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Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

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Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#531

Post by dmitriid »

dmitriid wrote: post #345
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh man people assume they aren't fighting the consoles clearly have not read the lawsuits themselves epic is proposing a 12% rate to all the stores and asked Google for it as well, they have fought playstation policies against crossplay and won in the past.

> epic is proposing a 12% rate to all the stores and asked Google for it as well "All stores" as in "actually all stores" or "Apple Store and Google Play Store only"? Their entire "fight" is very much targeted, and consoles (which are Epic's key partners) are not really targeted. Moreover, Epic goes out of its way to define consoles as something else.

To those who are downvoting, here's Epic's CEO on consoles:

--- start quotes ---

“The 30 per cent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 per cent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” he explains.

“There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30 per cent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.” [1]

"Consoles are unique in that the hardware is sold at or below the cost of manufacturing, and is subsidized by software sales, whereas iOS and Android are insanely profitable for Apple and Google from just hardware sales and ads." [2]

--- end quotes ---

Regardless of your opinion on 30% cuts in AppStore and Play Store, these are some really shoddy arguments.

[1] 2018, https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-31-30-percent...

[2] 2020, https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/127327654856984166...

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#532

Post by dmitriid »

viraptor wrote: post #386
dmitriid wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even better that Apple has decided to act like a big ugly baby about it You mean, Apple, like any grown-up company would do in their place, has rightfully shown Epic the door? Google kicked Fortnite from Play Store for the same reason. And had they tried this against consoles (where devs also pay 30%), they'd be kicked out of the respective console forever. What's a "non-cry-baby" reaction in your opinion?

Blocking the new release and blocking the version which allowed out of ecosystem payments. That's it. It's not like Apple gains anything from further actions.

Further actions, unless I'm mistaken, are the direct application of TOS. Epic kept on pushing updates to Fortnite that violated TOS. Your dev account will be disabled if you keep violating TOS.

Epic hoped for preferential treatment just because they are big, and they've enjoyed preferential treatment on consoles. hey've run into Apple applying their TOS equally to everybody and are now somehow pissed.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#533

Post by dmitriid »

GrimRe wrote: post #392
aboringusername wrote: post #6

This is something many people feared might happen, and now, it's become a reality: Apple can, at will, remove your entire foundation or business, your (their) customers and your existence on iOS is just gone. Apple is a company that needs to be brought down a peg or two, it's far too 'valuable' in terms of its market worth, and needs a huge kick up the ass as Microsoft once had to show them some respect. And the EU w…

>Apple can, at will, remove your entire foundation or business, your (their) customers and your existence on iOS is just gone. What a ridiculous thing to say. 1) You make it seem like Apple are some capricious God like entity that any moment will completely change the underlying terms and conditions you agreed to when running your business in iOS. Its simply not true. If you remove this one situation with Epic its li…

> they could have formed an alliance with other businesses and lobbied governments globally without breaking existing T&Cs.

And they would get quite a few allies then. See an earlier proclamation and fight by Spotify: https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#534

Post by ohgodplsno »

dijit wrote: post #192
newacct583 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation or Nintendo’s Switch. I don't believe any of those vendors take anything close to 30% of in-game revenue. And the reason is they compete with each other, quite vigorously, for the same set of users looking for the same set of products (consoles and games). > or classify iOS as somehow different... Right, because Apple is leveraging their dominance of an external market (high end…

> I don't believe any of those vendors take anything close to 30% of in-game revenue. Worked for one of the worlds largest video games publishers for 6+ years. Now I work for the largest games publisher in the world, so, if anyone would get a discount for being big it would be us. It’s 30% platform fee for sales on the PlayStation or xbox platforms, 70k eur/y developer fee (and you still have to buy hardware which is…

That was a while ago, then, or your games sold horribly for an AAA game. Steam's cut goes down to 20%.

The Microsoft store takes a mere 5%.

The Epic Games Store is at... 12% I believe. There's also no exclusivity from either Steam or EGS. The only condition is not using Steam to promote a game that will release first on EGS.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#535

Post by ohgodplsno »

GrimRe wrote: post #522
pier25 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remove this one situation with Epic its literally never happened. Apple has removed apps from the App Store and blocked apps from being published or updated MANY times. Inform yourself.

