29 ms·

Fortnite’s battle with Apple and Google could have an impact on news publishers

131 points by woldemariam 6y ago

abc-xyz 6y ago
Is it Fortnite’s battle or Tencent/CCP’s battle? The timing certainly seem to indicate the latter considering Tencent owns 40% of Epic and Epic went out of their way to get themselves banned on purpose.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  This event should've put to bed any notion that Epic is controlled by Tencent: https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-players-talking-politics-hong-kong-2019-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ba... In an incident where even fully US-based organizations were caving to maintain these Chinese market, Tim went full "I don't care what China thinks about what our players say on streams". Pretty sure Tencent is just in it for the money, Epic's a pretty good investment.
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    The degree to which Blizzard kowtowed was absurd. I don’t think we should exonerate a company for choosing not to ban players that voice support for democracy in Hong Kong. It would be interesting if Fortnite allowed people to make/sell custom skins and see how they would react to a Winnie the Pooh/Xitler skin.
- innagadadavida 6y ago
  What does tencent have to gain by this? Or are you suggesting this is somehow influenced by CCP in some elaborate payback for Huawei?
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    I’m guessing you haven’t seen Trump’s executive order targeting WeChat ‘transactions’? Tencent and Chinese companies would benefit from being allowed to operate their own app stores or side load apps, which would allow them to significantly reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions.
    - cat199 6y ago
      > reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions. why would separate app stores limit government jurisdiction?
      - abc-xyz 6y ago
        You can see how much harder it is to ban an app on Android compared to iOS since anyone can install an apk they download from a random website (or from a third-party App Store). Whereas now, if the government tell Apple to remove an app from their App Store worldwide then it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to download it. In the past I don’t think the CCP minded - in fact, they were probably happy about it since it made it much easier to censor apps they didn’t like. Whereas now they’re freaking out since they risk having all their apps blocked from all Apple devices worldwide.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Chinese companies already have amazing China only phones, like the new Xiaomi, which operate their own app stores. They don't need anything from Apple
- warp 6y ago
  Tim Sweeney still has a controlling stake in Epic, and has been beating this drum for a while. Previously when Microsoft introduced the Windows Store he was decrying the future of Windows as an open platform. So to me it seems mostly Tim's personal battle. Obviously in the end it's all about money, but Tim seems to genuinely want all game developers (not just Epic) to get a larger cut of the pie as opposed to the platform holders. The stated purpose of the Epic game store on PC is to give developers a larger cut compared to what Steam was giving them.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  This just seems like capitalism to me. Epic is losing millions of dollars to Apple, they think that they can keep more of those millions of they win this lawsuit. I don't think there's any reason to suspect a shadowy cabal of CCP interests when there's plenty of reason why Epic would want to do this out of self interest.
  - alfonsodev 6y ago
    Fortnite might not be losing that much after all, have in mind that it's free to play, and we don't know how much profit they have after dealing with all free traffic coming from iOS devices, paying Apple tax and paying regular state income tax (although tech comapnies are known to be tricky about this last one). It might be that is just not worth for such a massive game to be free to play, if you can't extrat enough profit from paying users.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      Last year Fortnite had an estimated 1.8 billion in revenue, and roughly 450 million of that was from apple/ios. They are making lots of money.
      - alfonsodev 6y ago
