What to Know About EU’s Digital Markets Act | Hacker News Reader

What to Know About EU’s Digital Markets Act

fosslife.org

17 pointsmpol7 comments

Blogspam, should link to https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/europe-prepares-...

Or the original version on wired.com:

https://www.wired.com/story/europe-dma-prepares-to-rewrite-t...

> “If you have an iPhone, you should be able to download apps not just from the App Store but from other app stores or from the internet,” de Graaf says, in a conference room with emerald green accents at the Irish consulate in San Francisco, where the EU’s office is initially located.

Has Apple made any announcements about this?

I think it goes in full effect in 2023. They haven't really defined, legally, which companies are the ones that will have to comply. Of course Apple is one of them but they won't say "hey it's us" until the Europeans tell them.

> the law’s consequences to Big Tech companies. De Graaf says they will be forced to break open their walled gardens.

So when will Steam be available on Microsoft's Xbox?

Probably at the same time it will be available on the PlayStation and Switch.

Which is maybe never as this law mostly targets critical computing devices like smartphones since you need those in the modern world for almost everything important like payments, transactions, tickets, transportation, navigation, government interactions and national emergency notifications, etc.

Since I haven't seen anyone paying their bus ticket with a Nintendo Switch or filing their taxes from a PlayStation, I guess they're exempt. They're just entertainment devices without cellular connectivity.

And as a sidenote, X-Box already lets you sideload your own apps in sandbox mode so I guess Microsoft can claim the X-Box is compliant.

You seem to get my point about the lack of specificity in the article about which companies and which walled gardens it actually applies to.

That being said, where specifically in the legislation does it clearly exclude walled-garden game stores and systems?

It seems very likely that Microsoft qualifies as a gatekeeper by market cap and user base (Sony as well.) But are there more than 10K Xbox game devs in the EU? Quite possibly, since anyone can create and publish a game through Xbox Live Creators Program. By requiring those games to be distributed exclusively through the Xbox Store (and a specific section of that store), Microsoft is ostensibly exercising its gatekeeping power to restrict the business of thousands of game developers and their access to millions of customers.

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