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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

The bigger question about Roblox is how and why they got their special treatment from Apple. The whole concept of Roblox is in blatant violation of Apple's App Store policies. I believe they are significantly shielded from competition because who else can get that kind of ongoing and reliable relief from Apple's famously picky and capricious App Store reviewers? Maybe Roblox is happy to pay Apple their 30% in exchange for that protection. And this is not a small matter: Roblox is a public company worth 25 billion dollars based in no small part on this special treatment. The SEC ought to be investigating this.

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I think the same argument could be made for Twitter/X. The app stores by Google and Apple specifically disallow pornographic material, yet the app is full of it. Once you're big and important enough, the rules mostly don't apply for you anymore. Of course, if they tried to circumvent the app store tax directly within the app, there would be consequences, but as long as Google/Apple can make a profit, it's okay it seems.

> I think the same argument could be made for Twitter/X. The app stores by Google and Apple specifically disallow pornographic material, yet the app is full of it.

Reddit is allowed too. imgur, snap, etc.

I assumed you're fine as long as your raison d'être wasn't porn and the content was user generated / supplied.

To add, Tumblr was lambasted for them not properly policing their porn[0], accidentally allowing CSAM, and Apple being the one to inform them of this error. it's what led to them banning all 18+ content, arguably sealing the platform's fate of irrelevancy.

0: https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-...

I thought Yahoo's acquisition was what stopped their 18+ content

But perhaps the most catastrophic misfire of all was the notorious ‘porn ban’ that came into place on December 17, 2018 – a policy partly driven by a US law [1] that made websites liable for sex trafficking that might take place on their platform. The ban covers ‘female presenting nipples’, genitals, and any depicted sex acts. Until then, the platform had remained a refuge for a devoted community of users, but this decision affected swift and dire consequences.

https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-sold-to-wordpress/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSTA-SESTA

And who determines that reason? Twitter seems to work fine with no restrictions but Discord basically has to lock down any server marked as 18+

(regardless of the content of 18+. Don't know how mobile has had 15 years to do granular content warnings based on decades of other medium but app stores still assume 18+ = porn).

> And who determines that reason?

the exact language of their T&Cs?

Not to be too flippant, but we can guess all we want, but the individual apps signed up to specific terms at the time, and you can almost guarantee that Apple (or anyone else) reserves a lot of leeway to themselves as to how they enforce or otherwise police those T&Cs.

All the conjecture in this bit of the thread seems a bit pointless given none of us are reading it, let alone reading the specific bit that whichever app in question might be held to.

Hence my start to it, as well, these seem to be allowed ...

Can an aggregator/distributor be liable for user created content? You can find porn in Reddit or Google Search and these apps are still in the app store so I don’t think they are getting any special treatment.

Didn't work out for Organic Maps. Merely allowing to access map data makes you un-family-friendly. Or at least that's what we can assume, since Google won't indulge in specifics. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41272925

Even Tapatalk had to filter out "adult" forums - and it's just a client to connect to 3rd party forums.

On Twitter you can find actual porn straight up.

There are some protections for hosting illegal data (real illegal, not EULA-disapproved), but they tend to go away if the host does any kind of editorializing (like showing the data through an algorithmic feed).

Google Search is different yet, since they aren't the primary host.

I don't think I've ever actually seen any porn on eXtwitter. (Well, on main.)

Why was a perfectly fine Unicode Blackboard X filtered out of my post.

HN strips out emoji and other non-language characters, may be related to that

There is a lot of porn. X even added official rules for it: https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/adult-content

I don't have an iPhone, but I know that you can access it via the official app from Google Play.

What I'm saying, you have to seek it out.

Roblox gets away with this due to the framing that it’s a single platform with many different experiences:

“To start, Roblox is not a single game. It's a platform that hosts millions of user-generated experiences, such as historical roleplaying games or virtual labs to simulate physics experiments. Because of the diversity of content you'll find on Roblox, we use the term experience to refer to what you play on Roblox.” https://create.roblox.com/docs/education/resources/frequentl...