        it would be interesting to know from that 450M revenue what % is iOS only and from that how much profit (revenue minus operating expenses) is left for shareholders. I guess my point was, if what is left for shareholders is not "that much" compared with the opportunity cost (the loss of not being doing something else) then it might make sense to put the iOS on hold and let the lawyers fight. But I'm speculating, I'm just trying to understand the incentives in play, becuase I don't buy the 1984 video, pretending they care about what is fair.
        jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
        The 450 is iOS. The rest is trivial to look up. You don't have to "buy" it. Everyone else is. You can verify the numbers yourself if you care to.
- izacus 6y ago
  This is a bizarre statement considering it's Apple who kowtows to Chinese government and censors Chinese appstore and Epic's CEO was openly criticising China and refusing to censor Fortnite players when Blizzard started doing it.
nostrademons 6y ago
I'd bet that their end goal is to get them broken up, and have the app store separated from the product. That way Epic Payments could swoop in as an alternate gaming-focused app store for mobile devices - they already have relationships with many gaming publishers, thanks to Unreal Engine - and get a piece of that lucrative pie, while not having to pay their 30% commissions anymore. It also wouldn't surprise me if Epic had been in touch with state AGs filing antitrust lawsuits. The timing is pretty suspicious, coming a week after Congressional hearings where Tim Cook said they don't do the exact thing they just did with Epic. You can't launch a new product in a week.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  How is Epic's store approach to indies? Can a random person from nowhere pay some 100 bucks and get it's games into their store just as doing it with AppStore?
  - benologist 6y ago
    It doesn’t matter because if the rules permit Epic then they will permit anybody else who wants to make an app store too. GitHub for instance.
    - mrtksn 6y ago
      It matters for discoverability and frictionless installs/payments. That's the hardest part these days. I am not thrilled by the idea of uneven developer access to the primary channels. Now I pay Apple 100$ and the %30 commission and I have my apps right next to the big boys. Apparently the big boys are planning to get free of the %30 and have their own walled garden where potentially I am not allowed. There's a risk of proliferation of a business model that is possible on the Epic Store but not on AppStore and I am not welcome to join. As a developer I would prefer a regulation to the AppStore for even access instead of alternative appstores.
      - SXX 6y ago
        I think it's safe bet to say that if Epic allowed to make their own mobile game app store then Valve will likely follow suit.
wmab 6y ago
There are entire cohorts of interested companies and industries that will be looking to benefit from a reduction in Apple's standard pricing policies. Do we know how / if Apple charges SaaS companies who enable adding seats through their App Store apps? I'm thinking the likes of Slack, Trello, Zoom, Notion etc, I haven't heard that they get charged by Apple?
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  > If you have a complete billing system outside of the app and the user can never get to a page with signup or billing information from inside the app, then you can still avoid having to pay 30%. I'm quoting [1], but from my expirience that's true, the problem comes when you link to your website without giving the option to pay with Apple system. Slack doesn't have any direct link to add seats, I think that's how they avoid the 30%. Why Spotify wouldn't do the same then ? I think maybe because they target a more mainstream public that will not understand that they have to go to website to pay and then go back to the app? Maybe they reckon that would be losing more than 30% without that flow, or I'm missing something. [1]https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-determine-whether-a-service-is-subject-to-the-in-app-purchase-30-fee https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-determine-whether-a-ser...
  - wmab 6y ago
    Yeah that's interesting. I think the friction "Go to the website to signup" is worth them spending the 30% to have it in-app for Spotify, catering for the lowest denominator of user.
- white-flame 6y ago
  Not sure about everything in general, but games are specifically singled out as required to go through Apple's payment processing. Other non-gaming stuff might have different or more flexible options.
- paxys 6y ago
  Apple has separate rules for purely business apps like Slack and Zoom, as well as a set of exceptions for Netflix, Spotify etc. Most other consumer-focused apps aren't allowed to do the same, so they have to offer an in-app subscription.
