Securing Lasting Freedoms for All | Hacker News Reader

Securing Lasting Freedoms for All

epicgames.com

41 pointschj62 comments

I take a cynical view here: the only reason Epic is doing this is to make more money. They want that last 30%. i.e. this is a PR stunt and nothing more.

You can feel various ways, but personally, my reaction is "This is the hill you want to die on? You won't win this. No judge will ever order Apple to let you participate in their app store in violation of their ToS. And if they do, it'll take years of litigation."

Still... Kudos to them for this ambitious plan. It takes guts to intentionally kill off your iOS revenue stream. I wonder what percentage of revenue fortnite iOS generated. Perhaps iOS simply wasn't too lucrative. But if it was lucrative, then this took guts.

Remember that struggles for money and power are often dressed up as struggles for morals and righteousness. You start to see that pattern everywhere.

The other side of this is, Apple needs to play this carefully. It has the potential to quickly spiral out of control. For example, banning all games built on Unreal Engine would ignite a real fury, and would make http://paulgraham.com/apple.html true – 11 years later.

Removing notarization for Fortnite on MacOS is another overstep, but it doesn't seem like it will cause Apple to lose the war.

Really? Microsoft was ruled a monopoly over similar issues with browsers. All the big tech monopolies should be shifting uncomfortably in their seats right now. They are rapidly losing support from the pro-business conservatives who are normally against this sort of regulation on account of being deplatformed, shadow banned, and railroaded. Who's left to stand up for big tech? Is that the new Democrat platform? I don't think being pro-monopoly is going to rally the progressives.

Microsoft used its dominant power in one arena to take control of another.

Apple doesn’t have a dominant position in smartphone land, and their fees are inline with other hardware and software marketplaces.

Of course it does. It has an extremely secure duopoly with Google and it's even stronger when you look at US market in isolation. You don't have to own 100% of a market to be broken up or regulated for anticompetitive practices.

I just want to verify that you also consider Sony, Nintendo, and MS to be monopolies as well?

Nintendo was born in 1889 and starting from 1960 it sells game consoles

In those 60 years have sold 750 million consoles (mostly Gameboys)

Apple sold 2.2 billion devices in 13 years (only counting mobile devices) and have become the company with the largest capitalization in human history

I think their power is not comparable, they don't even play in the same league

I see two arguments usually pop up when talking about Apple being a monopolyst

1 - you can buy androids

2 - MS had a dominant position, Apple does not

But

1 - Android is not a replacement for Apple and it doesn't come for free (extracting data from an Apple device is harder for the user than it is for a malicious actor, all the money spent on the Apple platform go out of the window)

2 -if Apple has no power, how is it possible that it killed Flash and stopped the adoption of PWAs? If Apple is different from MS why the only browser available on iOS is Safari which is also the main vector for vulnerabilities on Apple mobile devices? (according to security analysts)

So Apple has a de facto monopoly, one that is costly to escape from and it's using it to push its own browser volunterly crippling a web standard (PWAs) that would make apps and their store less relevant.

If that's a crime or violates antitrust laws I don't know, but that it is true I'm sure.

> if Apple has no power, how is it possible that it killed Flash and stopped the adoption of PWAs?

That's a really great question—it shouldn't be possible. It makes me wonder if one of your premises isn't true.

I wish they aren't true.

Ironically in the open letter "Thoughts on Flash" Steve Jobs said he would not allow Flash on Apple devices because

- to to avoid a third party layer of software coming between the platform and the developer. Exactly what Apple is doing right now.

- by almost any definition, Flash is a closed system. Exactly like Apple store.

There must be a reason why the open letter is not available anymore on Apple webiste.

"he who controls the past controls the future"

The main reason to kill Flash was that HTML 5 allowed playing videos and interactive content without the need for a third party plugin.

Steve Jobs claimed that (and was right) pure HTML 5 could replace Flash in almost every aspect.

Fast forward to WWDC 2020

> Apple has announced that the following Web APIs will not be supported by Safari.

    Web Bluetooth 
    Web MIDI API 
    Magnetometer API 
    Web NFC API 
    Device Memory API 
    Network Information API 
    Battery Status API 
    Web Bluetooth Scanning 
    Ambient Light Sensor 
    HDCP Policy Check extension for EME 
    Proximity Sensor 
    WebHID 
    Serial API 
    Web USB 
    Geolocation Sensor (background geolocation) 
    User Idle Detection

Isn't it even more ironic?

