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Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

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Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#521

Post by SXX »

m4rtink wrote: post #497
SXX wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but Epic is more of a friend to open source than Apple: they donated money to both Blender and Godot Engine. Also Epic benefit from game development being more open in general even if their own engine is not open source. If they gonna win in battle with Apple and will be allowed to have their own store then it's also make it possible to setup more of alternative stores for e.g open source software withou…

That's true, but still a far cry from Valve which has native Linux support for Steam and is actively involved in many open source projects.

Yeah, but Valve also doing all of this not just of goodwill, but as insurance in case Windows become full walled garden. Like it or not, but Epic working more or less the same direction.

Also Valve didnt start to use open source packaging software and haven't even made their own game engine source-available let alone open source. Yes it's nice they improving Linux graphics stack, but they also could do much more.

Like really I dont use Epic Games Store to buy anything neither I support the way they try to capture market share. But any attacks on locked down platforms is a good thing for FOSS.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#522

Post by Bjartr »

pjmlp wrote: post #26
MaximumMadness wrote: post #21

Apple is truly doing themselves a disservice here, if Epic wins this battle Apple will undoubtedly be painted as the bad guy, and other major companies will smell blood in the water when it comes taking down a competitor. Case in point; Tinder, Microsoft, Facebook, Spotify have all openly backed Epic and started to call attention to features that are impacted by this 30% fee. Status quo isn't going to cut it, and it…

Microsoft is playing politics, they act just like Apple on XBox.

Microsoft gets a cut of microtransactions?

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#523

Post by _qulr »

mattmanser wrote: post #504
_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…

The iPhone is not a store. The App Store is a store. Epic wants to be on the iPhone, but not necessarily in the App Store. Ideally, Epic wants to run its own store on the iPhone.

In any case, App Store is the only store in town, where the "town" is the 1.5 billion iOS users. If there's only 1 store, with no competing stores, that's an entirely different situation legally.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#524

Post by quelltext »

flingo wrote: post #511
btown wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important part of this is that as far as I can tell, most AAA mobile games now ship all but the most fundamental "code updates" as updates to interpreted scripts/data files over the Internet, bypassing the App Store update mechanism. (Where does data end and code begin? That's a philosophical argument that historically Apple could look the other way on for high-performing mobile games with weekly or even more freq…

Apple's iOS ToS specifically forbids downloading and executing code by the app. (with a definition of "code", and "execute" somewhere in the document) While you could technically hide this from them during the review stage, apple can stop any app from functioning on any iOS device connected to the internet by revoking the certificate, if they discover it at a later stage. Are there noteworthy apps that break this ter…

This clause is impossible to apply to games.

Any level of a game contains at least some logic like NPC behaviors, event triggering etc. and I'm sure scripting is a standard component of every single game.

Have you heard of Thimbleweed Park? It's basically a VM executing an adventure game language (like the creator's SCUMM VM in the past).

That's on the App Store.

Now if we specifically look at the downloading part, that would mean games on iOS cannot download new levels, which I think is done by a lot of games.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#525

Post by pvg »

_qulr wrote: post #520
pvg wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Epic's motion had several parts. The judge denied Epic's motion to be restored to the App Store. But the judge did grant a restraining order to prevent Apple from closing all of Epic's developer accounts. That was the retaliation, and the judge said it fit the criterion of irreparable harm. If Apple had simply removed Fortnite and stopped there, they'd be in a better position legally, and in terms of PR.

I'm not any sort of expert in this and can't really re-litigate what happened at the hearing. It can't be the case, though, that Epic is pulling some clever Grand Admiral Thrawn Hyperpoker move here if every commenter on the internet along with United States District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers can tell what it is after about 3 seconds thinking about it.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#526

Post by raindropm »

carabiner wrote: post #368
oneplane wrote: post #20

Not sure why people are surprised or consider it giant news. > The court recommended that Epic follow the App Store’s guidelines and policies while the case is in progress – the rules they followed over the past ten years until they created the current situation themselves. Epic refused. Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. No m…

I'm tired of these comments stating that the headline should not be surprising. Can you just accept that not everyone's life is fixated on the subject at hand, and that this still constitutes "news" for them?