greyswan 6y ago
These articles about the issue were both interesting: Matt Stoller (Journalist specializing in monopoly) https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/epic-games-kicks-off-the-civil-war https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/epic-games-kicks-off-the-... iA (App developer) https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-epic https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-epic
swiley 6y ago
It will have an impact on everything. Richard Stallman predicted the social dangers of locked computing and he turned out to be more right than almost everyone expected.
- criddell 6y ago
  What did Stallman predict correctly?
abakker 6y ago
As someone who doesn't play any games on my phone, and doesn't care at all about Epic, I guess the best alternative here for me, is that Apple just allow 3rd party app stores. I guess they could fully sandbox those stores so that those app stores had no device / user data access by default. I'd always have the choice to install them, but I could continue to ignore them and still get the benefit of Apple's walled garden approach.
tsycho 6y ago
A lot of the articles and comments I have read, focus on the 30% cut. Which is definitely high, though primarily for those who sell externally licensed and/or non-digital goods. But to me (with my almost decade long iOS developer experience), the bigger problems are: * You cannot install apps on an iPhone (even on a phone that you own) without paying Apple. Without a developer account, an app that you build and self sign works for only 7 days. * If you are an app that exists on other platforms, and/or accepts payments on other platforms, you can't describe that or even link to it, from your iOS app. Your users need to know that the alternative options exist on their own. See the Netflix sign in screen for a nice example, but realize that 99% of apps won't get away with that, only apps the size of Netflix can. * You can only ship apps that Apple's inconsistent review board agrees with. And of course, the rules and their inconsistent application keep changing in favor of Apple's competing apps, which of course have access to internal APIs and don't pay a 30% cut either. Spotify is a good example here, but it's worse for many smaller companies. * And now macOS is adopting the worst of iOS' draconian policies. You won't be able to run non-notarized apps on macOS on Apple Silicon based computers at all. Unfortunately there are many who drink the Apple koolaid about all of this being all about security. There are legitimately good things that Apple does which enhance user security, and I welcome changes like the new IDFA policy of iOS 14, but let's not pretend that Apple does those because they affect Apple's competitors' business and strengthen Apple's (you have to now use Apple's sdk for user tracking). But none of the things I wrote about above are about the user, and some of them are actively worse for Apple's users (eg: not being able to buy a book on the Kindle app easily).
- anupamchugh 6y ago
  > Without a developer account, an app that you build and self sign works for only 7 days. Can you elaborate on this? I have seen apps working for more than 7 days once installed.
  - MarioMan 6y ago
    Self-signing outside of the developer program lasts for 7 days. Historically, it used to last for a month. If you are part of the developer program, self-signing lasts for one year.
pneill 6y ago
Three sincere questions for the group: Does anyone disagree that Apple and Google have the right to just go "this app store business is just not worth the headaches, we're gonna shut it all down." When I read hackernews a lot, I get the impression folks think these app stores are some kind of public commons. And my second question: Who do you think customers will blame when someone uses an alternative payment approach to steal from customers? Google/Apple? The app provider? Themselves? Third question: What's a customers recourse once they are the victims of fraud or simply want a refund for whatever reason? How easy will it be for them to reason about what to do?
- blackoil 6y ago
  They should blame store/app provider. E-commerce over the web is pretty well established, don't think people blame Windows/Chrome when some shady site frauds them.
  - pneill 6y ago
    Logically, you're 100% correct. But I don't think most folks will reason it that way. Do you think a senior citizen will follow that reasoning? And then how will they contact the provider? What is the provider doesn't respond (for the case of simple refund request)?
