Apple is holding the Unreal Engine hostage, Epic says in new motion
theverge.com
theverge.com
1) They engage in anti-customer behavior by buying exclusives. They don't fund exclusives, they buy exclusives after they've been completed.
2) If they can't get an Indie as an exclusive, they don't want it. They don't want to compete with Day and Date releases.
3) Their war chest is funded by gambling mechanics, mostly gambling mechanics which are actively aimed at minors. While I can understand arguments for "parents should parent" and "adults should be allowed to adult", Epic is based out of the US, and gambling is largely controlled within the US.
4) EDIT: Oh, and their weaponizing their minor-heavy userbase as well against Apple - their trailer and anti-apple skins are being promoted in Fortnight (Rated T by the ESRB).
So yeah. Hate Apple all you want - there's plenty there to hate. But don't let your hatred of Apple push you into backing Epic.
Timed exclusives, mind you. Also, it literally doesn't matter and just changes where you download the game from, woohoo.
Absolutely support Epic on this endeavor. Anything that can make Apple eat shit is a valuable investment of your time.
Nor have ISPs, Online Retailers, repair shops, etc.
Funny that Apple wants a cut of this action.
In fact the App Store was a giant contributor to the free with In App Purchase model of software, undermining the previous paid upfront model.
This in comparison to the wild west of submitting your payment information to every Tom, Dick and Mary out there.
Somehow capitalism survived this situation in all of history prior to 2008. Also, Visa and Mastercard have a duopoly over payments, so it's not entirely accurate to say that it's the "wild west", or even that there weren't "trusted parties" before Apple.
In my experience, the credit card companies are actually quite protective of customer payments, and you don't have to pay if there's fraud. They just cancel your card and send you a new one. It's largely the merchants who have to eat that cost.
My answer is pretty close to zero, with a few exceptions for large companies who have earned my trust with my payment information.
Personally, I don't have much trust for PayPal or Stripe. PayPal is infamous for randomly banning accounts, for example.
> The law firm reported that Epic was notified about the security issue back in November 2018, but didn't acknowledge the problem until two months later.
> The data breach occurred back in January this year, when hackers found a flaw in Fortnite's login system, allowing them to impersonate players and purchase V-Bucks with the bank information attached to their accounts.
Epic is truly not a company you want to be supporting in this. I am not an Apple fan (I have a phone from all major mobile OSes), but Epic is truly abhorrent and stands for everything you do not want sticking their fingers into everything.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b15k8g/epic_games...
They've refused to pay out newly-introduced bug bounties over mass hijackings of their subdomains, do sketchy spyware-like stuff with their software running on your machine, collect data without consent, etc. Even if you hate Apple's stance on IAP, this is absolutely not a big guy vs little guy fight.
I see this a lot but I have yet to come across a good explanation of why this matters, could you explain? From my point of view it doesn't make a difference when the developer gets the money, an exclusive is an exclusive.
I tick all those boxes. I just want to honk.
And according to Skybound Games CEO, Epic was also involved in helping to establish the team that completed development of The Walking Dead's final season after Telltale collapsed, so it wasn't just a case of Epic simply buying exclusivity after the fact:
"We’re excited to work together on their latest transformative event with the launch of the Epic Games Store. Epic stepped up to the plate immediately to work with us in order to bring the original team back together and ensure fans will receive the completed season of ‘Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Final Season.'”"
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/telltales-the-walking-d...
And really, the same can be said for other exclusive games that are still in development, since money given to the devs is money that inevitably goes into the production of the game. By virtue meaning that they're helping to fund the game, at least in part.
iOS is a huge game market, but how many iOS games are powered by Unreal? macOS is a tiny game market.
For game developers, between this and the ARM switch on macOS, this could be a serious death to gaming on macOS.
I would also expect game developers to be mad at Epic to be playing chicken with their game engine, although that may be unexpected fall out. It might drive some game developers to move to other engines although this is probably a stretch.
Nobody takes deplatforming seriously until it hits them. It's the slippery slope, played out in real time.
Is this inaccurate? Epic doesn't make some fringe hate content, they make the world's most popular video game. Exactly zero normal people foresaw Epic losing access to the app store and development tools completely, regardless about how you feel about whether they should pay 30% or 0% or whatever in IAP fees.