They also ruled that after 7 days of non use cookies and the content stored in Indexed DB, LocalStorage, Media keys, SessionStorage and Service Worker registrations will be deleted.

Ok, they said this last won't affect apps saved on home screen, but given Apple history do you really trust them?

And what would you consider the reason for its failure on Android?

Would you invest in a technology that only covers half of the mobile market, knowing that you still have to make two versions of the same app?

Besides,PWAs in android haven't failed

According to Gartner they cover 50% of the Android market

Among the most popular PWAs there are

    Facebook 
    Forbes 
    Pinterest 
    AliExpress 
    Flipkart 
    Telegram 
    Google Maps Go 
    Uber 
    Trivago 
    Tinder

Android market has a much larger variety of devices and PWAs are especially good for low power devices

They might not be the sexiest around, but they make a good portion of the World mobile market

A for-profit company isn't going to spend millions and millions on something that doesn't benefit them. Something can make a company money and be generally good for others as well. If they get some good PR while making money and making things better, then more power to them

The only reason Apple is doing this is to make more money too. You'll find that's a common thread in the motivations of all parties in nearly every business dispute.

The question is which point of view is a better match for desired policy outcomes.

Morality and wanting money aren't mutually exclusive - see also: minimum wage.

Doesn’t epic sell loot boxes and virtual money in a bunch of their games? Despite those being well understood to be functionally gambling and exploitative?

“That last 30%” is kind of a funny phrase. If you were saying “That last 5%” I would probably agree with your take. But 30% is a massive chunk of the profit of every company in that whole market.

30% isn’t “that last”; it’s a substantial chunk of the money generated by the product you’ve spent years making, and I have trouble mustering your apparent disdain for anybody that would by so gauche as to expend energy trying to recover it.

Yeah, I understand that platforms like Steam also take huge chunks, even Amazon, for hosting, providing visibility and other such features. Still, 1/3 of my revenue is ALOT of money

Steam takes their cut for being the most convenient way to buy games, which drives sales, and developers are happy to be there. Apple take their cut because nobody has a choice, other than not to buy Apple devices. First is a honest partnership, second is extortion.

As far as I can tell, Apple was never going to ban games built on Unreal Engine. Epic made it sound very dramatic, but it seems like that was nothing more than Apple terminating Epic's developer account (for ongoing deliberate violation of rules in the Fortnite app) which happens to also be the account they use to publish the Unreal Engine on MacOS. In other words, Epic wouldn't be able to publish signed updated versions of the engine on MacOS, at least without creating a different developer account. Unless I'm missing something here, there was never a real threat that all games using Unreal Engine would be banned.

I never really thought about what the culture must be like an Epic games until this whole passion play started.

Either they are very, very good at cultivating a public image that speaks directly to the Fortnight demographic, or this is who they are now. Games are great because they can twist physics and omit other bits of reality like politics or sociology. But if you take on Apple like you're trying to win a video game, buddy that's going to be a really expensive lesson.

> this is a PR stunt and nothing more

Apple has banned Microsoft xCloud, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, and Google Stadia from existing on iOS (from the article).

Epic may not be doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, but they do have the clout to push back against these restrictions.

I view Apple's restrictions on gaming as a PR stunt...especially when streaming videos and music get a pass.

> the only reason Epic is doing this is to make more money. They want that last 30%.

It's actually a little sillier even than that. Epic in fact want to have their own app store (the Epic Games Store) on iOS, and thus exercise the precise sort of profitable market power over software developers that they claim to oppose Apple doing. They're pretty explicit about this in their statements.

In opening a path for them they allow others to have freedom too. You won't often find people or companies fighting major fights based purely on altruism alone. We shouldn't discount the broader value of this fight.

Agree with the cynicism, but while IANAL I believe they are on strong legal grounds. The issue is not the iOS store monopoly directly. Antitrust laws don't forbid monopolies. It's how they affect the competitive environment.

The issue, as I see it, is that Apple prevents them from using other payment systems and other app stores. The practice of tying one line of business (the app store, with its review process/curation/distribution/support) to an unrelated line of business (payment processing or appearing on other app stores) is looked dimly on by antitrust courts.