From the epic trial, Apple addressed why it allows them in a pretty tortured manner: https://www.polygon.com/22440737/roblox-metaverse-game-exper...

I think the best argument is that you’re a single player across games, kids speak of “playing Roblox”, there are portals between worlds, etc. This comment makes the point that all games feel the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41287780

It’s pretty different from what Epic wanted to do by offering completely separate games in their App Store without paying apple commission.

>Even Apple acknowledged this when a marketing head, Trystan Kosmynka, expressed “surprise” that Roblox was approved for the App Store in 2017 in an email. Kosmynka then defended this decision during the trial by saying Apple did not consider Roblox to be a place where people go to play games.

>“I look at the experiences that are in Roblox similar to the experiences that are in Minecraft,” Kosmynka said. “These are maps. These are worlds. And they have boundaries in terms of what they’re capable of.”

Wow. The damage control was even worse than I thought. So I guess the new UE Fortnite Network would be approved no problem since "it's not a game, it's a UGC platform" (not that Epic cares about app stores anymore). Because Epic isn't making the games anymore. Just offloading the labor to others a LA VR Chat.

How were they getting away with it for the 10 years before that when they were still calling them games and were still clearly in violation? It's pretty clear that the name change is just a retconned excuse and has nothing at all to do with the real reason.

Well, they actually did get banned from the App Store at one point, but successfully appealed.

Here's a key part of this: Executives also have kids and they want to play Roblox on the go!

Yes, favoritism by Apple execs is the most plausible explanation to me. I wonder if Phil Schiller owns any RBLX shares...

All this happened when Roblox was private, I don't believe there was/is any monetary interest beyond whatever executives had from their employers. If it's anything like the story for getting Roblox on game consoles, then it really is executives caring about what their kids also care about, and that gives RBLX a huge leg up.

You may be right, but Apple execs are accredited investors worth tens to hundreds of millions and as such are easily able to invest in private companies, so that doesn't rule it out. Nepotism is another possible explanation if there are any connections there. And while it wouldn't be illegal while they were private, it would still be immoral, and it would become illegal when not disclosed as a risk at IPO.

It could also further jeopardize Apple's standing with regulators, since they profess to apply their rules fairly and equally without secret deals (which is transparently ridiculous but Tim Cook said it in congressional testimony so it would be perjury if proven wrong).

Why the SEC specifically? Are you suggesting investors are hurt by this?

If you want any part of any government to investigate, shouldn't you suggest some agency that's supposed to be working for consumer welfare or so?

If there is any kind of undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO. There's a huge risk to Roblox were any such deal to unravel, both from the threat of competition being allowed and from the possibility of Apple starting to enforce their published policies on Roblox. For public companies, risks like that must be disclosed.

> undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO

not all undisclosed arrangements constitute securities fraud - only those whose intent is to defraud investors do.

As for anti-competitive measures, the investigation ought to be from the consumer protection agencies, like the FCC, or from the justice department regarding anti-trust.

You are right that not all undisclosed arrangements are securities fraud. However, an undisclosed arrangement that represents an existential risk to the company were it to ever change would be securities fraud. You can't go public with huge undisclosed risks like that.

They disclose risks under Risk Factors in their quarterly filings.

Obviously, like all public companies. But have they disclosed the specific risk that Apple might stop giving them special treatment and stop protecting them from competition or start enforcing the policies they violate? I believe I read their S-1 some time ago and didn't find any mention of special treatment from Apple. It's possible they started disclosing it later, but even that would still expose them to shareholder lawsuits from IPO investors.

Edit: They are also vulnerable to insider whistleblowers. Any whistleblower would be eligible for rewards of 10-30% of any penalty ultimately assessed by the SEC. The SEC has paid tens of millions to single whistleblowers in the past.

They don't have to disclose specific of a deal.

"We depend on effectively operating with third-party mobile operating systems, hardware, and networks that may make changes affecting our operating costs, as well as our ability to maintain our Platform which would hurt our ability to operate our business.

