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Can someone who's on Apple's side here elaborate on why they think the outcome for consumers would be worse if they're forced to loosen some of their restrictions? It's very unlikely that app developers choose to forgo the AppStore since it will be driving the majority of app installs even in a completely open world for years to come. And if they do choose to forgo that distribution channel that should be seen as a v…
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I'm surprised this kind of topic inspires such discourse. I wonder what makes it different than other topics.
These faction wars exist for most brands that have any adversarial relationship or buy-in. Another major example is Xbox vs Playstation. Often because mom is only going to buy you one and not both, so now you're part of that faction when duking it out online. That's certainly how I spent my summer at age 15. Ideally you grow out of caring which corporation stacks more money, though. Very boring hobby.
I think the fact that there are many devs here who deal with and depend on Apple is much more significant though.
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interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.
PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents
Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product.
Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of.
Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items.
> Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer.
However that isn't happening here.
They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation.
GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM.
Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.
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> They make great products for my parents, but they are increasingly hostile toward developers and tech savvy users. This is the opposite of a backhanded complement. The market for your parents is orders of magnitudes greater than the market for developers and technologists.
As a tech-savvy user, I may be asked which device I recommend. If I write OS-agnostic mobile apps for fun, and my apps can be downloaded for Android easily, but cannot be downloaded for iOS, guess which device I'll be recommending to my "parents", friends and internet strangers?
This point above is more of a “save your breath” suggestion as tech savvy people would much more likely be interested in this trade off when considering a which device type to purchase.
Can someone who's on Apple's side here elaborate on why they think the outcome for consumers would be worse if they're forced to loosen some of their restrictions? It's very unlikely that app developers choose to forgo the AppStore since it will be driving the majority of app installs even in a completely open world for years to come. And if they do choose to forgo that distribution channel that should be seen as a v…
Android is already a mess with multiple stores and loose, to put it mildly, standards for the quality of apps. And that still isn't enough for Epic. I don't want my iPhone turning into an Android (I did have many choices, and I chose iPhone) and I __definitely__ don't want it turning to an even less regulated ecosystem than what we already have with Android.
I don't really care if developers are happy, because so many of them have interests hostile to mine. Apple is fortunately big enough to be able to force folks like Facebook and Uber to play by the rules. They're also big enough to force developers to play ball with things like iPad support or get booted from the store. The cost of targeting iPad is less than the cost of e.g. Twitter losing their spot on iPhones, so now iPad has a great Twitter app where it didn't before.
Edit: forgot to mention how Apple's subscription management process is far, far superior to any other device. I explicitly choose to subscribe through Apple because I know I will be notified before renewal and that I can cancel easily. I know the scale of the iPhone market, combined with Apple's restrictions, are the only reason I have that choice.
People paint this whole situation as Epic fighting for the consumer, but really Epic is fighting for the interests of Epic alone. I know Android users don't get it becuase they may not have experienced it, but really Apple is adding loads of value here and taking that value away isn't automatically pro-consumer, even if associated with words like 'freedom' and 'competition'.
Edit: Another perspective on this is that as a developer who writes software for Android and iOS, iOS is a far, far superior experience. Things work more reliably, testing is easier because iOS is an OS whereas Android is really a family of operating systems - see how much things can change on Pixel vs Galaxy. Things are getting better over time especially with AndroidX and Jetpack, but the developer experience is still loads better on iOS.
If you're referring to developer as 'individual who writes software for iOS' Apple is far superior. If you're thinking of developer as 'financial entity that profits off software' then the 30% cut becomes more painful, but Apple justifies that by having a premium offering with customers who spend more on apps.
Maybe Epic will have some breakthroughs in making Fortnite browser based. Not sure what would be needed to accomplish this. Maybe better WebGL? That would be amazing to help kids discover that the internet is much larger than apps.
Off the top of my head, iOS Safari doesn't support notifications or (at least on iPhone) fullscreen API. Surprisingly there is controller support
As an app developer, I'm moving to straight web apps. All the hoops, the review system,and ranking prejudice makes it an easy decision even outside of the 30% rake.
App Store has been around over a decade and the number of popular mobile web apps (that didn't also release an app) is basically zero.
I gotta say I really thought Epic would blink and comply. I guess I underestimated their resolve. It’s not like their lawsuit wouldn’t continue if they put Fortnite back in the App Store.
It was very obvious that the response from Apple was quite expected so I don't understand why there would be any blinking going on.