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Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

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Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#601

Post by spanhandler »

throwaway140820 wrote: post #543

Apologies for the extreme swearing that ensues. Wow, I would have hoped for better support from the HN community. Instead there are apologists after apologists. So what if Epic is big. Really, seriously shouldn't we have had alternative app stores available form the official ones. Why is this even a point of debate? All the time we hear stories of people one of our own getting fucked by these app stores and their lor…

> Fuck your security and fuck your walled gardens.

Sigh. I guess we're going to remove a product category (the relatively safe, very consistent, managed platform you can use when you just want to use a computer and not also manage a computer) and call that consumer choice, then? I'd prefer instead that more companies make something similarly-nice and compete with Apple. I have lots and lots of options I can use if I want to have to worry about a bunch of silly stuff like "will this .exe or 3rd-party repo pwn me?" or "is this payment prompt fake?" when I'm just trying to play the piano, make art, track recipes, balance my books, or whatever. I use them all the time, in fact. When I don't want to worry about that crap I use iOS. It's nice having any option in that category. I do not want to go back to having zero of them. I don't care that 3rd party browsers on it have to render with the WebKit engine. Not even a little.

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#602

Post by danShumway »

pfranz wrote: post #496
danShumway wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the ability to sideload apps force you to install apps outside of the Apple store? I'm not forced to use FDroid just because I have an Android phone. People aren't arguing that the app store should go away, just that consumers should have a choice. As an analogy, if I want OEM care for my car, I can get that. It's more expensive, but it offers me strict guarantees about where parts are coming from, and I do…

Just look at the PC platform Epic is coming from. It used to be just buying retail boxes, then Steam came along. Now it's Steam, Epic, Origin, Uplay. Personally, I hate keeping track of the separate apps and which games were purchased with each. So I avoid most of them even for games I want to play. Its one of the things that makes me prefer consoles. The current situation seems more anti-business than anti-consumer…

I think it's going to be pretty hard for you to argue that the proliferation of app stores for the PC is bad for consumers.

A lot of people credit Steam (I think justifiably) with kickstarting a huge portion of the modern indie gaming scene -- precisely because they got rid of the crazy rules, agreements, and contracts of the retail boxes, which acted as a massive barrier to entry for game developers. If Steam had never been built, I don't think modern games would be even half as diverse or creative as they are.

Then we move on to storefronts like Humble and GoG, which I think have been hugely influential in pushing DRM-free games as the norm for indies. There are a lot of games that flat-out would not have DRM-free releases if GoG didn't exist. Heck, there are a lot of games that would not run on modern Windows if GoG didn't exist.

Then we move on to Epic's store, which I know gamers hate, but trust me when I say a lot of indie developers are thrilled right now to see someone forcing Steam to lower their splits. Epic has done some serious good for the indie scene. I don't like that they're encouraging exclusives, I think that's bad for gamers. But I'm not going to pretend that as a developer I'm not happy to see someone breaking Steam's stranglehold on the mainstream PC marketplace.

So yeah, there are a lot of PC stores. This has been a massive boon to the industry, there are a lot of excellent games that (I think) would not exist today if not for the diversity of marketplaces. And a lot of these marketplaces fill different niches. GoG focuses on older games, Steam offers mainstream AA titles, Uplay/Origin offer corporate AAA titles, Itch has all the really weird, creative "true-indy" stuff.

No single PC store is expansive enough to cover all of the niches of the entire market.

Even on the console side of things, the diversity of games on the PC has pushed console manufacturers to offer much wider selections of games. Are you happy that basically every indie developer and their dog is releasing their game for the Switch? A big part of that is Nintendo opening up the development process, and they did that because after the Wii U they realized that they needed to pull indie devs away from the PC to stay competitive.

And on PC, what's actually the problem with this? You can basically ignore all of the other platforms and just download your games from Steam. You can opt out of all of the complexity that you dislike.

Sure, you'll miss out on a few exclusives if you do. But you would have missed out on many of those exclusives with a unified storefront anyway, because a lot of those games just wouldn't have been created if there weren't stores that were a good fit for them to sell on. You'll miss out on just as many games if you decide to stick with curated console storefronts.

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#603

Post by metalliqaz »

vmh1928 wrote: post #598

Apple has plenty of funding to fight a lawsuit. They can divert some of the share-buyback funds. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/apple-launches-unprecedent...

A lawsuit isn't Apple's biggest concern. It's being set upon by the government for antitrust.

