Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case • Hacker News Board

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#191

Post by TillE » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #137

cblconfederate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many platforms it's not worth the effort, or the native payment method is actually cheaper than any potential competitor

Curious to know which platforms have lower fees than doing it yourself.

Taking direct payments is absolutely insane if you're a small developer. I mean, have fun accounting for zillions of tax laws in every country in the world.

30% is a lot, but considering all the other services you get, it's not particularly unreasonable.

For big companies, sure, you have accountants and lawyers and your own infrastructure, so you don't need any of that stuff.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#192

Post by coldpie » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

BackBlast wrote: post #138

coldcode wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's gateway? I don't see…

Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much? At the end of the day, services have to provide value. If your customers don't want to pay for your services, they do not value them. That's a dangerous position for any company to try to maintain. The mobile software industry generally has been chaffing at the fees for quite some time now, these are the warning s…

> Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much?

Honestly, yeah. I'm way more likely to click "subscribe at $5/mo using your normal payment flow" than go through a whole new account creation flow and wonder how cancellation will work somehow down the line or how trustworthy this vendor is with my data.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#193

Post by quickthrowman » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

Is this going to affect subscriptions? If so, I’m cancelling all of my current subscriptions through apple, they’re the ONLY company that makes cancelling easy and that will go away if this includes subscriptions.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#194

Post by gpm » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

cush wrote: post #66

bialpio wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thread on HN arguing one way or another whether Apple is a monopoly. Why would it? The court basically dodged the question, so we still don't have an answer provided by the court system. Until that happens, we can discuss it to death if we want! Edit: excerpt from the ruling is: "Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist unde…

Dodging the question would be a non-ruling. The judge issued an injunction. It's in the title of the post.

The judge issued a injunction based on another law that didn't require Apple be a monopoly, found that the record did not prove that Apple was a monopoly (and thus against Epic on that theory), but took the time to clarify that Apple might be a monopoly, it just wasn't proved.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#195

Post by OisinMoran » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

To be clear, I'm on the side of Epic here, but in rulings like this where it has been judged that someone did some wrong (just focusing on Epic breaking their contract) and the punishment is getting them to pay exactly as much as had they done the "right" thing, the expected value is always going to favour doing the "wrong" thing, as sometimes you won't get caught. Any fines or decisions like this should include the likelihood of getting caught and make the expected value negative. A fine for not having a train ticket is not just the price of a ticket.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#196

Post by nescioquid » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

borski wrote: post #155

bialpio wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I'm reading "the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws" as "we cannot decide on this matter". Is this not the right interpretation?

That is not the right interpretation. They didn’t say they cannot conclude one way or the other - they said they cannot conclude that Apple is a monopolist, period - meaning that they have concluded Apple is not a monopolist (under current state and federal laws). They did not say “we cannot ultimately conclude whether Apple is a monopolist” which would be your interpretation. [edit] Given the downvotes (really?) I s…

The judge found that Apple is not a monopoly _in the market for payment processors for mobile games_, not that Apple is categorically not a monopoly.

> “The relevant market here is digital mobile gaming transactions, not gaming generally and not Apple’s own internal operating systems related to the App Store,” Gonzalez-Rogers wrote.

> Under that market definition, “the court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she continued.

My main point of surprise is that anti-trust was even relevant in a lawsuit between two private parties. I thought this would only be relevant if the state were trying an anti-trust case.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#197

Post by simonh » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

MAGZine wrote: post #24

yurishimo wrote: post #15

I'm really happy to see this moving forward, but I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my life harder compared to Apple Pay. I'm hoping with this movement, tools like Stripe/Paddle will develop some better IAP flows to make it as easy as possible. Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appeali…

On Android, I use Google Pay all of the time for in-app purchases, and it doesn't require Google to take 30%. It's just another payment processor. It often shows up beside "add a credit card" in apps. I use it to order food, pay for rideshare, buy tickets, etc.

According to google, that is not correct. They levy a 30% fee on all Play Store transactions for apps and IAP. I've seen articles that say they are cutting the fee to 15% for businesses with under $1m revenue, but that's not what the support page says.

https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7159343?hl=...

Buying physical goods and services may not count, in the same way that they don't count on the Apple App Store.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#198

Post by coldpie » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #179

NationalPark wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s tons of value in a unified payment system, which is why it’s app developers who were unhappy, not users. For instance, ease of cancellation of recurring fees is enormous. You can bet that’s going to get harder as developers get more control. And anyway, The app developers have no motivation to charge you less, the market already bears the fees, they just want to capture that profit for themselves. Personally…

> which is why it’s app developers who were unhappy, not users The judge commented on that >> "Apple created an innovative platform but it did not disclose its rules to the average consumer. Apple has used this lack of knowledge to exploit its position. --- > Personally I probably just won’t buy things that require me to sign up for a new payment system You, as a consumer, will now have a choice, which you'll get to…

> This sounds like a win!

Not if I wasn't interested in having the choice to begin with. Now some apps will not be purchasable by me unless I go through their account flow, which I don't want to. It's strictly worse (for me).

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#199

Post by babelfish » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

sombremesa wrote: post #134

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik they cannot ignore a ruling. And they don't need 30% fees for maintaining IOS ecosystem - when you buy an apple phone for $1000, you pay Apple enough for it to maintain its AppStore. Also they earn money from AppStore advertising (which apps out of the millions should the small screen show); so maintaining AppStore should not be a problem. I don't know about the bad-actors part though.

> they cannot ignore a ruling Why not?

Because that’s not how the law works. Sure, they can technically ignore the ruling, but they’re opening themselves up to a whole host of lawsuits, and any judge in those lawsuits would not look favorably on Apple.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#200

Post by selykg » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

BackBlast wrote: post #138

coldcode wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's gateway? I don't see…

Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much? At the end of the day, services have to provide value. If your customers don't want to pay for your services, they do not value them. That's a dangerous position for any company to try to maintain. The mobile software industry generally has been chaffing at the fees for quite some time now, these are the warning s…

I would. I'm very careful about what I pay for anyway. If you want me to pay for your product it needs to be something that brings me real value. Even then I limit myself, as I only have a certain amount to spend anyway, so you're competing with other products for my limited amount of budget.

Apple's IAP makes it incredibly simple to cancel service. It's consistent as well, which means I don't have to keep hunting through your site to find it because you hid the location of canceling behind "Please contact us to cancel" type crap.

Do I think Apple is charging too much for their cut? Yea, I do. But as a consumer, the benefits outweigh it. As a potential business owner, yea... I would be upset too.