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Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#741

Post by fsflover »

wkat4242 wrote: post #614
lamontcg wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation. They're both just engaged in business. I can believe that Apple is acting incredibly badly in this case without needing to fluff up Epic Games at all. Apple and Samsung could sue each other and do business with each other because the stakes were lower and they were more codependent.

> Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation. They're both just engaged in business. This is what's wrong with the current overly capitalist system. Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience, and externalise whatever they please to consumers and the environment. And you could even argue they are 'forced' to do so by due diligence legislation. If we let this continue there will…

If you want to dedicate your company to a purpose over profit, it should be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#742

Post by amelius »

layer8 wrote: post #334
hizanberg wrote: post #18

If I had a Customer that spent years relentlessly complaining about my Company, I know I wouldn't want to have them as a Customer. It does present an interesting question on whether a Company can be forced to have a bad actor as a Customer, I guess this will be decided in the lawsuits to come.

The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem. Imagine if everyone wanting to publish a web app would have to be a customer of the respective browser vendors. Everyone complains about Google and Mozilla and Safari and Edge. Luckily, that doesn’t prevent us from having our web ap…

> The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem.

Indeed. It all boils down to: if I buy a product from company A, then want to use that product to do business with company B, why does company A have anything to say about it? Am I not the owner of my device?

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#743

Post by sillysaurusx »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #340
sillysaurusx wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. A story can disappear from the front page for a variety of reasons, including user flags and manual moderator intervention. There’s no reason to suspect this particular story triggered the flamewar detector.

The number of comments exceeds that number of votes. IIRC, that's one of the factors in the flamewar detector.

You’re right, but they didn’t at the time.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#744

Post by sjm »

drfuzzyness wrote: post #660
numbsafari wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me when Xbox allows side loading.

It's somewhat locked down as you need to apply with Microsoft for a Developer account, but you can technically sideload UWP apps onto your Xbox hardware by entering Developer Mode. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devk... It's not convenient and you need to reboot your console to go back to running commercial apps, but it is present. At least it's a one-time payment to get the developer account…

How is that at all different from what you could already do with Apple devices?

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#745

Post by ben-schaaf »

Terretta wrote: post #661
pornel wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook’s Apple is all about increasing the Services Revenue. The line has to go up. Apple exists for their shareholders, not users.

> The line has to go up. Apple exists for their shareholders, not users. Who does Epic exist for? This "they exist for the shareholders" is an argument that cancels itself out, as it's true of all firms. So you have to look at who's next on the list. Is the company for people looking to place ads? Is the company for publishers of games? Who is it for?

Epic is privately owned with Tim Sweeney having a majority. One man's whim is a lot more dynamic than a mass of public shareholders' expectations.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#746

Post by Workaccount2 »

freedomben wrote: post #619
Workaccount2 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is an anti-culture youth movement against iPhones, apple will be in serious trouble. Their revenue is heavily dependent on selling iphones and people using the app store.

Fortunately for Apple, there definitely is not a movement against iPhones. If anything, the youth associate status with iphones, and if you don't have one you are a loser deserving ridicule. My kids have stopped asking as they know I'm not going to give Apple any of my money, but for a very long time they begged for iphones because kids made fun of them for "having a droid." Today's youth are definitely not the rebel…

Kids are fickle and run with trends though. Apple has a good foothold, for sure, but banking on teenagers to carry your banner is an idea that would have me sweating.

Older people tend to care much less about what phone they have, and care much less about upgrading.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#747

Post by pornel »

Terretta wrote: post #661
pornel wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook’s Apple is all about increasing the Services Revenue. The line has to go up. Apple exists for their shareholders, not users.

> The line has to go up. Apple exists for their shareholders, not users. Who does Epic exist for? This "they exist for the shareholders" is an argument that cancels itself out, as it's true of all firms. So you have to look at who's next on the list. Is the company for people looking to place ads? Is the company for publishers of games? Who is it for?

For a while Apple existed for Steve to make products he’s proud of.

I have a very deep resentment for the App Store, because that was a turning point towards controlling the platform, and start of a feudal relationship with developers.

