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Judge in Apple v. Epic Case Sides With Apple on Fortnite and Epic on Unreal Engine [Updated]
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yes for music, but stuff bought prior to when they changed is still DRM'd. Not sure if you just remove it. I believe movies are still DRM'd however.
Am I missing an obvious loophole for Epic here?
Create a new app. Call it The Epic Physical Game Store (EPGS). On this app, you can buy physical Epic Game cards pre-loaded with money. Like a Target Card or Walmart Card or whatever. Since it's a physical good that gets mailed to your house, there's no 30/15% commission.
The EPGS is linked with your Fortnite account, so whatever you buy on the EPGS app shows up on your Fortnite app. No IAP in Fortnite at all. You want a gun in Fortnite, it comes out of the credit you have from the EPGS app.
I would assume (not sure) that digital gift cards sold at typically physical stores are also exempt from the 30/15% commission. If so, EPGS can sell them too and you don't have to wait for the mail.
Would this be a violation of AppStore policy?
I can see where Epic might not like this path because players would be more informed about how much they're spending. Epic probably wants people to lose track of how much IAP they're buying and seeing an account credit drain from $50 to $0 in a couple of hours would be eye-opening for many players, I imagine.
Create a new app. Call it The Epic Physical Game Store (EPGS). On this app, you can buy physical Epic Game cards pre-loaded with money. Like a Target Card or Walmart Card or whatever. Since it's a physical good that gets mailed to your house, there's no 30/15% commission.
The EPGS is linked with your Fortnite account, so whatever you buy on the EPGS app shows up on your Fortnite app. No IAP in Fortnite at all. You want a gun in Fortnite, it comes out of the credit you have from the EPGS app.
I would assume (not sure) that digital gift cards sold at typically physical stores are also exempt from the 30/15% commission. If so, EPGS can sell them too and you don't have to wait for the mail.
Would this be a violation of AppStore policy?
I can see where Epic might not like this path because players would be more informed about how much they're spending. Epic probably wants people to lose track of how much IAP they're buying and seeing an account credit drain from $50 to $0 in a couple of hours would be eye-opening for many players, I imagine.
Epic could probably do that as long as the app complies with the guidelines. However, the user experience might be less than stellar as you would have to go to Epics' website twice. Apple would probably not allow the gift cards to be applied via the app.
I don't see how Apple could prevent an app from applying the code via the app.
We have a store call Wawa (like 7-11) that has a card. I can load a gift card right onto the app. If the EPGS app is tied to the Fornite account (no reason to think that it couldn't), then all you would have to do is type in the code from the card to the linked Fortnite account. No need to visit Epic's website.
This works for just about any store app that has gift cards. Like Chick-fil-a, I type in the number on the back of the card and viola. Hell, I can even reload the card with ApplePay right in the app, although that might be a stretch as there are no digital chicken sandwiches at CFA.
Not an ideal user experience, but it's not awful either.
Wawa doesn't deliver digital goods, like a game. As I said, I don't know. The gift cards are an interesting concept.
Banning the developer account for the entire Unreal Engine seems retaliatory, especially as it would affect many other developers. As for the world they created, Apple and Google are both directly responsible, as are all the other developers that have enabled micropurchasing. Apple lives for nickel and diming people, because making a cut of 30% of all sales through mobile games and apps is basically a complete cashcow for Apple. This isn't necessarily a completely bad thing, as this goes to the benefit of the customers and the company by providing financial support for new hardware and development. Epic Games is definitely in the wrong for enabling purchasing inside the app and sidestepping Apple, violating Apple's ToS (warranting pulling the app). Mobile gaming in general is toxic for this ****. There are very few games that you can find on the app store that doesn't have micro-purchasing. Most games are built so that they intentionally encourage the use of micropurchasing by time-gating content. If they could deliver AAA games through iOS and Android platforms, then maybe this would change.
They get hate mostly on these forums, echo chambers full of Apple fans. Otherwise, nowadays few people really support Apple.
However you may take it, 30% is very much, especially for small dev companies or startups. Anyone trying to change the status quo imposed by a trillion dollar company, is a hero in my book.
If they win, most probably, Epic won't raise prices, but keep them the same, increasing their margins. But as i said, this helps developers mostly and consumers.
I'm not sure what "many many developers" find what Apple gives them a great deal, because a lot of their services suck or are buggy. Being an Apple dev is a pain, a lot of the times. The main app you get from Apple, the one that you use to build everything - XCode - has a 3.3 rating on the App Store with lots of real developers complaining about its quality and lack of basic features. This should give anyone an idea on the quality of services you get by paying 99$/year and 30% of every sale.
Yes the Ooblet thing is definitely Apple related
as for Xcode or Apple Developer the fact of the matter is that people use it, people want in on the Apple market, on the Apple approach, complaining is fine, criticism is welcomed, but the tools are offered...
Xcode infact is not limited for only those who pay 99/yr and I suspect the same for Apple developer app
furthermore I am trying to find an official score for Microsoft alternative so far having no luck with visual studio I did however got to an external reviewer site in which Xcode and visual studio are comparable
Ingress and Pokemon Go passcodes cannot be redeemed in the iOS apps due to Apple policy. You have to do it via a website.
