5 ms·

It's surprising they are doing this right now, while they are under the DOJ antitrust gun and also Apple is in a high profile lawsuit about this.

chacham15 6y ago
Google is also being sued by Epic (who is suing Apple for essentially the same thing): https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-games-sues-google-over-fortnite-play-store-removal-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-games-sues-google-over-...
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Oh, that make much more sense. Google enforced the policy against Epic, while allowing others (including itself!) to violate the policy. So it's doing uniform enforcement now to fend up charges of discrimination against Epic.
  - neuspadrin 6y ago
    I think while semi related, that falls under a different rule breaking that Epic did. If I recall correctly Epic was actually giving a discount to their own payment and charging more for Google/Apple. That is the violation they crossed. Using a different payment processing wasn't.
djmips 6y ago
Maybe the analysis is go to the money trough while you can?
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  The new enforcement is still a year away.
p1necone 6y ago
There's a crucial difference in that Android allows sideloading and the use of other app stores. Given this I feel like a lot of things that are not okay for Apple are fine for them to do as you have alternatives.
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
If they do this now it helps Apple's case that this is normal and not a special case. And if Apple wins, Google wins.
scarface74 6y ago
You mean the “high profile lawsuit” where the judge said.... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/apple-vs-epic-hearing-previews-a-long-hard-fought-trial-to-come/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/apple-vs-epic-hearing... If we look at this plaintiff and industry, walled gardens have existed for decades, Nintendo has had a walled garden. Sony has had a walled garden. Microsoft has had a walled garden... In this particular industry, what Apple is doing is not much different... It's hard to ignore the economics of the industry, which is what [Epic is] asking me to do."
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Imagine if your builder tried to control what appliances you were allowed to install in exchange for a cut. Digital restrictions to define a market defined not by technical limitations but by arbitrary restrictions designed to extract a cut of the profit is relatively new in the grand scheme of things and its a bad road to go down.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  The morality and/or ethics of the situation aside, I've still never gotten a satisfactory answer for why we should care that the iOS ecosystem is a walled garden to the point of wanting the US government to step in, but not maintain the same energy for the PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, etc ecosystems. I know that the deep down answer is that many of the people in these discussions think gaming is frivolous. But my PS4 is objectively far, far more powerful than any phone I've ever had, and comes with a selection of applications beyond just games - a web browser, photo/video editor, music and video streaming, a social messaging system (and social network, via the third-party Twitch). And going by hardware alone, it would be capable of much more than that if only it wasn't so prohibitively expensive to develop for. How is that so different from what the vast majority of people use their phones for? Yet people are far more up in arms about the $100 yearly fee for the Apple Developer Program than about the thousands of dollars ($2500 for a dev kit) it costs to even build and run a game on the PS4 (plus you have to be a registered company). Why should an iPhone be treated as an open, general-purpose computing device if a PlayStation is not? Why should Apple be forced to make it one?

chacham15 6y ago

Google is also being sued by Epic (who is suing Apple for essentially the same thing): https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-games-sues-google-over-fortnite-play-store-removal-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-games-sues-google-over-...

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Oh, that make much more sense. Google enforced the policy against Epic, while allowing others (including itself!) to violate the policy. So it's doing uniform enforcement now to fend up charges of discrimination against Epic.
- neuspadrin 6y ago
  I think while semi related, that falls under a different rule breaking that Epic did. If I recall correctly Epic was actually giving a discount to their own payment and charging more for Google/Apple. That is the violation they crossed. Using a different payment processing wasn't.

djmips 6y ago

Maybe the analysis is go to the money trough while you can?

srtjstjsj 6y ago
The new enforcement is still a year away.

p1necone 6y ago

There's a crucial difference in that Android allows sideloading and the use of other app stores. Given this I feel like a lot of things that are not okay for Apple are fine for them to do as you have alternatives.

thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago

If they do this now it helps Apple's case that this is normal and not a special case. And if Apple wins, Google wins.

scarface74 6y ago

You mean the “high profile lawsuit” where the judge said.... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/apple-vs-epic-hearing-previews-a-long-hard-fought-trial-to-come/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/apple-vs-epic-hearing... If we look at this plaintiff and industry, walled gardens have existed for decades, Nintendo has had a walled garden. Sony has had a walled garden. Microsoft has had a walled garden... In this particular industry, what Apple is doing is not much different... It's hard to ignore the economics of the industry, which is what [Epic is] asking me to do."

michaelmrose 6y ago
Imagine if your builder tried to control what appliances you were allowed to install in exchange for a cut. Digital restrictions to define a market defined not by technical limitations but by arbitrary restrictions designed to extract a cut of the profit is relatively new in the grand scheme of things and its a bad road to go down.
filleduchaos 6y ago
The morality and/or ethics of the situation aside, I've still never gotten a satisfactory answer for why we should care that the iOS ecosystem is a walled garden to the point of wanting the US government to step in, but not maintain the same energy for the PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, etc ecosystems. I know that the deep down answer is that many of the people in these discussions think gaming is frivolous. But my PS4 is objectively far, far more powerful than any phone I've ever had, and comes with a selection of applications beyond just games - a web browser, photo/video editor, music and video streaming, a social messaging system (and social network, via the third-party Twitch). And going by hardware alone, it would be capable of much more than that if only it wasn't so prohibitively expensive to develop for. How is that so different from what the vast majority of people use their phones for? Yet people are far more up in arms about the $100 yearly fee for the Apple Developer Program than about the thousands of dollars ($2500 for a dev kit) it costs to even build and run a game on the PS4 (plus you have to be a registered company). Why should an iPhone be treated as an open, general-purpose computing device if a PlayStation is not? Why should Apple be forced to make it one?