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Comment by Terretta | Hacker News Reader

You think this should apply to Google Play, Xbox, Epic, Steam, and everywhere else?

As the judge who ruled against Epic on the breach of contract wrote:

”There appears to be evidence that everyone that uses these kind of platforms to sell games is charging 30%. Whether Epic likes it, the industry and not just Apple seem to be charging that. Right now, Epic is paying Apple nothing. Epic itself charges third parties.”

Every company providing any service or good could be required to provide cost/margin accounting, as well as disclaim industry norm practices such as pay-for-placement in grocery stores or advertised retail price limits at BestBuy... does that seem right?

What would this 30% notice have said for the billion free downloads of Fortnite? When IAP business model is used to underwrite free to play, should it not also underwrite free to download? Epic can’t have their cake and eat it too.

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I think there's two real issues here:

* Apple does not allow other App Stores on their platform

* Apple does not allow other payment processing or even instructions on where you can purchase things outside of their platform. This reduces even big players like Netflix to just throw up a message that says "You can only use this if you're a memeber", rather than give users a helpful link where they can purchase a membership outside the app.

Neither of these are things that Android does, so the case against Apple is significantly stronger.

> * Apple does not allow other App Stores on their platform

As a consumer, I see that as a feature not a bug. On the Switch, Play Station and Xbox I don't have other stores I can use as well. I don't see how this is a problem as much as it is a feature. The fact that Android allows more than one store is much closer to how a Windows PC allows the user to install apps from anywhere. iOS isn't trying to replicate the PC experience, its not nearly as general purpose as Windows or even macOS.

For free downloads, the notice would of course not need to include the part about 30% of the app purchase price. It would still need to include the parts about 30% of the price of IAP and disclose the ban on mentioning any alternatives to IAP that might not include the 30%.

It's not typically a norm in other industries that you have no way of buying from the vendor without paying a middleman 30%, and that when such ways do exist, the vendor is restricted from telling you about them.

So, for your BestBuy example, if you want to buy from a company who sells there and not pay a cut to Best Buy and their distributors, you can always send a check (for cheapest processing costs) or use a credit card (for still far lower costs than Best Buy's cut) directly to/with the vendor. The vendor gets more of your payment, and you get exactly the same product usable in exactly the same ways as if you had bought at Best Buy. Not only that, the vendor is allowed to charge less than Best Buy charges if you buy direct. Grocery stores are broadly similar, though admittedly fewer grocery vendors are willing to deal directly with individual households (but that's up to them).

Apple creates a very different context than the above.

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