- chillacy 6y ago
  Presumably other companies would run app stores and do things like refunds. After all there are already apps where you can buy stuff on your phone not through the app store (Audible, AirBnb, Amazon, etc). Why are apps any different?
  - pneill 6y ago
    Yeah, but how does Apple/Google determine if an app developer has the capability to do it and verify that they're consistently doing it? Or are we saying that only big companies with verified and known payment platforms can use their own payment system? And then, how many bad experiences for these types of purchases (or articles about bad experiences) will customers tolerate before they stop trusting in-app or third party purchases? One? A hundred?
chosen1111 6y ago
Can fortnite run in browser? Would be nice if they could just do that and show genzoom that they dont need to discover interesting content via an appstore app only.
- Vorh 6y ago
  Currently learning webdev, so I'll give the best answer I can: You could probably use canvas and recreate all of Fortnite, but it would be a remake, not a simple port. There are existing libraries that could be used to load models and perhaps animate them, but... it would take a while, and there would be major FPS issues. Javascript is much less efficient than native apps.
  - negativegate 6y ago
    Unreal Engine (and Unity) can target HTML5 / WebAssembly. I expect the main issue is the download size of the assets.
    - astlouis44 6y ago
      This times 1000.
    - chosen1111 6y ago
      thank you
  - chosen1111 6y ago
    thank you
- skunkworker 6y ago
  Maybe in a few years when WebAssembly and WebGL advance more, early last year someone posted a port of doom 3 running completely in the browser. https://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/ https://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/
  - chosen1111 6y ago
rconti 6y ago
I agree on the "can't install apps from outside the app store". That's probably the best way to fix this. As long as Apple controls the app store, this will always be an issue, and it doesn't matter precisely what the % cut is. The reality is, very few people would argue that Apple "deserves" some cut of app sales for developers who choose to use the Apple App store. But it's impossible to disentangle this issue from in-app payments. If in-app payments are royalty free, then every app will become "free" with an in-app purchase to make it do anything at all, to game the system. But if Apple gets a cut of in-app purchases, there will always be this grey area of "what if I purchase a subscription using another website" or "what if I use a free app to access my paid Netflix account", and so on.
someluccc 6y ago
As a way out of this Apple should create an alternative for people to run alternative app stores, but disable iOS updates and Apple services on those products and offer them at a cost. People discount the fact that apple provides free software updates (that would cost $100s + in the past) for Free. If a user wants out of the apple ecosystem, Apple should enable that and demand a fair price for the services otherwise sustained by the way mobile economics are currently structured.
yibg 6y ago
Maybe another way to look at this is, if apple / google decides not to have an app store at all, would anyone find that wrong? iphones will only have apps produced by apple. If any other company, say a game producer wants their game on the phone then you have to license the game to apple for 30% royalties. Apple then makes the game available on the phone. Is this still an issue legally or in terms of fairness?
abryzak 6y ago
I've found it interesting that the Steam app on iOS has somehow slipped past the radar and allowed transactions bypassing Apple for a long time.
- NoodleIncident 6y ago
  It's been discussed to death, you can sell things on iOS as long as they can't actually be used on iOS, like Amazon
  - abryzak 6y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. The Steam Link app throws a little bit of a wrench into the argument since you could purchase a game and remotely install it with the Steam app then switch over to the Steam Link app to play it on the platform.
bhewes 6y ago
Hopefully the outcome of all this is we get lower transaction fees.
qserasera 6y ago
If this case comes down to who the consumers hate more it has to be Epic games and Fortnite. Sure Apple has a bad timeline but they did what they were allowed to do and Epic Games only attack is the environment it happened in.
zanecraw 6y ago
eh fortnite is trash anyway. pub g is much better

