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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

#871

Post by maccard »

scardycat wrote: post #409
maccard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More choice is always a win for the customers. Not if it solely results in fragmentation. Having the choice between Ubisoft Connect, EA Origin, Steam and Battle.net isn't a "choice", it's just 4 different storefronts for me to manage credentials for.

You cannot have choice without fragmentation, you cannot complain about lock-in without wanting choice. Choice and fragmentation go hand in hand, and customers get to decide who wins and who loses.

But fragmentation doesn't guarantee a choice. Take web streaming for example. I don't have a "choice" between Netflix and Disney, the choice is made by the content they provide. Now I'm essentially required to have two accounts to access the services that could appear on just one.

Music streaming is a different ball game altogether; I have an actual choice here between Spotify and other providers. Yes there are some exclusives but for the most part I'm choosing based on the features they provide, brand loyalty, price, etc.

Games consoles are somewhere in between (largely due to the methods of funding video games) - you choose between Xbox or playstation (or Nintendo I guess) and get access to a wide range of games on your platform. Yes there are some exclusives (most of which are funded by the console maker and just wouldn't exist if it weren't for this), but by and large your choice is dictated "where are my friends", gamepass, price of console + services, brand loyalty.

This is going to end up like origin vs uplay vs battle.net, where you don't have a "choice" on where you play because there's no overlap, you just have to have axcpunts with them all and deal with all their individual crap, and shitty practices rather than just Apples

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

#872

Post by paulmd »

cblconfederate wrote: post #667
jay_kyburz wrote: post #652

I'm going to put this comment on every Apple vs Epic thread from now on, regardless of how many internet points I lose. Instead of trying to ruin Apples ecosystem, Epic should try and develop their own. If Valve can make the Steam Deck, Epic can make a Fortnite Phone. Epic could then choose to make the phone as open or locked down as they like. They could have their own app store policies, and they could allow any pa…

> Instead of trying to ruin Apples ecosystem, Epic should try and develop their own. So instead of 2 silos, you now have 3. How does that improve anything? The whole point is to move away from this idea that developers are apple's "ecosystem", like cows in a cow farm. They are not cattle, but independent people with the right to compete in a fair market, much like how apple is competing in a fair market, which is pro…

> So instead of 2 silos, you now have 3. How does that improve anything?

Only on HN could you possibly find people arguing that an additional competitor entering the market somehow “reducing competition and not making anything better” while also arguing that attempting to use the legal system to destroy one of those competitors’ unique offerings to customers and force them to adopt the model of their competitor, leaving no customer choice for the curated-ecosystem model, is good and pro-competitive.

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

#873

Post by paulmd »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #577
rubyn00bie wrote: post #563

yawn Apple is getting a mild slap on the wrist and the outcome of the case is probably the best for everyone. It did away with the most entirely absurd and egregious restriction but still lets a company like... choose how to run their business. If anything this is likely to drastically improve the quality of some big-name applications on Apple's platforms, further increasing their bottom line. I would bet money techn…

Epic tried to put Fortnite back on the app store in Korea. Apple refused.

Good. Epic knew full well what they were doing was in breach of contract, and that the consequence would be termination of their account. And the court has just confirmed that this is correct, valid, and appropriate.

Enjoy your worthless banned developer account, because that’s what Epic wanted to happen and that’s what did happen exactly as everyone expected.

As they say: play stupid games…

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

#874

Post by MillenialMan »

NationalPark wrote: post #176
BackBlast wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I think if you offered the two options to users with even partial differences in price, most users would go for the cheaper option even if they had to do cartwheels to process payments.

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

#875

Post by ribit »

I am wondering how Apple will react to this. It seems likely that big companies (who pay for much of the App Store) will take the opportunity to implement their own payment option. Small devs probably won't bother, since overhead on small purchases + additional accounting is likely to be higher than Apple's 15%.

Will Apple introduce some sort of tiered pricing model, where apps with third-party purchase option have to pay a listing/API fee? Or will they just take a revenue hit?

I'm quite sure that they already planned for this, given their reaction to the verdict. They don't appear to be very concerned ...

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

#876

Post by paulmd »

Invictus0 wrote: post #45

Will Epic's developer account be reinstated?

Short answer: no.

Apple isn’t required to reinstate Epic, and it actually also enforces damages for the breach of contract during the time when Epic was stiffing Apple for the fees.

Despite a lot of reporting about how this is some big win for Epic, the court is siding with Apple there, the ruling is Epic was in the wrong (breach of contract) and needs to pay up, and if Apple decides they don’t want to do further business with epic then oh well, “play stupid games…”

Next time you want to try and negotiate a lower contract rate, don’t breach a legal and valid contract and then try to use the courts to do your dirty work. The courts are not your sales rep.

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

#877

Post by zajio1am »

gambiting wrote: post #707
msbarnett wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with a CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel the recurring payment by going through the account options on your bank website? No? I don't know where you're located, but I'm not aware of any North American banks that offer anything of the sort. Typically the only thing you could do through your bank is dispute a charge after the fact and request a chargeback. The end of that process may or may not see the…

Here in UK if a company wants to charge you regularly for anything they have to start something called a "direct debit" on your bank account - then they can withdraw money from your account whenever they see fit. The thing about direct debits though is that you can cancel them for any reason within few clicks on your account website, and all charges are reversible without having to provide a reason - I just call my b…

> Here in UK if a company wants to charge you regularly for anything they have to start something called a "direct debit" on your bank account - then they can withdraw money from your account whenever they see fit

Here in Czechia most periodic payments are paid through either direct debit or standing order. Direct debit payments require apriori permission (enabled for each recipient max sum per period), which could be revoked at any time.

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

#878

Post by woko »

ghosty141 wrote: post #495
BackBlast wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Most in-App purchases are in the range of 1-5$. If I pay a couple of cents more to have a unified experience, yeah sure. It'd be interesting to see how much users spend on in-App purchases. For me it's almost nothing, maybe 1 purchase a year? The big money is probably in the free2play market where players spend a…

You are correct. See:

> Judge seems alarmed at the extent to which impulse spending by "exorbitantly high spending gamers" drives App Store revenue.

> Says it's outside the scope of antitrust but says issue is "worthy of attention"

[1] https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1436365652164493317

> "in most economic ways...the App Store is primarily a game store and secondarily an 'every other' app store"

[2] https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1436365985800507394

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

#879

Post by wildfire »

gambiting wrote: post #707
msbarnett wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with a CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel the recurring payment by going through the account options on your bank website? No? I don't know where you're located, but I'm not aware of any North American banks that offer anything of the sort. Typically the only thing you could do through your bank is dispute a charge after the fact and request a chargeback. The end of that process may or may not see the…

Here in UK if a company wants to charge you regularly for anything they have to start something called a "direct debit" on your bank account - then they can withdraw money from your account whenever they see fit. The thing about direct debits though is that you can cancel them for any reason within few clicks on your account website, and all charges are reversible without having to provide a reason - I just call my b…

UK direct debits are only for debit accounts.

But most of the commentators are talking about credit cards.

There is no equivalent system for credit cards.

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

#880

Post by amelius »

pstrateman wrote: post #592
baxtr wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a WSJ subscription which I couldn’t cancel online. You have to call them, wait in line and then let them talk you into another free month and stuff. A bad experience. It was so annoying I just gave up until my CC was locked. This experience was definitely more expensive than using Apple’s services.

I cancelled mine by sending them an email stating that I would be disputing every charge. The reply email I got was at 9:07am EST, 'dispute' probably automatically puts your email head of queue for them.

Was this your first email to them? Is this how you cancel any service or just this one?
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