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Comment by thih9 | Hacker News Reader

In App Store I like the extra integrations with the apple ecosystem: the history of all downloads, or single place to manage all subscriptions; apple pay and sign in with apple are convenient too.

I want the alternative marketplaces to be that - an extra option that expands what users can do with their devices.

I wouldn’t want popular companies like Adobe, EA, Microsoft, taking their products to their own marketplaces while offering inferior UX.

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I kind of half expect this might be the (terrible) end game here: If you want App A, you have to download Publisher X’s crappy store and buy it there, then if you want App B, you need Publisher Y’s store, and then for App C, it’s publisher Z’s store. Yuck!

That's windows and games. Truly a PITA. And the worst thing is the rich companies can just bribe their way into people's computers by offering their games for free. EA and Epic are both guilty of this and I won't install that just on principle alone.

That being said, maybe if there was a good sandboxing, ot wouldn't be so bad?

> That's windows and games. Truly a PITA. And the worst thing is the rich companies can just bribe their way into people's computers by offering their games for free. EA and Epic are both guilty of this and I won't install that just on principle alone.

I have returned my last two game purchases on steam because they didn't launch into the game but an alternative login. I will no longer accept that. I'll chose another game and I wish many more will do that but I'm not hopeful.

Gamers are the least principled bunch of users I've come across. They screech & moan about shit they hate in games, and then turn around and buy the next carbon copy clone of Call of Duty, EA's games with thousands of dollars of DLC, the shiny new limited time microtransaction sword that costs $3,000.

If gamers had any kind of principle, they'd do what you're doing and show their disdain for these practices by not buying the game. But they just can't help themselves. The diminishing dopamine hits are just too difficult to resist, and so they just keep putting money into these awful schemes that are ruining the industry, making sure to cry and whine as they pull their credit card back out to really show the company how unhappy they are to continue buying the shit they put out.

> I have returned my last two game purchases on steam because they didn't launch into the game but an alternative login.

Ughh that’s the worst. When I double click on a game I want to play it, not run some publisher’s shitty “launcher” that begs you to create an account and hits you with ads. I HAVE A LAUNCHER: it’s called my operating system and it works fine.

Game developers please stop doing this shit! Nobody wants this.

That seems like quite a likely outcome unless the store offers sellers more value than it takes. The liklihood of that for the specific example of the Apple store is pretty low. If the stores cut were more of the order of 5% it's be much less likely that sellers would feel the need to work around it.

all a company would be doing by acting like this would be restricting the size of their user base

Companies that need to use the discoverability features of the store won't do this, but with things as they are, probably most companies that are already famous enough not to need that probably will (adobe, amazon, microsoft).

they don't do this on windows

I think the ms store revenue share is around 5% for non-games plus they allow you to take money in other ways too.

Is it a coincidence that the only group that needs to pay the big fees - games makers - are the only group that make their own stores?

>I think the ms store revenue share is around 5% for non-games plus they allow you to take money in other ways too.

so what do you think Apple will do the second this starts happening?

I know what I hope they'll do, and what most likely the entire point of this is - they should make their store more competitive and give app sellers a better deal. Whether that's what they'll actually do isn't trivial to work out - this is apple after all.

Why speculate when Android had been using this model all along? It haven't been an issue. Of course there are multiple alternate marketplaces, but it's not like every company has their own.

Apple is a bit different, it has tighter control over its store; and more rules over things like using internal apis or duplicating os features.

But yes, in many ways this is similar too. You’re right, time will tell.

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