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#604

Post by camhart »

staunch wrote: post #563
throwaway140820 wrote: post #543

Apologies for the extreme swearing that ensues. Wow, I would have hoped for better support from the HN community. Instead there are apologists after apologists. So what if Epic is big. Really, seriously shouldn't we have had alternative app stores available form the official ones. Why is this even a point of debate? All the time we hear stories of people one of our own getting fucked by these app stores and their lor…

These people must also have no idea what Tim Sweeney (Epic founder) is like as a person. This guy is a genius programmer that never sought great wealth for its own sake but happened upon it through creating huge amounts of value and happiness in the world. He's someone who has been preserving wilderness by buying up large swaths of land to keep it safe. He's a good and principled person. He's NOT a money-grubbing two…

I would like to learn more about Tim. Any suggestions?

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#605

Post by Bombthecat »

dannyw wrote: post #578
throwaway6000 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite for Android just got axed from the Google Play Store too https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/13/fortnite-android-google-ki... Oops! Apple Bad, Google Good? ;)

Google Bad, Apple Worse. At least you can get other app stores on Android.

I expect an elic store on android soon.. And they might have a chance! Fortnite will pull in a lot of people!

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#606

Post by throwaway140820 »

spanhandler wrote: post #601
throwaway140820 wrote: post #543

Apologies for the extreme swearing that ensues. Wow, I would have hoped for better support from the HN community. Instead there are apologists after apologists. So what if Epic is big. Really, seriously shouldn't we have had alternative app stores available form the official ones. Why is this even a point of debate? All the time we hear stories of people one of our own getting fucked by these app stores and their lor…

> Fuck your security and fuck your walled gardens. Sigh. I guess we're going to remove a product category (the relatively safe, very consistent, managed platform you can use when you just want to use a computer and not also manage a computer ) and call that consumer choice, then? I'd prefer instead that more companies make something similarly-nice and compete with Apple. I have lots and lots of options I can use if I…

I am sorry, I don't understand. Will you be suddenly forced to install all the shit from all the sources? Nobody is forcing you right? How does your position change with the new one? Are you arguing having firefox and ublock on iphone will suddenly make it more pleasant to browse the web and you don't like it? I am sure you are not.

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#607

Post by watermelon0 »

pfranz wrote: post #496
danShumway wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the ability to sideload apps force you to install apps outside of the Apple store? I'm not forced to use FDroid just because I have an Android phone. People aren't arguing that the app store should go away, just that consumers should have a choice. As an analogy, if I want OEM care for my car, I can get that. It's more expensive, but it offers me strict guarantees about where parts are coming from, and I do…

Just look at the PC platform Epic is coming from. It used to be just buying retail boxes, then Steam came along. Now it's Steam, Epic, Origin, Uplay. Personally, I hate keeping track of the separate apps and which games were purchased with each. So I avoid most of them even for games I want to play. Its one of the things that makes me prefer consoles. The current situation seems more anti-business than anti-consumer…

The big difference is that the platform is completely decoupled from app store.

On Windows, publishers can choose to which store they would publish, and you can choose from where you want to buy it.

On iOS you are completely at the mercy of Apple; not only won't they allow specific apps or content on the store, they seem to make exceptions for some apps/publishers. There is no way to install and use something that Apple doesn't like.

Android is quite different, since it allows to load a different store, like the Amazon one, or FDroid for open source projects (you are still more or less tied to having Google Play Services on the device, since majority of Android apps use it, but the situation is a LOT better than on iOS.)

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#608

Post by lvturner »

shaykk wrote: post #583
ss3000 wrote: post #518

I wonder why Fortnite doesn't also make a WebAssembly version of Fortnight and deploy it on fortnite.com? Then Apple would get jack shit from any sales there, so they can fight this battle with them while still offering access to the game for Apple users. I'm probably missing some esoteric limitation Apple places on web-based games to cripple this use case.

Why doesn't everyone make a WebAssembly version of their game and host on their own servers? I'm pretty sure there are a thousand big problems with this idea.

Mostly latency around WebSockets.

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#609

Post by thrownoone »

I hope Apple stays its course.

- It's really hard to mess up apple devices for non-tech savvy people.

- I have learnt the importance of "It just works" and familiarity when my family got tired of Android and just bought everything Apple.

- I hope/wish to see Apple Pay/login implemented everywhere on web as well.

Would a tier system like the tax brackets help small developers?

Re: Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

#610

Post by sriku »

From a financial perspective, it appears unfair to also charge 30% for in-app purchases after the safety guarantees of the app have been established by apple, thereby invalidating their claim that charging a cut of in-app purchases is also towards ensuring platform safety for their users.

Thing is, if apple lifted the in-app purchase cuts, then all apps would essentially switch from "pay to install" to "pay after install" and the apps would get their "safety certification" some for free - i.e. at apple's cost.

What seems fair in this case is to pay the platform vendors a fee for the certification and network costs (charged like aws perhaps) instead of the leeching that's happening. Even the _option_ of doing that over giving a 30% cut seems fairer than what's happening.

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