“Get educated”? Are you aware of the the internet works at the most basic level? And what the fee really represents and the fact the people would use google search anyway?
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Fortnite for iOS and macOS Will No Longer Be Cross-Platform When New Season Launches
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Now you understand most of the frustration many of us feel with Epic over this regardless of whether Apple needs some reigning in over App Store policies. Do some more reading and you’ll see that it is true. Epic’s CEO has some very convoluted reasoning to counter this point but it is true. And publicly verifiable.
though i dont play fornite (yet)
this situation is unfortunate - forgive the pun
cross platform capability is a good thing for gaming in general
this situation is unfortunate - forgive the pun
cross platform capability is a good thing for gaming in general
You are out of 50% of the digital business mobile market if you refuse the the terms of the Policy. Furthermore, if you agree than the money you have payed is than used by the Conglomerate to compete with you (Apple Arcade, Apple Music, TV+ ...). This is typical of a vertically integrated conglomerate with a large market share in one of their businesses. They can easily force a business hand to use another of their services regardless if you agree with the terms or not. That is unfair competition
I believe that the clean for Apple to get out this situation is to start discussing with the digital market a fair game policy, rather than dictating it. Apple is a great company, did amazing things to be were they are, to get to their power position is extremely, I mean extremely difficult to achieve. But as I sometimes say, just because you earned the right to carry a gun and it’s yours it does not mean that you are allowed to use it anyway you please to target others, even in self defense ...
Case in case, the latest retaliation by Apple was stopped by the law. Just notice that in the latest trial the one that was stopped was Apple. Epic, simply was told, for now if you want to stay in, you need to follow Apple policy! Apple was told, you need to keep the devs account for the other businesses even if they decide not to follow the App Store policy and remain out!
Apple retaliation was abusive and monopolistic. They were using other extraneous means to force Epic not only to remain in the App Store but also to comply with the Policy. THIS IS HUGE! and will form evidence for later trials.
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xcode and its bug output not super user friendly compare to other language. Epic just pure middleman want to gain more profit .
according to rule is non digital item example scratch card can be bought via visa but apple divide the loop hole saying enhancement so rejected. .
Amazon charges even more than 30% if you sell a book through their Kindle system or sell a book through them. Unlike Apple which makes a relatively consistent and simple fee, Amazon and Ebay have complicated rules that make it hard to know or estimate the charges.
Imagine if a seller on Ebay put a link to buy the item directly and not pay Ebay fees. Or when you sell a book on Amazon you put a link to buy the book without paying Amazon's fees. Thats what Epic is asking for. You could argue that all of these (Ebay, Amazon, Apple) take too much commission but they are certainly due some commission. And in the case of Apple, they are providing an entire programming environment for those developers. I recall 25 years ago, where you would have to spend about $400 for Metrowerks Codewarrior to program for the Mac,
Lets say company A sells their app for $200. Apple takes $60.
Epic sells 20 micro transactions for $10. Apple takes $3 x 20 = $60.
Doesn't matter how you want the customer to pay, Apple wants their 30% commission and I don't see why it is worse for someone doing micro transactions compared to someone doing one large transaction.
The harm is that you might need to use different payment methods depending on the app.
With today system, Apple forces developers into one payment system, which is a huge convenience.
What I love about this is Fortnite also has this garbage about split vbuck wallets by platform. So now the money I've spent on vbucks is stuck in iOS. They're just punishing players.
Like I said in my other post, you can further qualify any market to inflate numbers. 50% of the digital mobile market maybe, but in the overall gaming market, it’s almost nothing, as evidenced by the fact Epic decided not to temporarily follow the rules in order to keep their product in there. Clearly that market isn’t that important to them, hence why they are doing what they are doing now, it’s a calculated move. You could also count the switch as a mobile gaming device, so the 50% doesn’t reflect reality, especially since only a certain percentage of iPhone owners installs and plays game on their device, whereas 100% of switch owners do, that’s why I said the iPhone competes in too many markets to define the market as simply “mobile phone platform”, it should be considered a limited-purpose gaming device for the purpose of this case. If you decide the switch is another segment entirely, then Nintendo owns basically 100% of that market (portable gaming device? I guess) and most games aren’t on the platform, and are wildly successful, which shows me that the entire gaming market should be considered rather than a subdivision of it. It’s moving the goalpost in order to suit your own storyline.
