Google Pulls Fortnite From Play Store, But Game Remains Available Through Other Android Sources [Update: Epic Games Sues Google]

[compwiz1202]

If easy sideloading of apps is so important to you why did you get an ios device? I chose it because it is a walled garden and the platform is safe. You had options before you bought. Why are developers trying to force a change that wasn’t there before, and one I don’t want.

Especially since you have Android for more customization but less security

 

[jgdeschamps]

If Apple applied the same policies from the iOS store to the Mac App Store, you wouldn't even be able to buy from Steam. The only "App Store" would be the Mac App Store.

And you are reinforcing the point that the "freedom" you get has a high chance to get you, the consumer, screwed big time when compared to a properly controlled environment. Why? Because I bought games outside Apple's Mac App store, and now I cannot access said games due to rivalries between Steam and Apple. On the other hand and as an example, I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum long ago using the Mac App Store, and even though you won't find it available for purchase there anymore, Apple is still hosting my copy on its servers so I can install it on Snow Leopard or Catalina. That's good customer service. Now, ask me when I'll buy a Mac game on Steam again... hint: NEVER.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

This is why I think Apple is screwed. These developers want Apple to take ZERO and that is what they are pushing for. To date I have heard no reasonable amount mentioned by Epic or anyone else. They just want Apple to take nothing, or at least that’s how it seems to me.

Or maybe they want to be able to just break apart the walled garden? Software from anywhere to be installed like the Intel Macs?

Really? You've heard from developers directly and they say they want to give Apple ZERO? Doubtful. Maybe an alternative avenue for distributing their apps where they can control their costs. From a business standpoint, doesn't that seem fair?

You've probably heard no discussion about "reasonable amount" because it's none of your business. Why should you know?

 

[SegNerd]

I still find it ridiculous that someone walking in my yard, and trips, they can sue me.

No, they can’t. This is just an urban legend used to try to scare people into allowing even more restrictions on their legal rights. You did not cite any source or case where someone successfully sued for this.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

If easy sideloading of apps is so important to you why did you get an ios device? I chose it because it is a walled garden and the platform is safe. You had options before you bought. Why are developers trying to force a change that wasn’t there before, and one I don’t want.

I got an iOS device because I like the the unique apps like iMessages, and for iOS itself. Being a "walled garden" and "safe" does not even cross my mind. I've used both Android and iOS and I settled on iOS (as my main phone), but not because it's safer than Android.

As a matter of fact, I have to carry an Android phone with me to be able to run some apps that Apple has disallowed from running on an iOS (or, at least, they don't allow them on their App Store). In particular, networking tools that show more than very basic information and Apple doesn't allow apps to access much of the hardware in an iPhone directly that is needed to be able to use certain tools. And I mean tools that are used for legit reasons, as in my job as an IT guy. Too much power and control if you ask me.

 

[cocky jeremy]

As a part-time developer, a 30% cut made sense a few years ago when we were saving on packaging, distribution logistics, printing copies, etc.

But nowadays, everything's available as a download. Many modern services empower us to make subscriptions and one-time payments easily, securely and for much less.

Google and Apple and the others have to step up the game. They make so many billions with that cut, it's not like they can't do something.

How much would you make without Apple's store? Nothing. You don't get anything for free. They charge 30%. You agree to it or move on.

 

[cocky jeremy]

The only issue is there is no other place to go, you do know ever other company invests time and resources just like Apple, this is the very reason they are in an Anti Trust lawsuit at the moment. 100% unfair tactics and abuse of power.

Apple charging 30% is unfair, but everyone else doing it is ok? lol. 30% is standard across most platforms.

 

[PsykX]

You don't get anything for free.

Developers already pay $100/year for their developer licence. They also need to buy a Mac to develop in Xcode. And usually they also buy products such as iPhones and iPads to test their products. That 30% is added on top of that.

You agree to it or move on.

And THAT is the problem. It's called monopoly.