131 points by woldemariam 6y ago

Is it Fortnite’s battle or Tencent/CCP’s battle? The timing certainly seem to indicate the latter considering Tencent owns 40% of Epic and Epic went out of their way to get themselves banned on purpose.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This event should've put to bed any notion that Epic is controlled by Tencent: https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-players-talking-politics-hong-kong-2019-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ba... In an incident where even fully US-based organizations were caving to maintain these Chinese market, Tim went full "I don't care what China thinks about what our players say on streams". Pretty sure Tencent is just in it for the money, Epic's a pretty good investment.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  The degree to which Blizzard kowtowed was absurd. I don’t think we should exonerate a company for choosing not to ban players that voice support for democracy in Hong Kong. It would be interesting if Fortnite allowed people to make/sell custom skins and see how they would react to a Winnie the Pooh/Xitler skin.
innagadadavida 6y ago
What does tencent have to gain by this? Or are you suggesting this is somehow influenced by CCP in some elaborate payback for Huawei?
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  I’m guessing you haven’t seen Trump’s executive order targeting WeChat ‘transactions’? Tencent and Chinese companies would benefit from being allowed to operate their own app stores or side load apps, which would allow them to significantly reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions.
  - cat199 6y ago
    > reduce the impact of Trump’s current and future actions. why would separate app stores limit government jurisdiction?
    - abc-xyz 6y ago
      You can see how much harder it is to ban an app on Android compared to iOS since anyone can install an apk they download from a random website (or from a third-party App Store). Whereas now, if the government tell Apple to remove an app from their App Store worldwide then it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to download it. In the past I don’t think the CCP minded - in fact, they were probably happy about it since it made it much easier to censor apps they didn’t like. Whereas now they’re freaking out since they risk having all their apps blocked from all Apple devices worldwide.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Chinese companies already have amazing China only phones, like the new Xiaomi, which operate their own app stores. They don't need anything from Apple
warp 6y ago
Tim Sweeney still has a controlling stake in Epic, and has been beating this drum for a while. Previously when Microsoft introduced the Windows Store he was decrying the future of Windows as an open platform. So to me it seems mostly Tim's personal battle. Obviously in the end it's all about money, but Tim seems to genuinely want all game developers (not just Epic) to get a larger cut of the pie as opposed to the platform holders. The stated purpose of the Epic game store on PC is to give developers a larger cut compared to what Steam was giving them.
Pfhreak 6y ago
This just seems like capitalism to me. Epic is losing millions of dollars to Apple, they think that they can keep more of those millions of they win this lawsuit. I don't think there's any reason to suspect a shadowy cabal of CCP interests when there's plenty of reason why Epic would want to do this out of self interest.
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  Fortnite might not be losing that much after all, have in mind that it's free to play, and we don't know how much profit they have after dealing with all free traffic coming from iOS devices, paying Apple tax and paying regular state income tax (although tech comapnies are known to be tricky about this last one). It might be that is just not worth for such a massive game to be free to play, if you can't extrat enough profit from paying users.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Last year Fortnite had an estimated 1.8 billion in revenue, and roughly 450 million of that was from apple/ios. They are making lots of money.
    - alfonsodev 6y ago
      it would be interesting to know from that 450M revenue what % is iOS only and from that how much profit (revenue minus operating expenses) is left for shareholders. I guess my point was, if what is left for shareholders is not "that much" compared with the opportunity cost (the loss of not being doing something else) then it might make sense to put the iOS on hold and let the lawyers fight. But I'm speculating, I'm just trying to understand the incentives in play, becuase I don't buy the 1984 video, pretending they care about what is fair.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
        The 450 is iOS. The rest is trivial to look up. You don't have to "buy" it. Everyone else is. You can verify the numbers yourself if you care to.
izacus 6y ago
This is a bizarre statement considering it's Apple who kowtows to Chinese government and censors Chinese appstore and Epic's CEO was openly criticising China and refusing to censor Fortnite players when Blizzard started doing it.

nostrademons 6y ago

I'd bet that their end goal is to get them broken up, and have the app store separated from the product. That way Epic Payments could swoop in as an alternate gaming-focused app store for mobile devices - they already have relationships with many gaming publishers, thanks to Unreal Engine - and get a piece of that lucrative pie, while not having to pay their 30% commissions anymore. It also wouldn't surprise me if Epic had been in touch with state AGs filing antitrust lawsuits. The timing is pretty suspicious, coming a week after Congressional hearings where Tim Cook said they don't do the exact thing they just did with Epic. You can't launch a new product in a week.

mrtksn 6y ago
How is Epic's store approach to indies? Can a random person from nowhere pay some 100 bucks and get it's games into their store just as doing it with AppStore?
- benologist 6y ago
  It doesn’t matter because if the rules permit Epic then they will permit anybody else who wants to make an app store too. GitHub for instance.
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    It matters for discoverability and frictionless installs/payments. That's the hardest part these days. I am not thrilled by the idea of uneven developer access to the primary channels. Now I pay Apple 100$ and the %30 commission and I have my apps right next to the big boys. Apparently the big boys are planning to get free of the %30 and have their own walled garden where potentially I am not allowed. There's a risk of proliferation of a business model that is possible on the Epic Store but not on AppStore and I am not welcome to join. As a developer I would prefer a regulation to the AppStore for even access instead of alternative appstores.
    - SXX 6y ago
      I think it's safe bet to say that if Epic allowed to make their own mobile game app store then Valve will likely follow suit.

wmab 6y ago

There are entire cohorts of interested companies and industries that will be looking to benefit from a reduction in Apple's standard pricing policies. Do we know how / if Apple charges SaaS companies who enable adding seats through their App Store apps? I'm thinking the likes of Slack, Trello, Zoom, Notion etc, I haven't heard that they get charged by Apple?