Real lawyers, feel free to correct me on this :O

Epic's most likely goal here is to use their muscle to get a discount in both the Apple & Google distribution fees. Quite sure they will settle something like this out of court and noone will be the wiser.

To paint this with a Securing Lasting Freedoms for All headline is a farce of the most disgusting variety.

My inner cynic thinks this is an attempt to paint themselves as outcasts and use it to convince their audience to jump through hoops to give them even more money.

But if nothing else, I now understand why Kindle is so 'stupid' as to not have a way for me to buy a book without bouncing out to amazon.com and clicking half a dozen buttons. They don't have a choice.

As we were discussing recently with Amazon comingling, the whole notion of retail is that you take on some of the liability of the product, logistics and inventory management risks, in exchange for a big slice of the profits. I'm curious if there's any way that a large vendor on the Apple or Google app stores could make it more of a partnership, split more of the risks and the rewards.

I'm just not sure how you'd swing that. If the app store is down, that's all on Apple or Google. If the Steam portal in the App Store is down, that is going to reflect on Apple/Google more than it does on Valve, or Paradox games. You can't split curation, billing is iffy. Advertising, maybe, but how much does Apple really do/provide?

I've said before that I think Apple should lower their margins on the App Store, but I'm not sure how you would make that fly politically. The margins on their other units are at least that high, and all companies end up paying lip service to their least profitable division even if it's important. Put $30m into new materials science for the Apple Watch 9 case, or put $25m into a facelift for the App Store? Decisions, decisions...

I am even more cynical. What they want is way bigger than the Fortnite 30%. They want to be the primary alternative checkout for in-app purchases. This is just the Trojan Horse that, if they win, opens that gate.

> the only reason Epic is doing this is to make more money.

i don't understand the insistence on mentioning this. Why should anyone care? The only meaningful question is whether it is beneficial or not (for you/for devs/for society/etc.) if Epic gets their way. Your demand for noble motivations is not only unrealistic, it doesn't affect the merits of the arguments

I'm curious: how much revenue are they making off others' games written on Unreal and appearing on iOS? This isn't some coy "oh, well Epic takes a cut, too!" because IIRC their cut is reasonable. But I do think one could consider Unreal licensing for iOS games part of their iOS revenue.

Edit: also recall that Apple can't currently prevent others using Unreal to make games for iOS: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/judge-issues-restrain...

Isn't "securing lasting freedoms for all" a hyperbolic title for this issue?

"Reducing our payment processing costs" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Having the potential to restore general purpose computing to a device I own is a noble cause even if the standard bearers are an unpleasant bunch.

Restoring general purpose computing is so immensely removed from allowing 3rd party payments on a regulated software market, I would hesitate to even call it a step in the right direction.

It is in the pantheon of possible solutions to the crisis. We know for fairly certain epic wants their own store on iOS. That does move the needle significantly.

Particularly when Epic's entire business model depends on restricting people's freedoms.

Calling it now:

After Epic's claim to "secure our freedom", Apple replies that they are "freeing our security" by only allowing verified payment methods.

Epic wants more money. Watching them raise the banner of freedom makes me want to vomit a little. But Apple’s 30% take is ludicrous and the enemy of my enemy is my friend so I really hope they prevail.

> Watching them raise the banner of freedom makes me want to vomit a little.

I agree they probably have ulterior motives, but I will always welcome people to the banner of freedom whenever they are willing to hold it. Even though they are arguing for freedom because of the potential profit, it doesn't change the importance of the freedom.

Imagine if all apple apps joined forces and just pulled their apps from the app store until apple allowed 3rd party payments or lowered their take.. 10% seems more reasonable..seems then they might change their tune, cause without apps, iphone is pretty defunkt.

Tell it to the people who used to play Rocket League on linux.

Tell them what exactly? That's a case of a developer not wanting to continue maintaining an app on the platform. And thankfully WINE and Proton are able to pick up the slack and make the game playable without the support of the devs. Epic still wants to publish Fortnite on iOS, presumably, and in the meantime there isn't a way for them to do so without returning to the 30% cut.