If tomorrow, Apple decides the new price is 90% instead of 30%, we'll all have to swallow the pill or up the price for the customers, so we can still get as much revenue. The other solution is to implement direct payment solutions, which will make Apple automatically pull or reject our app.

Luckily, on the Mac, on Windows and even on Android, there are still alternatives to App Stores, which enables us to lose just a few cents per transaction as opposed to a whopping 30%.

 

[Bluetoot-]

Does Epic have what it takes to go up against 2 tech companies? I mean you are spreading yourself thing. They could have dealt with one then the other now taken on 2 at once. It is pure hubris. And it may backfire.

nvm this was not the post I was trying to reply to.

 

[smetvid]

Yeah? How much, exactly?


They didn't have to. They could have allowed app downloads from websites, just like any Mac or PC can do. Instead they chose the walled garden approach to get a slice of all the revenue, and did it under the guise of security. Sure, you're more protected, but we're not all idiots. My Mac is doing just fine downloading apps from the internet, thank you very much.

What does any consumer have to gain from that? Most consumers really don't care and they are happy to have a store where they can find any app and not have to worry about 5000 wannabe stores to look for something. In fact from a user experience perspective it is better not to have a store created by every Tom, Dick and Harry.

It is only developers that have an issue with this walled approach and it impacts consumers in no way.

 

[Altivec88]

I got an iOS device because I like the the unique apps like iMessages, and for iOS itself. Being a "walled garden" and "safe" does not even cross my mind. I've used both Android and iOS and I settled on iOS (as my main phone), but not because it's safer than Android.

As a matter of fact, I have to carry an Android phone with me to be able to run some apps that Apple has disallowed from running on an iOS (or, at least, they don't allow them on their App Store). In particular, networking tools that show more than very basic information and Apple doesn't allow apps to access much of the hardware in an iPhone directly that is needed to be able to use certain tools. And I mean tools that are used for legit reasons, as in my job as an IT guy. Too much power and control if you ask me.

I respect your reason for choosing Ios but just because security and a walled garden was not a reason for you, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t for others such as myself. I ask you to respect my decision for buying. These rules were in place before either of us bought our phones, you may even hate this aspect of ios but you bought it anyways. Why do i have to be forced into a change that I don’t want when we both knew the rules going in.

 

[Ethosik]

No, they can’t. This is just an urban legend used to try to scare people into allowing even more restrictions on their legal rights. You did not cite any source or case where someone successfully sued for this.

What Happens If Someone is Injured on My Property?

An injured guest, customer or trespasser may be able to bring a personal injury lawsuit against you. Depending on how the person was injured and what their status was on your property, you could be held liable.

www.legalmatch.com

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Except that Epic are suing both for almost identical reasons. Apple can use that in their case to point out the hypocrisy and say “see, even if we DID open it open they’d STILL not be happy”

Yeah - that might weaken their position a bit. I wonder if they could argue that Apple and Google are engaging in price-fixing?

 

[TiggrToo]

Yeah - that might weaken their position a bit. I wonder if they could argue that Apple and Google are engaging in price-fixing?

Oh, the same way that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo do?

That’s the issue - this isn’t just Apple or Google. The console makers all levy a 30% fee.

 

[Abazigal]

Oh, the same way that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo do?

That’s the issue - this isn’t just Apple or Google. The console makers all levy a 30% fee.

Epic knows it would be suicidal to take on every platform at the same time. So they are starting with who they perceive to be the easiest prey - Apple.

Apple just recently went through their own antitrust hearings, and has been in the news for a number of potentially monopolistic practices, so perhaps Epic is betting that public sentiment against Apple isn’t the best at the moment. Epic probably knows they don’t have a very strong case to begin with, so they are using social media to fan the flames and appeal to emotion and letting the public wage their war for them.

If they are able to extract concessions from Apple, then this strengths their case to go after other platforms such as Sony or Nintendo now that they have established a precedent.

