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Comment by bluk | Hacker News Reader

Cloud game streaming has been recently allowed worldwide under a few conditions ( https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=f1v8pyay ).

Forcing Apple to allow third party payments without Apple's cut would improve market opportunities for many businesses. Facebook could have its marketplace conduct peer to peer transactions. Amazon could allow the purchase of digital goods (books, movies, etc.) and put it on more equal footing with Apple itself. While big businesses are best positioned to take advantage today, the effects directly trickle down to small startup businesses.

While I personally don't care for it, cryptocurrency use would have more potential. Apple blocked apps for NFT features in the past because they couldn't get their 30%.

Having third party marketplaces might make it so that there is some actual curation at the App Store.

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> Forcing Apple to allow third party payments without Apple's cut would improve market opportunities for many businesses.

It would, but that is how Apple collects their commission. Where regulations where Apple has been forced to provide this separation (such as the US), they have split 3% to cover payment fees out of the commission, and put additional considerations for when leaving the app to make a payment would result in a commission and that Apple may audit that you are properly reporting commissions.

The DMA mandated that Apple decouple their commission structure from a single App Store in favor of multiple marketplaces, and they put in a 50 Eurocent core technology fee per user per year (after a margin of free installs).

> Amazon could allow the purchase of digital goods (books, movies, etc.) and put it on more equal footing with Apple itself.

Amazon does have digital purchasing of Video. Amazon added the ability to subscribe to a limited video version of Prime using in-app purchasing, and that kind of account will bill purchases using in-app purchasing.

They likely have razor thin margins for anyone who chooses to do this, but expect customers to either have existing Prime accounts or to want to upgrade from Video to the full Prime account for the other services. I suspect they did the math and think their margins on Kindle wouldn't support this.

> Amazon does have digital purchasing of Video. Amazon added the ability to subscribe to a limited video version of Prime using in-app purchasing, and that kind of account will bill purchases using in-app purchasing.

Sorry, I do not parse this. What did they add?

Amazon Prime was originally an add-on to regular Amazon accounts that provided expedited delivery as a flat rate subscription. Later, Amazon got into the streaming business and bundled access to films and shows into the Prime subscription. For a while it was kind of a useless perk since the available content was old or low quality.

Later, as Amazon acquired more popular content and then created an in-house production studio, they added the ability to rent or "purchase" (rent) streaming video content on a per-episode/season/film basis without requiring the full Prime subscription service.

This was designed to address Amazon customers who were primarily (pun intended) interested in the video content, not the physical goods.

I think he’s saying you can subscribe to Amazon Prime Video via in-app purchase.

Yep, not the full Prime account, but a cheaper video-limited one.

The DMA did not mandate that they decouple their commission structure. That is Apple’s interpretation of the DMA which seems to change every few weeks so far. PWAs on home screens were disallowed and then allowed again. Apple looks like they do not have legal and execution discipline and is being caught flat footed. It is somewhat alarming that they have made so many mistakes (see Epic being revoked from their third party marketplace and then Apple being strong armed to re-allow because of a EU comment about investigation).

The idea that Apple is compliant with the DMA has yet to be tested. There are many direct statements by the enforcing commissioner and complaints from third parties that I think only a direct ruling will settle things.

I forgot about Prime Video purchases having a special back door deal for some of their purchases. I wasn’t referring to the subscription service but the purchase of digital books/movies. My point stands though. Digital goods could be sold and bought without special exceptions or loopholes from the 30% fee. That alone is a huge market opportunity.

I wonder if this will have a trickle down effect on other app stores, specifically gaming consoles. Would XBox Live or Playstation Store, for example, be on the hot seat if they rejected an application or "game" that was basically a storefront for streaming other games?

I don't think so, at least not as a consequence from this case if Apple loses. Antitrust cases are usually very limited in scope. Microsoft's loss required many actions (documenting Active Directory and other protocols/formats, browser choice screens, etc.), but no one else in tech were required to do so.

John Sircacusa (from ATP.fm) pointed out years ago that the heart of Apple's biggest issues is business relationship management. This was when Apple only had a handful of issues with a few companies and made some poorly received statements about developers. Their ability to build mutually agreeable relations has only gotten worse in recent years.

Sony and Microsoft have kept their relations with third parties tough but ultimately agreeable. They promote practically all of their third parties (unlike the App Store which has so many apps that its like winning the lottery to be promoted). Consoles have stores which are probably more curated but which third party publishers/developers actually like.

IMO, DoJ, EU, etc. are acting primarily because they have received so many complaints from Spotify, Microsoft, Epic Games, Google, Meta, Tile, etc. Governments don't take action for the "public" interest on its own.

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