If the only thing you can use the cards on is digital goods, then yes, it would be against App Store policy
People use Xcode because they have no choice. This is the whole Apple problem. You have no choice. You have to pay their taxes and agree to their terms. There's no other way. If you want to make products for their users, you HAVE to use their tools. It wouldn't be a problem if those tools were great. I wouldn't mind paying if the tools were great. But they're not, quite the opposite. You get Xcode for free, but you can't do anything with it, unless you pay that 99$.
You get Xcode for free out of the Mac App Store, they ship the command line tools that can help you build most of what you need without the main Xcode app as well. Apple have been giving away Xcode for almost two decades now (save for a period where they charged a nominal $5 fee for it) to enable developers to build applications and get started. Years ago they gave away Dashcode, a tool for helping to make Dashboard widgets and then later web based iOS apps before the iOS SDK came out. Any hobbyist can start building their own apps, push them to their own devices and learn how to code for nothing. Apple was one of the first ecosystems that permitted that to happen. I remember all of the hoops I went to getting set up for PalmOS development back in the day, it was not only a nightmare to get set up but also costed a small fortune.
We forget the part where the $99 yearly fee and a 30% cut was revolutionary and ground breaking. You didn't have to pay thousands of dollars to get access to the SDK and poorly put together developer tools and you got 70% of the revenue not 30% of the revenue once everyone else had taken their cut. We forget having to deal with the middlemen to get to customers and all of the fees they charged let alone not seeing anything until their "fees" had been paid or having to pay upfront for marketing or other expenses. We forget that the App Store in a sense levelled the playing field that a random unknown application could explode out of nowhere, like Flappy Bird, in a way that really hadn't been seen before. It's a level of discoverability that a centralised App Store provides.
Now a days we live in a world where Microsoft now gives away at least a version of Visual Studio for nothing, an improvement on the thousands of dollars they used to charge. We compare to Google who built their platform on top of Oracle's Java technology base and re-used much of the existing open source Java tooling to build their development ecosystem from the IDE to the core libraries built on top of Apache Harmony.
If anything the smaller developers get a marginal improvement compared to the bigger players. Epic Games has hundreds of millions of dollars to gain from this and that is a powerful motivator. They can afford to pay for expensive tooling these days and for the longest time they were one of those expensive tools with the Unreal Engine locked behind custom negotiated agreements. However there will come a point where if you cut away at Apple's ability to make money, it won't make money any more. That means it isn't as easily able to invest in the ecosystem it's made and move it forward. I'm sure not all of what Epic Games paid goes to the betterment of iOS, the hardware, the App Store, the services Apple provides to developers as a part of program membership and the developer tooling but at the same time it is disingenuous to say none of that income funds that work either.
At one level the cost of entry now is incredibly cheap, Apple were part of making that so and to me it's amazing to see people denigrate it or say it gives them no value. Truly if there were no value from it they wouldn't be here and if you're just getting started the cost of entry is a Mac and once you're ready to go $99/year to sell the app. To me that's a bargain.
Apple has gained a lot of respect from people like me over the years, they worked hard and got where we are, and even though I personally have decided to leave the ecosystem a few times I have always found my way back, most recently I returned to the Mac after a long long hiatus (almost two decades),
people like me spend money on the App Store. Others prefer to use iOS and dislike android in the end of the day you don’t HAVE to do anything for Apple, you don’t HAVE to use anything Apple puts ...
you WANT to. and that is a different story...
you WANT money we are willing to pay, you WANT our usage, you WANT it for different reasons and there’s nothing wrong with that..
if you feel your money is wasted on what Apple offers you can just go to Microsoft or Google I believe there is many more SMALLER operating systems
you say epic is getting hate mainly here but their involvement with tencent and their shady ways has made epic really Unappealing to put it mildly in the gaming world many developers that signed a contract with them found how disliked epic is
in recent years I have heard many times people say that developers deserve more and that if 3rd party apps will cease to be on iOS
It’s all down hill but until now I have encountered no such appcalypse
are developers really waiting for the tencent fueled white knight do they hold no power themselves even now epic stands alone with Spotify still in the App Store and Microsoft carefully addressing the situation...
if it is so bad and Apple is really no good
why is not EVERYONE fleeing the platform?
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I own an apple phone have for 8 years through generations and the amount of issues I have faced with the phone is ridiculous, the battery is drained after an update, my phone wont allow me to make calls, it doesn't let me download apps for a week, i couldn't download an update till the next one released... Honestly don't trust apple as far as I can throw them.
Have played Fortnite and know how much they try to please their customer, but have a difficult time coping when there is something controversial...
In this case, I feel that whether Apple is wrong or not it doesn't matter... It looks like big old Apple trying to take more money from a product they didn't create and are just hosting, honestly the least amount of players are on mobile devices so I don't see why they are so worried. But still it looks bad on Apple's part no matter is they are guilty or innocent... I think any
[Oh and I've seen some people comment saying well if you don't like their policies then don't join... I bet the people saying that have never been MAJORLY excluded from something. If you are going to create a product meant for everyone, that is should cater for everyone... Exclusion wasn't their goal]
Have played Fortnite and know how much they try to please their customer, but have a difficult time coping when there is something controversial...