For the three months ended June 30, 2024, 30% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Apple App Store and 16% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Google Play Store. Because of the significant use of our Platform on mobile devices, our application must remain interoperable with these and other popular mobile app stores and platforms, and related hardware. We are subject to the standard policies and terms of service of these operating systems, as well as policies and terms of service of the various software application stores that make our application and experiences available to our developers, creators, and users. These policies and terms of service govern the availability, promotion, distribution, content, and operation of applications and experiences on such operating systems and stores. Each provider of these operating systems and stores has broad discretion to change and interpret its terms of service and policies with respect to our Platform and those changes may be unfavorable to us and our developers’, creators’, and users’ use of our Platform. If an operating system provider or application store limits or discontinues access to, or changes the terms governing, its operating system or store for any reason, it could adversely affect our business, financial condition, or results of operations."

Thanks for actually digging up the relevant lines!

Apple can and does change even the written terms of AppStore service on a whim without warning. The risk that Apple suddenly changes its unwritten enforcement policy to your detriment is not that much different than the risk that they just change their Ts and Cs entirely. Apple’s walled garden, Apple’s rules.

ANY publicly traded company that relies on the Apple AppStore for a significant portion of its revenue has an implied ‘so long as Apple continue to allow us to do this’ caveat hanging over their revenue forecasts.

And when they are subject to US regulations, they typically make that implicit caveat into explicit disclosure. See eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303671

Curious, why is Roblox in violation of Apple's App store policies?

> Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, nor may they download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps.

Roblox is in clear violation of this clause, downloading and executing entire games written in Lua. Apple does have an exception to this policy for HTML5 games and streaming games but Roblox does not qualify because it is not HTML5 and not streaming. Many people have had their businesses destroyed for far less serious violations of App Store policy.

I believe there are also other rules against putting an app store inside your App Store app. Clearly Roblox is an app store for games, with its own currency. Apple has not been reasonable on this point with other companies: they originally didn't even want to allow cloud game streaming apps to play multiple games in a single app. Their ridiculous plan was to require a separate Apple App Store listing for each game that a streaming platform supported, and they only relented under pressure after Microsoft went public with their complaints: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/11/21433071/microsoft-apple-... And after that debacle they explicitly added exceptions to their policies for game streaming apps. They have never done so for Roblox-like apps, which are still plainly forbidden under their publicly posted policies.

It’s a gray area. If you look at apps like Snapchat, instagram and TikTok, they all have this concept of filters/lens/effect which are effectively <8mb bundles running JavaScript / lua scripts for visual effects and whatnot (see lens studio, meta spark and effect house). The key seemed to be to not use any JIT compilers and make sure it does not change the code of the app itself but mainly just act as a static runtime / engine for the effect.

One app effectively violating that policy is WeChat with their mini programs, but they get away with it due to the fact that iOS without WeChat would be doa in China.

It's not gray. Your examples do not violate policy because Apple has an explicit exception to allow stuff like that when specifically running in WebKit's JavaScript engine. That's why they use JavaScript, to qualify for the loophole. But as I said, Roblox does not use JavaScript or WebKit for running games and does not qualify for that exception. There is also an exception for "plug-ins" which seems like it could cover the case of camera filters, but definitely would not stretch to cover an entire embedded app store full of complete games purchased with a third-party currency.

Going back to my prior example, selecting an AR Effect/Lens on TikTok/Insta/Snap and is kind of akin to a mini app store if you think about it: https://sh1ftdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_8904...

If you think about it, a scrollable list of tiny free camera filters is not that similar to an enormous searchable catalog of complete and individually purchasable games.

Apple clearly doesn't think these are the same thing either as demonstrated by their explicit policies allowing the former and their attempt to block cloud streaming apps from providing the latter, later turning into explicit policies specifically allowing it for cloud streaming apps and only cloud streaming apps, not Roblox-like apps.

