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Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

reuters.com

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Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#471

Post by simion314 »

dkonofalski wrote: post #428
notthemessiah wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is parasitic, but I think in the bigger scheme of things, Valve is a lesser evil than Epic, which is in itself a lesser evil than Apple. Valve is investing in its own capital as well as the infrastructure for the PC gaming industry at large (Vulkan and driver improvements), whereas Epic has no endgame but to gain market share using bottomless VC pockets. Apple, while a company with some merits, utilizes vertical i…

You and I must have different definitions of parasitic. Apple is providing services to developers and, in exchange is receiving payment for that. Developers shouldn't be able to take advantage of the benefits of the platform without paying for it. Everything else you said is irrelevant.

Apple provides a hardware thing, users pay for the objects, Developers should pay for the IDEs or compilers if they want to use Apple tools and the user should have the freedom to decide what to put on his piece of hardware,

But sure, if I put my app on the store I should pay for hosting it, for the updates and reviews, I should pay if I want it to be promoted on the store but I should not be forced to say pay Apple a tax for shit like soem subscriptions or books I sell from my app, I should pay Apple for the store services they offer.

Also Sony and Microsoft should not be immune either IMO

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#472

Post by dkonofalski »

stale2002 wrote: post #426
dkonofalski wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things.

> If you can't sideload things Ok, and if you simply had a setting that you could turn on, that make it so your phone couldn't side load, then you still get what you want. Everyone wins, by simply giving you the option to turn off side loading, but letting others choose to do so if they want to.

No, everyone doesn't win because that exact situation has already been used before by Windows with UAC and Android with developer mode and malware/virus peddlers just started to include instructions on how to bypass those things.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#473

Post by colejohnson66 »

Polycryptus wrote: post #450
ekianjo wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You install those yourself you know. I'd rather have a choice than not. yes and No. When some games are "exclusives" to a certain store, if you want to play such games you end up having to install every store in existence which is not very consumer friendly. It would be better for stores to have every game possible, just like at the time of good old physical retail. It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games…

> It's not like there were Wallmart exclusive games, right? It doesn't matter too much, but there actually have been... Nintendo's Chibi-Robo Park Patrol was a WalMart exclusive game in the US. (in 2007)

A big problem with the comparison between big box stores and app stores regarding exclusives is: I can go to Walmart, buy my “Walmart Exclusive(tm)”, and then not go back. Chibi-Robo! doesn’t require I play in Walmart, and, in fact, will run just fine on my DS everywhere. OTOH, for an Epic exclusive, I can’t buy (read: license) the game and then never use the Epic launcher. Because every time I want to play “Epic Exclusive(tm) #9001”, I need to have the Epic Store running.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#474

Post by adamdusty »

dpkonofa wrote: post #124
adamdusty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? All in app purchases have to be made through Apple's payment system. If you can buy amazon prime through the app then Apple should be taking a 30% cut. They might already do that, I have no idea, but it seems unlikely Amazon would agree to it.

You can't buy Amazon Prime through the app. What people are referring to is the fact that existing subscriptions are allowed to renew without the 30% cut. People are misframing that as an exception for Amazon even though there are several platforms in the same situation that already benefit from the same policy that Amazon now agrees to.

I figured you were right, so I just signed up for prime.. through the app, and it didn't use the play store payment system, so Google isn't taking a cut.

Again, I have no idea what is possible on the Apple version, but I have subscriptions on other apps that go through the play store payment system. I'm not an expert on app store policies for payments, but I don't use any other apps that have subscription payment that don't go through the play store. I have a LastPass subscription which I purchased through their website, specifically because you have to go through the play store if you get it through the app.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#475

Post by isodev »

enragedcacti wrote: post #448
isodev wrote: post #146

Such vendors are free to create game catalogs for their games (Steam-like), taking the user to the App Store for downloads. They can also have IAPs, Subscriptions and alls kinds of payment options. Apple's own Arcade follows this same architecture so I don't see Epic's argument at all. When I am using my iPhone/iPad, I expect all apps to work with services connected to my Apple account. No user should be required to…

> I expect all apps to work with services connected to my Apple account. No user should be required to provide payment information to a shady 3rd party like Epic, Microsoft or whatever. Apple could make everyone happy tomorrow vis-a-vis IAPs by charging standard credit card processing fees (~2-3%)instead of 30% while still protecting your payment info from app developers.

