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Epic Games Throwing a 'FreeFortnite Cup' Bash Before iOS Users Lose Access
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Jailbreaking isn't a true option, considering Apple's stance on it and the ways they discourage it.
Apple absolutely isn’t paying $0.33 out of a $0.99 transaction. First, they tend to batch smaller transactions wherever they can (not as much as they used to but they still do), but also PayPal’s fees at those prices are substantially higher than what one can get handling payments directly themselves, which Apple does. By paying PayPal to do it, you’re also paying for their service, not just the payment processing fees.
Since you seem to post this over and over, would you please explain why, if that was Apple’s goal, they would need to wait until they had Apple Silicon Macs to accomplish it? They could have done it years ago, and could have trivially done it on any system with a t2 chip (pretty much every system they sell).
Yeah, I'm sure that will be the case for a bit. But, Apple has been around a long time. These games come and go. If it weren't for Unreal Engine (which is a bigger deal), this would be a total non-issue IMO... let them go, better off without them. The world might be a better place.
No, Apple cares that everyone pays the 30% (well, except Amazon, etc.?) But, yeah, this seems all about the money for Epic as well.
It isn't that I think companies shouldn't care about these things, but they are both being rather stupid in my opinion.
I'm no security guru, but wouldn't that leave the system as a whole more open to attack?
Except that it is a Google product, so it's more or less hacked out of the box.
That's a good point given how lame the media and journalism are these days. Imagine all the 'Apple hacked again.' articles we'd be seeing every time someone side-loading had some issue.
Dangerous Android Malware Returns To Beat Google Play Store Protection
Described by security researchers as "one of the most sophisticated threats of its kind we have ever seen," Joker is back.
www.forbes.com
Research, News, and Perspectives
Android Security Threat As ‘Unremovable’ Malware Infects 45,000 Phones So Far
Security researchers warn of ongoing Android malware threat that is proving to be 'unremovable' even after a factory reset.
www.forbes.com
Yup, you must be right.
They are picking a fight with the mobile platforms because they aren't the majority of where their players are, something like 70% of players are on consoles and PC, if you're going to pick a fight where you know your own customers are going to get hurt you pick the smaller market.
I don't think that Apple would have you believe it's impossible since they have a number of pathways for loading apps onto the phone, they just limit how many apps you can side load without jailbreaking the device.
I've heard people quote this a few times but I haven't been able to find where in the rules it says you can't charge 30% more on the App Store. Do you have a reference to which rule limits this?
Sony owns a piece of Epic, a 1% piece for sure but a piece nonetheless. That inherently creates a different relationship and you probably don't want to give them cause to question a $250 million investment. Epic Games and Microsoft seemed to have come to a truce last year with a cringe "Epic loves Microsoft" after years of battling against Microsoft's Windows 10 store after Microsoft made HoloLens 2 an open platform. It does beg the question when is the last time Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo had to justify their 30% cut either because you can't get games for their platforms without them getting a cut. Let's ask an even crazier question, what justifies Steam's 30% cut and why do developers continue to pay it?
More broadly, my guess is that the consoles and desktop consist of 70% Fortnite players with mobile being the other 30% so they knowingly threw the smaller market under the bus to make a point and still kept the majority of their consumers working properly.
I actually agree that they needed to trigger a rejection on the grounds but their follow up actions I feel disadvantage Epic Games, potentially weakens their case and to an extent misses the age old lawyer advice of not talking about active legal situations because it might impact upon your case. They could have triggered the blockage without appearing to sneak through an update but instead putting it in a review version and if Apple decided to block it then file the suit. Go through the front door instead of sneaking through the back door. Now if this was intended more as a marketing campaign and the legal battle is expected to not be successful then this excessive marketing approach makes more sense.
Both companies care about money and in so far as caring about your developers helps them make money, it helps you make money.
Epic for the longest time was rumoured to have one of the more expensive licenses with everything being custom terms. Epic went to a royalty model of 5% of sales over $3000 a quarter for a while and at the start of this year moved to the one million dollar threshold they have now. Partially I wonder if this was actually a move to cut down on their processing as at $3000 a quarter means Epic getting $150, one has to wonder how much it cost them to handle that or even attempt to enforce it. One wonders if competition from Unity impacted on these decisions as well as the number of games that broke out built on Unity has shifted it from a toy framework to a much more accepted framework.
To say Apple only cares about money belies how they've consistently pushed forward the mobile phone platform, especially in terms of hardware. They have one of the better performing facial recognition systems on a phone when they could have stayed with a fingerprint reader. Their shift to FaceID pushed the competition into a particular direction. They shifted to 64-bit processors when the competition were fixated on adding more cores. The shift of the Macs to Apple Silicon could be a positive move for the platform as they get control of their own destiny there, it remains to be seen. One of the videos I've seen recently pointed out how the iPad Pro could edit HEVC video much better than Intel based hardware because of custom decoders on the Apple Silicon chips.
