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Epic Games Accuses Apple of Charging 'Unjustified Fees' for Required Non-App Store Purchase Link
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I think Australia might be next in the line. They have a draft bill waiting to be put in place once the EU situation is clear. Even India might have one.
I'm here for it! -- all of it!
Easy solution, and will prove who is "right" Apple or Epic. All a developer has to do is charge 43% more than what they want to make. If they want $1 per app, charge $1.43 in the App Store. Apple will get its cut, and the developer will make what they want. Perhaps they can even do what Amazon does with their Kindle books, put a disclaimer in the listing explaining why the cost is higher. If the customers really don't want to pay more, they will stop purchasing things in the App Store, which will send a clear message to Apple that they are charging too much.
I want the government to make companies pay me more too but it just is not working out.
""The company wants the court to require Apple to bring its policies into compliance with the injunction.""
whah wha wa...😂😂😂 the world does not run on games alone.
""The company wants the court to require Apple to bring its policies into compliance with the injunction.""
whah wha wa...😂😂😂 the world does not run on games alone.
It's not unheard of for developers to try to bypass Nintendo's cut:
Wisdom Tree - Wikipedia
Many adults purchase the iPhone to be their primary or even only personal computer. That isn't the case with the Switch. Video game consoles could be general purpose computers, but nobody buys them for the purpose of being a general purpose computer.
You may not think that is a relevant distinction, but it is a distinction. I can't judge for you whether that is a good enough reason to have different rules. That's your own opinion. But I think that should factor into the regulations.
I think there are many reasons that when taken in aggregate are enough to warrant regulation, even if each individual reason alone wouldn't be enough to justify a regulation. Like in the Spotify case, I didn't see as much of a problem with Apple taking a cut before Apple had a service of their own that competed directly with Spotify.
Apple doesn't let you explain why the rates are higher in their stores compared to the costs on the website, which is a point of contention. Also, in the case of apps that have Apple's app as a competitor, such as Spotify, this will not work because Apple will price its app at $1 while your app will be $1.43. Very few will buy your app.
The issue with that is when Apple is also offering a competing book store and music subscription service. They can offer almost exactly the same product for 70% of the price. They are abusing their dominance in one area to give them an unfair advantage in another area.
Probably quite a few - the regulations have so far not been oriented toward developers who feel they signed a bad contract, but on market segments which have no or limited competition due to service tying.
It will be hard to argue a payment service can't be competitive when Apple's carve-out is basically market rate for payment services.
Epic games and Spotify are not your friends either! 1, They would gladly collect all the data they could and sell it to 3rd parties at the drop of a hat. 2, 40% of epic games are owned by the Chinese government, (private ownership doesn’t exist in china) 3, Spotify pays the lowest amount of any steaming music services, it’s literally stealing from artists.
The only reason they want to destroy Apple is to steal users personal data, and OPEN up the platform to thieves and scammers just like windows was in the late 90s early 00s.
I’ll gladly be a called a Apple Fanboy, they at least try to protect my privacy.
Epic however….
www.latimes.com
And Spotify…
time.com
The only reason they want to destroy Apple is to steal users personal data, and OPEN up the platform to thieves and scammers just like windows was in the late 90s early 00s.
I’ll gladly be a called a Apple Fanboy, they at least try to protect my privacy.
Epic however….
FTC hits Epic Games with record $520 million in penalties over Fortnite privacy breaches
The North Carolina-based company's popular game duped millions of players into making unintentional purchases, the FTC said in a statement Monday.
www.latimes.com
And Spotify…
Here's Why Taylor Swift Pulled Her Music From Spotify
The 1989 star is telling artists to say no to low-royalty streaming services
it helps to realize Apple doesn't charge fees to match their infrastructure costs. They charge fees for you to be in the App Store, and offer you services (like payment, reviews, downloads) as part of being in the App Store.
They use commissions from paid apps and in-app purchases to subsidize the review/hosting requirements of other free apps, including gigantic ones like the Facebook app. Unfortunately changes to how they monetize the store will wind up hurting some group of people, and Apple can't really do that now that they are under so much regulatory scrutiny. The EU "core technology fee" is probably a lot closer to what Apple would propose switching to for regulators, although it still needs additional failsafes for small/upstart apps without a business model to fund downloads past a million.
