Epic Games CEO Likens Apple's Core Tech Fee to Unity's Disastrous Runtime Fee
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That said, there's no doubt that Apple carefully crafted the financial terms of the new EU developer TOS to make it economically unattractive.
[0] [...] Also today, Apple is sharing new business terms available for developers’ apps in the European Union. Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms. [...] -- excerpt from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-chang....
The DMA has very broad anti-circumvention provisions (i.e. "If you comply with the letter but not the spirit of this law, expect to see us in court anyway"), so I'm expecting a protracted legal battle between Apple and EU authorities. Plus this smells an awful lot like leveraging a monopoly, and Apple is appealing the whole law itself anyway, so this is gonna keep the lawyers busy for years.
Because another commenter[0] also wondered the same thing, I will answer "Yes" and "No" because it depends on what type of discussion is happening.
- If it's a "big picture" discussion about freedom from Apple's App Store and avoiding their commissions, then the answer is "no difference" because the overall desirable outcome that developers wanted didn't happen.
- If it's a specific discussion about Tim Sweeney & Ashley Gullen's tweet equating the Unity "disastrous" fees with Apple's new optional EU TOS, then the answer is "yes there is a key difference"
In response to TS & AS tweet, Unity's new fee rollout was a public relations disaster because (1) it was retroactive (2) had no option to stay with existing license to avoid the fee. Developers felt "betrayed" by the change and Unity eventually backtracked the changes. Apple will not suffer the same embarrassment that Unity did because devs can just continue "business as usual" by staying with Apple's old TOS (even while EU and Apple continue to fight it out in courts.)
Even if you are just a small indie developer that's far too much risk for anyone offering free apps (or that might want to in the future). Imagine being the next flappy bird (over 50 million downloads before it got pulled) and suddenly being on the hook for $25,000,000.
If that were the case then every time someone who smokes told you it's a filthy habit don't copy me, you would take up smoking concluding there was vitamin C in it, and it must be good for you.
Apples always has had fees and probably always will as long as they control the os.
Epic had their day in court to prove their claims, and lost, so everything they say sounds like sour grapes.
The point of this entire exercise is to allow developers and consumers to leave the Apple app store if they like. A free choice. If people must stick with it because the alternative will lead to total financial ruin, then there is still no choice.
> Did... did Apple just introduce the equivalent of Unity's runtime install fee... but for all iOS app developers in the EU?!
That answer to that question is without a doubt, "No" unlike what Tim is trying to say.
This is an overly broad straw man argument because no one is trying to force Apple to give away iPhones. And yes, the government should be able to force you make major concessions, especially if your device becomes integral to the daily lives of half the citizens of said government.
Apple is selling these devices at a significant profit to end users. The primary purpose of the app store for Apple is to provide value to those consumers, so they continue to buy iPhones. Even if the EU decided tomorrow to confiscate all profits Apple makes from the app store in perpetuity Apple would continue to offer the App Store.
And even then, it is not much different from forcing them to give away iPhones. So what, producing iPhones has a cost so giving them away is "obviously" not tenable, but making tools to develop for it has no cost? Forcing a security model where they have to be ready for "anything, anytime" instead of having a gate where they check things right at the gate has no cost? Especially when if their security fails, they will be the ones to be held responsible?
the rest of the things you say you support is a sure-fire way to make sure no company would risk anything to make devices / inventions so valuable that they become an integral part of your lives. at least not in your jurisdiction.
yeah, sounds better than this future where they embrace, extend, and extinguish with the mindshare gained before pulling wool over the customer's eyes.
And this isn't new. This is the entire reason behind anti-trust. Because it's not in the government's best interest to allow Microsoft to push out other browsers. Post-innovation runs down a road to greed and corruption, which stifles future innovation for current convinience. It's never worth it.
If you develop a platform that runs software, you should freely distribute necessary the tools to develop software for the platform.
The end user should own their device and that means they should be able to develop software for it free of charge once they have the device.
That does not mean that you can not make libraries that you sell. So I think apple could sell a specialized ML library for their chips, as long as they document the hardware such that someone else willing to do the work could also create such a library
they aren't using it for free, though. These are $1000+ luxury hardware powered by software that developer pay a yearly license to develop for (and because Apple has no modern server OS, these devs also buy into said $1000+ hardware).
At this point I see it as rent-seeking since essentially they are saying that companies need to retroactively pay for software they made decades ago, even if they want to bypass it.
>in the end Apple can say "hey we are selling the dev kit for $500k, only good for this major version of the OS" and that will be the end of that.
that would honestly be a better deal. $500k for a dev kit for a large gaming company would pay for itself if it can make $2m+ or so in revenue (after advertising budgets). It would be catastropic for indies but indies aren't likely to see alternate stores as is.
The iPhone itself has been consistently superior to its competition across its history (although obviously not always best at everything). And I say that as an Android fan.
Under the standard EULA, Unreal Engine is free to use for learning, and for developing internal projects; it also enables you to distribute many commercial projects without paying any fees to Epic Games, including custom projects delivered to clients, linear content (such as films and television shows) and any product that earns no revenue or whose revenue falls below the royalty threshold. A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game) and the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in this case, the first $1 million remains royalty-exempt.
I don't like this fee model, but let's not pretend Android doesn't exist.
If I build a Flutter app for checking bus times, what am I paying Apple for? I'm already deliberately avoiding their badly documented frameworks. Apple don't own the buses, they don't own the internet, they should not be claiming ownership of the users phones.
How did you have no choice, did Apple threaten you or something?
Android is a competent competitor you could choose instead.
Because they clearly are not. So why do developers get the choice but not the consumer?
Sounds to me the power is still in the wrong hands and consumers loose.
because you can't just push a button and port Fortnite to Linux. Or maybe you can, but expect a lot of bugs that will ultiamtely be negative PR for Fortnite instead of a boon for consumers. What benefit does this give consumers?
Besides, this metaphor doesn't work. You do not have to play, pay, nor install fortnite to do anything except play fortnite. With this ruling, you need IOS to do anything involving making an IOS app, even if you do not need the app store. I don't see the use in being charged for hardware and dev licenses and ALSO be charged per install because your free app chose not to be on the app store.
Citation needed. I use F-Droid not because I want the devs of the apps I install from there to be free of the Google Play Tax. I use it so I can be free of Google Play.
You see the parallels and why "I-Droid" won't be a sustainable store?