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Apple has some rules. Epic Games has accepted this. Now, when Epic suddenly makes an illegal move, it is very normal to remove it from the AppStore. If Apple a

Apple has some rules. Epic Games has accepted this. Now, when Epic suddenly makes an illegal move, it is very normal to remove it from the AppStore. If Apple accepts this, it has to apply it for all apps. This means a very serious loss of income. So I mean, I know Apple charges a lot of commission. But Apple has to apply his own rules too.

screpy 6y ago
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has called Apple’s characterization of the series of events leading up to Fortnite’s removal as “misleading,” as he initially requested in an email that the App Store exemptions Epic sought be made available to all iOS developers.
- donarb 6y ago
  He actually requested the exemptions be made for Android developers. He cut/pasted his letter to Apple from his Google letter and forgot to change the platform. https://twitter.com/rsgnl/status/1296907639952224264?s=10 https://twitter.com/rsgnl/status/1296907639952224264?s=10
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Odd, HN usually hates middlemen tacking on additional costs and 30% is an unjustifiably deep cut by any measure. Your Apple and Android apps could be 20% cheaper than they are now. Your Steam games could have 20% more going to the developers, software creators just like you and I, to enable more people to make a living by creating indie games. If Epic wants to dent the walled garden app store model, more power to them.
- maydemir 6y ago
  Yes, you're right. Apple charges a lot of commission. But Epic Games accepted this rule and entered the store. And Epic can't make changes without a deal with Apple. If Apple accepts this, it should do so for all apps. And it goes into 30% loss.
  - screpy 6y ago
    Yes, but everyone knows that Apple charges a lot of commission now.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Apple has been charging 30% since 2003 with the iTunes Store. This is no secret.
- Someone 6y ago
  I think the App market is like that of pop songs: a few developers make lots of money, a few make decent money for a short time, and most of them think they are working on a career but are lucky if they can scrape by. Main reason, I think, is the same in both industries: more people have the ability for the craft than are needed to satisfy demand, and they’re willing to do it for peanuts and/or tricking themselves to think success and, with it, monetary compensation, will eventually come their way. And compared to the music industry, 30% doesn’t seem that bad. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-percent-from-music-sales-706746/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-...: “Musicians Get Only 12 Percent of the Money the Music Industry Makes” So, are musicians being preyed upon by the music industry, or is selling music harder work than making music? I would think it’s a bit of both. I also think that applies to apps, too.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "And compared to the music industry, 30% doesn’t seem that bad." I don't really think pointing that other professions have it worse is a justification for abuses in our own.
- fatbird 6y ago
  Or app developers raise their prices by 20% since they already know the price point at which people will buy their app.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The price was already carefully chosen and will stay the same so they get 20% extra. There is no need to raise the price.
    - fatbird 6y ago
      Right: I was responding to the parent's assertion that dropping Apple's cut from 30% to 10% would result in a 20% drop in the price of the app. As you observe, the developer would just keep the extra 20%. Maybe as a consumer, that's valuable because it means greater incentives to create apps, but honestly, there's no shortage of apps today. The problem isn't an inability to make money on the app store such that dropping Apple's cut would change the landscape significantly.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I’m old enough to remember when 30% was a good deal, especially when the market was dominated by $0.99 apps and they cover your hosting bandwidth. What are hosting/bandwidth fees like for an app this size anyway?
- manfredo 6y ago
  I'm less leery about steam since they have competition: Origin, Epic Games Store, GoG, Microsoft play store, and just releasing the game yourself (plenty of studios actually do this, spiderweb software, paradox, to name a couple). Apple's situation is more like if Windows decided that all apps running on windows need to pay a 30% cut. The term "App Store" is misleading: it's not a store, if your application isn't in the app store there is no legitimate way of running the app on an iPhone or iPad.
- imtringued 6y ago
