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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
by 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 agoHow 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 agoIt 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 agoIt 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 agoI 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.
- mrtksn 6y agoSo is Valve allowing any developer to get its games into their store under reasonable conditions ?
- cma 6y agoHumble and Itch.io could make stores too.
- mrtksn 6y agoSo I will have to convince my potential customers to first install the app store that I can get in then they will have to remember to install my app once they complete the set up of the alternative store. Is this even working on Android or anywhere?
- cma 6y agoI've used the Amazon, Samsung and Oculus stores on Android. And I think direct APK downloads from Humble a long time ago.
- mrtksn 6y agoGood for you but are you going to pay me few thousand dollars a month so I can sustain an independent business? Probably not. What I need is access to a lot of people who are willing to pay me a small sum each for the software that I make. Multiple appstores with uneven access is unlikely to help with that and would probably increase my development costs too. That's not that big a problem for established and big companies but it is something that I am not looking forward to.
- LoSboccacc 6y agoI wonder why steam isn't using his position to build an android games marketplace, since they already can.
- bokbok8379 6y agoCan't wait to have to log in to a different game store, one for each publisher, to buy games!
- colinmhayes 6y agoI can't wait for the open source store that has less than 5% fees.
- mrtksn 6y agoI heard that it exist on Linux. It must be very lucrative.
- ROFISH 6y agoHonestly direct sales does seem to be where this might be headed. Between safe, secure payment technologies such as (heh) Apple Pay and and safe, secure login systems such as (heh) Login with Apple, then really its super easy to not worry too much about the signup friction.
- mrtksn 6y agoThe problem with direct payments is users trust. Crypto is a already available form of payment and there are many tools to take payments directly but it never took of besides for drugs and ransom payments.
- ROFISH 6y agoThere are plenty of services such as Apple Pay (or equivalent tokenized services on other phones), 3D Secure, and/or PayPal that don't expose your PAN.
- Gwypaas 6y agoEurope is already essentially running on 3D Secure with 2FA. Becomes noticeable when buying from stores not having the EU as a significant market, usually American, which does not implement it. After the transaction is declined I'm forced to open my bank app and click the scary sounding "open my card for all internet purchases for 60 minutes" button.
- falcolas 6y agoHistorically, no. If Epic can't get an indie title as an exclusive, they're not interested in having the game on their store. ref. https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7 https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivit...
- baddox 6y agoOr for that matter, can a random person sell digital items to be used in Fortnite?
- romanoderoma 6y agoa random person can't even sell items in Walmart for that matter... Fortnite is a software platform and the market is part of the software. Apple is an Hardware company which also chose the software you can run on it, which also owns the only market where you can buy software for. That's a pretty different situation. TLDR: Apple can sell Apple stuff exclusively on their e-store, they shouldn't force third party developers to sell their stuff only on their mobile store.
- baddox 6y agoI'm not seeing the distinction. Why is hardware relevant? If Epic sold a "Fortnite tablet" would this somehow change the legality of Epic's monopoly on selling digital items in Fortnite?
- romanoderoma 6y ago> Why is hardware relevant? Because it's the part that people should own after they bought it. You can play Fortnite without buying anything on the Epic store. You can't use an iPhone without being forced by Apple to use the device the way they want. Many probably like it that way, that's not the point, the point is that if Safari is the root of many exploit for iOS (https://twitter.com/Zerodium/status/1260541578747064326 https://twitter.com/Zerodium/status/1260541578747064326) users cannot disable it and replace it with something else, something more secure That completely hinder the free (as in freedom) utilization of the device > If Epic sold a "Fortnite tablet" would this somehow change the legality of Epic's monopoly on selling digital items in Fortnite? Of course it would! It would be a monopoly nonetheless Even though a table that can only play Fortnite cannot clearly be classified as general computing platform. But it would probably be based on Android, being iOS not available for third parties, and allow sideloading. The same point could be made about Amazon and the Kindle, but Amazon allows self publishing and direct sell for free.
- criddell 6y agoI wonder if Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are worried that they are next? Maybe Amazon too with their Kindle exclusivity? It's hard for me to root for either Apple/Google or Epic, but if Epic's action is the beginning of the end of exclusive stores, then go, Epic, go!
