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Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#501

Post by _qulr »

cepp wrote: post #457
_qulr wrote: post #387

My feeling is that this whole situation is mostly going as Tim Sweeney intended. He was itching for a fight, wanted to sue Apple. The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic's court case. Apple is playing right into his hands. Did Sweeney anticipate Apple's threat to Unreal Engine? Maybe, maybe not. But the temporary restraining order did block that threat, at least for now. I don't think Epic ever intended to…

> In the short term, Epic loses money by not having Fortnite on Apple devices. Will they though? For all the players who already had the app they still have access to Epic's payment system meaning they're making 20% more on those transactions. I'm not sure that new user purchases will be > 20% they make in the short term from those existing users.

The new Fortnite season 4, which should be very profitable, will not be available on iOS.

Plus no new customers on iOS.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#502

Post by hu3 »

jpollock wrote: post #499
cepp wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the short term, Epic loses money by not having Fortnite on Apple devices. Will they though? For all the players who already had the app they still have access to Epic's payment system meaning they're making 20% more on those transactions. I'm not sure that new user purchases will be > 20% they make in the short term from those existing users.

~25% (straight line) of their customer base churns to a new iPhone every year [1]. Those customers will no longer be able to download Fortnite. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/08/four-year-smartphone-upgrades...

They might now buy Android devices instead. It goes both ways.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#503

Post by hawkoy »

dang wrote: post #463
dang wrote: post #181

All: these Epic vs. Apple threads, and $BigCo vs. $BigCo threads in general, have unfortunately been seeing more name-calling, accusations of manipulation, flamebait/unsubstantive posts, and other things that break the HN guidelines. If you comment, can you please avoid that? Reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html would help. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoug…

This is a stub comment to collect the replies so we can collapse them, to prevent offtopicness. Sorry, no-JS users.

I am really curious how this stub comment functionality works on the backend. How does the dashboard looks dang?

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#504

Post by mattmanser »

_qulr wrote: post #387

My feeling is that this whole situation is mostly going as Tim Sweeney intended. He was itching for a fight, wanted to sue Apple. The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic's court case. Apple is playing right into his hands. Did Sweeney anticipate Apple's threat to Unreal Engine? Maybe, maybe not. But the temporary restraining order did block that threat, at least for now. I don't think Epic ever intended to…

I can't see how Epic wins this.

If Stripe can claim Wells Fargo doesn't want to process porn payments, and that's legal, how can an American court rule for Epic?

Epic are obviously going to lose, and lose hard, or set a precedent that's going to screw every payment provider in America and open a flood gate for fraudulent payments.

You can't force someone to sell something they don't want to, especially because Apple is nowhere near a monopoly in games or gaming sales, they can just point at steam.

If somehow the American courts arrive at that judgement, and I am a non-lawyer, I put my hands up, but surely it's going to set all sorts of nasty precedents?

Edit: The more I think about it the more absurd this is. It's as if some random brand of Mayo is suing Wallmart for not stocking their brand on their shelves.

There is absolutely no way they can win this, unless American courts are going to start allowing "mom & pop" random ketchup brand to force Wallmart to stock it on their shelves. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on phones, it doesn't have a monopoly on games, it's got a store front you can buy stuff from, and if you don't want to play by their rules, then bye-bye. Wallmart choose their suppliers, and sets the markup, why can't Apple?

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#505

Post by pvg »

_qulr wrote: post #387

My feeling is that this whole situation is mostly going as Tim Sweeney intended. He was itching for a fight, wanted to sue Apple. The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic's court case. Apple is playing right into his hands. Did Sweeney anticipate Apple's threat to Unreal Engine? Maybe, maybe not. But the temporary restraining order did block that threat, at least for now. I don't think Epic ever intended to…

The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic's court case. Apple is playing right into his hands.

I keep seeing seeing assessments in this vein but they can't really be right - the courts would have to be toddler-level naive not to see through it. They aren't - here's Judge Rogers addressing Epic at the recent hearing (as reported by Sarah Jeong):

"To Epic: Your client created this situation. Your client does not come to this action with clean hands ..... in my view, you cannot have irreparable harm when you create the harm yourself."

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#506

Post by Danieru »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #10
makecheck wrote: post #3

Of all the things about this, the fact that the Fortnite competitor PUBG is now being “featured” by Apple just ticks me off so much. Talk about being petty. Are there school-aged children running the App Store now (or the executive suite?). I realize Apple has the right to decide who they feature but come on . Being featured is important , it’s a big deal and it can make a serious difference to any developer’s income…

The irony here is that PUBG is made with the Unreal Engine, which they're being forced by a judge not to cut off from their platform, and Epic still gets 5% of all revenue from PUBG.

Heads up, PUBG was released under the EULA and thus the 5% but after release the publisher sued to be able to buy a buyout license. Thus no, Epic gets no new revenue from PUBG.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#507

Post by jay_kyburz »

hu3 wrote: post #502
jpollock wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~25% (straight line) of their customer base churns to a new iPhone every year [1]. Those customers will no longer be able to download Fortnite. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/08/four-year-smartphone-upgrades...

They might now buy Android devices instead. It goes both ways.

I thought it was also off Android right now.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#508

Post by nodamage »

fabioyy wrote: post #470

Most of the comments defending apple, are people thinking that epic games does not want pay the 30% cut... but the problem is not that.. the problem is that apple demands that the price must be equal on all points of sale. ( Epic should be able to increase their price in 30% on apple plataform only, to cover apple fee )

They can do that.

They're just not allowed to mention that the price is cheaper on their website or other platforms.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#509

Post by jpollock »

hu3 wrote: post #502
jpollock wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~25% (straight line) of their customer base churns to a new iPhone every year [1]. Those customers will no longer be able to download Fortnite. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/08/four-year-smartphone-upgrades...

They might now buy Android devices instead. It goes both ways.

Which would be a huge indication that Fortnite is a key feature.

However, it seems bubble colour is important.

"Why'd You Push That Button - Why do iPhone users judge people with green text bubbles?"

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18624681/apple-imessage-a...

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#510

Post by mdoms »

filoleg wrote: post #282
jasonlotito wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead you have sideload... the Epic Games Store! I remember when Valve did that with HL2 and Steam. The outrage was similar [1]. Look how it turned out for Valve. [1] https://games.slashdot.org/story/04/10/23/0812224/half-life-...

Valve was introducing a new kind of an experience with their store, because there were no digital stores for games before that (that were actually used; because no doubt someone in the comments will point out to some obscure digital game store that existed at that time, but no one has heard of or used). Valve was not fighting an existing store using "stores are bad" as an argument, only to introduce another store. Wh…

> Valve was not fighting an existing store using "stores are bad" as an argument, only to introduce another store. Which is exactly what Epic is doing here.

No. You are not arguing in good faith.

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