Got news for ya, if I ran a store I'd be taking commission off your sales too. Anyone would.
Apple shouldn't take any commission because they're big and greedy and mean. They should give it away for free out of guilt for daring to *gasp* turn a profit! /s
I swear, feelings have taken full control over some people's decision making. Be it this case, politics, or just life in general. Rational thought seems to be dead.
It's nobody's business to decide what Apple does besides Apple and its shareholders. If devs and customers want to walk away, they can do so. But guess what? Very few do because of the value proposition of Apple, iPhone, iOS and the App Store.
At some point, Epic, along with any other revenue-seeking developer, saw the value in Apple and its platforms. After all, it helped them turn over $1B in profit. Now all of the sudden they try to corner Apple to get them to change a policy that really didn't seem to hurt them (is $1B in profit somehow mediocre?).
It's really hard to feel sorry for Epic. They deliberately violated Apple's policies, had a lawsuit and video ready to go on their desk knowing very well Apple would pull their app, organized a rebellion against Apple and now they're giving away competitor products to further spite Apple.
Like I've said before, Apple should just go ahead and revoke all their developer entitlements now. They have no intention of remedying the issue and I don't think Apple cares at this point. There will be many other successful developers that will pay their dues and not say "thanks Apple but screw you".
Exactly. A million times this. Epic could’ve gone on a sales strike and unilaterally withdraw Fortnite from the App Store in protest of those policies, and even sue Apple over them. Instead, they deliberately ran afoul of a legal agreement they entered, in order to play the victim card, and the timing of it all just gives it away.
Not only any sane judge could and should throw away the case altogether, as it was filed in blatantly bad faith (even if some regulator/watchdog ends up investigating Apple over this; that’s an entirely different matter), Apple might even be able to countersue Epic for damages, libel, etc. And I suspect they will, eventually and especially if some sort of agreement isn’t quickly reached (in fact, if Steve was alive, I am damn sure they would, or at least he would pen one of his famously curt and scathing open letters).
By the way, to the fanboys overcompensating over fears of being labelled as such: yes, I am a huge fan of Apple as a company, and I know they are a capitalist venture. I’m always critical of monopolies, legal corruption (AKA “lobbying”) and general hypocrisy (such as Apple labeling itself as 100% environmentally-friendly and, yet, fighting Right to Repair legislation across the board to the point that one day you can’t even replace a fscking capacitor on a MacBook board without killing it (I would be perfectly content with then being restrictive when it comes to privacy-sensitive stuff like chips with secure enclaves, etc., but this is getting ridiculous). But there’s a point where you have to look at reality for what it is: a legal agreement is a legal agreement; if you want to fight it, you can either try to renegotiate it, walk away from it or take it to court. Breaking it is just about the stupidest thing you can do to get your way, even if you’re absolutely right. Epic is fscked, and rightly so.
If I played Fortnite, I’d walk away from it in a heartbeat on principle. Because I’m a 35-year-old, not a child. The only reason Epic gets away with this stupid PR stunt is the fact that their target audience are, in essence, kids and young adults who don’t know yet right from wrong, and may not take lightly to moral lessons from their parents either way. But guess who else are adults? That’s right, UE customers and Epic Store sellers (i.e. vulnerable indy devs, big houses with their own legal departments, etc.). Apple may be sometimes mercurial and/or arbitrary when it comes to their policies, but they do listen and abide by the agreements they enter, and always did (EVEN during their Lisa and og Mac 128k days, complete with pirate flags, sassy adverts and middle finger selfies thrown at IBM); as for Epic, they may very well become a corporate persona non grata in the gaming world if they keep up with this juvenile BS, all their accumulated UE-related technical prowess notwithstanding.