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI largely agree with the gist of your comment. I am not sure average user sees that much of a change from either of those corporate powers. Now, there may be some interesting changes for the players and I here I am genuinely unsure, which one is least bad . I am watching this fight unfold and see no one I am willing to back here. But.. the resulting fight may end up having good results for the customer. Time will tell.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoEven if Epic isn't directly suing them at this time, a ruling against Apple and/or Google for their store behavior will hit every other app/game store operator. Arguably, there's limits to how many companies Epic can go after at once, and they have to pick their battles somewhat politically, I imagine. But if an Apple or Google behavior gets ruled unlawful in court, and Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo is doing it, Epic probably won't even have to sue to make them drop it.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago> if Epic's action is the beginning of the end of exclusive stores, then go, Epic, go! That's ironic given that the Epic Store is quite well known for buying exclusive rights to new game launches.
- no_multitudes 6y agoIDK, it doesn't seem ironic to me. Being the only store that sells something is pretty different from being the only store allowed in town.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
- SyneRyder 6y agoI think you're right. Google sent out a developer survey recently with a lot of questions including Epic & Unreal, and stand out questions included "would you still use the Google Play Store and Android if it was no longer owned & run by Google" and "would you pay a fee to use the App Store". So I think Google is already preparing for a future where hardware, software & app store divisions are all split up into separate companies. I don't think Apple is prepared for that future. I can imagine Google & Amazon making app stores that run on iOS, but I can't see Apple making an App Store For Android. (Imagine if Google could also have an iOS App Store, and you could buy software once on Google Play Android, and the same purchase also ran on iOS devices via Google Play For iOS. Would you keep buying software from Apple?)
- simonh 6y agoOh grief, so then we'd have Apple put all the cool new features in iOS in their iOS App Store libraries, as Google does with the Play Store and leave iOS itself as a bare bones layer, with some crappy crippled ghost town stores on the side full of malware and adware. All in the name of customer choice. Gah. I do have a choice, if I wanted a mess like that I'd get an Android phone.
- Operyl 6y agoPretty much how it'll go, yup. Meanwhile, making it all the harder for people who are making applications that are never going to be distributed via the App Store because you wanted to make use of one of those APIs.
- throwaway2048 6y agoThe amount of people making applications that aren't being distributed via the Apple App store is vanishingly tiny.
- vadansky 6y agoExactly, I don't understand why everyone is quick to turn Apple into Android, when I bet they don't even have iPhones in the first place. I know the concensus on HN is that Apple is a monopoly, but ALL my friends expect for one have androids. You can say "Well yes, but by % of revenue", but that's the point. All my friends will never give a penny to a play store App because it has the reputation of a Warez site, full of flashlight apps that need root permission to install.
- rtkwe 6y agoHonestly I don't think Epic will hold out for something that large. If Apple and Google offer them a special break on IAPs or an exemption to the rule I bet they'll take it.
- ak217 6y agoI don't think Tim Sweeney got into this fight to get a sweetheart deal. He has strongly held beliefs about platform rentiering and developer and app consumer rights. Epic could have negotiated a deal with Apple in private, instead they chose to maximize the publicity.
- criddell 6y agoIf Sweeney's beliefs are that strongly held then I expect Epic to pressure their partner Sony (Sony invested $250 million in Epic last month) to allow alternate apps stores on the PS5.
- simonh 6y ago$250m buys a lot of moral fibre these days.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoI mean, if you want to pay full price for your console, sure. The console market only works if you sell the hardware under cost and then charge up the ass for services to the game developers ($50,000 was the price point for pushing updates on PS4)
- m4rtink 6y agoIIRC modern consoles are at cost - do you have any linkable claims otherwise ?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoMy data could be out of date -> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2006/11/8239/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2006/11/8239/ PS3 didn't regain profitability until the end.
- gameswithgo 6y ago> 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. It is not suspicious, it is plain.
- romanoderoma 6y ago> . The timing is pretty suspicious I would say the whole thing was pretty well engineered and executed. Kudos to Epic.
- chaostheory 6y agoThere is one good thing having a walled garden with a centrally controlled payment system: it's good at dealing with fraud. If we allowed every app to have their own payment system, a bad problem is going to get infinitely worse.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago> That way Epic Payments could swoop in as an alternate gaming-focused app store for mobile devices Oh yeah I'm so excited at the thought of a second app store filled with "games" that have no guarantee they'll actually respect data collection, privacy, etc. As a consumer I like that Apple keeps a firm hand on the standard of apps in the store, I have no guarantee that Epic will bother doing that at all.