It doesn’t help that pundits have always gravitated towards Apple cynicism, because that’s what generates clicks and views. Many equate being cynical or critical of Apple with intelligence / thinking outside the box. It was the case with Apple’s business model many years back (the iphone will lose to cheaper android phones!), now it’s the App Store (Apple is being greedy!), and it will move on to something else in the future when they realise that they were wrong all along and Apple was right and their original arguments no longer hold water.

The few constants in the world - death, taxes and Apple cynicism (no matter how well they do).

 

[RevTEG]

Um... the law? Well, maybe.

Suppose there is a restaurant that says “By entering this restaurant, you consent to being killed by an axe murderer.” You think it’s a joke so you head in, and you get slashed. It’s OK because you knew the rules, right?

Obviously not. It is possible to enter into a contract and then try to make an argument that the contract is illegal and thus unenforceable. I don’t know if Apple’s contract is illegal, but Epic obviously wants to find out.

‘I get what you’re saying. However, Epic games has been in the App Store for what a decade? Apples rules are not new to them. So, thinking Apple is “joking” isn’t something businesses do when they enter legal contracts, especially multimillion dollar companies. They have lawyers.

If i see a sign that says, bridge out and i still drive over the edge... that’s on me not the road company. They warmed me.

 

[Ramchi]

The exact opposite. Apple handle all the CC issues, including chargebacks. They host an online store, make your app available 24/7 to the general public. They provide a backend infrastructure to support leaderboards, trophies and synchronization.

They handle basic marketing and promotions, they also handle subscription management as well.

The developers then in turn get to develop and not worry about all that.

CC charges are very negligible in any online transactions, 24 X 7 just App Store, whereas the App developer has to provide SLA to their customers which is way different than hosting a static App in an App Store not worrying about fulfilling obligations. All the back end App Specific infrastructure are hosted by the developers (WhatsApp server stores WhatsApp data, not Apple unless you choose a paid iCloud services of Apple). App data in App Store vs Customers data in servers are way too different.

Marketing promotion of Apps for developer’s potential customers without giving opportunity for developers to promote the way they want and mining the data of their customers etc...

Developers already pay $100/year for their developer licence. They also need to buy a Mac to develop in Xcode. And usually they also buy products such as iPhones and iPads to test their products. That 30% is added on top of that.


And THAT is the problem. It's called monopoly.

If tomorrow, Apple decides the new price is 90% instead of 30%, we'll all have to swallow the pill or up the price for the customers, so we can still get as much revenue. The other solution is to implement direct payment solutions, which will make Apple automatically pull or reject our app.

Luckily, on the Mac, on Windows and even on Android, there are still alternatives to App Stores, which enables us to lose just a few cents per transaction as opposed to a whopping 30%.

Very valid points, developers have to move out of the platform that charges percentages of the revenue, restrictions that do not allow them to develop their business on their own reasonable terms.

Mobile phones have become part of everyone's life and we need more OS choices to compete iOS & Android.

Developers community must work towards this and moving out of dictatorial and ransom platforms even if that hurts them.

When large pool of developers take such actions it affects the ecosystem and OS just like it affects developers.

Even governments don’t tax this much for the kind of services they provide.

 

[Le0M]

It all comes down to one thing: greed.

 

[Andropov]

As a matter of fact, I have to carry an Android phone with me to be able to run some apps that Apple has disallowed from running on an iOS (or, at least, they don't allow them on their App Store). In particular, networking tools that show more than very basic information and Apple doesn't allow apps to access much of the hardware in an iPhone directly that is needed to be able to use certain tools. And I mean tools that are used for legit reasons, as in my job as an IT guy. Too much power and control if you ask me.

This was sadly necessary since hardware info (MAC addresses and such) were being used as a way of tracking and identifying unique users after Apple deprecated the UDID.

