / CVE-2020-9889 / CVE-2020-9890 / CVE-2020-9891 (all audio, arbitrary code execution)

 

[threesixty360]

Ok then:

1. Download Amazon Prime Video app form App store
2. Purchase/rent a movie in the Amazon Prime Video app and pay using Amazon, not Apple

There you go, you just completely circumvented Apple and they got nothing.

the App Store doesn’t sell films.
App Store and the iTunes Store are different. The 30% fee doesn’t apply to media content in the iTunes Store.

It does sell games though.
Does the amazon prime app sell games that you can buy through amazon and play on the iPhone? I don’t think so.

Try again.

 

[farewelwilliams]

You have clearly not used xcloud, I have used this on a woefully underpowered Galaxy Tab A 10 inch with an Xbox pad and it’s great. Gonna be all over this on my iPad Pro 12.9 if it comes out.

i have used all other services since OnLive. my point still stands

 

[morphineseason]

This doesn't even make sense. xcloud service is for streaming console/PC games on your mobile devices. The games don't exist as native mobile apps, and it's not a competitor for something like Apple Arcade. Apple's statement makes me wonder if they're that out of touch with understanding what these services even are, or if they're just trolling at this point. It's not much different than allowing something like Microsoft Remote Desktop Mobile on iOS, really. As long as they're not directly selling a subscription or the games in the app itself, why would it matter? It's just a wrapper that's showing a remote display.