Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11 • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#331

Post by FractalParadigm » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:28 PM UTC

gorkish wrote: post #232

thdrdt wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they should first fight it before breaking it.

Sure they could; but I find it kind of hard to criticize their strategy of getting a hundred million people to commiserate with them before they try. Even better that Apple has decided to act like a big ugly baby about it; they must be over the moon. I've owned and used Apple products continuously for over 30 years, and I'm not ashamed to say that I am rooting HARD for Epic on this. Apple doesn't give a shit about in…

> Apple doesn't give a shit about innovation when they are making money hand over fist

It's crazy but I didn't even notice this paradigm shift until they announced their credit card. Apple used to be the company to push boundaries and revolutionize computing in some way every few years. The last real "innovation" I feel Apple has come up with was the Retina display, pushing OEMs everywhere towards higher pixel counts and better overall user experiences. Before that we got everything from the iPhone and iPod and even iTunes, to USB and WiFi brought to the mainstream, to crazy, beautiful designs that worked well, like the iMac G4.

Just for instance working off local memory, The iMac hasn't seen a form factor update since what, 2012 when they slimmed down the curve? Which even then was a minor facelift of the 2007 design at best, which itself was an aluminum facelift. Before then we had new iMac designs every few years, between the G3 in '98, the G4 in '02, and the G5 settling on the current form factor in '04.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#332

Post by hanselot » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

suby wrote: post #315

an_opabinia wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would speculate that the disappearance of Fortnite from the App Store is a net positive for game developers there. Fortnite sucks the air out of the room, as much as any #1 media property does to its category. Besides, making an Unreal Engine game for iOS hardly ever makes sense. Those are always crummy ports. You could argue Fortnite on mobile devices is itself a crummy port. Do we need more virtual joystick games…

What? It's really quite absurd to wave away every unreal game disappearing from iOS as acceptable because they were all bad games anyway. It's likely the second most popular engine in the industry, there must be thousands of unreal games released on iOS every year. Good for the ecosystem? How many people could be, through no fault of their own, locked out of an entire platform because of this?

>Through no fault of their own is a bit of a stretch.

Apple has exhibited the same behaviour wrt right to repair, and afaik there is no trivial way to install a different OS on your 'old' devices, whether they are left crippled beyond use by Moore's law approach of software design (you know, write whatever barely runs now, and assume future hardware will be able to tank it), or whether by the inability to easily replace components.

This happens with every single company of this scale (and none have been this large before, right?)

Yet we will continue to humour the people who are literally paid to defend their corporate overlords online.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#333

Post by dijit » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #292

dijit wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe any of those vendors take anything close to 30% of in-game revenue. Worked for one of the worlds largest video games publishers for 6+ years. Now I work for the largest games publisher in the world, so, if anyone would get a discount for being big it would be us. It’s 30% platform fee for sales on the PlayStation or xbox platforms, 70k eur/y developer fee (and you still have to buy hardware which is…

Unless you're a high level executive (which you may be, so apologies in advance!), I don't think you would ever know if a special deal was cut for your company. For publishers/developers getting a special deal, there's just no upside to sharing that information, even internally.

I helped build the PNL for my projects, company doesn’t (can’t) hide finances from the project.

Since I can see total unit sales and total income and it’s broken down on SKU- then it would have been easy for me to see a discrepancy from what I was told our deals were by my masters at HQ but there never was one.

I think you assume too much of executives, they are consumers of our work, they don’t create any reports or such themselves.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#334

Post by vincnetas » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #312

reaperducer wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple can, at will, remove your entire foundation or business It’s the hazards of building your business on another company’s foundation. There are millions of companies completely dependent on Apple, Amazon, or another organization. In tech terms, it goes back to affiliate marketing days. In real world terms, it goes back centuries. No leader should make his company dependent on another company, but it happens all t…

> It’s the hazards of building your business on another company’s foundation. This is one of those mindkill kind of lines someone posts in all such threads. Yes, everything in the world depends on something else. Do you also say this when companies rely on utility companies for their electricity and water? Or must I buy an island and set things up from scratch before I am allowed to start a lemonade stand? Or maybe m…

You can get identical electricity from different provider. You cant get identical platform from not apple.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#335

Post by DennisAleynikov » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #291

411111111111111 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt that. Apple hardware has always been more about being a status symbol then utility. To the average Apple user it's just not cool enough if it isn't availble on Apple hardware. Even looking back I'm still surprised how effectively Apple polarized people into fans vs haters after steve jobs rejoined back then...