alfonsodev 6y ago
> If you have a complete billing system outside of the app and the user can never get to a page with signup or billing information from inside the app, then you can still avoid having to pay 30%. I'm quoting [1], but from my expirience that's true, the problem comes when you link to your website without giving the option to pay with Apple system. Slack doesn't have any direct link to add seats, I think that's how they avoid the 30%. Why Spotify wouldn't do the same then ? I think maybe because they target a more mainstream public that will not understand that they have to go to website to pay and then go back to the app? Maybe they reckon that would be losing more than 30% without that flow, or I'm missing something. [1]https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-determine-whether-a-service-is-subject-to-the-in-app-purchase-30-fee https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-determine-whether-a-ser...
- wmab 6y ago
  Yeah that's interesting. I think the friction "Go to the website to signup" is worth them spending the 30% to have it in-app for Spotify, catering for the lowest denominator of user.
white-flame 6y ago
Not sure about everything in general, but games are specifically singled out as required to go through Apple's payment processing. Other non-gaming stuff might have different or more flexible options.
paxys 6y ago
Apple has separate rules for purely business apps like Slack and Zoom, as well as a set of exceptions for Netflix, Spotify etc. Most other consumer-focused apps aren't allowed to do the same, so they have to offer an in-app subscription.

greyswan 6y ago

These articles about the issue were both interesting: Matt Stoller (Journalist specializing in monopoly) https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/epic-games-kicks-off-the-civil-war https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/epic-games-kicks-off-the-... iA (App developer) https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-epic https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-epic

swiley 6y ago

It will have an impact on everything. Richard Stallman predicted the social dangers of locked computing and he turned out to be more right than almost everyone expected.

criddell 6y ago
What did Stallman predict correctly?

abakker 6y ago

As someone who doesn't play any games on my phone, and doesn't care at all about Epic, I guess the best alternative here for me, is that Apple just allow 3rd party app stores. I guess they could fully sandbox those stores so that those app stores had no device / user data access by default. I'd always have the choice to install them, but I could continue to ignore them and still get the benefit of Apple's walled garden approach.

tsycho 6y ago

A lot of the articles and comments I have read, focus on the 30% cut. Which is definitely high, though primarily for those who sell externally licensed and/or non-digital goods. But to me (with my almost decade long iOS developer experience), the bigger problems are: * You cannot install apps on an iPhone (even on a phone that you own) without paying Apple. Without a developer account, an app that you build and self sign works for only 7 days. * If you are an app that exists on other platforms, and/or accepts payments on other platforms, you can't describe that or even link to it, from your iOS app. Your users need to know that the alternative options exist on their own. See the Netflix sign in screen for a nice example, but realize that 99% of apps won't get away with that, only apps the size of Netflix can. * You can only ship apps that Apple's inconsistent review board agrees with. And of course, the rules and their inconsistent application keep changing in favor of Apple's competing apps, which of course have access to internal APIs and don't pay a 30% cut either. Spotify is a good example here, but it's worse for many smaller companies. * And now macOS is adopting the worst of iOS' draconian policies. You won't be able to run non-notarized apps on macOS on Apple Silicon based computers at all. Unfortunately there are many who drink the Apple koolaid about all of this being all about security. There are legitimately good things that Apple does which enhance user security, and I welcome changes like the new IDFA policy of iOS 14, but let's not pretend that Apple does those because they affect Apple's competitors' business and strengthen Apple's (you have to now use Apple's sdk for user tracking). But none of the things I wrote about above are about the user, and some of them are actively worse for Apple's users (eg: not being able to buy a book on the Kindle app easily).

anupamchugh 6y ago
> Without a developer account, an app that you build and self sign works for only 7 days. Can you elaborate on this? I have seen apps working for more than 7 days once installed.
- MarioMan 6y ago
  Self-signing outside of the developer program lasts for 7 days. Historically, it used to last for a month. If you are part of the developer program, self-signing lasts for one year.

pneill 6y ago

Three sincere questions for the group: Does anyone disagree that Apple and Google have the right to just go "this app store business is just not worth the headaches, we're gonna shut it all down." When I read hackernews a lot, I get the impression folks think these app stores are some kind of public commons. And my second question: Who do you think customers will blame when someone uses an alternative payment approach to steal from customers? Google/Apple? The app provider? Themselves? Third question: What's a customers recourse once they are the victims of fraud or simply want a refund for whatever reason? How easy will it be for them to reason about what to do?

