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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Why do you force me to defend Apple?

Trotting the 30% tax as an Apple exclusive problem is extremely disengenuous.

Sony, Microsoft and Valve also charge 30% (and have draconian agreements that are even worse than apples).

It’s like Foxxcon all over again; when Apple does the same as everyone else, suddenly it’s a pariah. (For context I’m talking about the suicides at Foxconn due to the abhorrent working conditions, despite the fact that nearly every large OEM and board maker used them: Apple got the most shit).

Sometimes I think the media might have a bit of bias against Apple for some reason.

Not that the criticism isn’t justified, but it’s definitely not levied even handedly.

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Similar as they may appear, the comparison between Steam and Apple's AppStore is disingenuous.Valve doesn't prohibit developers from selling the app directly to customers and installing the app on their devices, bypassing the middleman. Apple absolutely locks down iOS devices and direct installation of anything is impossible (testflight and MDM options do not count).

This makes these two appstores completely incomparable. Enrolling in one is voluntary, and is done by developers because it is beneficial to them, another one is extortion.

As far as I understand (I was only working in the same building as uplay/Ubsioft connect) there were rules about payment processing (ie; all games downloaded through steam have to use the steam payments api: this is all I can find on the matter at a glance: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1755779919109...)

Second; while you can sell your program in other places, you may not charge differently than steam. Which makes a lot of sense but is quite hard to grapple with in reality. I think there are cheeky “letter of the law” ways of working around this but obviously Valve don’t want that and then look for other reasons to just drop your entire catalog at random (this was not done by Ubisoft, despite the title and article claiming that: https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-remove-game-steam/)

After all; why go outside of steam if it’s not cheaper?

Some people don't like Steam since its proprietary. I own around 200 games on Steam and almost all of them have Steam's DRM that prevents me from running the game without being logged into Steam.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm

Some games can be bought on Steam, GoG (DRM-free), and/or their website.

Example:

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/games-kerbal-space-progra...

https://www.gog.com/en/game/kerbal_space_program

https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Progr...

Others doing the same doesn't justify the practice. I am calling out Apple right now because this discussion is about Apple, not because I just want to blame Apple and give a pass to the others. What is this argument, is Apple now the 12 year old 'bad' kid in class who gets blamed for everything? Should I be considerate of its feelings? Anyway, Google still allows alternative app stores on the platform like F-droid that is a major difference.

Since Apple has locked down the platform, they are the price setters: they decide for you that 30% is fair. Seems extortionate to me.

I’m more pointing out that as far as “platform costs” go, Apple is in-line with its contemporaries.

In fact it’s likely by virtue of the platform being so closed that the rate is so high (as my examples are console platforms which also seek to be hermetically sealed environments), so trotting out f-droid as a refutation does little.

Maybe I’m numb to this from working in games; try making a game and avoiding the 30% tax; even on a free and open platform like PC, outside of Epic and some home-grown launchers you’re going to be paying 30%. For consoles; forget about it, that’s the price.

It’s pay to play, and if you don’t want to pay then… don’t, nobody puts a gun to your head any forces you to support the iPhone. At least you have an alternative platform to target that is cheaper (Android).

Where as I got death threats when we put The Division 2 on Epic Games; the public opinion was not a good one: https://reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/ae8vnd/_/ednd9fr/?...

>> It’s pay to play, and if you don’t want to pay then… don’t, nobody puts a gun to your head any forces you to support the iPhone

Right? If you don't like their monkeys then don't join their circus! Apple is spending billions of dollars to create their iPhone market that these people then want to tap into and profit from for free! Apple doesn't get paid unless you get paid, distribute your app for free and you don't have to pay Apple anything. Oh, you want to make money? Then you're going to have to pay for that!

If these people don't like it then I suggest they try distributing their software via Walmart, Gamestop, or Staples. Wait, what? You can't access their stores for free to sell your stuff! Say it ain't so!

Frankly I'm tired of this juvenile discussion. These people obviously have no clue as to how retail works and can't see that Apple has actually cut them a hell of a deal! A better deal than you're going to get distributing any product via a traditional retail channel.

Perhaps people would rather take the side of the consumer instead of the multi-trillion-dollar global conglomerates?

Feel free to donate as much money as you want to them though.

The consumer wants everything for free. Get back to me when you're willing to work for free - I'd love to "hire" you! :)

Consumers already pay for the hardware which is why they're a trillion dollar company.

However there are other trillion-dollar companies that have free consumer services if that's really the issue (which it isn't). By the way, millions of apps are not monetized and therefore free to host so clearly there's not a critical cost associated with the app store but rather pure profit margin.

Simply allowing the install of additional app stores would solve all these issues and allow for more competitions and the free market to discover the real price of app store services.

The problem isn't the tax, it's that there is no way around it.

Let people install alternative app stores and every single issue is resolved.

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