
Fortnite’s battle with Apple and Google could have an impact on news publishers - woldemariam
https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/08/fortnites-battle-with-apple-and-google-could-have-an-impact-on-news-publishers-too/
======
tsycho
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).

~~~
cwhiz
You cannot install Fortnite skins/characters/emotes/etc without paying Epic.
Epic has a monopoly on the Fortnite Store.

It sounds pretty ridiculous to type that... but it's the same basic argument.
Apple is a minority player in the smartphone market. Every single person on
this (HN) site has a competitive alternative if they don't like Apple
policies. If it should be illegal for Apple to have a monopoly on their own
product then it stands to reason that it should be illegal for Epic to have a
monopoly on their own product.

~~~
tsycho
Beyond a certain market share, that argument doesn't hold anymore. That's
where anti-trust comes in.

Which market share definition, you ask? IMHO it is the definition that defines
decision making for app developers, on whether they can skip the Apple
platform or not.

So Apple's percentage of global smartphones doesn't matter, what matters is:

\- Apple's 2/3 share of app store revenues.

\- Apple's share of users in rich, developed markets such as US, Europe and
Japan, which (source: ben-evans.com) varies between ~50-70%.

It is unaffordable for app developers to skip the Apple platform, since that's
where the majority of paying users are. And as a result, they should fall
under anti-trust laws that protect small players.

~~~
scarface74
_Which market share definition, you ask? IMHO it is the definition that
defines decision making for app developers, on whether they can skip the Apple
platform or not._

How many game developers will skip either Sony or MS unless they are paid for
exclusives?

Why can’t Google and all of the Android manufacturers convince people with
money that they should buy Android phones?

------
nostrademons
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.

~~~
criddell
I 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!

~~~
simonh
Which would kill the subsidised console market, nobody is going to buy a
console for $600, and would just turn iOS into a clone of the fragmented
dumpster fire that is the Android app ecosystem.

This is why we can't have nice things.

~~~
criddell
The subsidized console market is largely a myth anyway.

~~~
simonh
Consoles are mostly sold at slightly above the cost of manufacture, maybe 5%,
but that's nowhere near enough to recoup the costs of development,
distribution, marketing and maintaining the attached online services. To make
a profit on them as a standalone consumer product MS and Sony would to charge
another 30% to 40%. The bill of manufacture for a PS 5 is estimated at $450,
that's why I said they would probably have to charge $600. The console market
is highly price sensitive and we've seen time and again a premium of just $100
can kill a product.

~~~
criddell
Sony is also in the software business. Their hardware margins may be thin, but
how profitable is Naughty Dog? Or Insomniac? What kind of money do they make
from the subscription services sold on the console?

~~~
simonh
I'm not sure what you're implying. Are you saying Sony and Microsoft should
just make less money?

It's entirely possible to lose money on consoles. Microsoft wrote off such a
huge loss on the first XBOX, between $5bn and $7bn, that counting inflation on
the losses they probably still haven't made a profit off it.

The other problem with that is it would make it flat out impossible for any
other company ever to enter the console market. The up front cost is device
losses would be staggering. It was bad enough for Microsoft as it is.

~~~
criddell
> Are you saying Sony and Microsoft should just make less money?

Not at all. I'm merely pointing on that their console business is composed of
many streams and focusing on one part of it to the exclusion of others is
deceiving. Supposedly, _Return of the Jedi_ has never made money yet they kept
making Star Wars movies.

> it would make it flat out impossible for any other company ever to enter the
> console market

I disagree. It's harder to compete with competitors that are selling their
product below the cost of production. I've always wondered if an EU-based
company came out with a console, what would happen? I think Sony, Microsoft,
and Nintendo would be forced to sell their consoles at or above cost in the EU
or face dumping charges.

~~~
simonh
I don’t think it’s deceiving at all. If you don’t think it would lead to them
to make less money, can you explain how?

It seems to me that if the consoles cost 1/3 more they would sell fewer of
them (Lots of empirical evidence for this), and therefore sell fewer games and
make less revenue on services to their smaller customer base, who now can by
games from other publishers without the console vendor making a penny. After
all isn’t the point of this to cut off their other revenue streams at the
knees? I may well be missing something though.

------
abakker
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.

------
greyswan
These articles about the issue were both interesting:

Matt Stoller (Journalist specializing in monopoly)
[https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/epic-games-kicks-off-
the-...](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/epic-games-kicks-off-the-civil-
war)

iA (App developer) [https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-
epic](https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-epic)

------
pneill
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?

~~~
Apocryphon
Apple and Google do not have that right, because as many headaches there are
involved, killing their services cash cows would be abandoning their fiduciary
duty to investors in an almost litigation-worthy boneheaded move.

~~~
pneill
Not sure I follow you. Do you mean, they won't do it because it makes a lot of
money or do you mean they straight up don't have the right because of the
economic platform they've created benefits a lot of people.

Just to be clear, I'm just trying to understand if folks think the app store
is a public commons or is it private property?

Lots of the comments on this issue imply that the store is a public commons.
And I'm wondering if that's a common view.

~~~
Apocryphon
Because it makes a lot of money, Apple doesn't have the right to engage in
such a self-sabotaging move because they are bound to their investors, who
would be mad at them willingly destroying such a revenue stream. So debates
about commons aside, the question is somewhat ludicrous because it's about as
fanciful and applicable as "What if Microsoft released the Windows source
code?"

~~~
prewett
A bit off-topic, but frankly, I think trying to use the Windows source code
would be a liability for everyone but something like WINE. Just building it
would be a trick, last I heard a full build of Windows took an entire day. I'm
guessing it wasn't your beefy Dell machine building it, either. I'll bet there
are so many pieces and custom tools and forgotten necessary settings on build
machines that building it would be a nightmare. And then there is the test
suite. I wouldn't trust a custom build of Windows, who knows all the subtle
settings here and there that are necessary to get the same result. I think
Microsoft could put the Windows source on GitHub tomorrow and the only thing
that would happen is that they'd get a lot of bug bounties and an increase in
the number of people they could hire who could just step in and start working
without having the six-month ramp up in understanding the relevant code base.

------
swiley
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
What did Stallman predict correctly?

------
rconti
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
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.

------
wmab
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
> 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-
ser...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-determine-whether-a-service-is-
subject-to-the-in-app-purchase-30-fee)

~~~
wmab
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.

------
abryzak
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
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
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.

------
yibg
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?

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

------
qserasera
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.

------
chosen1111
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
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
Unreal Engine (and Unity) can target HTML5 / WebAssembly. I expect the main
issue is the download size of the assets.

~~~
chosen1111
thank you

------
abc-xyz
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
This event should've put to bed any notion that Epic is controlled by Tencent:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-
ba...](https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-players-
talking-politics-hong-kong-2019-10?op=1)

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
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.