  You're contradicting yourself. You can't make the games 20% cheaper and give 20% more to developers. Since the developers get to pick they will just keep that portion. There is no benefit to consumers. Indie developers aren't struggling because their game made 25k instead of 30k. Steam offers a discount to publishers for games exceeding a certain amount of revenue so the ones who would most benefit from lower fees are already getting them. Since game companies can't know how much revenue they will generate they can't lower their pricing ahead of time. Again all the saved money is going to the publisher with no benefit for the consumer. You're also ignoring that not every copy of a game on steam was actually acquired by paying the 30%. You can kiss Humble Bundle and their Humble Store goodbye because they are using Steam infrastructure without paying for it. It's not really black and white. You can't say that lower fees are better in every case because they involve different trade offs. The cheapest product on the market is rarely the best.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    That is a very good point. If Epic wants to argue that consumer welfare is harmed by the 30% commission then they are going to have to show evidence that a reduced commission would actually be passed onto the consumer. If the developers are likely to pocket the difference then they've only shown that the developers are being affected by the 30%, not the end consumer.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "You can't make the games 20% cheaper and give 20% more to developers." I'd have thought it would be self-evident from the phrasing that that two separate possible scenarios were being described. > "Since the developers get to pick they will just keep that portion." Being that HN is mostly developers, few here will regard that as anything other than a good thing. It's a particularly good thing among indie games developers, the majority nowadays, where the risk is high and the rewards usually slim.
anfilt 6y ago
Honestly, a locked down device is the problem not the app store. Let users sideload.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It does wonders on game consoles, which Epic isn't suing, rather they even proudly do PS5 demos.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    They've fought game consoles before: https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/26/17905770/fortnite-cross-play-ps4-nintendo-switch-xbox https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/26/17905770/fortnite-cross-pl...
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      2 years ago, and now do PS5 exclusive demos.
- maydemir 6y ago
  Yes, I wish it was a little more flexible. But there are good points in this. I think they create a better quality and performance product in this way.
salawat 6y ago
Epic Games finally realized that what Apple was doing with the App Store was a text book case of anti-competitive behavior for the scale on which Apple operates. You're not allowed to set rules in such a way as the end consumer is ultimately harmed, and you are entrenched in a dominant market position as a gatekeeper. Contracts are not meant to be vehicles through which violation of of other legal tenets are committed, and that is exactly what Apple's rules are. Violations of anti-trust law. It sucks being big. Being big carries with it a whole bunch of nasty implications because suddenly the number of people nor okay with you doing whatever you want starts to out pace the organized efforts you can muster to make everyone agree you should be able to do whatever you want. Hell, Google does the same stuff with Google Play. Just not with as much of a parasitic model as the Apple Store. Enough I think they'd squeak by a bit longer without notice, but Apple has absolutely gone off the deep end.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I bet Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft are much bigger at world scale.
  - newbie578 6y ago
    Considering Apple is the world's biggest company and their whole business model rests on their walled garden, there isn't anyone bigger at world scale
    - scarface74 6y ago
      And MS is the third largest company...
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Apple is nonexistent outside North America and a couple of tier 1 countries.
throwaway189262 6y ago
Because 30% is an extraordinary amount of money. Apple is user-hostile on this too, not sure why their users would ever defend it. Think of it this way, every time you buy something on the store you're paying 30% of your money to Apple. You're paying 30% of your money to Apple for the right to install the app on your phone You are allowed to charge more to make up for the fees. But you cannot tell your users this. If you say "sign up on our website to save" you will be banned from the store. Tons of people pay 30% more for subscriptions because they bought them through apple store. I'm tired of all the locked down bullshit and you should be too. It's my device, I should be able to install whatever I want
- ben_w 6y ago
  I wonder what markup supermarkets generally charge over the wholesale rates, and if any of them would stock products with labels saying “buy this product direct from us and save $$$!”
  - manquer 6y ago
    Supermarkets loose money if goods do not sell, storage is expensive and limited shelf space , will also promote your product visibility or even give exclusivity etc . Apple takes no risk and does none of the above, so not remotely the same. Sure if Apple is willing to buy apps from Epic in bulk and speculate in addition to distribute, Epic or any other dev is not going to say no. Fulfilled by Amazon is much better comparison, you get paid only if the customer actually buys, you get penalized for returns etc. Providing the market place, the customer, the delivery service, storage service and payment gateway. Amazon does not charge even close to 30% in most SKUs.
  - notyourday 6y ago
    Supermarket's profit margins are in low single digits.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It is peanuts compared with what J2ME, Symbian, Brew, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Blackberry stores used to ask for.
abc-xyz 6y ago
Because Tencent (along with all Chinese companies) risk getting banned from all Apple devices worldwide, so they use whichever proxies they can (such as 40% Tencent-owned Epic Games) to try to force Apple to allow third-party app installations.