Maybe to us technical folks, but for everybody else on the planet it's night and day different.

What’s doa?

Dead On Arrival

Roblox actually changed their wording in response to Apple's policies at some point. They no longer call them "games", they call them "experiences"

Is any Lua run on iOS devices at all? The majority of the Lua code is sent to the server, which then tells the client what to do.

There are Lua scripts intended to run on the "client" (such as camera scripts) but I was under the impression (I could be wrong) that even they were converted by a server into instructions sent to the client, not run as a Lua scripts in a local Lua interpreter on your iPad.

Surely the user interface runs locally ? Or has Roblox been careful to ban interface development in LUA ?

My assumption is that the server either directly tells the client what to display or it converts the “client” code to some kind of bytecode that doesn’t require a lua interpreter.

Or perhaps the lua code is sanitised by the server such that the lua code run on the client is not the same as submitted by the user. Many App Store games do have an embedded scripting system of some kind, just not one that can run code directly inputted by an end user.

Bytecode or not it is still running code inputted by an end user on iOS devices.

The whole point of Apple's rules here are to force app functionality and features to be reviewed when submitting an app to the app store. Anybody can go and make complete games ("experiences") in Roblox and they will immediately be available on iOS without being reviewed by Apple. It's a full game engine that lets you write custom code, use custom assets, and replace everything. Take a look at Frontlines (https://www.roblox.com/games/5938036553/FRONTLINES) as an example of a game that looks nothing like Roblox.

If you were to release an iOS app and push new features and content to it OTA then you risk being kicked off the store if you get caught because you bypassed their review process and the store page may not be accurately describing the app anymore.

Have you heard about codepush? Apps are routinely ignoring this requirement and apple does literally nothing, as recently discussed on hn:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41146779

It's allowed if the app doesn't change the main purpose based on the review process! In the past, I'd worked with a company which makes whitelabel apps for churches and does use codepush to fix bugs and implement small improvements, so through codepush the company can not change the app to be about casino games.

You can make the same argument about Minecraft since servers download you texture packs, data packs or skins. I don't think that Apple should stop these apps, that's their game model.

Roblox games are not comparable to texture packs or skins. They are complete games with assets and executable code, or at least the fancy ones are. Maybe data packs are more similar but it seems like Minecraft for iOS does not support them.

Minecraft Bedrock (iOS and all mobile/console versions) do support assets and executable code as well.

They are called "Behavior Packs": https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/minecraft/creator/document...

Seems like they use JavaScript and this might qualify for the HTML5/JavaScript exception that Apple has. Also it seems like they are a lot less powerful than Roblox scripts, and there isn't an in-game store allowing you to purchase them without using Apple's in-app purchase flow.

For transparency I lead the Minecraft Scripting team.

You can purchase content that runs behavior packs from the store, but it's all through soft currency purchased with per-platform stores.

Link to some of the content: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/catalog

As for the "not as powerful as Roblox", we're working on it :)

Neat! And you can do those purchases inside the iOS app?

Yup! Soft currency (Minecoins) travel with you with your Microsoft account and can be used on what ever device you sign into (including iOS). You can also purchase more Minecoins in the game its self each platform.

also https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Redstone_compute... ;-)

Speaking of hated network effect companies, that's the fandom wiki roach motel.

Here's the same page on the better wiki: https://minecraft.wiki/w/Tutorials/Redstone_computers

> I believe they are significantly shielded from competition

I think you're onto something. All of the nieces and nephews of mine that play Roblox do it on an iPad.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what an App Store policy is.

You're reasoning as though the policy is for Apple to follow. No. It's for developers to follow. Apple can put whatever it wants on the App Store, the policies are guidance for developers to give them a fighting chance that their apps will be accepted. If Apple wants an app, it'll go on the store. If they don't, it won't.

So Apple's decisions are arbitrary and capricious? Tim Cook testified to Congress that Apple's policies "are transparent and applied equally to developers of all sizes and in all categories". Did he commit perjury?

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