And now, only now, it's newsworthy that some app, like that WordPress app no one has heard of, also gets deplatformed for totally bullshit reasons. Every scenario is different, but surely you see, that it's about the power to deplatform, not the reasons, that people don't take seriously.
In the long run, gamedevs would be even more reluctant to provide iOS/MacOS builds, which doesn't matter at all since people don't buy Macs for gaming.
Apple Arcade could basically be called "Games Never On Android".
> Here’s what being “exclusive to Apple Arcade” means. The game is a mobile-exclusive and cannot be released on other mobile operating systems ... Video game consoles are not considered mobile
https://9to5mac.com/2019/09/13/apple-arcade-exclusive-means-...
They even banned Unity3d, Mono and the concept of 'cross compilers' while they were waging war on Flash, who at that point were perfecting cross-platform compiling from Flash "the IDE" to native Android and iOS apps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
> desire to avoid "a third party layer of software coming between the platform and the developer"
They even are on record complaining about Amazon promoting Kindle books being accessible cross-platform.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/31/emails-apple-blocked-ki...
> While the primary message is that there are Kindle apps on lots of devices, the secondary message [something garbled] is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android
They're currently trying to sell people a gaming subscription service.
The big difference between games and other software, is that typical devs also profit from Apple making changes, e.g. Adobe managing to deprecate their previous licences and switch to subscription-only without backlash since it's Apple changing the platform. So Adobe loses a bit from porting, but gains more from new subscriptions.
Old games are almost never ported as is, at best they're "remade/remastered" which is a serious investment. So Apple making changes and choosing their own APIs is a pure loss for gamedevs. That's hardly the only problem but that's a big one.
ARM could be a boon for macOS gaming if it allows for better access to iOS titles.
This is Apple trying to ward off a business model they consider parasitic and destructive to a large chunk of their app store revenue.
Keep in mind that everything here has been gamed out ahead of time by Epic. They knew they would get their app removed for the brazen TOS violation. They knew that it would result in their developer account being suspended, and they knew that it meant their other apps tied to that account would also be locked out.
The consumer welfare thing is just one factor of many to make a status-quo antitrust law case a real battle. There hasn't been antitrust victories for consumers in a very, very long time.
Epic had to get Apple to go do an anti-trust thing - in their opinion. So it's definitely required to bolster the claim.
Probably 100% of congress uses an iPhone. 100% of judges. Every lawyer. It's right in their face. 100% of them use Google, 0% use Bing. I don't think I know a single non-engineering professional, English as a first language adult who uses an Android device.
It's not some abstract situation the consumer welfare standard didn't anticipate; it's the now. Nobody is going to sympathize with arguments about choice because that hasn't been true for a while - nobody makes the choice, not among these people, for alternatives, so is there really a choice?
Looking at the Wikipedia page and the requirements for standing the way Epic is doing this looks at least for me much more in line with the given requirements.
Though I guess the Wikipedia page is a simplification of the reality.
I have a feeling their money on iOS is a rounding error compared to the serious gaming platforms, and this whole thing is basically a marketing activity that they calculated would pay off better than the revenues they'd lose from losing access to iOS/Mac.
Also considering if they win this much more clear cut case, then they or someone else would try to apply it to those markets.
The case is definitely clear cut, but not to Epic's advantage.
I have no love for Apple, but at the same time Epic doesn't have a leg to stand on here. This is two extremely wealthy parties fighting over a giant pile of money, and Epic is cynically trying to claim they're fighting for the consumer.
If the underlying structures wouldn't change it would be a smaller pile of cash more parties share. On the other hand, if it opens up for innovation the pile would grow allowing better products for all. Though I guess the innovation angle is hard to prove in court.
Wait until Epic gets their app store entrenched and raises their prices for Fortnite content 30% because they know people are willing to pay that already, and no matter how much they raise the price, it's always the cheapest option.
Apple’s “bad behavior” here ultimately aligns with my desires as a consumer. By controlling the marketplace, they enforce privacy and UX controls. They use that money to improve the products I use every day.
I cannot say the same for Epic. Every battle they are starting is to degrade my experience as a consumer so they can make even more money.
