6 ms·

Apple: We Won’t Make an Exception (Fortnite)

14 points by maydemir 6y ago

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
The more big players Apple pushes off its platform, the weaker the network effects are. The 30% rule only applying to digital products is arbitrary and capricious.
geoelectric 6y ago
So now Apple has tied together access to iOS, MacOS, TVOS, WatchOS, and Safari extensions (think those are all covered under the same dev agreement) in a decision over App Store commission on iOS. I suspect terminating the dev agreement might terminate the "publisher account," too--it's possible Epic apps won't even be findable in Purchases. I realize Epic is hardly a sympathetic company in this to many gamers, and their motives are pure profit and control of their own cash cow platform. That said, Apple is demonstrating about as much bundled-product market control as a company possibly can. They're preventing access to a whole ecosystem over a single product, and they can't even argue their ecosystem is vertical since individual TVOS and iPad devices can run without phones. Sure, Epic isn't on TVOS yet, but they could be...but only if Apple likes what they do on iPhone. IF Apple is dominant enough to be subject to Clayton Act controls, this sort of cross-product behavior will most certainly prompt that scrutiny. The fact that the developer program is a "single product" backing them is irrelevant when the consumer products are separate. Epic is making a bold move, but I think it's a very well-timed one.
- catmistake 6y ago
  > Apple is demonstrating about as much bundled-product market control I see this sort of sentiment everywhere. There seems to be a mass delusion occurring. The AppStore is not it's own economic market. It is just one member of many in the actual economic market. The WalMart down the road from you is not an economic market. It is just a store, one implementation of the entity that is Walmart. But even taking every WalMart together, you do not have an economic market. It is just a store. One store. What economic market is WalMart in? This one: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_hypermarkets&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_hypermark... AppStore is just a store, one of many many implementations of a package management system, with retail sales and free apps. The economic market includes AppStore, Google Play Store, LG SmartWorld, Huawei App Store, Sony Apps, Amazon AppStore, Aptoide, F-Droid, GetJar, AC Market, SlideME, Uptodown Market, Itch.io, Cydia, neXva, Bemodi, AppBrain, 1Mobile, Appolicious, Kongregate, and AppLand collectively all together. And far more than that is included in the actual economic market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_management_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag... Apple has many many competitors in both hardware and software. There is no such thing as "the Apple economic market," or "the AppStore economic market."
  - jamesboehmer 6y ago
    > The AppStore is not it's own economic market. It is just one member of many in the actual economic market. Let's be realistic here. Iphone users don't have a choice of app stores, and the useful android options have a high technical barrier to entry. That's not a market, that's an oligopoly. It's like ISPs that gouge content providers for carriage costs, and then customers for throughput and limits. You can't snap your fingers and make competition appear, so you regulate the players to prevent abuse and protect the consumer.
    - catmistake 6y ago
      > Let's be realistic here. Iphone users don't have a choice of app stores, and the useful android options have a high technical barrier to entry. That's not a market, that's an oligopoly. Let's be realistic here. FreeBSD users don't have a choice of package managers. It's pretty much PKG or nothing. So what? Choice does not define an economic market. Competition does. Can't use Apple's AppStore on Android! Google is a monopoly! These details do not matter. You have a choice. You want iPhone, you're stuck with AppStore. You want Android? You're stuck with PlayStore. You want FreeBSD? You're stuck with PKG. It has always been this way. Linux proper gives a few choices, probably dozens. macOS has the Mac AppStore, but also can use MacPorts, Brew, you can even use pkgsrc if you want. iOS is maintained as a walled garden for security. And, you can still jailbreak it and use Cydia. Apple is doing nothing wrong, protecting their IP and their walled garden. Don't like it? Go elsewhere. Epic is acting like an infant, and chewing off their own foot while they do it. It is all absolutely absurd. What a waste of resources. At least the lawyers are happy.
      - jamesboehmer 6y ago
        > Choice does not define an economic market. Competition does. Competition is directly correlated with choice. The more competition there is, the more choices consumers have. And the fewer choices there, there is effectively less competition. Apple and Google abuse their market share to limit competition by building walled gardens and taking large cuts of revenue from publishers, because they know that very few publishers have consumers willing to switch platforms or tolerate heroic acts of jailbreak. Netflix is one of the few publishers that come to mind that have such a large and dedicated subscriber base that they can force users off their device to do their signup and purchase flows on the web. While Epic is pouting and making a spectacle, I also think they're rightly pointing out that Apple's policy of killing their publisher account and disallowing them from signing their packages effectively removes choices from the consumer. A competitive market would have a way for publishers to self-publish, and Apple is prohibiting that, which is anti-competitive and anti-consumer.

