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Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#581

Post by jahewson »

sfifs wrote: post #545
pvg wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic's court case. Apple is playing right into his hands. I keep seeing seeing assessments in this vein but they can't really be right - the courts would have to be toddler-level naive not to see through it. They aren't - here's Judge Rogers addressing Epic at the recent hearing (as reported by Sarah Jeong): "To Epic: Your client created this situation. Your client does n…

What I think is happening is Epic is trying to force a jury trial on anti-trust and won't hold out for a settlement unlike Amazon and Netflix. At this stage all Epic's actions are geared basically around collecting arguments to bring in front of a jury composed of regular folks. I'm very confident the old Steve Jobs emails from the eBooks anti-trust case will also be brought into the trial to argue anti-trust is in A…

Epic can’t force a jury trial on anti-trust (Sherman act violations) - only the US government has standing to even file that kind of suit. What they can do is sue for damages due to breach of contract or similar bad faith which is a risky and not hugely convincing position.

You’re quite right that they want a jury trial and to put on a show. But legally this is just a business dispute and arguably one that Epic engineered. I wouldn’t be surprised if the case was simply thrown out for that reason.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#582

Post by Aeolun »

sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #468
akira2501 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No matter what opinion one holds on mobile store rules, they are their rules and so far you have the choice of following them (which is also somewhat iffy) or not being on the store. A valid opinion is that those rules are illegal under current federal statue. Another one is that although they currently aren't, they should be. > Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departm…

If it makes you feel better, the tax payer funded courts are only about 0.05% of the annual budget.

Guess that explains why everything is so glacially slow. How about deverting a tenth of a percent from the military? :)

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#583

Post by smichel17 »

dang wrote: post #463
dang wrote: post #181

All: these Epic vs. Apple threads, and $BigCo vs. $BigCo threads in general, have unfortunately been seeing more name-calling, accusations of manipulation, flamebait/unsubstantive posts, and other things that break the HN guidelines. If you comment, can you please avoid that? Reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html would help. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoug…

This is a stub comment to collect the replies so we can collapse them, to prevent offtopicness. Sorry, no-JS users.

Workaround (kind of) for nojs users: these comments are available via the api, so you can access them via your choice of app or alternative UI (there are some sites around that put a different interface around the api).

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#584

Post by Fezzik »

_qulr wrote: post #571
Fezzik wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the iPhone as a mall then - it still gets to pick its tenants by whatever criteria it sees fit (that are not illegal, and fees are not illegal). Epic is not winning this one. Edit: added the bit about fees.

> Think of the iPhone as a mall then Why?

Because the comment I was replying to was saying to think of the iPhone as a store... I was following the analogy and expanding on it because I thought it was inaccurate.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#585

Post by Stevvo »

mattmanser wrote: post #504
_qulr wrote: post #387

My feeling is that this whole situation is mostly going as Tim Sweeney intended. He was itching for a fight, wanted to sue Apple. The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic's court case. Apple is playing right into his hands. Did Sweeney anticipate Apple's threat to Unreal Engine? Maybe, maybe not. But the temporary restraining order did block that threat, at least for now. I don't think Epic ever intended to…

I can't see how Epic wins this. If Stripe can claim Wells Fargo doesn't want to process porn payments, and that's legal, how can an American court rule for Epic? Epic are obviously going to lose, and lose hard, or set a precedent that's going to screw every payment provider in America and open a flood gate for fraudulent payments. You can't force someone to sell something they don't want to, especially because Apple…

"How can an American court rule for Epic?"

It's unlikely, but In an EU court, it's a different kettle of fish. Maybe Epic's play for a favourable ruling in Spotify Vs Apple in the EU?

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#586

Post by mcphage »

Aeolun wrote: post #561
_qulr wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone is not a store. The App Store is a store. Epic wants to be on the iPhone, but not necessarily in the App Store. Ideally, Epic wants to run its own store on the iPhone. In any case, App Store is the only store in town, where the "town" is the 1.5 billion iOS users. If there's only 1 store, with no competing stores, that's an entirely different situation legally.

Yeah, I bought a $1000 device, but somehow Apple gets to decide what I run on it? I just cannot see how that is a desireable situation.

It's true for every video game console, which have run to up to $600. I'm not sure if $400 makes that much of a difference.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#587

Post by zem »

jpollock wrote: post #509
hu3 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might now buy Android devices instead. It goes both ways.

Which would be a huge indication that Fortnite is a key feature. However, it seems bubble colour is important. "Why'd You Push That Button - Why do iPhone users judge people with green text bubbles?" https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18624681/apple-imessage-a...

wow, that's an interesting dark pattern i hadn't encountered before!

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#588

Post by nuker »

gnopgnip wrote: post #560
mattmanser wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see how Epic wins this. If Stripe can claim Wells Fargo doesn't want to process porn payments, and that's legal, how can an American court rule for Epic? Epic are obviously going to lose, and lose hard, or set a precedent that's going to screw every payment provider in America and open a flood gate for fraudulent payments. You can't force someone to sell something they don't want to, especially because Apple…

This is like in Amazon sold a fridge and said you can only shop at Whole Foods. Epic wants users to be able to shop at stores other than Whole Foods, not to be carried at that store without a markup

> This is like in Amazon sold a fridge and said you can only shop at Whole Foods.

So why would anyone buy such fridge? And if they do, there clearly are other benefits, which you omitted.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#589

Post by anonytrary »

I should be able to build a website and set up payments on it, then build an app which includes a subset of the features, not including payments. Apple should not be allowed to terminate me or compel me to support payments via the app. That is predatory and monopolistic behavior.

Re: Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account

#590

Post by Fezzik »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #580
Fezzik wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the iPhone as a mall then - it still gets to pick its tenants by whatever criteria it sees fit (that are not illegal, and fees are not illegal). Epic is not winning this one. Edit: added the bit about fees.

Sure, but does that one mall capture 50% of all physical good sales nationwide? This is an issue of monopoly power, which depends on scale. If you use an analogy that doesn’t demonstrate the same market power, of course it’s going to seem absurd.

Without Googling it, I would wager that 3-4 conglomerates own 98% of the malls in the US. So I think it is an apt comparison.
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