Epic Games Setting Up Webshops for iOS Developers to Offer Users Out-of-App Purchases

[0049190]

Bad, bad, bad

Apple has invested billions of dollars in building the infrastructure around computers, phones, iPads, Apple TV and so on. And they continue to invest billions each year in new technology that will benefit the developers and making it possible for them to develop new games and apps that can be even more advanced thanks to new hardware.

Apple have made this business possible in the first place. What's wrong with them benefitting from that more or less forever?

If you don't make it possible for innovators making a giant pile of money in the end, why should they risk the initial investments from the beginning?

I think you missed the argument completely. Nobody is saying Apple should not benefit, it’s how much they should benefit that’s the question. Once these third party app stores are up and running Apple users will have a genuine choice and the market will decide what is a fair price to pay which is how it should work.

 

[dandy1117]

Everything you buy for your house should only be purchased through your builders store.
Only your original car manufacturer can sell you anything for your car.
Got audio equipment? Everything played on it, the manufacturer gets a cut and determines what’s available.
AT&T should be the only company selling phones and services. They should never have been broken up.
ESSO should be the only gas station. That whole Standard Oil thing killed the consumer with inferior products.
Anything cooked on a Whirlpool range has to pass through the whirlpool store.
Geez…life would be great and so much safer and simpler that way.

I can’t tell if people are purposefully misstating the issue at hand or if they are struggling to come up with a proper analogy. I apologize for reposting, but here’s my response to a previous comment:

What if Walmart funded the infrastructure and ongoing maintenance of the factory that produces Heinz ketchup in return for exclusive supply to Walmart? This is a frequently overlooked aspect. For example, consider Target approaching Heinz to stock their products while assuming they will continue using the factories supported by Walmart.

In this tortured analogy, it might seem unfair for Walmart to prevent Heinz from selling their product elsewhere. However, it also seems reasonable for Heinz to pay a fair market value for the infrastructure provided by Walmart. Wouldn’t you agree?

 

[spazzcat]

I think you missed the argument completely. Nobody is saying Apple should not benefit, it’s how much they should benefit that’s the question. Once these third party app stores are up and running Apple will have a genuine choice and the market will decide what is a fair price to pay which is how it should work.

Its been a year, how are these 3rd party app stores doing in the EU?

 

[HighwaySnowman]

Everything you buy for your house should only be purchased through your builders store.
Only your original car manufacturer can sell you anything for your car.
Got audio equipment? Everything played on it, the manufacturer gets a cut and determines what’s available.
AT&T should be the only company selling phones and services. They should never have been broken up.
ESSO should be the only gas station. That whole Standard Oil thing killed the consumer with inferior products.
Anything cooked on a Whirlpool range has to pass through the whirlpool store.
Geez…life would be great and so much safer and simpler that way.

I don't understand why so many people's brains turn off when it comes to iDevices.

They wouldn't stand for any of those things, but they applaud it when Apple does the exact same thing.

 

[djphat2000]

A better analogy would be if a mall landlord required every store to give them a 30% cut of every sale made anywhere, even if the customer just found the product at the store and later bought it directly from the brand’s website. That’s not about fairness—it’s monopolistic behavior.

Malls charge rent to each store in the mall. Same as Apple.
While the mall rent can be fixed for the term of the lease. The least tends to go UP over time. While the "cut" for Apple has actually gone DOWN over time.

Also, while the Mall will not care if any store wanted to advertise a lower price at another store. No store in the mall would advertise someone else's lower price. Either physical or online. Certainly not from a competitor. Unless they wanted to show they "the store you are in" has a lower price than its competitors.

Just because the Appstore is digital doesn't change the fact that it is a store, and its owner is Apple. It also doesn't change the fact that there is a cost to running the store. Cheap or otherwise. And we live in a captialist world. How can any judge determine what any business charges for any service via their business?

I have zero issue with allowing any 3rd party app vendor the ability to email or otherwise advertise on their sites/platforms other means in which to pay for stuff. But, it should not come from the AppStore. Want to do it IN the application, sure. But not ON or from looking it up IN the AppStore.

 

[0049190]

Its been a year, how are these 3rd party app stores doing in the EU?

I don’t think any of them a fully up and running yet because Apple keeps putting roadblocks in the way, that’s why they keep getting fined.

 

[spunkystrawberries]

So now we see why Epic were really doing this, they want to be able to take the cream off themselves.... pure and simple greed.

Yeah. Basically at the end of the day, it's this. Sure, maybe 30% is too high of a cut (and I know it's 15% in some cases), but at this point, we're just negotiating over the percentage.