My reading of this is that there's nothing preventing them publishing a "free" Fortnite on iOS and offering only an off-device means of purchasing V-bucks. Basically, the Netflix model.

I think the issue is basically that their telemetry shows most iOS players being kids who may not have access to a computing device other than their phone, and who are on a fixed allowance. So they're not looking to save anyone money; they're looking to capture the other 30% of Timmy's lunch money.

> developer not wanting to continue maintaining an app on the platform.

This isn't what happened. Psyonix was perfectly happy with it and continued to expand and engage the wider PC gaming and modding community. Then Epic bought them for Rocket League's userbase and things reversed after the period of false assurances that nothing would change.

Epic is just a broken clock being right twice a day. Yes, what they're arguing for is sensible. But pretending that they're doing it to "Secure Freedoms for All" is absurd.

Here I give my analysis of what the best solution could be. Would like to know your thoughts too.

0. Lower rate from 30% to 15% -Apple still has monopoly, nothing changes.

1. Side loading apps: Not good! malicious apps can run amok, eg. $BIG_CORP$ will say - you will get 20$ credits if you sideload our app, and then surveil everything that is possible on the device. Here, we expect an average user to give all the permission that the app requests for.

2. allow secondary app stores: -not good as it depends on the quality of enforcement in secondary app store. For Apple, it is in their interest to maintain app quality in their appstore to maintain overall good user experience in their device, but motivations are not same for secondary app store. May allow malicious apps which deteriorate the user experience/privacy similar to 1. And there will be a state where you will have to install 10s of app store just to install specific programs which is also not ideal.

3. Allow secondary payment methods: -Average user will have to give up their payment info to everyone who asks for it. Most of them will not be trustworthy nor we can expect all of them to maintain good security standards for saving payment info.

The biggest culprit of all this drama is Apple does not allow secondary payment inside apps AND also, if you have secondary payment outside of app, they do not allow that price to be lower. There is no competition, thus Apple can get away with whatever it chooses to. Thus the monopoly.

4. SOLUTION:

a) charge a flat fee for reviewing/serving apps. If necessary, linearly increase it based on daily active users if they need more resource to support that app.

b) allow whitelisted secondary payment providers. Only whitelisting few payment methods which are trustable eg applepay, googlepay, paypal, stripe, etc will maintain security of payment data.

c) allow secondary payment price to be lower than Apple.

With this solution, there will be competition between payment providers which will drive the price down.

Side loading apps would not and does not have to be bad. iOS is protected by technical restrictions as well as ToS restrictions. A sideloaded app would not be able to grab your gps and contact list without requesting permission because those are technical restrictions. It would however be able to show adult content and 3rd party payment processing because those are ToS protections.

When I worked in ad tech I, I was tangentially a part of a project where we were working with a sister company to integrate in their app to enable data collection.

My work wished to use fine-grained location and there was concern that our integration and usage of the gps API's in an app that didn't otherwise have a good reason to use them would cause it to be rejected (apparently this had happened before). I don't know for certain whether this ended up being the case, but I would certainly believe it. If there was a 2nd App Store that didn't enforce standards in the same way as the Apple run-store, I absolutely believe ad-tech companies would go to lengths to push clients to using it so they could vacuum up more data.

Android has had sideloading for like a decade and no major app is installed via sideloading. Its entirely used for beginner developers, open source repos and piracy. The inconvenience of being out of store is bigger than the benefits of being in store. I think ultimately epic does not want the solution to be sideloading since they are having the same issues on android. They want to be on the app store and to have no fees.

On-device permissions should include a way to provide randomized GPS and other data to sideloaded apps.

If I pay you outright for the device, you should have zero input about what software I run on it. Give me a little checkbox that says "I will not go to the Genius bar" and let me have at it.

Get out of here with this perpetual rental BS

We are committed to securing lasting freedoms for all. This is why we fight.

This seems so out of touch given what's happening in the United States and around the world today.

I understand the disgust some people are expressing, but I can't really sympathize with it.

It seems like a case of aligned incentives.

This is a surprisingly personal legal battle for me.

I'm totally blind. For a long while now, iOS has been the mobile accessibility leader, and unless you as a blind person have some specific reason to use Android, you're encouraged to use iOS.