The public really doesn't give a crap about whether or not their is one contract or multiple, or the quality of apples legal arguments, which seems to be some of the core issues raised in this motion responding to Apple's motion.
Epic is painting themselves as the underdogs being bullied by Apple - the multi-billion dollar contract-breaking underdog.
They wanted access to the iOS market, and the terms were there.
While they have certainly engaged in PR, I really don't see this motion as being motivated by PR in any way...
> the multi-billion dollar contract-breaking underdog.
This is assuming Apple wins. If Epic is right they didn't break any contract because the terms Apple is claiming they broke were in fact not legally binding in the first place, by virtue of being illegal.
And even if this did impact the engine, perhaps epic should have thought about that when playing chicken with Apple.
In this case, it seems the goals of Epic the game publisher versus Epic the component supplier really don't align, and Epic the publisher's needs are winning out.
There is a bit of a conflict between Epic the component supplier and Joe the game developer's goals here, because Joe the game developer doesn't really care whether it's Apple or Epic taking the payment processing cut. Joe doesn't necessarily lose either because Joe seems some benefit (just less) too due to competition lowering the cost of payment processing. It's just not clear cut.
In reality it probably the case that some game developers will win thanks to lower cost of payment processing dominating their cost benefit analysis, and others will lose thanks to worse unreal engine platform support dominating their cost benefit analysis.
Maybe iOS isn’t that important to Epic or their clients which is why they can do this.
Developer accounts are not free. Of course $99 is not a problem for Epic or most game developers, but please be accurate.
Anyone with an Apple ID — which is not a developer account — can download Xcode from the App Store. However, this version of Xcode does not support prerelease versions such as iOS 14 and macOS 11, so it's not adequate for professional purposes.
Is there something inaccurate about this answer? This is what this saga is all about.
Even the amazon app doesn’t allow buying kindle ebooks directly.
These app stores are filled with so much shit these days that it's impossible to find quality software, and the app store model gives these companies little opportunity to differentiate and sell their offerings.
Give me the ability to install apps from any store, website, or platform. Give me the ability to use a device whatever way I decide. Incentive developers to create useful, enjoyable software instead of IAP shovelware. Make it the norm and break users from depending on The One App Store.
You're continuously surprised that most people aren't ideologues about this?
These are old debates about computers. Decades ago the rift was between computer tinkerers and Apple for what they derisively called "appliances". They cared, customers didn't. The rest is history.
Forever? Because now there are competing payment providers.
Either way game devs have no choice
This seems like an unjustified assumption that Epic would attempt to leverage any monopoly they had on game engines to create a monopoly on payment processing. They haven't done this on desktop where they (up to legal issues) could, so I don't see why you think they would on IOS.
Moreover, there is competition between game engines and gamedevs are not a captive audience to quite the same extent as consumers are.
Moreover, if epic wins and they attempted this they would have literally established the precedent for Apple to sue them in return.
Why? That’s what they’re selling
If it were not for competing business interest what human is altruistic enough to throw this many resources at taking down apples monopolistic iron grip over the app market?
Support Epic not for their moral reasoning, support them because their interests align with yours.
How do you know? I don’t
You're telling me that you're not aware that if epic wins then it means apple has less of a monopolistic foothold over the app store?
I’m telling you I don’t know. Are you 100% sure that all alternatives are best?
What if this prompts governments to have app stores regulated as public utilities? To me that sounds like a nightmare.
If I were interested in reducing the ‘monopolistic foothold’ I can always get an android phone, can’t I?
Don't know what? I made a bunch of guesses but you haven't specified what you don't know. What do you mean by alternatives that are best?
I am saying that apple should not impose monopolistic regulatory practices in the app store, what alternative are you talking about?
>What if this prompts governments to have app stores regulated as public utilities? To me that sounds like a nightmare.
Yeah like how the government regulates the stock market. Sounds like a nightmare, we should not regulate the stock market.
>If I were interested in reducing the ‘monopolistic foothold’ I can always get an android phone, can’t I?
The google play store does the same shit. It's essentially a dual-opoly.
Pretending you’re blocked on doing anything for iOS and macOS because the account you use to deploy Fortnite has been locked is bullshit