Seems like Epic is also picking a fight with Steam?
newsletter.gamediscover.co
Revealed: Tim Sweeney's 'Epic' rant to Valve re: 30% platform cut
We're just going to go straight-out tabloid here, I guess.
newsletter.gamediscover.co
i recommend you to try and develop a game without XCode, iOS SDKs, etc
and post it on the AppStore.
The good news is you can do that very easily,
the sad news is Apple won allow you to post the app without using their tools as a mandatory requiremen unless you sell it though cydia distribution or other similar storefronts. Where you pay nothing to Apple for the fact they aren’t using any of apples services.
And just about nobody here have an issue with Apple asking for e a Core celeoper Dee is fair. They could even take 60% commission.
Apple can take whatever fee they want for using the tools and the AppStore.
The issue we have is that it’s the ONLY option for customers to deal with developers
if we the customer had the option to let’s say acquire the app directly from the developers webpage or alternative stores that would be perfect.
And if we the customers don’t want to pay Apple anything at all because we think the developers deserves 100% and Apple 0% that should be possible.
So if developers didn’t use apples Xcode or the iOS SDK then they should pay 0% and 0€ because they aren’t using their services.
I don't care. Doesn't invalidate their arguments.
I will choose to not use them if that happens.
That is blatantly false. They pay lower than Apple, but they pay more than many other music streaming services.
But even that is very misleading.
Spotify pays approximately the same as Apple when you normalize for 1. Service level, 2. Region, 3. Songs played per listener.
In other words: if an American pays for a $11 subscription from both Spotify and Apple music, the same amount of their subscription fees go to the rights holders.
- Service Level: Spotify has a free, ad-supported radio option. It is a lesser service, because listeners can't directly choose the songs they listen to. Apple does not have an equivalent service level. Rights holders have negotiated a lower fee for this service level.
- Region: different regions/countries have different subscription prices. A higher percentage of Apple's subscribers are from wealthier countries with more costly subscriptions. And that's intuitive, because most Apple Music subscribers will be Apple device owners, and Apple devices are more common in wealthier countries, on average.
- Songs played per listener: Spotify claims that their subscribers, on average, listen to more songs each month than Apple Music subscribers. Because subscriptions are a flat fee, that means there will be less paid per song played.
I record you read up on your legal history. Both the USA and EU courts have ruled you can’t charge for your IP.
In the U.S. it’s in the case of Google vs oracle.
And in EU you can look at a 2010 case of SAS Institute Inc. v. World Programming Ltd
I am not familiar with the latter, but wasn’t the Google vs oracle lawsuit an issue of fair use? Google’s use of Java’s APIs were deemed transformative in nature, fell under fair use and therefore did not violate copyright.
While technically anyone could develop a web app, iOS does not allow automatic installation of PWAs. This would be simple to implement and Android has had it for years.
Apple has also deliberately withheld important features like push notifications from PWAs for years and gotten developers locked into native apps that way, although it's possible to implement push notifications now.
How is an iOS port a huge thing for them when we’ve all coped without it for over a year?
People have other ways to play.
Epic violated the agreed terms they voluntarily signed. They knew what they were doing. And were removed. Simple.
Apple
Had no choice. The rules were clear and if they didn’t enforce it others would do the same.
Perhaps, but you can’t punish someone from breaking an illegal contract terms in EU so good luck with that argument.
In the Google Va oracle it was a in large part a fair use case.
In EU if you didn’t know the concept of fair use doesn’t exist. There is no ‘fair use’ doctrine in EU copyright law comparable to that of the United States. Instead, EU law provides an explicit list of exceptions from copyrights granted to the rights holders, each with a specific scope.
I highly recommend you to read the court case as it might bring some clarity for you and perhaps give you better insight of how to argue against the DMA and other Eau legislation
if the Oracle vs google case was to play out in EU the question that would have been answered is if APIs in question are protected by copyright. Something EU concluded in 2010 isn’t protected.
SAS sold what it described as a Learning Edition product, which was an edition of the software enabling users to learn how to use the SAS System.
The defendant, World Programming Ltd (WPL), created a software product called World Programming System (WPS) to execute application programs written in the SAS Language. In developing WPS, WPL sought to emulate much of the functionality of SAS's software as closely as possible, but did not have access to its source codes.
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