Back in 2009 when Android accessibility was a joke, by which I mean as a developer I found major API issues within a few hours of development, I wrote one of the first and most popular Android screen readers. I think it was at least the first to be publicised even before TalkBack, where by "publicised" I mean TalkBack wasn't in Android's release notes, but I at least had an APK installable via tinyurl and posted to a mailing list. I quite literally had nothing else to do with my time at that point in my life, and Android 1.6 had an accessibility API, so on a lark I started writing a screen reader. The project has since died out, but for a long while, Spiel was a thin on Android.

iOS won't let me do anything like that. Further, iOS won't even let me code for it unless I use MacOS, and while MacOS has some decent accessibility features, it's been a royal pain in my ass to code on. I could elaborate, but to keep this comment brief, take it as a given from a subject area expert that developing on MacOS as a blind person is worse than any other platform I've used to date. And that's saying something, since Linux is my primary platform, and there are a number of blind developers who won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. I don't want to claim that coding on MacOS under VoiceOver isn't possible, but it's more difficult than it needs to be.

Yes, these are two huge corporations slugging it out, and it's hard to muster much sympathy for Epic. But I wouldn't be the developer I am today if it weren't for Android's openness letting me build a screen reader, and its further openness letting me build an accessible GPS navigation app which I've hacked on in some form for around a decade now, and which I've come to rely upon. It bugs me to no end that the more accessible mobile platform is so locked down such that a budding blind software engineer handed an iPhone can't code for it using JAWS or NVDA. So Apple is handing blind people internet-connected mobile computers with all sorts of sensors, and telling them the only way they can develop for these devices is by using a sub-par development environment that's going to fight them every step of the way and, likely, turn them off of software development more broadly. Then maybe we wonder why we don't see more blind software engineers?

So, go Epic. If they start being asses later then of course I'll oppose that, but if they have a big enough saber to start breaking up Apple's stranglehold on the most accessible mobile platform, they've got my support 100%. Hell yeah, the web wouldn't have been possible under Apple's rule. And while I respect those of you who want more secure devices and a curated experience, don't under-estimate the harm caused by locking blind developers out of one of the most accessible computing environments they're ever likely to get. No, jumping through certificate hoops to install something that will expire after a week isn't anything near what I'm asking for.

And to those of you who say "Just tell your blind friends to use a Pinephone," I wish I could, but Linux accessibility infrastructure has no support for touchscreens and touch events. Any of you millionaires reading this interested in funding that development? ;) Serious question, I'll work to put you in touch with the right folks.

If Epic pulls this off and Apple will be forced to allow app sideloading and third party appstores, I pledge myself to install Epic Store on some of my desktop computers.

This is one immoral company fighting another for money and simply hoping people will see the other as more immoral.

There's something disgusting about their technique of preparing a propaganda film portraying themselves (a massive corporation) as the courageous underdog representing the people, then purposefully breaking ToS for the purposes of provoking the obvious reaction which they could then "react" to by releasing the film.

Of course all of this is independent of Apple's actual sin, which is indeed an overbearing ToS.

They broke the TOS so Apple would block the app, which then gives them standing in court. Without standing, any judge would dismiss their case.

A fair point for legal pragmatism, though it doesn't affect my opinion of their character.

Ah yes, the sanctity of the ToS was violated. My heart bleeds.

Why the snark? I certainly said more than "they violated the ToS", which I even explicitly stated was an overbearing ToS.

Nailed it. I played fortnite consistently for 2 years. They milked everyone for in-game purchases. This is fun to watch play out, but at the end of the day they're both large companies with fat margins.

The way I see it, Apple has been trying to have the best of both worlds. They want to portray their App store policies as putting the user first - protecting them from malware and standardizing the experience. But the reality is that in some cases, there is a conflict of interest where what is best for the user is not the same as what's best for Apple, and Apple has of late been tending more to the “best for Apple” side in enforcement decisions.

The purpose of Epic's “stunt” was to demonstrate this conflict of interest. They couldn't have had the PR impact they wanted without it.

> Apple’s policies would have even blocked the World Wide Web if it had been invented after the iPhone, because Apple policies disallow running code not reviewed by Apple, accepting payments directly from customers, and accessing content not reviewed by Apple — all fundamental features of the web

YES!

This argument will be useful next time a brick and mortar store tells me they only take cash.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com