> Apple hardware has always been more about being a status symbol then utility. Citation needed. Even Linus Torvalds had used several pieces of Apple hardware (iBook, G5, Macbook Air)... Perhaps he was in search of "status" too?

there are a few nerds here and there that actually prefer the weird Unix/BSD that Mac OS X is based on but theres no way Linus Torvalds is using the normie focused MacOS Big Sur and the current environment

Apple used to support freedom in programming and use of the computer.

That has not been the case anytime recently, they've taken the prison system of iOS and slowly implemented it on 'macOS'

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#336

Post by smachiz » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #239

jmpman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace Apple’s iOS ecosystem with Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation or Nintendo’s Switch. Either you destroy the console ecosystem by forcing them all to open up, or classify iOS as somehow different... or you leave them all to enforce their business agreements through mutually accepted legal term. If Epic doesn’t want a different agreement than Apple, they can negotiate alternative legal terms.

> Either you destroy the console ecosystem by forcing them all to open up, or classify iOS as somehow different. Console ecosystems are already open-by-law, based on past cases from the 80s and 90s. You can already publish a game to a Switch or PlayStation without ever going through Nintendo or Sony (so long as you don't steal any copywritten assets to do so). You can even publish your own software, that modifies any…

Their online stores are 100% closed, walled gardens.

As far as I know, the courts didn't require that Nintendo, Sega or Sony make the consoles open - they just didn't make it illegal to reverse engineer the protections.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#337

Post by ffhhj » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #205

aboringusername wrote: post #6

This is something many people feared might happen, and now, it's become a reality: Apple can, at will, remove your entire foundation or business, your (their) customers and your existence on iOS is just gone. Apple is a company that needs to be brought down a peg or two, it's far too 'valuable' in terms of its market worth, and needs a huge kick up the ass as Microsoft once had to show them some respect. And the EU w…

I can't help but think that the whole thing is playing out exactly like Epic had hoped. After Apple kicked Fortnite from the iOS store, there was an outcry of people who had previously spent money on it through Apple's in-app purchases and now wanted a refund. Some of those users switched to playing Fortnite on a laptop or Android phone instead, but of course they were still using Sign in with Apple if they had origi…

Epic should take advantage of this momentum and launch their own gaming device, with Google/Apple stores saturated as they are, gamedevs like me will welcome it.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#338

Post by sjy » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

cavanasm wrote: post #220

mythz wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is untrue. Their harm was of their own making which was why the Judge dismissed their injunction: > The Court finds that with respect to Epic Games’ motion as to its games, including Fortnite, Epic Games has not yet demonstrated irreparable harm. The current predicament appears of its own making. Epic strategically chose to breach its agreements with Apple How can purposefully violating someone's contract be a p…

There hasn't been a hearing on an injunction yet, that happens later this month. The hearing that HAS happened was on a temporary restraining order, which was to keep Apple from doing anything UNTIL AFTER the injunction hearing. The difference is important, the temporary restraining order's effects are only limited to that August-September time window, and the hearing itself had limited argument, and very little prep…

> a similar anti-trust suit filed by an Apple user was thrown out without a trial on grounds that the customer was not able to sufficiently demonstrate Apple's practices harmed them

Which case is this? Epic’s complaint [1] only mentions the word “standing” once and seeks broad restraints on Apple’s “conduct” that go beyond the enforcement of one TOS clause. I can see why strategically, Epic thought it was best to build the record by breaching its contract with Apple first, but it’s not clear that this was an essential precondition to the lawsuit.

[1] https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#339

Post by mcv » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

ffpip wrote: post #156

Animats wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're sorry that you were unable to log in with Apple. Here's a discount offer on an HTC U-series phone! And we'll throw in five new Fortnite skins!"

They got every single kid to enable 2FA on Epic Accounts by giving a free skin. My brother even asked me 'how to 2FA?'

That's a really good way to leverage security. Respect to Epic for that.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#340

Post by dmitriid » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #213

gamblor956 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Apple, larger developers can use their market leverage to negotiate better rates, and many have, which is why you don't hear Epic or Rockstar complaining about MS or Sony. This point is key to the difference, since antitrust is about market interference. If market participants can use their own leverage to push back against another participant's market activities, then you don't have an antitrust violation. Ap…

MS doesn't require Xbox developers to use their IAP API. Most do, but that's just because it's so convenient for the players.

quote: Microsoft’s App Developer Agreement states that “[n]ew App and in-App Product submissions to the Store are required to use Microsoft’s commerce engine to support purchase of any In-App Product(s) that are or can be consumed or used within [the] app.”

Appendix A1 (page 16) here https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishi...