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Apple, Epic, and the App Store

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Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#541

Post by rymate1234 »

donor20 wrote: post #521
naikrovek wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic has a monopoly on selling items inside Fortnite. 3rd party artists can't create anything that can be used inside Fortnite, neither inside the v-bucks store nor outside of it. There's no 3rd party "market" at all. Apple has a market where third parties can market their apps. Apple requires a cut of all purchases made through that store, which alone is not monopolistic. Apple also requires that you sell your iOS…

Xbox has a monpoly on their game store. Sony has a monpoloy on their game store. Come on - is this argument going to be used for all these too? Walmart has a monopoly on what sells in Walmart.

Unironically there should be alternatives for those platforms, and the Switch

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#542

Post by ThatPlayer »

y7 wrote: post #323
enragedcacti wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...just don't use other app stores? Honest question, what do you lose by other people having the option?

Because it leads to fragmentation. If developers have a choice of app stores, then users have to install ALL app stores if they want access to the entire market. This happened with streaming services as well: when Netflix was the only prominent one, only that subscription was enough. Now you also need Amazon, Hulu, etc.

It also leads to competition. Without alternative streaming services, we'd have a Netflix monopoly, and there's nothing stopping them from increasing prices like what happened with cable monopolies.

Look at how Netflix is still raising prices even with less content.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#543

Post by gsich »

donor20 wrote: post #521
naikrovek wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic has a monopoly on selling items inside Fortnite. 3rd party artists can't create anything that can be used inside Fortnite, neither inside the v-bucks store nor outside of it. There's no 3rd party "market" at all. Apple has a market where third parties can market their apps. Apple requires a cut of all purchases made through that store, which alone is not monopolistic. Apple also requires that you sell your iOS…

Xbox has a monpoly on their game store. Sony has a monpoloy on their game store. Come on - is this argument going to be used for all these too? Walmart has a monopoly on what sells in Walmart.

There is still a retail market on consoles. So not entirely monopolistic. Also iirc you can use your own payment method on those consoles.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#544

Post by ThatPlayer »

paulmd wrote: post #477
hinkley wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not at all enthused about Epic being one of those stores, but being able to download from Steam sure would be nice. If you were trying to remove the monopoly, I'd think you should start there, and then expand to other people who can prove they have their shit together. Epic let someone else use my email address to sign up for an account (and they only allow one account per email). That is serious amateur-hour ter…

Pretty sure you can buy from Steam on the iOS app - Steam just has a revenue-sharing agreement with Apple. which is specifically the part that got Epic in trouble , they don't want to share revenue with Apple, and what's more they want to charge other developers a fee for the use of Epic's app store. the thought that Apple was just going to let this hilarious ToS breach lay was all wrong, absolutely not

Steam Link on iOS actually has to run a version of Steam Big Picture without a Store or Community option because of Apple's rules: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/apple-reversal-allows...

The Store application lets you buy games because you cannot consume them on the device, like how Amazon allows you to buy physical items but not Kindle books.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#545

Post by nodamage »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #35
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #11

A pretty well-thought out article, given the inflammatory nature of the subject matter. I think Apple is right on the line. But I don't see a good argument as to what their doing is being anti-competitive. ~2 million apps are on the app store. Charging a fee for giving developers a huge market that spends money is not exactly unfair. And the rules of engagement are generally applied equally to everyone - the exceptio…

actual harm => consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut (which is more like a shakedown). I don't see any reason why a company needs to pay any percent of their revenue instead of a flat fee. You pay a % of revenue when someone is your partner or an investor in your company. Apple is neither. In fact, they've shown to be the opposite of a t…

> On another note, regarding your first comments, in the late 90's Microsoft went through DOJ depositions and demands for breaking up simply because they bundled Internet Explorer with their operating system.

