I think this kind of behavior is wide-spread - Climbing a ladder and then kicking it down once you're on the top because you don't need it anymore. Twitter is the famous example of doing that where they grew their network on the backs of third party clients, and then rate-limited them out of existence.
The lesson here is: invest in protocols and open standards, not “apps” and closed platforms.
This is obvious, until you realize that the line between company and customers(shareholders) have been blurred, creating perverse incentives.
What's the actual theory of the case of how Apple are owed damages here? Obviously they're losing revenue from Fortnite but that would have happened if Epic just decided they don't like the rules and took the app down themselves instead of breaking them. I can't imagine Apple would be entitled to damages then and I can't see how they've lost more money than that. The other obvious thing is legal expenses, but you don…
There is a material difference between costing Apple revenue by doing something they're allowed to do and costing Apple revenue by breaching their agreement. They cost Apple revenue by circumventing the in-app purchase system and Apple will naturally want the lost revenue. My guess is they'll produce figures saying "We made 30% of X revenue from in-app purchases over Y time frame, this dropped to 30% of Z revenue aft…
But surely that position would only apply if Apple hadn't removed the game from the app store? If myself as an indie dev breaches the TOS and my app store account is suspended, surely Apple can't sue me for lost revenue because they opted to suspend my account? Imagine the precedent that would set: Apple could sue you for lost income if you break the store TOS causing your app to be removed.
I think Apple would have had much more of an argument for lost revenue if they had kept the game on the store. It would be directly quantifiable, they could say "look, the game made x million and we received $0, we should have received $y".
And this is a good thing, competition between this stores is good for the users, some users got free games, some developers got better deals. The "needs to launch on startup" is FALSE , you can have this launchers set no to start at all and you launch the game and the launcher will start if needed (not all Steam games need Steam in background). FYI GOG launcher is optional, you can just download the game from the web…
the commenter is right and you have missed the point. There is no competition in this space. You can only get Fortnite from the Epic Games Launcher.
But the Epic Games Launcher is free and doesn't preclude you from using any other launcher/store for anything else, so how does that harm competition?
By contrast, if I want iMessage on my phone, Epic has to distribute Fortnight to me though Apple.
This is a very bad look on Apple. Regardless of the enforceability of their agreements, the sense of entitlement that underlies Apple’s position is shocking. The claim that Epic has “lined [its] pockets at Apple’s expense” implies that Apple deserves to sit in the middle of every transaction that happens on their devices and take a margin. This is the world’s most valuable company we’re talking about here; assertions…
The logical next step is for individual countries to regulate the maximum % commission that a digital marketplace can charge its developers.
Which will place Apple in a much more difficult position than if they unilaterally reduced their commission level to 15%.
I really wish there was a third party - the customer - actually represented in this trial. Apple and Epic arguing over what is best for the customer, while clearly they are having their own interests in mind, screams for the actual customers to be represented. The whole argument about them promoting an app „for free“ is a bit ridiculous. They clearly knew the amount of commission they were going to earn from pushing…
Meanwhile the Apple AppStore is terrible for finding anything. It’s just a horrible list of most downloaded apps and a search bar, and even the search feature is bad. For every other purpose like getting proper recommendations, you have to consult the internet. Imagine having a “we think you will like these games because you played...” feature that works as well as Spotify’s or Steam’s recommendation engine. That wil…
I have just given up on the Apple app store entirely at this point. It feels like 99% of it is pure garbage, and a significant portion of that garbage is trying to trick me with in-app-purchases.
Every time I think "I bet there's an app for that", I go away disappointed.
It sounds so hollow when the Supreme Leader of Apple brags about their store having 10.000.000.000 apps. Sure you do, and maybe 20 of them aren't total crap.
There is a material difference between costing Apple revenue by doing something they're allowed to do and costing Apple revenue by breaching their agreement. They cost Apple revenue by circumventing the in-app purchase system and Apple will naturally want the lost revenue. My guess is they'll produce figures saying "We made 30% of X revenue from in-app purchases over Y time frame, this dropped to 30% of Z revenue aft…
But surely that position would only apply if Apple hadn't removed the game from the app store? If myself as an indie dev breaches the TOS and my app store account is suspended, surely Apple can't sue me for lost revenue because they opted to suspend my account? Imagine the precedent that would set: Apple could sue you for lost income if you break the store TOS causing your app to be removed. I think Apple would have…
Oh, I see where you're coming from. No, the way that Epic have been suspended is such that they can't put out any more updates, but people who already have the game installed still have it, the game doesn't get deleted from your phone, so people are still using it and still buying stuff direct from Epic.
Why should they not have that right? Does Sony not have the right to prevent users from using alternative game stores to run unofficial games on their PS4? Does Nintendo not have the right to prevent users from using an alternative to the eShop to download games for their Switch? Does Tesla not have the right to prevent users from downloading and running whatever random applications they wish on their Tesla?
> Why should they not have that right? Because the phone belongs to the consumer, and the courts have already said that it is perfectly legal to jailbreak your phone, even though apple attempted to sue people who were doing this. It is pretty horrible that Apple was trying to sue people, for modifying property that the consumer owned, and it required the courts to get involved, to clarify that it is perfectly legal t…
All products even with ownership come with rules and regulations.
Houses can’t be arbitrarily changed. Cars have governors. Scissors shouldn’t be run with.
Ownership of an iPhone is not different. It just has special rules attached.
If you don’t mind breaking the warranty, please jailbreak your iPhone and install whatever apps you’d prefer.
The App Store generates nearly 10 times as much revenues for developers per device sold as Google Play. How is building a safer walled garden that attracts the highest spending customers and makes them extremely comfortable with buying apps and subscriptions not a massive amount of utility?
Because if the app was permitted to be installed outside of the app store, it would make more money, meaning the app store offers negative utility to some developers. Fortnite is a huge brand outside of iOS. It iOS did not make the success of Fortnite. Epic doesn't need the app store's advertising to succeed, and being forced to go through this bottleneck only hampers them.
It’s not about advertising. It’s about trust building.
Apple has earned trust with me as a user. When I download an app from Apple’s stores it extends its trust to those apps.
I feel more comfortable spending money on iOS because of that trust. Take away the trust, and I promise there is significantly less money to be made.
The punitive damages are not for simply breaking the rules, this is made very clear in the filing, they are for knowingly and deliberately breaking them with a full understanding of the legal consequences for doing so.
The punitive damage could as simple as Apple putting you out of business if you rely mostly on your iOS app to survive. We've seen this many times, it's not exclusive to the case against Epic.
Then complain about those cases, not this one where the argument does not hold.
> If it costs money to develop a platform, it doesn't seem that strange to just charge that upfront when someone buys an iPhone. Epic runs their own digital distribution platform, in which they also take a cut of the sales. Their terms are different than Apples, but they still do take a cut of sales. Epic also takes 5% royalties for any (non-free) game built with Epic's Unreal Engine. Epic and Apple have the same bus…
It doesn't really matter what Epic is doing. Loot boxes, game engines, and game mechanics aren't the issue here. The issue is that I, a user of an iPhone, should be able to install whatever software I want. You know what? I played Fortnite and I hated it. I won't be installing Fortnite or buying any skins for it. But, Epic has the right to offer their product to me without interference. Apple already has $1000 of my…
> The issue is that I, a user of an iPhone, should be able to install whatever software I want.
Could one not argue that you are able to do this by jailbreaking your iOS-device, which the courts have deemed perfectly legal?
It seems to me that one owns the phone, but not necessarily the operating system it runs.