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Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

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Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#871

Post by DangerousPie »

paulgb wrote: post #869
vr46 wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "tax", when referring to Apple's fees, is a loaded and partial term. The fact that it's clear and understood and factored into the price makes it easy to complain about, but no casual customer to my knowledge has ever seriously asked what proportion of their peppermint tea and scones pays for a café's rent - overheads are overheads and margins are margins. Both companies are invoking consumers and value in t…

If a company like Spotify sells subscriptions both in the app and on the web, they have to charge 43% more to the in-app purchaser to get the same revenue, even though the user gets exactly the same experience. I would call that a tax (informally; I know it strictly doesn't meet the definition) and as a customer I would like to know about it.

If a company sells coffee both in a shop and on the street it would have to charge 43% more to the in-shop purchaser to get the same revenue, even though the user gets exactly the same experience.

Would you call that a tax or would you call that rent?

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#872

Post by geocar »

renaudg wrote: post #858
AsyncAwait wrote: post #841

I don't think Epic is doing anything but trying to pocket more for themselves, yet I also think that the comments here overstate how "aware" average people are about Apple's restrictions, tax etc. I don't think most people would consider direct payment to reputable companies like Epic to be a particular security risk. I don't think most realize why they can't subscribe to Spotify from their iPhones, they think it's s…

"if Apple was OK with displaying a 30% Apple tax on checkout" Do you know any store that adds a line showing their margin on the customer receipt ?

"How dare my corner grocery they charge me a “store tax” without displaying the amount of money they make for operating the shop, handling customer requests and complaints, and so on...

I mean seriously people, do you not realise the words you use also affect the way you think about things and not just the other way around?

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#873

Post by paulgb »

renaudg wrote: post #858
AsyncAwait wrote: post #841

I don't think Epic is doing anything but trying to pocket more for themselves, yet I also think that the comments here overstate how "aware" average people are about Apple's restrictions, tax etc. I don't think most people would consider direct payment to reputable companies like Epic to be a particular security risk. I don't think most realize why they can't subscribe to Spotify from their iPhones, they think it's s…

"if Apple was OK with displaying a 30% Apple tax on checkout" Do you know any store that adds a line showing their margin on the customer receipt ?

I've seen gas stations list two prices, one if you pay with cash and one if with credit. It's not quite what you asked for, but it's an example of passing optional margin related to the choice of payment on to the customer.

(Incidentally credit card companies, like Apple, really hate it; I think some states have exceptions in their laws to disallow contracting out of it?)

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#874

Post by AsyncAwait »

renaudg wrote: post #858
AsyncAwait wrote: post #841

I don't think Epic is doing anything but trying to pocket more for themselves, yet I also think that the comments here overstate how "aware" average people are about Apple's restrictions, tax etc. I don't think most people would consider direct payment to reputable companies like Epic to be a particular security risk. I don't think most realize why they can't subscribe to Spotify from their iPhones, they think it's s…

"if Apple was OK with displaying a 30% Apple tax on checkout" Do you know any store that adds a line showing their margin on the customer receipt ?

If it was the only store in town, I'd like to know, yeah.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#875

Post by zxienin »

Aeolun wrote: post #561
_qulr wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I bought a $1000 device, but somehow Apple gets to decide what I run on it? I just cannot see how that is a desireable situation.

Consider that the reason you buy this $1000 device, is that Apple decides a lot what happens on this device.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#876

Post by turbinerneiter »

DangerousPie wrote: post #871
paulgb wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company like Spotify sells subscriptions both in the app and on the web, they have to charge 43% more to the in-app purchaser to get the same revenue, even though the user gets exactly the same experience. I would call that a tax (informally; I know it strictly doesn't meet the definition) and as a customer I would like to know about it.

If a company sells coffee both in a shop and on the street it would have to charge 43% more to the in-shop purchaser to get the same revenue, even though the user gets exactly the same experience. Would you call that a tax or would you call that rent?

At least you are calling Apple's behavior what it is: rent-seeking.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#877

Post by floatboth »

neurostimulant wrote: post #836
floatboth wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they need their own account to just develop the engine? They could use any employee's personal account, or a third party partner company's account, anything

Apple is know to cracking down abuse of developer accounts, so they could ended up playing cat and mouse game with apple. Also, the dev tools are probably licensed in a way that you can't use it legally after getting kicked out of apple dev program. Maybe epic can get around this by divesting unreal engine into a separate company. I think it's already done that (unreal is under epic international), but as apple was c…

You can use Xcode and the SDKs without even having an account! A free account is required to sign code temporarily to run on test devices. Apple shouldn't even get to know what is being signed.

Apple might be cracking down on people who sign apps for others as a service, publish signed stuff online, etc. but they literally have no way of preventing development of anything.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#878

Post by _qulr »

dmix wrote: post #720
_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. Courts almost never evaluate specific cases based on broader patterns of behaviour... they are always narrowly focused on specific issues. This might help in the media/social media debate, but I doubt it helps much in court. The bigger piece Epic bites off the harder their battle will be.

But the specific issue in this case is whether Apple is an abusive monopolist.

Apple is proving that they are.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#879

Post by mantap »

ghayes wrote: post #683
mantap wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracts are not laws, if you breech a contract then one of the possible outcomes is that you will end up in court arguing whether the contract is valid. That is what happened in this case. The law would be especially toothless if you had to obey a contract in order to dispute its validity.

This topic has been brought up a lot in these conversations and I’ve missed the substance. Which laws do we suspect Apple may have broken with their App Store contracts?

You can read Epic's court filing but the tl;dr is that Epic alleges that the terms of the contract restrict Epic and other parties from competing with Apple, that Apple uses their market power in one area to get an unfair advantage in other areas (such as payment processing), and they cite the Sherman act as the primary legal basis of their claim that those terms are illegal.

This case is likely to last for years so it is very much too soon to be predicting who will win.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#880

Post by paulgb »

DangerousPie wrote: post #871
paulgb wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company like Spotify sells subscriptions both in the app and on the web, they have to charge 43% more to the in-app purchaser to get the same revenue, even though the user gets exactly the same experience. I would call that a tax (informally; I know it strictly doesn't meet the definition) and as a customer I would like to know about it.

If a company sells coffee both in a shop and on the street it would have to charge 43% more to the in-shop purchaser to get the same revenue, even though the user gets exactly the same experience. Would you call that a tax or would you call that rent?

I'd say the difference is that the tax is not uniformly charged by a middleman. If a mall made its profit by charging 43% on every purchase, I would think of it (informally) as a tax.
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