And I still can't see that, if everything went Epic's way, how Apple would make any money at all off their App Store or apps? Developers would provide all their apps for 'free' so Apple would get nothing and route all purchases (in app or the whole app) through their own services.

And yeah, at the end of the day, it does lead to a lot of extra fragmentation and messiness for both developers and the customer experience with how payments are handled. It seems to me that the real sticking point is just the percentage that has to be shared with Apple and if that's fair or not. (And I think that's totally valid to discuss and negotiate.)

 

[I7guy]

Not really, it's more of a chicken and egg problem. If Apple disappeared sure devs would be fine, because consumers would migrate to other platforms. How do you get consumers to migrate without a critical mass of apps leaving iOS? You can't, your stuck in a prisoner's dilemma where even if it would be better for all devs negotiating position if they all left iOS at once, the devs that stayed would reap the rewards of the attention of being the ones that stayed. There is too much to be gained in the short term by defecting and staying than the longer term gains if everyone left at once.

Further: the world today is different than the world of 2013 (when blackberry disappeared), far more of life is online today than in 2013. When Blackberry existed there were more options for smartphone OSs (even windows phone lasted till 2015).

Based in this Apple is still not a gatekeeper. And still if Apple disappeared shareholders, observers, commentators, employees and devs would suffer. But humanity will march in.

But I suppose we won’t agree on this point.

 

[I7guy]

I don’t think any of them a fully up and running yet because Apple keeps putting roadblocks in the way, that’s why they keep getting fined.

If the eu would be honest and state their intentions instead of a guessing game, things would be different.

 

[spazzcat]

I don’t think any of them a fully up and running yet because Apple keeps putting roadblocks in the way, that’s why they keep getting fined.

So they are doing very well, which most have predicted based on how they do on Android. People want easy; people want simple.

 

[dandy1117]

I think you missed the argument completely. Nobody is saying Apple should not benefit, it’s how much they should benefit that’s the question. Once these third party app stores are up and running Apple will have a genuine choice and the market will decide what is a fair price to pay which is how it should work.

The issue is that Apple is not only a marketplace but also a platform provider. It supplies all the APIs necessary for developers to create software on its platform. To cover the costs of providing this platform, Apple has decided to charge developers engaged in commerce on the platform. This includes requiring developers to distribute their apps exclusively through the App Store.

What could be an alternative solution to monetize the platform? One possibility is to increase the costs and charge all developers, including those of free apps, Tye fair market value for access to the development tools. Another option could be to charge consumers for access to iOS through paid operating system updates or service fees for using features like weather, maps, or Siri server requests.

 

[0049190]

In other words, you're looking forward to Tim Cook actually getting to go to jail for doing more criminal contempt?

Yeah, that would be nice. But I'd rather Apple just shut down the app store and let us install software normally.

I’ve never had a problem doing exactly that on my Mac for all those years. The AppStore store is all about control and money. Nothing to do with security and privacy. That’s a giant red herring to justify their vast profits from AppStore sales.

 

[iisdan]

The game will have to be damn good for me to go out of my way to deal with this ********. I'll just play another game on another store

 

[FriednTested]

It’s literally nothing though, that analogy oversimplifies and misrepresents the situation. Apple isn’t a physical retailer like Walmart—it’s a platform provider, more akin to a landlord renting digital space. Developers aren’t asking Apple to list their products for free while sending customers elsewhere to pay—they’re asking for the option to point users to an external checkout, especially when Apple takes up to 30% of revenue on in-app purchases.

A better analogy would be if a mall landlord required every store to give them a 30% cut of every sale made anywhere, even if the customer just found the product at the store and later bought it directly from the brand’s website. That’s not about fairness—it’s monopolistic behavior.

This ruling is about giving developers more freedom, encouraging competition, and giving consumers more choice. Apple still benefits from hosting the app on the App Store, but it shouldn’t control how every dollar flows after that.

I hope you know that a lot of malls do operate that way. My friend runs vending machines in several malls. He pays rent + revenue sharing.

 

[0049190]

So they are doing very well, which most have predicted based on how they do on Android. People want easy; people want simple.

How’s your flying car doing? It’s not because it doesn’t exist yet? That makes as much sense as your argument.

 

[falkon-engine]

If the trade is otherwise legal, then why should Apple be permitted to restrict it? macOS is not locked down in this way, SetApp exists, and a much more open business model exists outside of the App Store for App distribution…

 

[swm]

What about providing bandwidth

amazon charges absolutely bonkers prices for ebook downloads. their cut usually goes above 30%.
"Delivery Costs are equal to the number of megabytes we determine your Digital Book file contains, multiplied by the Delivery Cost rate listed below.