blackoil 6y ago
They should blame store/app provider. E-commerce over the web is pretty well established, don't think people blame Windows/Chrome when some shady site frauds them.
- pneill 6y ago
  Logically, you're 100% correct. But I don't think most folks will reason it that way. Do you think a senior citizen will follow that reasoning? And then how will they contact the provider? What is the provider doesn't respond (for the case of simple refund request)?
chillacy 6y ago
Presumably other companies would run app stores and do things like refunds. After all there are already apps where you can buy stuff on your phone not through the app store (Audible, AirBnb, Amazon, etc). Why are apps any different?
- pneill 6y ago
  Yeah, but how does Apple/Google determine if an app developer has the capability to do it and verify that they're consistently doing it? Or are we saying that only big companies with verified and known payment platforms can use their own payment system? And then, how many bad experiences for these types of purchases (or articles about bad experiences) will customers tolerate before they stop trusting in-app or third party purchases? One? A hundred?

chosen1111 6y ago

Can fortnite run in browser? Would be nice if they could just do that and show genzoom that they dont need to discover interesting content via an appstore app only.

Vorh 6y ago
Currently learning webdev, so I'll give the best answer I can: You could probably use canvas and recreate all of Fortnite, but it would be a remake, not a simple port. There are existing libraries that could be used to load models and perhaps animate them, but... it would take a while, and there would be major FPS issues. Javascript is much less efficient than native apps.
- negativegate 6y ago
  Unreal Engine (and Unity) can target HTML5 / WebAssembly. I expect the main issue is the download size of the assets.
  - astlouis44 6y ago
    This times 1000.
  - chosen1111 6y ago
    thank you
- chosen1111 6y ago
  thank you
skunkworker 6y ago
Maybe in a few years when WebAssembly and WebGL advance more, early last year someone posted a port of doom 3 running completely in the browser. https://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/ https://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/
- chosen1111 6y ago

rconti 6y ago

I agree on the "can't install apps from outside the app store". That's probably the best way to fix this. As long as Apple controls the app store, this will always be an issue, and it doesn't matter precisely what the % cut is. The reality is, very few people would argue that Apple "deserves" some cut of app sales for developers who choose to use the Apple App store. But it's impossible to disentangle this issue from in-app payments. If in-app payments are royalty free, then every app will become "free" with an in-app purchase to make it do anything at all, to game the system. But if Apple gets a cut of in-app purchases, there will always be this grey area of "what if I purchase a subscription using another website" or "what if I use a free app to access my paid Netflix account", and so on.

someluccc 6y ago

As a way out of this Apple should create an alternative for people to run alternative app stores, but disable iOS updates and Apple services on those products and offer them at a cost. People discount the fact that apple provides free software updates (that would cost $100s + in the past) for Free. If a user wants out of the apple ecosystem, Apple should enable that and demand a fair price for the services otherwise sustained by the way mobile economics are currently structured.

yibg 6y ago

Maybe another way to look at this is, if apple / google decides not to have an app store at all, would anyone find that wrong? iphones will only have apps produced by apple. If any other company, say a game producer wants their game on the phone then you have to license the game to apple for 30% royalties. Apple then makes the game available on the phone. Is this still an issue legally or in terms of fairness?

abryzak 6y ago

I've found it interesting that the Steam app on iOS has somehow slipped past the radar and allowed transactions bypassing Apple for a long time.

NoodleIncident 6y ago
It's been discussed to death, you can sell things on iOS as long as they can't actually be used on iOS, like Amazon
- abryzak 6y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. The Steam Link app throws a little bit of a wrench into the argument since you could purchase a game and remotely install it with the Steam app then switch over to the Steam Link app to play it on the platform.

bhewes 6y ago

Hopefully the outcome of all this is we get lower transaction fees.

qserasera 6y ago

If this case comes down to who the consumers hate more it has to be Epic games and Fortnite. Sure Apple has a bad timeline but they did what they were allowed to do and Epic Games only attack is the environment it happened in.

zanecraw 6y ago

eh fortnite is trash anyway. pub g is much better