I also think you put too much weight to the recent decision by the judge. You have two dev accounts for basically the same dev. Once you’re banned, you can’t create a new account for yourself. I don’t think we’ve had a case like this before. Apple’s logic made sense: it’s the same developer, if they wanted to create that second account after the ban, we wouldn’t allow it, so why allow it because it was created before. The judge though took UE clients into account and in order not to impact them, decided that since it was created before the ban, it could stay in function. I think the decision has a lot more to do with other devs than with the case at hand.
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Evidence works both ways. It could work in Apple’s favor.
They very well may not be able to for the same reasons they are having issues with EPIC.
Here’s the official Apple statement:
Are these rules difficult to work with? I honestly don't know, I'm not a developer. However, they could have their streaming service on iOS as long as they provide a means to review the games and follow the same set of guidelines that all other developers follow.
As far as an HTML version of xClould or Stadia. Again, I'm not a developer and can't even begin to assume its possible. However, I do remember playing Quake III Arena in a browser like 5 or more years ago. It wasn't bad, and I'm sure such things have improved by now.
Again, I think the greater point here is that everyone wants to make more money. Especially during a world wide quarantine. It's getting harder to make a buck, and Apple just has money dropping out of their collective pockets at this point. EPIC and others want more of it. And even though they get exactly what they want in payments out of that 70% cut. They see the ability to make more. it's easy money, no real work needed. Just get Apple to give up some more. And Apple, like every other publicly traded company. Isn't about to do that.
Honestly, EPIC could just remove all IAP from the app today. Have zero in app purchases. Email all of there customers and say, from now own. Purchasing vBUCKS needs to be completed at www.epicsucksitbutbyvbuckshere.com
Problem solved.
Problem solved.
My kid is asking for a $15 game, like a child. I said no. He gets nothing. He has plenty of toys and other things to play with. Like most kids.
iPhones are cheap but, they are not that cheap. If that kid already has a perfectly working iPhone(#), they "may" get another phone for their birthday, or Christmas, Hanukah, etc. But, it's not happening all at once, and in many cases not at all. What is that parent going to do with that older iPhone? Or newer iPhone if they just got it recently? Think they are going to get that kid any Android device, and then add it to their already expensive cellphone plan? And keep the iPhone? Easy choice to make. No, you get no new phone and your just fine with the one you have. You get a new phone when the this plan is up and you maybe able to pick something different then. But, it's not happening today. Lookup how many rich parents are out there in the world. We call them the 1% for a reason. There isn't many of them. MANY people are out of work in the US. As a parent, we could give 2 poops about Fortnite or any other game for that matter. WAY more important things to worry about. Like sending our kids to school safely.
EPIC picked the worst time (world wide pandemic), and did the worst thing to do in the manner in which they did it.
Shame, as I used to love playing Unreal. Way back on my G3 beige tower. With my Rage 128 ATi card. And later on my G4 with Unreal Tournament, and G5. Thing is. I was, am, and will continue to remain on the Apple platform. Games come and go. Always something new, if you have the time of course. But, for any gaming company to hang their hat on something so ridiculous as a markup fee that everyone else charges. Nuts. In an already nuts world.
Because $99/year is peanuts, and we could skip the app store and its insane approval processes?