The crucial point of the Microsoft case was that their operating system had 90% market share, which Apple does not.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#546

Post by chucky_z »

jpindar wrote: post #483
three_seagrass wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're referring to swapping in funny money to obfuscate customer ability to estimate the costs. It's similar to how slot machines require tokens, but I don't think that's quite gambling. The gambling part comes in with loot boxes, where you're essentially paying to roll the dice to get something of value.

Fortnite doesn't have loot boxes.

what about those pinatas? are those still in the game? that's very much a loot box if so.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#547

Post by [deleted] »

cromwellian wrote: post #385
bttrfl wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following your logic, Fortnite's add-ons should clearly be free since the cost to make and sell them is minuscule in comparison to 400M Epic made in April alone [0]. [0] https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/epic-games-shareholders-s...

Games have a limited shelf life. I don’t really care about Epic. Fortnite won’t be around much longer when the next big game du jour comes out. Whether or not Epic charges for their store is immaterial to whether one of the largest and most important general purpose computing platforms in the world is performing highway robbery.

[deleted]

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#548

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

modeless wrote: post #103

It's a common meme that "With a free service you're not the customer, you're the product." Well, you may be Apple's customer at the beginning when you pay for the phone, but immediately afterward you become their product. You're being sold for the 30% tax. And to enforce that tax Apple maintains ultimate control over the hardware you supposedly bought, blocking you from doing things that would threaten Apple's revenu…

Well, we could make similar arguments about something like Chromebooks. You pay for the hardware, but then Google expects you to store personal data in a Google cloud data center. Your data and access to you is the product. They use pre-installed software, e.g., Chrome, as well as numerous other read-only, auto-running programs, and automatic updates, as a way to enforce control, including testing user behaviour through Chrome. The situation is even worse on Android phones.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#549

Post by gsich »

cromwellian wrote: post #385
bttrfl wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following your logic, Fortnite's add-ons should clearly be free since the cost to make and sell them is minuscule in comparison to 400M Epic made in April alone [0]. [0] https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/epic-games-shareholders-s...

Games have a limited shelf life. I don’t really care about Epic. Fortnite won’t be around much longer when the next big game du jour comes out. Whether or not Epic charges for their store is immaterial to whether one of the largest and most important general purpose computing platforms in the world is performing highway robbery.

I hear this argument often, but there are counterexamples like Minecraft, CSGO, World of Warcraft (one of the few MMOs that still have a subscription).

So it's entirely possible that Fortnite will stay.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#550

Post by lajawfe »

Here I give my analysis of what the best solution could be. Would like to know your thoughts too.

0. Lower rate from 30% to 15% -Apple still has monopoly, nothing changes.

1. Side loading apps: Not good! malicious apps can run amok, eg. $BIG_CORP$ will say - you will get 20$ credits if you sideload our app, and then surveil everything that is possible on the device. Here, we expect an average user to give all the permission that the app requests for.

2. allow secondary app stores: -not good as it depends on the quality of enforcement in secondary app store. For Apple, it is in their interest to maintain app quality in their appstore to maintain overall good user experience in their device, but motivations are not same for secondary app store. May allow malicious apps which deteriorate the user experience/privacy similar to 1. And there will be a state where you will have to install 10s of app store just to install specific programs which is also not ideal.

3. Allow secondary payment methods: -Average user will have to give up their payment info to everyone who asks for it. Most of them will not be trustworthy nor we can expect all of them to maintain good security standards for saving payment info.

The biggest culprit of all this drama is Apple does not allow secondary payment inside apps AND also, if you have secondary payment outside of app, they do not allow that price to be lower. There is no competition, thus Apple can get away with whatever it chooses to. Thus the monopoly.

4. SOLUTION:

a) charge a flat fee for reviewing/serving apps. If necessary, linearly increase it based on daily active users if they need more resource to support that app.

b) allow secondary payment providers (whitelisted only).

c) allow secondary payment price to be lower than Apple.

With this solution, there will be competition between payment providers which will drive the price down. Only whitelisting few payment methods which are trustable eg applepay, googlepay, paypal, stripe, etc will maintain security of payment data.

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