Honestly, this happened in every section of any big/ semi-big news lmfao. You just skip pass them real fast.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#527

Post by kmeisthax »

burlesona wrote: post #476
pier25 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Epic ever intended to release the new Fortnite season on Apple platforms. Epic probably doesn't care much about Apple platforms. 80% of Fortnite players are on console. I doubt macOS accounts for more than 1-2%. https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoos-battle-royale-s...

And ironically Epic is mum on all those consoles that take the exact same cut that Apple does. The iPhone is merely another console. Really hard for me to see why this is controversial, or why Epic thinks that Apple can have a monopoly over their console while somehow Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo don’t...

There's two possibilities.

1. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all negotiated smaller rev-share agreements with Epic. Maybe this is in exchange for marketing or console bundles or something else that improves the health of the platform. 2. Epic thinks they can use any victory they get out of Apple to force game console manufacturers to do the same thing.

Personally, I think it's the latter - Epic's ultimate goal is to get their hands into the game distribution pie. One of the things Epic contemplates in the lawsuit is "we want to run our own iOS app store in competition with Apple's App Store". You bet their ass "Epic Game Store on Switch" is going to follow if they win the Apple lawsuit.

(For the record, I happen to want Epic to win, though I don't want EPIC to win. I hate locked-down hardware.)

You are correct in one critical way: there's no way in hell Epic would try this shit with console manufacturers. You know how Apple tried to threaten developer tools access and basically tried to take UE4 users hostage? Yeah, imagine that, except console manufacturers have far more leverage. First, console is Epic's core business; second, console developer access is very strictly guarded. Had the courts not enjoined Apple from revoking Epic's UE4 developer account, they could at least have hypothetically continued to support iOS customers.

This isn't true on console: the developer tools are confidential and highly guarded. So, instead of "we might revoke your dev account access", it's "give us back our devkits, delete all your copies of our SDK, delete any UE4 code that uses that SDK, and stop selling UE4 on our platform". Epic wouldn't be allowed to support PS4/Switch/Xbox developers in any capacity. Just the mere act of a licensed console developer asking an unlicensed engine provider for support with the console SDK would constitute a breach of their confidentiality agreements.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#528

Post by cynix »

DRW_ wrote: post #481
sillysaurusx wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. Epic International. If apple has blocked that other account, would it have removed all Unreal Engine powered iOS apps from the App Store, just like all Epic games are now removed from the App Store? I press this question because IMO that would be a serious tactical mistake on Apple’s part, and it’s surprising that Apple would make it (even incidentally). The judge’s injunction may have saved Apple from itself. Bu…

No. Even if Apple terminates the 'Epic International' account - nothing will happen to existing Unreal Engine games on the store by other developers. The issue is that Epic will lose access to Apple developer tools and will struggle to maintain Unreal Engine going forward and as such that may hinder development of those games in the future. There's no indication or reason to believe Apple would manually remove all UE…

Why would they struggle to maintain Unreal Engine? The developer tools/SDKs are free to download and you don’t need a developer account for that. All they will lose is access to pre-release tools such as betas or the Apple Silicon transition kit. It just means they might not have a release ready on launch day, but should be fine after that as the tools are made public.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#529

Post by weixiyen »

oneplane wrote: post #20

Not sure why people are surprised or consider it giant news. > The court recommended that Epic follow the App Store’s guidelines and policies while the case is in progress – the rules they followed over the past ten years until they created the current situation themselves. Epic refused. Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. No m…

> not getting the special treatment they want

They are not asking for special treatment.

They are asking for the courts to curtail Apple's absolute power over how applications can be installed on an operating system designed for general computing.

That would be a game changer for the entire developer ecosystem.

Whether that's good or bad is another debate, but the industry-shifting impact it could have is undeniable.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#530

Post by Spivak »

_qulr wrote: post #523
mattmanser wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The iPhone is not a store. The App Store is a store. Epic wants to be on the iPhone, but not necessarily in the App Store. Ideally, Epic wants to run its own store on the iPhone. In any case, App Store is the only store in town, where the "town" is the 1.5 billion iOS users. If there's only 1 store, with no competing stores, that's an entirely different situation legally.

Apple will do just fine arguing that their devices are no different from Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, Roku, Cable Boxes, Keurig, Vzw feature phones. I would be extremely surprised if the courts just up and anti-Tivo’d every device on the planet.

You try to make a case about how phones are somehow special but they’re really not. You have millions of people who only have an Xbox and so you can’t reach them unless you contract with MS.

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