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Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

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Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#461

Post by verall »

ninjinxo wrote: post #439
verall wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friends and I play Apex through Steam, which I downloaded for free. When you click to purchase "Apex coins", it takes you straight to EA's website. Apple wants to enforce a cut on every purchase of in-game currency. Steam does not do this. And Valve allows you to sell steam keys on your own website also without paying the cut, so long as you don't undercut the steam store.

Steam does take a cut for microtransactions, very likely force price parity, and put the developers under NDAs: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1ogbo7/will_mo...

They take a cut for microtransactions that they process, but you are free to use your own service. They do require price parity. That link doesn't seem related at all.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#462

Post by notafraudster »

bendmorris wrote: post #298
spiderice wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it telling that you use AWS as an example because they are different than the apple model, while ignoring all the companies using the exact same model as apple, including how Epic charges developers to host content on the Epic store.

Epic is a great example. Their own store lists alternative stores on the Epic store, like itch.io. But they don't take a cut of games bought from those stores. Once you launch itch, you're in itch.

This would be true if they listed "alternative store_s_", but what they actually did is add itch.io to their store in a token way once they started the lawsuit in order to say "Look, we have no problem working with other stores". It's a stunt for the lawsuit. Even the Itch founder who signed the deal said they basically found it bemusing and an effort to gain legal leverage without really doing anything else.

It'd be like if Apple took all of the developers who testified against Apple, reduced their commission to 0% in perpetuity, and then asked the judge to throw out their testimony because the complaints were moot.

(That being said, I do think there are conditions where stores would/should allow other stores, and I think those conditions could be more permissive than the Roblox example. Apple should, medium term, resolve the GeForce Now/XCloud objections.)

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#463

Post by LexGray »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #101
slver wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is that you're OK with basically every single developer declaring their app as free, and then asking for your credit card, which will be processed in god knows what ways with most of them. So developers get in the shortterm to avoid the 30% cut. But what happens next? The payment process becomes much more cumbersome and much less safe for users. So they start avoiding any payments on iPhone. Apple…

This is FUD. Where is the evidence that letting developers choose how to process payments leads to rampant fraud? The online payment landscape outside the App Store is actually very safe for users. Try to cancel an in-app subscription without Googling how to do it. Good luck. Also, if you try using the store, you’ll see it’s not curated in any meaningful way. It’s full of garbage and fake reviews. Someone properly in…

I have worked a few places where customer credit card information was kept in spreadsheets or other open databases. At the scale of an app developer who has trouble affording a $99 developer account spending money on securing customer information is a virtual non starter. Also third party interfaces you may attempt to use are often purchased and repurposed.

There are huge numbers of dark pattern companies who thrive on the ability to thwart subscription cancellation and the Apple method can at least be googled.

I have not seen any platform which has resolved the fake review problem through incentives and many that are far worse.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#464

Post by anonymouse008 »

lossolo wrote: post #437
MR4D wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa charges you 3% but doesn’t have an online store that I can find your app on, and don’t run security checks against your app to check for malicious apps, etc. So I think we can agree that a realistic number for Apple is definitely above 3% for the service they provide. We can argue about 30%, and that’s a good discussion, but 3% is no way comparable.

Apple had 72.3 billion revenue from App Store in 2020. I can assure you that I can provide you with online store that I can find your app on, and run security checks against your app to check for malicious apps, etc. for 2.1 billion $ per year (3%).

Ah yes, and I’ll have that feature done in 2 weeks, max! How hard could it be?

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#465

Post by thaumasiotes »

JadeNB wrote: post #182
duped wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A credit card with standard transaction fees and interest is very different than taking 30% of every transaction on the platform while also having the power to forbid venders on the platform from increasing their prices to make up the difference.

> A credit card with standard transaction fees But they're only standard because the credit cards asserted these fees, we got used to them, and now they seem obvious, right? (I remember plenty of merchants who used not to accept credit cards to avoid the fees, but, whether by bank pressure or just the weight of expectation, there aren't many of those any more.) It surely won't be too long until these fees are 'standa…

> (I remember plenty of merchants who used not to accept credit cards to avoid the fees, but, whether by bank pressure or just the weight of expectation, there aren't many of those any more.)

It's a difference between small merchants and large merchants. Small merchants still feel free to refuse cards or charge higher prices when you use them. Large merchants aren't free to refuse (too much of a customer loss) or to charge (against the credit company terms).

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#466

Post by grishka »

taurath wrote: post #404
wccrawford wrote: post #4

Other news on this has quotes from Tim Cook saying that they'd have to find a way to track purchases on IOS and bill developers so that Apple still gets their cut when using other payment processors. For me, this is way over the line. If they want to charge developers to be on their store, fine. I don't have a problem with that. And charging for using them as a payment processor makes sense. Charging for using Apple…

What if the platform strategy is inherently flawed from the perspective of a public good, and is inherently monopolistic and anticompetitive? How does this not reach the absolute definition of a de facto monopoly, especially if you’ve read about the powers that monopolies already broken up we’re using to keep theirs? No monopoly ever will admit it is one. I would like to see a world where platforms are forcibly opene…

> they own the hardware

They don't — the users bought it, it's theirs now. It should be illegal to restrict hardware like this.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#468

Post by [deleted] »

sidlls wrote: post #371
mthoms wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't make unsubstantial comments on HN. You're not being as clever as you think you are. Edit: The context of my pro-free-market comment is app stores. Of course it's not absolute. You very well know this. Please don't argue in bad faith.

The comment was not unsubstantial, nor was it “clever” in the way you suggest was attempted. Cigarettes were quite a popular market driven product for literally decades. The point being, obviously, that “the market decides” isn’t necessarily a good way to determine or identify quality, or what consumers actually want or need.

[deleted]

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#469

Post by grishka »

sircastor wrote: post #112
celsoazevedo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that a clueless person was able to download and install a malware apk when by default Android forces you to go to your settings and allow apps to install other apps (the behaviour has changed over the years, but you always need to do something). Not to mention that Google Play Protect scans your apps and warns you if it finds something sketchy. In any case and as much as I like my own clueless grandma, I d…

Never underestimate a malware makers ability to instruct a user to do something. Out for that matter a users ability to get themselves into trouble.

IMO the right question to ask here is how do we, as a society, make people not be this trustful?

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#470

Post by jedberg »

grishka wrote: post #458
jedberg wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you look at it. I used to work in a store that sold software in the 90s. The publisher would sell us the game wholesale and we'd charge retail. So they would sell it to us for $22.50 and set the retail price at $29. So in that sense it was a 22% cut, because we only kept 22% of the sale price. But in most cases the publisher didn't make the game. They were a middleman who took a game from a studio and…

Except physical distribution is expensive by its nature. It involves producing and moving around physical objects — that's material and labor per copy . App store, on the other hand, is a digital distributor. Making a digital copy is so cheap it could as well be free. And even then, not all app developers publish on the app store because they want or need its distribution services. There are many developers who would…

I agree with you completely. I think Apple should, at the very least, allow side loading.

I was just answering the question about what the cut used to be in the packaged software world.

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