• Amazon.com: US $0.15/MB
• Amazon.ca: CAD $0.15/MB
• Amazon.com.br: R$0.30/MB
• Amazon.co.uk: UK £0.10/MB
• Amazon.de: €0,12/MB"

source: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500

those prices are even steeper than the average mobile network operator charges for non-unlimited subscriptions.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

Malls charge rent to each store in the mall. Same as Apple.
While the mall rent can be fixed for the term of the lease. The least tends to go UP over time. While the "cut" for Apple has actually gone DOWN over time.

Also, while the Mall will not care if any store wanted to advertise a lower price at another store. No store in the mall would advertise someone else's lower price. Either physical or online. Certainly not from a competitor. Unless they wanted to show they "the store you are in" has a lower price than its competitors.

Just because the Appstore is digital doesn't change the fact that it is a store, and its owner is Apple. It also doesn't change the fact that there is a cost to running the store. Cheap or otherwise. And we live in a captialist world. How can any judge determine what any business charges for any service via their business?

I have zero issue with allowing any 3rd party app vendor the ability to email or otherwise advertise on their sites/platforms other means in which to pay for stuff. But, it should not come from the AppStore. Want to do it IN the application, sure. But not ON or from looking it up IN the AppStore.

If you want to set up a store to sell food, you could rent a space in a mall.

OR, you could buy a bit of land and build a shop.

Apple's illegal abuse of their monopoly keeps you from doing the digital equivalent - which is setting up your own website and letting users download software from there.

If Apple didn't have a monopoly, I would not care AT ALL how much they ripped developers off for. They could charge 95% as far as I care. And I'd be free to NEVER install a single piece of software that used their idiotic app store, I could just install directly from the developer's site without Apple's unneeded and unwanted interference.

But Apple does have a monopoly on iDevice apps. And that needs to be fixed.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

amazon charges absolutely bonkers prices for ebook downloads. their cut usually goes above 30%.
"Delivery Costs are equal to the number of megabytes we determine your Digital Book file contains, multiplied by the Delivery Cost rate listed below.

• Amazon.com: US $0.15/MB
• Amazon.ca: CAD $0.15/MB
• Amazon.com.br: R$0.30/MB
• Amazon.co.uk: UK £0.10/MB
• Amazon.de: €0,12/MB"

source: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500

those prices are even steeper than the average mobile network operator charges for non-unlimited subscriptions.

Ok, so?

I can sell an ebook from my own website, I don't have to use Amazon.

NOT the same as what Apple is doing.

 

[spazzcat]

How’s your flying car doing? It’s not because it doesn’t exist yet? That makes as much sense as your argument.

But the third party app stores exist and are selling apps right now in the EU.

 

[bcortens]

Based in this Apple is still not a gatekeeper. And still if Apple disappeared shareholders, observers, commentators, employees and devs would suffer. But humanity will march in.

But I suppose we won’t agree on this point.

It is a gatekeeper because only in magical fantasy land is Apple going to disappear tomorrow...

They are important in the real world. If they disappeared we would adapt but that doesn't mean they have no dominant power in the world today, or that, today, in the real world where people actually live and make choices, that devs have a real choice about whether or not to support iOS or not.

 

[spazzcat]

Ok, so?

I can sell an ebook from my own website, I don't have to use Amazon.

NOT the same as what Apple is doing.

People have to find your website, this will cost you money. If they get to your site, will need to build trust instantly or people will not buy from your site. It will also cost you money to create a professional and trustworthy website.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

People have to find your website, this will cost you money. If they get to your site, will need to build trust instantly or people will not buy from your site. It will also cost you money to create a professional and trustworthy website.

If you think Amazon provides ANY of that... LOLNO.

 

[0049190]

The issue is that Apple is not only a marketplace but also a platform provider. It supplies all the APIs necessary for developers to create software on its platform. To cover the costs of providing this platform, Apple has decided to charge developers engaged in commerce on the platform. This includes requiring developers to distribute their apps exclusively through the App Store.

What could be an alternative solution to monetize the platform? One possibility is to increase the costs and charge all developers, including those of free apps, Tye fair market value for access to the development tools. Another option could be to charge consumers for access to iOS through paid operating system updates or service fees for using features like weather, maps, or Siri server requests.

Apple makes vast profits from their hardware sales, they could easily provide these tools and price their fees at cost which is significantly less than 30%.

 

[spazzcat]

If you think Amazon provides ANY of that... LOLNO.

You missed that point. Amazon is built on a search engine and they already have the trust of the customer.