4 ms·

Yes, you could breach a legally binding contract, a contract tested in court and effectively confirmed as legal by a federal judge. And then Apple will remove y

Yes, you could breach a legally binding contract, a contract tested in court and effectively confirmed as legal by a federal judge. And then Apple will remove your app from the App Store. It is also very normal in a situation like this for a contract to include clauses that would allow the licensor to review the licensee's books if there's any suspicion of misreporting. Also, the Epic Games Store is currently being run at a loss, so it isn't (yet) a poster child for a sustainable business model.

danShumway 5y ago
> you could breach a legally binding contract But nobody has that contract right now. Not Epic, not Apple, not Valve, not Microsoft, not Google. No PC or mobile store that I'm aware of has clauses that try to take a portion of 3rd-party purchases. It's not just Epic Store "being run at a loss", nobody does this. So again, you're talking about this like it's the norm and developers are pulling sneaky tricks to avoid it, but as far as I can tell nobody including Apple is trying to collect commissions on individual purchases that happen on other platforms, and it's not clear to me as a non-lawyer that it should be treated as the same category of contract as a general revenue contract. I can't find any current store contract that tells me that the company is entitled to percentages of purchases that happen on a website that they're not interacting with. And given Apple's extreme distaste for linking to other platforms, it seems like they're at least a little hesitant to just put this language in their contract themselves. Outside of specific revenue contracts, it doesn't seem to be the norm to me. So sure, Apple could start doing this, but it would be a new thing that would seem to be relatively unique among PC/mobile stores, and that goes back to the original question of whether or not a judge would view that as anti-competitive -- is it just a standard extension of a revenue agreement, or is it something else.

danShumway 5y ago

> you could breach a legally binding contract But nobody has that contract right now. Not Epic, not Apple, not Valve, not Microsoft, not Google. No PC or mobile store that I'm aware of has clauses that try to take a portion of 3rd-party purchases. It's not just Epic Store "being run at a loss", nobody does this. So again, you're talking about this like it's the norm and developers are pulling sneaky tricks to avoid it, but as far as I can tell nobody including Apple is trying to collect commissions on individual purchases that happen on other platforms, and it's not clear to me as a non-lawyer that it should be treated as the same category of contract as a general revenue contract. I can't find any current store contract that tells me that the company is entitled to percentages of purchases that happen on a website that they're not interacting with. And given Apple's extreme distaste for linking to other platforms, it seems like they're at least a little hesitant to just put this language in their contract themselves. Outside of specific revenue contracts, it doesn't seem to be the norm to me. So sure, Apple could start doing this, but it would be a new thing that would seem to be relatively unique among PC/mobile stores, and that goes back to the original question of whether or not a judge would view that as anti-competitive -- is it just a standard extension of a revenue agreement, or is it something else.