Still, it has nothing to do with the AppStore since it's enforced from iOS itself (networking APIs no longer return real addresses that can be used as a way of identifying users) and not the App Store policies.

 

[ikramerica]

Epic gets $8 instead of $7 and Apple gets zero dollars instead of $3 for providing distribution, cross device management, etc.

You may say Apple is greedy, but Epic decided to make Apple provide their services for free. How is that not greedy?

 

[ikramerica]

This was sadly necessary since hardware info (MAC addresses and such) were being used as a way of tracking and identifying unique users after Apple deprecated the UDID.

Still, it has nothing to do with the AppStore since it's enforced from iOS itself (networking APIs no longer return real addresses that can be used as a way of identifying users) and not the App Store policies.

Plus, he is a professional technician who has to carry a special tool to do a job. That really doesn’t impact consumers who want a phone for consumer purposes. which seems to be his point. As a consumer device, he likes the iPhone. But for his specific professional needs, he also has an android device to help him.

My wife has an android tablet to test apps. But also an iPhone and iPad for personal use. What’s frustrating is that we can’t develop iOS apps without buying a new Mac that runs Xcode, because Apple only let’s you use Xcode on the latest MacOS, but I can’t upgrade my Mac because it will break programs I use that would cost thousands to upgrade.

 

[atomic.flip]

Yeah sorry to say but Apple is obviously being greedy (just like any other corporation would be.)

on the one hand I can hardly blame Apple for taking the stance they do as they put in the up-front investment to develop the storefront in the first place. Also, you have to consider how all retail purchases work.

Let’s say you want your product to be on the shelves at Best Buy. Well you have to give them a cut. Cause who is doing the selling? Best Buy is. Now 30% is not an uncommon number in the software world.

Meaning, the product manufacturer would give the seller a 30% discount on their product which they then can use to either charge MSRP or really what ever they want and then keep that difference as profit.

Here is where things get a little dicey. In the scenarioI mentioned there are tons of different places you can offer to sell your product. Even online at your own website. But in the world of Apple there is no way to offer any software product and now even an in-app purchase is something you must share with Apple.

Apple clearly has such negotiating power because of the massive user base and also because of the entirely closed ecosystem that they can dictate terms and just ruin a company by denying them access to the storefront.

Also, Apple offers no clear way for a company to get their products advertised or placed in the AppStore. They too dictate those terms. That isn’t as much of an issue from an anti-competitive practice. But the simple and obvious solution to this is to either:

1. Allow side loading of apps. (This is least likely to occur for a litany of reasons.)

2. Allow in-app purchases to be executed by what ever means the developer / product manufacturer wishes. (Also less likely, as Apple will argue that the content delivered via in-app purchase is being hosted on their content delivery servers and the data storage and transfer costs money, thus compensation is merited.)

3. Incentivize using an in-app purchase vs another means by putting in controls and limitations on their use:

For example: Purchases that are not made in-app must be made completely outside the Apple ecosystem by utilizing a desktop web browser or mobile Safari etc. Thus the user must exit the App and go else where to complete the transaction.

They can even implement more controls on in-app advertising and restrict the use of notifications to let a user know about product updates for purchases made outside the AppStore.

If they allow this and let Epic or whomever see how much harder it will be to collect money from the user base they will see that even 30% is worth the investment to make purchases as easy as possible.

FYI: I know this for a fact because my career in mobile tech began with analyzing device interfaces and redesigning the user interface to make purchases and other functions as easy as possible. The result of this changes the Average Revenue Per Unit generated. ARPU. This is a huge factor when selling phones to carriers and negotiating the value / justifying the cost.

However, while this still matters it only matters to Apple unless they demonstrate the alternative to the developers a bit more clearly by offering or allowing alternatives in the first place.

 

[farewelwilliams]

It’s stupid for instance to take 30% of a subscription service every month like Spotify which is their sole means of revenue and Spotify uses their own servers to host their data. The flat rate of 30% across everything is nonsensical.