screpy 6y ago

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has called Apple’s characterization of the series of events leading up to Fortnite’s removal as “misleading,” as he initially requested in an email that the App Store exemptions Epic sought be made available to all iOS developers.

donarb 6y ago
He actually requested the exemptions be made for Android developers. He cut/pasted his letter to Apple from his Google letter and forgot to change the platform. https://twitter.com/rsgnl/status/1296907639952224264?s=10 https://twitter.com/rsgnl/status/1296907639952224264?s=10

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

Odd, HN usually hates middlemen tacking on additional costs and 30% is an unjustifiably deep cut by any measure. Your Apple and Android apps could be 20% cheaper than they are now. Your Steam games could have 20% more going to the developers, software creators just like you and I, to enable more people to make a living by creating indie games. If Epic wants to dent the walled garden app store model, more power to them.

maydemir 6y ago
Yes, you're right. Apple charges a lot of commission. But Epic Games accepted this rule and entered the store. And Epic can't make changes without a deal with Apple. If Apple accepts this, it should do so for all apps. And it goes into 30% loss.
- screpy 6y ago
  Yes, but everyone knows that Apple charges a lot of commission now.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Apple has been charging 30% since 2003 with the iTunes Store. This is no secret.
Someone 6y ago
I think the App market is like that of pop songs: a few developers make lots of money, a few make decent money for a short time, and most of them think they are working on a career but are lucky if they can scrape by. Main reason, I think, is the same in both industries: more people have the ability for the craft than are needed to satisfy demand, and they’re willing to do it for peanuts and/or tricking themselves to think success and, with it, monetary compensation, will eventually come their way. And compared to the music industry, 30% doesn’t seem that bad. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-percent-from-music-sales-706746/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-...: “Musicians Get Only 12 Percent of the Money the Music Industry Makes” So, are musicians being preyed upon by the music industry, or is selling music harder work than making music? I would think it’s a bit of both. I also think that applies to apps, too.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "And compared to the music industry, 30% doesn’t seem that bad." I don't really think pointing that other professions have it worse is a justification for abuses in our own.
fatbird 6y ago
Or app developers raise their prices by 20% since they already know the price point at which people will buy their app.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The price was already carefully chosen and will stay the same so they get 20% extra. There is no need to raise the price.
  - fatbird 6y ago
    Right: I was responding to the parent's assertion that dropping Apple's cut from 30% to 10% would result in a 20% drop in the price of the app. As you observe, the developer would just keep the extra 20%. Maybe as a consumer, that's valuable because it means greater incentives to create apps, but honestly, there's no shortage of apps today. The problem isn't an inability to make money on the app store such that dropping Apple's cut would change the landscape significantly.
ben_w 6y ago
I’m old enough to remember when 30% was a good deal, especially when the market was dominated by $0.99 apps and they cover your hosting bandwidth. What are hosting/bandwidth fees like for an app this size anyway?
manfredo 6y ago
I'm less leery about steam since they have competition: Origin, Epic Games Store, GoG, Microsoft play store, and just releasing the game yourself (plenty of studios actually do this, spiderweb software, paradox, to name a couple). Apple's situation is more like if Windows decided that all apps running on windows need to pay a 30% cut. The term "App Store" is misleading: it's not a store, if your application isn't in the app store there is no legitimate way of running the app on an iPhone or iPad.
imtringued 6y ago
You're contradicting yourself. You can't make the games 20% cheaper and give 20% more to developers. Since the developers get to pick they will just keep that portion. There is no benefit to consumers. Indie developers aren't struggling because their game made 25k instead of 30k. Steam offers a discount to publishers for games exceeding a certain amount of revenue so the ones who would most benefit from lower fees are already getting them. Since game companies can't know how much revenue they will generate they can't lower their pricing ahead of time. Again all the saved money is going to the publisher with no benefit for the consumer. You're also ignoring that not every copy of a game on steam was actually acquired by paying the 30%. You can kiss Humble Bundle and their Humble Store goodbye because they are using Steam infrastructure without paying for it. It's not really black and white. You can't say that lower fees are better in every case because they involve different trade offs. The cheapest product on the market is rarely the best.
- nodamage 6y ago
  That is a very good point. If Epic wants to argue that consumer welfare is harmed by the 30% commission then they are going to have to show evidence that a reduced commission would actually be passed onto the consumer. If the developers are likely to pocket the difference then they've only shown that the developers are being affected by the 30%, not the end consumer.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "You can't make the games 20% cheaper and give 20% more to developers." I'd have thought it would be self-evident from the phrasing that that two separate possible scenarios were being described. > "Since the developers get to pick they will just keep that portion." Being that HN is mostly developers, few here will regard that as anything other than a good thing. It's a particularly good thing among indie games developers, the majority nowadays, where the risk is high and the rewards usually slim.