In this case, I feel that whether Apple is wrong or not it doesn't matter... It looks like big old Apple trying to take more money from a product they didn't create and are just hosting, honestly the least amount of players are on mobile devices so I don't see why they are so worried. But still it looks bad on Apple's part no matter is they are guilty or innocent... I think any
[Oh and I've seen some people comment saying well if you don't like their policies then don't join... I bet the people saying that have never been MAJORLY excluded from something. If you are going to create a product meant for everyone, that is should cater for everyone... Exclusion wasn't their goal]
they may want to be for everyone, but there’s no inalienable right to be on every platform. I’m sure apple would like to put its Apple TV+ programming on Netflix and be paid by customers who watch their stuff on Netflix, but they have no right to have that happen.
Anecdotes are great. I've had iPhones since the first one and any problems I've had have been minor. I've had to restore the odd one from time to time but in more recent years its a simple and painless task. If you think you'd have had less issues on an Android phone I think you're deluding yourself.
Apple has built a huge and highly lucrative platform which has enabled other developers (including Epic) to make a ton of cash. I don't know why you think the number of mobile players is insignificant, it just shows you aren't adequately familiar with what's going on here.
As for exclusion, I don't really see what you mean. If you won't use something because you don't like their policy then you aren't being excluded, you are making a choice. One you remain free to change. I'd like Ferrari to give me a free car but I'm not being excluded because they won't. Apple's products are created for the majority and that's who they cater to. Intuitive, reliable, great feature sets, minimal opportunity for the user to screw things up. it drives the tinkering nerds bonkers, it drives the poor folks who can't get an Apple device even more bonkers but Apple has no duty to give away its hard work for free.
The only exclusion being forced on people is the iOS players on Fortnite who have spent money and can no longer use what they bought because Epic threw a greed tantrum. They were free to litigate without breaching their contract, they did it in the hopes of garnering sympathy in the media by painting Apple as the bas guy but their own reputation for greed and bad practice belies the bad faith that underpins their arguments.
Xcode and associated tool-suite is light years ahead of Android Studio in my experience (developer for 30 years).
There are 1 billion devices out there. If yours (anecdotally) was the rule and not the exception, it would be noticed. I have had minor issues over the years the last two being batteries on the iphone 6s and 7, which apple replaced at no cost to me.
Epic made a ton of money on a platform it had voluntarily signed up for and gave Epic access to hundreds of millions of customers literally at the click of a button. There were no losers here. Big old Apple created a total environment for app testing, distribution and management. It doesn't look as bad for Apple as Epic, purposefully abandoning their customers.
The app store excludes little, just have to comply with the rules.
Here is why I am against Apple on this and also why people need to quit comparing this to Android PlayStore or Xbox or Playstation consoles.
I’m so tired of everyone comparing this to game consoles because it’s not at all. Yes, Microsoft and Sony take 30% when you buy a game digitally from the store but unlike Apple, you can also buy it physically from any place that sells physical discs. People and developers have an option. DLC and In App Purchases and subscriptions might get 30% when bought on store or in game but you can also buy those same things at gamestop and they give you a redemption code, or buy a physical card with a redemption card from Walmart, bestbuy etc.
Here is an even crazier thing. On Xbox and PlayStation for example if I decided to download the Netflix App and didn’t have a subscription already, Netflix can allow you too, 1. Subscribe in app, 2. Post in app instructions on how to go online and subscribe and 3. Even have a QR code scanner on your phone that sends you to that website.
Apple is just being greedy and worse showing favoritism to certain companies.
Netflix can be on the App Store but Project xCloud can not when both are technically “Reader Apps” that are just streaming content.
Look everyone’s beating on Epic for breaking the rules but you also have to understand, revolutions only start when someone CROSSES a line and someone eventually would/have to do it.
I’m so tired of everyone comparing this to game consoles because it’s not at all. Yes, Microsoft and Sony take 30% when you buy a game digitally from the store but unlike Apple, you can also buy it physically from any place that sells physical discs. People and developers have an option. DLC and In App Purchases and subscriptions might get 30% when bought on store or in game but you can also buy those same things at gamestop and they give you a redemption code, or buy a physical card with a redemption card from Walmart, bestbuy etc.
Here is an even crazier thing. On Xbox and PlayStation for example if I decided to download the Netflix App and didn’t have a subscription already, Netflix can allow you too, 1. Subscribe in app, 2. Post in app instructions on how to go online and subscribe and 3. Even have a QR code scanner on your phone that sends you to that website.
Apple is just being greedy and worse showing favoritism to certain companies.
Netflix can be on the App Store but Project xCloud can not when both are technically “Reader Apps” that are just streaming content.
Look everyone’s beating on Epic for breaking the rules but you also have to understand, revolutions only start when someone CROSSES a line and someone eventually would/have to do it.
Ah the naive belief that Epic are not fighting a legal case, but are instead starting a revolution that’ll free the masses, have dogs and cats living together and all cars will be towed by rainbow farting unicorns...
Viva la revolución!