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Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

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

#421

Post by cblconfederate »

bberenberg wrote: post #68
socialist_coder wrote: post #35

This will certainly get appealed and bogged down even more in the legal system, right? What are the chances this actually happens? And when? Secondly, this is such an easy way to increase your take by 20+% that I would imagine almost every publisher is going to be offering their own payments platform, not just the biggest ones like Epic.

It will be interesting to see how many small companies figure out that tax and general compliance is worth every penny that Apple charges them. Smart ones will opt for a seller of record approach, but many will get burnt.

Definitely not every penny. E.g Xsolla, a payments provider/merchant-of-record charges 5%

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

#422

Post by ibdf »

I believe this will cause managing subscriptions to be a lot harder and untrustworthy. I will probably have to sign up for different payment systems I never heard of… the store won’t be able to track when subscriptions expire, and this will open up so much room for fraudulent behavior.

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

#423

Post by wvenable »

Spivak wrote: post #396
travoc wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.

I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.

Many apps already have non-Apple-taxed pricing. So they can just keep price consistency without losing 30%.

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

#424

Post by lmkg »

mertd wrote: post #249
sudhirj wrote: post #223

Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, which might actually increase revenue. 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year. The thing is no customer wants to use any c…

Why do you think people would implement their own IAP? It would most likely be a few competing platforms like Shopify for web purchases.

To sell the purchase data to data brokers so they can aggregate purchase data across merchants by card number?

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

#425

Post by danShumway »

dannyw wrote: post #100
danShumway wrote: post #43

This is somewhat surprising to me. I thought Epic had a reasonable chance of getting an eventual win on some points, or in getting enough attention that regulators stepped in. I also thought Apple had a pretty decent chance of winning. But I did not think that Epic had a particularly strong chance of getting an injunction like this. I hope that the takeaway people take from this is "it's tricky to guess what a judge…

The judge literally hinted at this exact outcome during the hearings, back in May: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic-appl... . It's not a surprising outcome whatsoever if you followed the trial. Apple's recent concession on this was reading the room and realising this is the likely outcome.

I did follow the trial, and actually probably commented on that exact compromise hint at the time (although I'd need to look over my comment history to know for sure).

I didn't read a "compromise" as indicating that an injunction was particularly likely, and most of the commentary I read on HN at that time didn't read it that way either.

I think people are looking back with the benefit of hindsight at something that was not by any means a generally assumed outcome, even from people who were covering and talking about the trial on HN itself or on other social media sites I followed.

A hint that the judge is curious about finding middle grounds in a lawsuit is definitely not a promise of a permanent injunction.

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

#426

Post by jclardy »

Spivak wrote: post #396
travoc wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.

I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.

Most likely Apple subs will increase in price. This was the case for Netflix/Spotify for a while until Apple banned the practice (7.99 direct, 9.99 via IAP.)

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

#427

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

It still costs Apple money to run the App Store.

Since many developers will now be able to opt out of payments through Apple and Apple will lose that revenue, I foresee Apple changing the terms of service for developers so they can get revenue by some other means not affected by this ruling.

Would Apple charge developers based on the number of downloads / installs of the developers' apps?

What other ways might Apple make up for the lost revenue?

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

#428

Post by superkuh »

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…

When Apple announced it was introducing intentional security vulnerabilities to their Apple Pay platforms last month that was the signal that they were done trying to be a bank. I wonder if that decision was made knowing the likely outcome and downstream results of this case.

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

#429

Post by bink »

donmcronald wrote: post #382
mrtksn wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Developer, I also don't look forward for integrating 50 frameworks for payment, deal with the limitations of each and every one and go through the bureaucracy of 180 countries for export compliance and taxes. When you sell something through Apple, depending on the location of your user, Apple will act as Agent or as a Commissionaire. This makes everything easy, even for a solo developer. Sold an in-game coins in…

I'd be stunned if everyone starts using niche payment providers. I think it's more likely the larger providers will step up. It'll be more along the lines of: Pay With --- Apple IAP ($1.43) - Stripe IAP ($1.06) - Paypal IAP ($1.06) That's also why Epic is disappointed. If Apple were forced to allow competing app stores, Epic is in a perfect position. They have app store tech with payments, commissions, etc. built in.…

Is there anything in the ruling that prevents Apple from requiring all prices be the same or preventing companies from providing extra "value" if their payment processor is utilized?

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

#430

Post by dragonwriter »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #354
dragonwriter wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Afaik they cannot ignore a ruling. They can, but it has a high probability of additional adverse consequences.

By your argument, we CAN commit murder, but it has a very high probability of additional adverse consequences (such as life in prison)

> By your argument, we CAN commit murder, but it has a very high probability of additional adverse consequences

Which...is obviously true. I mean, it would be nice if people could not commit murder, but they can and do.

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