anfilt 6y ago

Honestly, a locked down device is the problem not the app store. Let users sideload.

pjmlp 6y ago
It does wonders on game consoles, which Epic isn't suing, rather they even proudly do PS5 demos.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  They've fought game consoles before: https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/26/17905770/fortnite-cross-play-ps4-nintendo-switch-xbox https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/26/17905770/fortnite-cross-pl...
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    2 years ago, and now do PS5 exclusive demos.
maydemir 6y ago
Yes, I wish it was a little more flexible. But there are good points in this. I think they create a better quality and performance product in this way.

salawat 6y ago

Epic Games finally realized that what Apple was doing with the App Store was a text book case of anti-competitive behavior for the scale on which Apple operates. You're not allowed to set rules in such a way as the end consumer is ultimately harmed, and you are entrenched in a dominant market position as a gatekeeper. Contracts are not meant to be vehicles through which violation of of other legal tenets are committed, and that is exactly what Apple's rules are. Violations of anti-trust law. It sucks being big. Being big carries with it a whole bunch of nasty implications because suddenly the number of people nor okay with you doing whatever you want starts to out pace the organized efforts you can muster to make everyone agree you should be able to do whatever you want. Hell, Google does the same stuff with Google Play. Just not with as much of a parasitic model as the Apple Store. Enough I think they'd squeak by a bit longer without notice, but Apple has absolutely gone off the deep end.

pjmlp 6y ago
I bet Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft are much bigger at world scale.
- newbie578 6y ago
  Considering Apple is the world's biggest company and their whole business model rests on their walled garden, there isn't anyone bigger at world scale
  - scarface74 6y ago
    And MS is the third largest company...
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Apple is nonexistent outside North America and a couple of tier 1 countries.

throwaway189262 6y ago

Because 30% is an extraordinary amount of money. Apple is user-hostile on this too, not sure why their users would ever defend it. Think of it this way, every time you buy something on the store you're paying 30% of your money to Apple. You're paying 30% of your money to Apple for the right to install the app on your phone You are allowed to charge more to make up for the fees. But you cannot tell your users this. If you say "sign up on our website to save" you will be banned from the store. Tons of people pay 30% more for subscriptions because they bought them through apple store. I'm tired of all the locked down bullshit and you should be too. It's my device, I should be able to install whatever I want

ben_w 6y ago
I wonder what markup supermarkets generally charge over the wholesale rates, and if any of them would stock products with labels saying “buy this product direct from us and save $$$!”
- manquer 6y ago
  Supermarkets loose money if goods do not sell, storage is expensive and limited shelf space , will also promote your product visibility or even give exclusivity etc . Apple takes no risk and does none of the above, so not remotely the same. Sure if Apple is willing to buy apps from Epic in bulk and speculate in addition to distribute, Epic or any other dev is not going to say no. Fulfilled by Amazon is much better comparison, you get paid only if the customer actually buys, you get penalized for returns etc. Providing the market place, the customer, the delivery service, storage service and payment gateway. Amazon does not charge even close to 30% in most SKUs.
- notyourday 6y ago
  Supermarket's profit margins are in low single digits.
pjmlp 6y ago
It is peanuts compared with what J2ME, Symbian, Brew, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Blackberry stores used to ask for.

abc-xyz 6y ago

Because Tencent (along with all Chinese companies) risk getting banned from all Apple devices worldwide, so they use whichever proxies they can (such as 40% Tencent-owned Epic Games) to try to force Apple to allow third-party app installations.