To put things in perspective the move by Epic Games benefits Epic Games without any benefit to Apple. There is no reason for Apple to make the change as presented. We know the actions were a foil for a future legal action and I'm sure Apple suspected something was afoot when they get a long email out of Tim Sweeney. It was written with the intent that it would show up in a legal filing. Apple is taking actions that are consistent with what makes sense for Apple and Epic Games is trying to push a boundary to see if they can get some more or trigger some sort of regulatory interference. I don't like the chance of the legal action succeeding but we'll see how it goes this coming week as the emergency injunction is handled.
Highly dependent on the market. Walmart has deliberately crushed any and all competitors in most rural markets across the country.
WWDC 2008 just re-watched this ... seems like yesterday as THIS was the first mention of App Store and it's mega start to success.
Clarification of initial business terms:
for PAID apps ONLY (Free apps remain free - this was the initial setup of App Store guidelines)
Developers set the price! (hard stop)
70% of proceeds are paid monthly to developers.
No Credit Card Fees (this is fees for the developer for each transaction and transaction per customers account with Visa/MasterCard/etc to the developer!
That was just 5 out of 5 of the highlights.
The fight against such benefits in today's mobile app success is just making me smh.
We both can post on App Store vs Play Store Malware stories to counter each other.Dangerous Android Malware Returns To Beat Google Play Store Protection
Described by security researchers as "one of the most sophisticated threats of its kind we have ever seen," Joker is back.
Research, News, and Perspectives
blog.trendmicro.com
Android Security Threat As ‘Unremovable’ Malware Infects 45,000 Phones So Far
Security researchers warn of ongoing Android malware threat that is proving to be 'unremovable' even after a factory reset.
Yup, you must be right.
Apple Battles App Store Malware Outbreak
Apple is moving to contain an outbreak of malicious apps being distributed via its official App Store that were infected with XcodeGhost malware. Hundreds of apps
But in reality both platforms as we speak carry same level of security. In the early days of Android it was obviously vulnerable since it was running in staggering 90% of the Mobile devices across OEMs in a fragmented fashion not allowing Google to patch vulnerabilities. Since 2015 things have been stabilised. I used to keep various virus scanners like Norton, Symantec, Kaspersky paid services keep my mobile clean, and when using Samsung used their Knox protection. Now a days, with Patches being released every other month, it is relatively safer.
It is impossible for any digital platform securing themselves against all forms of external threats.
Google of all has the ability to address all attacks since they are running in almost all forms of computing devices with the ability to mine unthinkable amount of online traffic, analyse and address variety of threats in the online world than any other organisation in the present world. If Google can’t find or fix threats, no one can.
Apple definitely only cares about money these days. They just became a 2 trillion-dollar company recently. Their hardware innovation has been dismally slow incremental slow since Tim Cook took over. The only thing Tim Cook has helped improve is the supply chain. Consumers will never have trouble getting a new iPhone when a new one comes out. Epic is suing Apple to benefit developers not just themselves:
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If you really believe this, you swallowed Epic's bullyotz hook, line, and sinker. Epic likes to paint themselves as brave fighters against monopolies - they already did when starting to compete with Steam -, but they in fact only care about their own profit.
Notice how Sweeney almost exclusively talks in the quoted mail about Epic getting the right to run their own storefront on iOS. The line about other developers getting the same rights is clearly only thrown in as an alibi if Apple releases it, as they eventually did.
If you have the time, you should read the agreements (indie) developers have to agree to when using the Unreal Engine or when selling things on the Unreal asset store. Let's see if you still think they really care about "fairness" after that.
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Google used to have the words "don't be evil" in it's company policy.
Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct
Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show.
gizmodo.com
Seems like Epic only cares about money these days. So what we have here are two corporations fighting over the same dime. Except Apple will throw all it's weight to keep the systems and processes in place (which may not be a bad thing)
While they themselves charge 30%. Seems hypocritical to me. However, be that as it may, 30% seems fair. Of course most developers would like to pay 0%. But nothing is stopping anybody from developing Android applications, if they are dissatisfied with Apple. Devs want Apple to run their business the way they want, not the way Apple wants.
Correct. Seems like 30% is fairly common, which was my original point, even though the wording didn’t convey what I meant upon rereading what I wrote.
I have seen you mention Epic only charges 12% a few times. Not really going to help them much in the court as it is not an independent 3rd party comparable. I could create my own app and online store and say set a commission rate of 5% - does not mean I can argue that 5% is the correct market rate or that 30% is too high. Epic store has been active for less than 2 years - who knows this may have been their strategy from the start. In addition Epic can charge more than 12% depending on how the end user pays.
Epic has been accused of selling Customers data to the Chinese Government (which has not been proven).
You don't know what their legal strategy is yet or how the court will rule. They can definitely use their 12% cut on their store as one example to show how drastically unfair Apple's 30% cut is. Where are you getting Epic can charge more than 12% on how the end-user pays? Show me an example on their store where they do this.
Nice to see you using internet incel misinformation.
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