14 points by maydemir 6y ago

The more big players Apple pushes off its platform, the weaker the network effects are. The 30% rule only applying to digital products is arbitrary and capricious.

geoelectric 6y ago

So now Apple has tied together access to iOS, MacOS, TVOS, WatchOS, and Safari extensions (think those are all covered under the same dev agreement) in a decision over App Store commission on iOS. I suspect terminating the dev agreement might terminate the "publisher account," too--it's possible Epic apps won't even be findable in Purchases. I realize Epic is hardly a sympathetic company in this to many gamers, and their motives are pure profit and control of their own cash cow platform. That said, Apple is demonstrating about as much bundled-product market control as a company possibly can. They're preventing access to a whole ecosystem over a single product, and they can't even argue their ecosystem is vertical since individual TVOS and iPad devices can run without phones. Sure, Epic isn't on TVOS yet, but they could be...but only if Apple likes what they do on iPhone. IF Apple is dominant enough to be subject to Clayton Act controls, this sort of cross-product behavior will most certainly prompt that scrutiny. The fact that the developer program is a "single product" backing them is irrelevant when the consumer products are separate. Epic is making a bold move, but I think it's a very well-timed one.

catmistake 6y ago
> Apple is demonstrating about as much bundled-product market control I see this sort of sentiment everywhere. There seems to be a mass delusion occurring. The AppStore is not it's own economic market. It is just one member of many in the actual economic market. The WalMart down the road from you is not an economic market. It is just a store, one implementation of the entity that is Walmart. But even taking every WalMart together, you do not have an economic market. It is just a store. One store. What economic market is WalMart in? This one: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_hypermarkets&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_hypermark... AppStore is just a store, one of many many implementations of a package management system, with retail sales and free apps. The economic market includes AppStore, Google Play Store, LG SmartWorld, Huawei App Store, Sony Apps, Amazon AppStore, Aptoide, F-Droid, GetJar, AC Market, SlideME, Uptodown Market, Itch.io, Cydia, neXva, Bemodi, AppBrain, 1Mobile, Appolicious, Kongregate, and AppLand collectively all together. And far more than that is included in the actual economic market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_management_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag... Apple has many many competitors in both hardware and software. There is no such thing as "the Apple economic market," or "the AppStore economic market."
- jamesboehmer 6y ago
  > The AppStore is not it's own economic market. It is just one member of many in the actual economic market. Let's be realistic here. Iphone users don't have a choice of app stores, and the useful android options have a high technical barrier to entry. That's not a market, that's an oligopoly. It's like ISPs that gouge content providers for carriage costs, and then customers for throughput and limits. You can't snap your fingers and make competition appear, so you regulate the players to prevent abuse and protect the consumer.
  - catmistake 6y ago
    > Let's be realistic here. Iphone users don't have a choice of app stores, and the useful android options have a high technical barrier to entry. That's not a market, that's an oligopoly. Let's be realistic here. FreeBSD users don't have a choice of package managers. It's pretty much PKG or nothing. So what? Choice does not define an economic market. Competition does. Can't use Apple's AppStore on Android! Google is a monopoly! These details do not matter. You have a choice. You want iPhone, you're stuck with AppStore. You want Android? You're stuck with PlayStore. You want FreeBSD? You're stuck with PKG. It has always been this way. Linux proper gives a few choices, probably dozens. macOS has the Mac AppStore, but also can use MacPorts, Brew, you can even use pkgsrc if you want. iOS is maintained as a walled garden for security. And, you can still jailbreak it and use Cydia. Apple is doing nothing wrong, protecting their IP and their walled garden. Don't like it? Go elsewhere. Epic is acting like an infant, and chewing off their own foot while they do it. It is all absolutely absurd. What a waste of resources. At least the lawyers are happy.
    - jamesboehmer 6y ago
      > Choice does not define an economic market. Competition does. Competition is directly correlated with choice. The more competition there is, the more choices consumers have. And the fewer choices there, there is effectively less competition. Apple and Google abuse their market share to limit competition by building walled gardens and taking large cuts of revenue from publishers, because they know that very few publishers have consumers willing to switch platforms or tolerate heroic acts of jailbreak. Netflix is one of the few publishers that come to mind that have such a large and dedicated subscriber base that they can force users off their device to do their signup and purchase flows on the web. While Epic is pouting and making a spectacle, I also think they're rightly pointing out that Apple's policy of killing their publisher account and disallowing them from signing their packages effectively removes choices from the consumer. A competitive market would have a way for publishers to self-publish, and Apple is prohibiting that, which is anti-competitive and anti-consumer.