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Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

Of all the things about this, the fact that the Fortnite competitor PUBG is now being “featured” by Apple just ticks me off so much. Talk about being petty. Are there school-aged children running the App Store now (or the executive suite?).

I realize Apple has the right to decide who they feature but come on. Being featured is important, it’s a big deal and it can make a serious difference to any developer’s income and notoriety. The fact that Apple can just deposit something at the top of the list because they’re in a bad mood really says something about Apple: I don’t know, maybe that they’re a bit isolated and immature about this whole thing?

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The App Store promotes PUBG constantly [1]. You're reading too much into this. It would be silly for Apple to promote PUBG to spite Epic because it's made with Unreal Engine.

[1] https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aappstore%20pubgmobile&sr...

Based on that thread, the last time they did it was in May, and the latest was yesterday. Furthermore, they’re promoting a sneak peek so they could have easily waited to promote something that isn’t even here yet. The timing makes it pretty clear that they’re just trying to beat up Epic, and it’s an immature thing for a company to do.

The irony here is that PUBG is made with the Unreal Engine, which they're being forced by a judge not to cut off from their platform, and Epic still gets 5% of all revenue from PUBG.

Heads up, PUBG was released under the EULA and thus the 5% but after release the publisher sued to be able to buy a buyout license. Thus no, Epic gets no new revenue from PUBG.

Thanks, good note. I'd argue half of my comment remains valid though: If Apple hadn't gotten a TRO from the judge, PUBG would be unable to get Unreal Engine updates going forwards.

do you actually need to download unreal engine from the app store to build unreal engine games on ios or do gamedevs download the unreal engine tools and sdks on a desktop and then compile their games for ios from the desktop and sign them with their own app store dev accounts and upload them to the app store

I was trying to figure this out before. As I understand it from other discussions (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), the majority of developers bundle Epic's engine with their game, so it is delivered with the game in the app store. Those would not be harmed by and Epic entity being terminated by Apple, EXCEPT that it would hurt Epic's ability to develop new versions and support the already existing Unity engine and their customers. Because this court case might drag on for months but much more likely years, the court didn't think it was ok to allow Apple to terminate the dev account for the part of Epic that makes the engine, Epic International. This news is specifically about Epic Games, the company that makes Epic games, not the engine.

They're not being forced to do anything, it's a temporary injunction, i.e. just a remedy.

What's noteworthy here is that it's not a preliminary injunction, meaning that Apple might not even have had the chance to defend themselves in court yet.

> They're not being forced to do anything,

It's literally a court order forcing them to not do things that they said they were going to do

A new court order will be issued in the future, but for at least the next month this is the state of things.

> meaning that Apple might not even have had the chance to defend themselves in court yet.

The hearing was literally livestreamed on zoom and (illegally I might add) on youtube.

Apple had the chance to write and file this 34-page response to the application (which partially succeeded). https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/08/21/appleepic.pdf

To be honest Apple has to feature PUBG, because this fight with Epic is hugely damaging to their reputation with the next generation of kids who want devices.

The message that young preteens and teens are hearing is "iPhones and iPads are wack because they don't have the cool game". They don't care about the cost of v-bucks and who gets what percentage of the money. They just care that they can't play a game but their friend at school who has an Android can.

Apple has to feature PUBG because they have to show their customers that they still have cool games to play. Otherwise they run the risk of killing their iPhone gaming market just like they did the Mac gaming market. When you think desktop gaming its pretty likely that you think Windows first, because Mac has a really weak selection of games and many of the biggest titles are Windows only.

That's what Apple is now desperately trying to avoid happening to iOS as well.

>That's what Apple is now desperately trying to avoid happening to iOS as well.

It took a court order to not cut off Epic's developer liscence, which affects many other game vendors too.

That doesn't sound desparate. That sounds balsy and arrogant, and considering the attitude of Epic somewhat called for. It's almost like the gaming market on iOS is a only small percentage of all the money Apple makes. We are talking about a lot of money that Epic looses to them, but the same is not true in reverse.

Apple will stick to its guns even if the whole gaming industry would boycot them. They don't seem to care, and i can understand why they don't. Mobile games is a very profitable market, but one that makes money irregardless of quality. Angry Birds will do for Apple. The assumption that exclusive titles are platform drivers for mobile phones is false.

Linux gaming is actually really solid now thanks to Lutris, DXVK, WINE, Steam, etc. Lutris especially makes it all work smoothly, and apparently it's Linux-only. Could Mac have similar gaming support if it were less hostile to OSS?

Apple featured PUBG numerous times before this. Conspiracy theories not needed.

Tim Epic (not to be confused with Tim Apple) retweeted that with an amusing response:

"While waiting for Apple to #FreeFortnite on iOS and Mac, here’s another awesome battle royale game powered by Unreal Engine!"

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/129941176668281651...

This might be a desperate attempt at saying "hey but we do have PUBG!" but OTOH 80% of Fortnite players are on console vs PUBG has 40% of players on mobile [1].

My point being that if PUBG is much more popular that Fortnite on iOS it would only be natural that Apple would want to promote it. I have no idea if that's the case though.

[1] https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoos-battle-royale-s...

It comes across as petty, certainly rubs me the wrong way to the point I'm done with Apple. But could it just be a coincidence of some sort and that we read some agency in that?

Yes it's a coincidence since PUBG is about to release a major new update:

https://www.pubgmobile.com/en/event/erangel

Not to whataboutism too hard, but Epic made an animated short mocking a past Apple advertisement. Further, tried to brew up a hashtag shame campaign. And finally ending with a holier than thou email over this whole ordeal.

Apple is just promoting an update for a popular game, around the time it’s going to be updated.

Love that move. EPIC is no nice guy in this fight. They put it as if they want to benefit users, but is still bottom line they are after. You wanted a fight why are you ticked off the other guy start throwing hay makers?

This kind of thing is handled at the CEO level at Epic because it is clearly part of a big strategy. This sounds to me like two very wealthy CEOs got really pissed off at each other and are going to all out war here. To me Apple's response only makes sense if you see if as keeping a promise to do literally everything possible to crush Epic in response. This seems very transactional to me, not strategic.

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