They’ve went from (half-assed) open source efforts to outright banning GPL completely. They’ve went from trying to use open protocols to putting DRM throughout entire stack on everything they could.

Apple has been high margin company with expensive products, but arguably worth the cost if you appreciated their style and attention to detail. But the OS and services side has shifted to just extracting as much money as they can, because they can. Their 27% cut on purchases made outside of iOS is just pure greed and spite.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#748

Post by concinds »

overgard wrote: post #664
SllX wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic also intentionally broke agreements with Apple before. Non-discriminatory doesn’t mean they have no grounds to terminate Epic’s developer accounts, and Epic is continuing to make themselves look untrustworthy by trying to publicly and explicitly shank Apple. Spotify is also trying to shank Apple in all the same places Epic is, but they also didn’t go behind Apple’s back to deceive the prior review process in con…

I find it hard to see Apple being in the right here. While I'm not so naive as to think one company is "good" and the other "bad", I do think that as developers Epic is fighting for our best interests. Apple's app store monopoly serves only Apple.

Criticize Apple vigorously and criticize Epic vigorously. Epic's been fined for dark patterns, data collection on minors below 13, and their entire business model relies on getting children to buy worthless cosmetic skins out of peer pressure, while optimizing for engagement and addiction. It's a predatory business model that should be illegal.

One of their main goals in bypassing IAP is to make these microtransactions non-refundable, so parents are screwed. They're the great satan.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#749

Post by zmmmmm »

makeitdouble wrote: post #740
zmmmmm wrote: post #707

In some ways it makes me question if it's impossible to have one without the other - can you have a company that is as obsessive about quality as Apple at the same time as one that won't attempt to exert monopolistic control over its whole ecosystem? Are these two sides of the same coin? I'd like to embrace something like the Vision Pro. But as long as it's an iPad strapped to your face fully locked to this controlle…

An obsession over quality would have Apple open the door to better audio services like Spotify to integrate with the phone's audio database for instance. Or have Kindle like apps let their user have the better purchasing experience. Or better browsers to have deeper system integration. Better messaging platforms interoperate with iMessage. A 3.5mm jack to have the best latency and highest potential audio quality. The…

Yeah it's a great point. In some ways here we are seeing the exact illustration of that point. If they only cared about user experience and quality they wouldn't sacrifice their user's interests by forcing them through convoluted processes to buy content outside their own store. That's far from a high quality experience. So they value quality highly but it's a distant second to their own desire for control. They still present a very thin veil of pretending this is in their user's interests, but they are barely trying any more.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#750

Post by idle_zealot »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #686
seydor wrote: post #673

What a monster big tech has become.

It is probably a good description of what society has become, there are a lot of people who go on repeating that these big tech are just corporations for profit and don’t have to signal any good intention, because it doesn’t make them any profit, and being bad doesn’t make them lose any profit, because we’ve become just a bunch of ignoring consumers going after the next gadget blindly, these companies are shit, becau…

> What I keep wondering is why iSheeps don’t complain

Because the costs and detriments are obscured, dispersed, and nebulous. The consumers here are largely boiled frogs who don't know what they're missing. If users were used to an open system; an app store that functioned as an intuitive frontend for multiple distribution channels, a messaging app that supported all the protocols their friends and family use and seamlessly joined their conversations, a social media app that aggregated all the content from the people in their lives and creators they follow, and documents/photos/etc that sync across all of their devices. And then Apple et al took that all away; now you can only have apps we approve of, now all of your chats are split between platform apps with UIs that compete for your attention and try to upsell you features, now you have to use the Twitter app to read tweets (and see our ads), Instagram to see your friends' posts their (and our ads), YouTube to see new videos (and our ads), Twitch to watch people live (and our ads), oh, and also now all of your photos only sync to some of your other devices (the ones we sold you). Then you'd see outrage and indignation. iSheep don't know what is being kept from them, don't understand how cohesive and empowering a digital interface to the world should be. They have been trained not to expect a User Agent, but instead an appliance that allows them access to little islands and digital fiefdoms. And it isn't just Apple device users that are subjected to this. Apple is the most rigid in licking down their computers, but all major platforms add friction and roadblocks meant to discourage users from owning and tailoring their systems.

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