The App Store is also a distribution channel. The 15% seems like a lot but I would have to pay, way, way more to achieve the same level of presence elsewhere (without nasty tracking ads).

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#476

Post by enragedcacti »

onion2k wrote: post #209
dubcanada wrote: post #184

I can hardly wait to use Amazon App Store to install Amazon and then open up the Epic Game Store to install random game and then open up EA Game Store to install random game and then open up Facebook App Store to install Facebook and then open up the Apple App Store to install the Blizzard App Store to install Hearthstone and then go back to the Apple App Store and update the Blizzard App Store so I can get the lates…

I hate the fact I have to use Apple TV to watch Servant, Disney+ to watch The Mandalorian, Netflix to watch Stranger Things, and Amazon Prime Video to watch The Boys, and HBO to watch Game of Thrones, and so on. I'd much rather all of those other companies gave Apple a 30% cut of their revenue.

Funnily enough the new Chromecast with Google TV is a better experience for you than Apple TV. All of the services except Apple TV that you mentioned are searchable and playable from the home screen and Google doesn't have to take 30% of their revenue to make it happen.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#477

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

joshuaissac wrote: post #461
babypuncher wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that choice of app store actually matters to you, then you have the option to choose an Android phone instead of an iPhone. You're not being relegated to some obscure platform with no app support like people who didn't want to use Wintel in the '00s.

Google Play Store's revenue is half of that of the Apple App Store, so choosing only Android instead of both platforms would cut the expected app revenue by about two-thirds. Google also has similar app tax policies to Apple (and there is an ongoing lawsuit by Epic against them), so they really are relegated to the more obscure app stores.

That's because Apple's app store has better quality apps due to curation. The minute iPhones are opened up, the value of the App Store will tank considerably, and many devs on here will be up in arms, complaining about all the flood of free apps that have destroyed their market.

The fact is the App Store helps everyone. It curates apps for most people, it helps developers make more money (as you said, double the revenue, well worth the 1/3 cut, that no longer applies to small apps), and it helps Apple innovate on their hardware product.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#478

Post by adamdusty »

csunbird wrote: post #167
adamdusty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? All in app purchases have to be made through Apple's payment system. If you can buy amazon prime through the app then Apple should be taking a 30% cut. They might already do that, I have no idea, but it seems unlikely Amazon would agree to it.

Delivery of physical goods and services are allowed to have other means of payment, I think.

I wouldn't consider amazon prime a physical good or service.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#479

Post by throwaway3699 »

vinger wrote: post #463
Arainach wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic started offering a very bad user experience game devs would hesitate to publish exclusively through them because they'd fear reduced revenue. This is demonstrably not true. Epic's launcher has been a laughing stock since it was announced. * It only recently got any form of Achievements (that are completely undiscoverable) * It has no way to join a party with your friends. I think it has Friends support but am…

None of those sounds like a very bad user experience. A very bad experience is games disppearing different games appearing after purchasing something else, games not working, memory usage too high..etc No user reviews, no easy help button for noobs, no cloud save, only recently got achievements, can't crush a friends party. all sound like little nice to haves that don't add much value. Does it allow me to find/play t…

Then, no offense, but you might not understand the market very well. Achievements and friends are table stakes these days. Games are primarily a multiplayer experience with friends so platforms absolutely need those things before locking games as exclusives.

This would be like shipping an OS without internet access to end-users.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#480

Post by colejohnson66 »

cafed00d wrote: post #419
SCHiM wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You install those yourself you know. I'd rather have a choice than not. I feel your pain in the sense that that I think user UX will take a hit, but I think that's less important than breaking the monopoly of the current app store. For example, I can't find apps with pornography or other types of things the high overlords at apple or Google have deemed inappropriate for me to have. That's bad. Apparently apps like Ma…

> It'd be nice if I can choose what I want to see. Have I got news for you?! You can choose exactly what you want to see. There's a very cool "App Store" on your iPhone right now. Somebody in marketing named it "Safari" -- IKR! pfft; -- Safari is one of the best App Stores out there. It has this neat interface called "URLs" where you "search" for Apps and apparently they run on this HTML5 voodoo magic; which is a set…

I know this is a joke comment, but isn’t JavaScript supposed to be the joke language here on HN, not Objective-C/Swift?
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