Give me one single example of Apple changing the T&Cs and then retroactively removing Apps that are in violation of the new T&Cs. Every single time Apple removed an App from the App Store is because the new version was somehow in breach of the T&Cs. You could say that the rules was applied unfairly to Hey but nonetheless the T&Cs were clear as day about off platform signup/payments because it protects consumer from s…

Apple kicked Blix out of the App Store, just before releasing sign in with Apple. Blix was an anonymous sign-up service.

When Catalina was released, they kicked out Luna and Duet after having copied their features in Sidecar.

When they released Screen Time, they kicked out similar apps from the App Store, despite being here for years.

The list is endless.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#536

Post by dijit »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #534
dijit wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe any of those vendors take anything close to 30% of in-game revenue. Worked for one of the worlds largest video games publishers for 6+ years. Now I work for the largest games publisher in the world, so, if anyone would get a discount for being big it would be us. It’s 30% platform fee for sales on the PlayStation or xbox platforms, 70k eur/y developer fee (and you still have to buy hardware which is…

That was a while ago, then, or your games sold horribly for an AAA game. Steam's cut goes down to 20%. The Microsoft store takes a mere 5%. The Epic Games Store is at... 12% I believe. There's also no exclusivity from either Steam or EGS. The only condition is not using Steam to promote a game that will release first on EGS.

Well, that's interesting. for context I worked for Ubisoft and I left approx. 1month ago (August 12th) to work for Tencent.

Although, while we had good relationships with Microsoft at Ubisoft on a technical basis- I'm not sure about the business arrangement. If Valve is any indication then it was likely incredibly hostile.

Epic does only take 12%, it's an outlier, and is gaining traction because of it.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#537

Post by imtringued »

dmitriid wrote: post #531
dmitriid wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> epic is proposing a 12% rate to all the stores and asked Google for it as well "All stores" as in "actually all stores" or "Apple Store and Google Play Store only"? Their entire "fight" is very much targeted, and consoles (which are Epic's key partners) are not really targeted. Moreover, Epic goes out of its way to define consoles as something else.

To those who are downvoting, here's Epic's CEO on consoles: --- start quotes --- “The 30 per cent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 per cent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” he explains. “There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership wit…

The reality is that you're not paying the 30% cut for nothing. Companies actually thought hard about how much they should charge and what they provide in return.

Consoles will become more expensive but games will cost $60. Payment processing fees have to be passed onto the customer. Your $0.99 game with 30% cut is now a $1.30 game because of credit card fees. No more Steam cards at retailers.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#538

Post by imtringued »

tracker1 wrote: post #436
fakedang wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So another Stadia?

If they won't be able to support iOS, they can just launch their own "store" for Android. Similar to Amazon's. Though I'm half surprised Steam hasn't done this. I do question the justification of the 30% cut they all seem to take.

Valve introduced Steam machines and those flopped.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#539

Post by imtringued »

xmprt wrote: post #154
thaumasiotes wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have an open console market. It's called the PC market. Consoles are nothing but closed PCs. Did opening up destroy the PC market? No. But opening up another console market probably would destroy it; there's no reason to separate a hypothetical new PC market from the old PC market. So if you have a PC market and a PS4 market, and then you open the PS4, you have a PC market and another PC market, and then y…

The console market has been slowly dying for the last decade. If anything, opening the console market could help rejuvenate it by turning consoles into general purpose entertainment devices. And the claim that consoles are just closed down PCs is absurd. Consoles can play AAA games at a fraction of the cost of your average PC. The hardware that goes into building a console is significantly different than a PC.

Console hardware isn't significantly different. It's just a highly customized APU from AMD with GDDR5 memory as main memory to make the iGPU fast. A PC might cost more but it also performs better than the console.

Re: Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on September 11

#540

Post by ralfd »

xnyan wrote: post #320
ctroein89 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft and Playstation also allow for cross-platform play Sony explicitly didn't allow for cross-play until 2 years ago [ https://kotaku.com/sony-is-finally-allowing-cross-play-on-th... ], even though it was technically possible before then [ https://www.engadget.com/2017-06-24-rocket-league-cross-netw... ]. In fact, the only reason Sony opened up to cross-play is due to pressure to stay competitive with rival p…

> On the other hand, if argument is that it's easy enough to switch from Playstation to Xbox, then how is that different from buying a new phone? Would you be willing to agree that the relative importance of a smartphone in 2020 is far greater than the relative importance of a video game console in virtually everyone’s lives?

As we are talking about a first person shooter game and not some “relative important” app, no I would not.
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