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Comment by klmadfejno | Hacker News Reader

Epic picked the fight but this is Apple's move at the end of the day. They could allow Epic to give the option to buy through apple or buy for cheaper skipping apple. It wouldn't be a particularly rational business decision to do so, but they do need to own the fact that putting their foot down is their call.

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> They could allow Epic to give the option to buy through apple or buy for cheaper skipping apple.

How do you propose that Apple could give this option to Epic?

If they allowed Epic to skirt their rules, they'd have to do the same for everyone, so it is a fight that Epic picked and Apple is choosing not to continue that fight, that's all. You make it sound like it would have been just fine if Apple let Epic do what they were doing.

We can debate that Apple should change its rules for everyone, but it sounds like you think they should have just let Epic continue violating their policies.

> If they allowed Epic to skirt their rules, they'd have to do the same for everyone ...

Er... yes?

The point is that Apple doesn’t want to do that, so if they do it for one person, they’d have to do it to all. Ultimately doing something they didn’t want to do in the first place.

They already did that.

"Documents show Apple gave Amazon special treatment to get Prime Video into App Store"

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348108/apple-amazon-pri...

Apple is already allowing Epic's parent company to skirt the rules. Tencent runs the biggest app store in China.

Tencent is not a parent company of Epic, they are a minority shareholder of 40% [1], while Epic's CEO is the owner with >50% ownership.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games

> If they allowed Epic to skirt their rules, they'd have to do the same for everyone

Apple is already allowing Amazon to "skirt their rules".

You're writing this as if Apple gets a sort of status quo advantage. Their policies aren't law. They're making the choice to enforce this and they're fully capable of not doing so. It's Apple's choice.

Would Apple likely have to forfeit more exceptions to other companies if they did this? Probably yes.

Still Apple's decision.

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