Perfectly fair. Spotify converts the user outside the app, they keep 100%. If Spotify converted the user to paying inside the app, Apple had a hand in that and so they deserve a cut. Apple has featured Spotify many times on the front page of the App Store. Apple built the App Store and the foot traffic of 500 million users per week, they deserve the 30% if they converted some of that to paying customers. If Spotify converted the user before the user downloaded the app, obviously Apple gets 0%.

There should be variation based on the service being offered.

If they did, the next argument is "Why does Apple get to dictate that gaming is X%, but utility apps are Y%?". It never ends.

The banning of cloud gaming in general is just an outright stupid policy and the defending of it is incomprehensible.

Apple has never stated the reason (contrary to what has been reported by The Verge and other outlets). I suspect the UX is terrible, no matter which service implements it. It's due to the hardware: the touch screen itself has a ~50ms delay and combine that with a roundtrip delay via LTE + render of a frame + encoding/decoding a frame = ~150ms means remote gaming is not good. 200ms delay is just not going to be a great experience and Apple inadvertently could be blamed for it. PS4 remote play is barely passable due to the machine being located within the same network, so they allow that.

These policies also don’t apply to everyone, such as Amazon Prime being sold outside the Apple Store.

No one else has a Prime-like membership. I believe if there was a Prime membership competitor, they too can also get the same benefits. So far there's only one like it in the world, so Apple hasn't put that in the guidelines.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Developers already pay $100/year for their developer licence.

Considering an app reviewer gets paid $30/hr + benefits, $100 pays for 3 hours of app/update submissions. How many updates does a developer submit to the store per year? Likely more than 3.

They also need to buy a Mac to develop in Xcode. And usually they also buy products such as iPhones and iPads to test their products. That 30% is added on top of that.

How much does it cost an app developer to use Google Maps for high volume usage? Thousands per month.
How much does it cost an app developer to use Apple Maps for equivalent high volume usage? Free.

(Keep in mind, Apple makes $0 from Yelp, but Yelp saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by using Apple Maps in their apps)

How about Google's Firebase? Thousands per month again.
How about Apple CloudKit? Up to 2 petabytes of storage for free.

How about distributing Android apps to China? Extra 1-2 weeks of dev time to implement against Baidu's policies and SDK.
How about distributing iOS apps to China? No extra work

How much is a Mac mini and iPod Touch? $1k.


Not even factoring in the hundreds of millions of dollars Apple reinvests back into developer programs. Compare Google's yearly SDK updates vs Apple's SDK. Apple's SDK wins by far.

 

[alien3dx]

Considering an app reviewer gets paid $30/hr + benefits, $100 pays for 3 hours of app/update submissions. How many updates does a developer submit to the store per year? Likely more than 3.

I have no problem on this because they are supportive and quick. Compare to google they ban first if something wrong and has to change according to their request and make new namespace project.

How much does it cost an app developer to use Google Maps for high volume usage? Thousands per month.
How much does it cost an app developer to use Apple Maps for equivalent high volume usage? Free.

My site using google maps instead of apple maps. Apple still lacks of information compare to another vendor.

How about Google's Firebase? Thousands per month again.
How about Apple CloudKit? Up to 2 petabytes of storage for free

Only using firebase for crash event on iOS/Android apps. Before using fabric.

How about distributing Android apps to China? Extra 1-2 weeks of dev time to implement against Baidu's policies and SDK.
How about distributing iOS apps to China? No extra work

We send apk so client can sideload.

How much is a Mac mini and iPod Touch? $1k.

For optimal like me, I have iMac and iPod touch and other so basically you shouldn't calculate cost like that. If you dare to calculate should how return on investment (ROI) .

Not even factoring in the hundreds of millions of dollars Apple reinvests back into developer programs. Compare Google's yearly SDK updates vs Apple's SDK. Apple's SDK wins by far.

Google always win for their services and provide sdk. Apple err aa..