Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is a quote from the letter that Apple sent to Epic;

"If your membership is terminated, you may no longer submit apps to the App Store, and your apps still available for distribution will be removed. You will also lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities:"

[...]

"- Engineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware; optimize Unreal Engine on the Mac for creative workflows, virtual sets and their CI/Build Systems; and adoption and support of ARKit features and future VR features into Unreal Engine by their XR team"

That is a statement that Apple made saying they will stop all help they give to Epic getting UE running on all Apple hardware. With the other stuff in the letter it makes it very clear that the problem is not just one for Epic Games, but all of Epic.

You can read it yourself - https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327... (Apple's letter starts on page 51 of the PDF)

Thanks for sharing. Ah so Epic couples it all together.

Not just Epic. Apple do. If you think Epic Games and Epic International are wholly separate then telling Epic Games "Engineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware;" would make no sense. It's very clear that Apple are threatening to do things that impact all of Epic in that letter.

What's less clear is whether or not Apple would have actually revoked Epic International's developer accounts. You might like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but it's ambiguous enough for a court to issue a ruling that Apple aren't allowed to do that. This is obviously not just Epic catastrophizing if the court agreed with them and ruled in their favor on that part.

Common sense ties them together. While the Fortnite app was in violation of terms, it wasn’t the app itself which violated the terms—it was the corporation.

> Common sense ties them together.

The problem is that the US judicial system, thanks to its focus on precedent cases no matter how old they are, and "modern common sense" don't always fit together.

> While the Fortnite app was in violation of terms, it wasn’t the app itself which violated the terms—it was the corporation.

Definitely not. If you have multiple apps in the App Store, and one is removed for violating the terms, the rest should not be removed, since the others didn’t violate those terms.

That would make sense if apps wrote themselves and signed their own agreements with app stores.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com