In one instance, we had a 3rd party library that had a hardcoded string (that was never used) in it that got flagged. Our app was rejected for partially supporting a specific feature, despite the fact that we didn't use the feature at all. Meanwhile, our backend team was coordinating with a 3rd party vendor for an upgrade, and our app had to be released by a certain date. We almost missed the target date because a 3rd party library had a hardcoded string that got flagged by Apple. And we have to pay $99/year for that privilege.
I'm a bit torn by this dispute between Epic and Apple since my 13-year old daughter enjoys Fortnite on iOS with her friends—some of whom play on other platforms and will be separated from the group. Besides a cut of the revenue stream, Apple stands to lose hardware sales. I actually purchased an iPad Pro for her use, and that would not have otherwise occurred. I also play the game myself (Level 203 if you know what that means) on a Mac Pro, so the Epic embargo of macOS has me peeved. I suspect I will buy into another platform so we can enjoy the new season.
FYI, Fortnite has purchases for skins and accessories that are strictly cosmetic. There are no purchases like powerups that enhance your winning outcomes. In that regard, I find the design admirable, especially for such a high-quality freemium with continuous content enhancements.
FYI, Fortnite has purchases for skins and accessories that are strictly cosmetic. There are no purchases like powerups that enhance your winning outcomes. In that regard, I find the design admirable, especially for such a high-quality freemium with continuous content enhancements.
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Yeah, as long as you exclude every one else, than maybe. The only metric that the app store excels in is sales. Personally, I find the Windows app store to be the easiest to deal with, but Google's isn't bad if you know what you're doing.
Maybe this is exactly why the concept of the App Store is good for the consumer. It stops “garbage apps” from entering the system and degrading the quality.
I suspect Apple secretly wants to get rid of Epic and especially Fortnite from its platforms as a selling point to parents!
I've heard comments at my school from parents and teachers about Fortnite that makes me think the purchasers, not the users, see no Fortnite as a big advantage...
All EPIC has done is made me not able to play fornite with my kid on occasion. And, by kicking me off Fortnite, I guess my wife is has a more favorable view of them...
For families, EPIC is holding open the door for Apple and the future of their gaming platform.
Not at all. Platforms are now a family affair. iCloud and parental controls + the status of iphones have pretty much locked in initial purchases for pre-teens. There isn't a service that is going to sway iphone sales, particularly as most of the things that kids get addicted to, Fortnite, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, are frowned upon by parents anyway.
iPhone market share has remained 45% for the last 5 years in the US.
U.S. iPhone user share 2014-2022| Statista
How many people have iPhones in the United States? In 2022, there were more than 120 million iPhone users in the United States, accounting for nearly 49 percent of all smartphone users in the country.
www.statista.com
You're forgetting fragmentation hell. Quick, without Googling, which API target number do you develop for? Bet you don't have a clue.
iOS: Target one version behind and you cover the majority of users. This has been true for over a decade.
And Android simulators will never match the performance of iOS simulators. Have developed an app for both iOS and Android with the same exact features. Recompiling and running an app on an iOS simulator took less than 10 seconds. Android took 5 minutes to re-compile.
It's obvious you're biased, so I'm going to stop the discussion here.
21. I think we're developing for 22 now, because Google is forcing us to. We have a few issues related to different devices, but generally we have enough variation in devices where testing against fragmentation is just part of the process, and we deal with it.
But on iOS I've been dealing with differences on older phones vs newer phones. I suspect that it's related to the amount of RAM on the phone, but since Apple pretends like the SE (2016) runs the same as the 11 pro, I have no idea. We also had a bug that effected some 6s's. Unit tests that work on iOS 13.1 don't work on 12.4 or 13.3. I could go on. At least with Android, you know what to expect and the tooling around it is adequate. Because iOS is presented as uniform (and it is for 99% of developers) the tooling around inconsistancies basically doesn't exist.
Sorry, the experience of playing Fortnite on an 2018 iPad pro at 120fps and with airpod pros is BETTER than my new Asus G14 with a 4900HS. I don'y think you understand what is coming with respect to Apple silicon.