Regarding #2, it is a truly mystifying move. I suppose they’re giving up on trying to fight Apple directly and will transition all their money and effort into lobbying Congress to resolve this via new legislation.
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Fortnite Now Available to All on iOS via Nvidia's GeForce NOW Streaming Service
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Epic didn’t disclose the, I’m going to call it a “securely vulnerable” for now, security vulnerability.
Software development is when you build a product that does what you say it did. Epic didn’t do that. Also, it wasn't a feature, it was an unapproved and undisclosed securely vulnerable.
I’m not sure gatekeeping is the right word since that’s what I paid Apple to do.
Epic can make any software they like but they have to do four things first:
1. Notify Apple of all changes.
2. Get Apple's permission to offer the update.
3. Notify the user of all changes.
4. Get the user's permission to apply the update.
Even if you have permission to apply updates without review if you don't notify the user of changes they can't consent to the update being applied.
Epic didn't do any of them. At best, Epic committed fraud with malicious intent. Both Tim Sweeney and the person who created the code need prison time. The only question is, who else at Epic is guilty because they knew and didn't speak up.
Even if Epic made a case and convinced a judge they have the right to circumvent Apple (parts 1 and 2), they still need the users to know what is being applied and get their consent to do so (parts 3 and 4) if for no other reason than it puts them at significant financial risk.
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And, when one considers that THIS is the kind of thing that’s possible with the controls that are in place, there is no way in heck that anything gets BETTER by removing the controls. Some people seem to feel that just by using the word sideloading, all developers will just magically start behaving themselves.
Side loading is a “thing” Samsung and Android and you can side load until the cows all home.
Man, I could watch 20 episodes of The Real Housewives of Silicon Valley and get less dramatic hand-wringing than what comes from you iFanatics. Jail time? Because a software developer decided that Apple's rent seeking was enough and decided to put their own link to a secure payment processor into their game? Geezus.
Delusional. Fortnight is hugely popular amongst the kids. Huge. I'm presuming you have no kids.
It has to run as a web app. It's not a native app. The only way to get a native app, is via the App Store. Native apps have a massive advantage of capabilities. Your argument is nonsensical.
Privacy? What are you even talking about? The kids are just playing games. What privacy, pray tell, is being invaded? This "privacy" word is thrown around as a strawman every time someone gets on their high horse to defend their favourite brand. You may as well be saying "Christianity is the best religion because of privacy and security."
Yes, jail time. For exactly the reason you give. Because what they want - and this is important - doesn't matter. They don't get to decide the rules of the game, they only get to play by them if Apple and end users agree. They put people at real financial risk in order to avoid fulfilling their contracts.
It wasn't an accident. And, since they did it on purpose then their punishment should not be lenient.
All that hand wringing again. Breach of contract is a civil offense, not a criminal one. You seriously need to rethink your civics education.
Exactly zero people were "put at real financial risk". Heck, given the software quality coming from Cupertino lately, I'm not sure that I would trust Apple's payment portal any more than I would trust Epic's.
Not really. Fortnite “the game” apparently doesn’t require a native app to work. SOME apps may need to be native, but not specifically Fortnite.
If Fortnite was still unavailable on iOS, then there would be a case to be made. As Fortnite IS available on iOS, the whole point of “We’re at the mercy of the App Store!” was, quite clearly, untrue.
Hard agree. I HATED streaming services because I only play multiplayer, and having that input lag was annoying.
Trying GFN (3080 tier) on the Mac completely changed my mind (1600p, 120fps, and input latency that is LESS than my native pc). It really is amazing, it's truly feels like your playing natively.
PS. No, don't bother with the $10 tier, the $20 tier is on another level input latency wise
Epic was putting players and developers in the line of fire by that breach of contract.
If they weren’t pleased by Apples business conditions, there were options available to them other than what they did. It was a choice, a choice at the cost of others who had no interest in this.
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If anyone paid via the alternate method they were harmed.
If anyone paid via the alternative method epic stole money from apple.
Why are you talking about criminal vs civil? Stealing and wire fraud are crimes. Crimes Epic planned Uber the instruction of the their ceo, crimes they carried out, and then admitted to.
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Lol not even close to what is going on buddy.
This is basically a website. Thats it.
Apple basically created the idea of Web Apps which is a bookmark basically and then has been trying to get rid of it and even fought with MS because they were doing their streaming service to the website after apple said fck off. Even though MS would've put just the AAA games which you can't at apple. And offered apple money. Apple said fck off.
SO EVGA NOW decided to just push it to the website as well. Same with STEAM.
EVGA,MS, and Steam all mostly carry games that cant run on the apple ecosystem in any format outside of very few games. Its anti competitive entirely. Apple has been vocal about being against what they are doing lol
No, they didn’t fight with MS. MS said what they wanted to do with native apps, Apple said no, and then helped them on their Safari solution. No fighting required.
Good option for those who want to play the game!
They weren't harmed by anything Epic did. They may have been harmed by losing access to a game because Apple removed it from the App store. You're villifying the wrong entity here.
No. No they didn't. They breached their contract with Apple. Those are entirely different things. They didn't steal anything from Apple.
And Apple fans far and wide cheered while now happily paying the same amount as everyone else for a watered down experience.
Man, I miss the days when it was third party software developers and peripheral manufacturers that made Apple users feel like second-class citizens, instead of Apple themselves.
I don’t know about all that. I was just saying you’d said there was a fight and there wasn’t one.
They were harmed because the user has every right to believe that Apple gets 30%. They were harmed because they didn't approve the changes to their software. They were harmed because their financial information was transmitted via an unapproved method.
Not paying for a service is theft. Using someone else's property without approval or paying them is stealing.
No, user's don't have any such right. Users aren't privy to contracts between Apple and developers. Not all developers pay Apple a 30% cut. Users don't really care at all whether or how much of a cut Apple gets from developers.
Users don't approve of most changes to their software. That's how auto-updates work. Given your metrics, you would call it "harming the user" if Microsoft suddenly decided to update the iOS Outlook app to add additional spam filters, or to add Xlookup and Lambda functionality to iOS versions of Excel. Or if Apple themselves added a Sunday Morning Cartoons section to the Apple TV app.
Most updates happen without strictly informing users. This isn't new.
Unapproved by Apple, that is. The only way that their financial information was ever involved was if they set up an account on Epic's store with their financial information. Users who actually prefer to pay through Apple were never under any illusions that they were paying through Apple. Ever.
In an actual legal sense (which we are talking about here), that is categorically false.