
Apple Rejects Valve's Steam Link App Due to 'Business Conflicts' - Doubleguitars
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/24/apple-rejects-valve-steam-link-app/
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dvdhnt
Not surprising. If people can play their PC games via Steam, they’ll be less
likely to purchase games and in-app purchases on iOS.

That said, Steam’s argument is technically true (I think) - their app is
basically a remote desktop client. I wonder how Apple could defend that
legally without shooting itself in the foot? Although, they’ll probably come
to some closed-door financial arrangement before it comes to that.

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ascagnel_
Apple's argument could be primary purpose.

A general RDP app would stream your entire desktop; exactly what happens on
the desktop is outside of the purview of the app.

This Steam Link app is designed to stream Steam, but can be kinda/sorta
halfway backed into streaming the remote desktop. It's primary purpose is to
stream the Steam "Big Picture" UI -- which prominently features an independent
store -- in addition to any PC games that run through Steam. If Valve were to
remove the store links, this would be a very different discussion.

It's similar to how Apple wouldn't allow something like the Kindle app to
"just" direct users to an in-app web-view or deep-link to content in the
system browser to avoid paying Apple -- if you're selling a digital good on an
iOS/tvOS platform, you need to pay the 30% gatekeeper's fee.

~~~
guu
This is no different than R-Play though. A Remote Play app for iOS to connect
to a Playstation 4 which is allowed on the App Store.

~~~
giobox
I wonder if this is really apple’s concern. It’s not hard to imagine this
feature eventually evolving to the point where you don’t run your own games on
your PC and stream to your device. Surely within the next 5 years this feature
evolves to have Valve run the games in the cloud and stream to your device, so
it’s always available if you have a sufficient connection, no need to even
have a PC.

At that point it’s a much bigger competitive risk to Apples AppStore game
sales revenue. To play devils advocate, I could see this argument having more
strength within Apple’s walls than banning an app that just streams games from
the user’s own PC.

I think it’s inevitable Valve enter the cloud hosted pc gaming market
eventually, personally. Sales of mobile devices and cheap PCs dwarf sales of
gaming PCs, the size of the potential customer base explodes once your users
don’t need to be well off enough to afford a gaming rig.

~~~
ascagnel_
> It’s not hard to imagine this feature eventually evolving to the point where
> you don’t run your own games on your PC and stream to your device.

nVidia already runs such a service, GeForce NOW. I've been trying the Mac beta
for a few months and... it's not great. Some games just _need_ 1:1, perfect
streaming (twitch shooters, 2D platformers, etc.), and their service at best
(when on wired ethernet and a datacenter nearby) delivers a lag of 2-3 frames.
Valve's product, since you're running it on your local network, can get that
down to a single frame, but that can still be too much at times.

~~~
giobox
What you say is true of today. I'm talking about the future.

I think it's foolish to bet against cloud game streaming technology reaching
the point where it is good enough for _most_ people, and when it does I'd be
even further surprised if Valve aren't at least trying to be a major player.
LAN based game streaming is always going to be a relatively niche feature, as
gaming PCs are increasingly niche. Cheap tablets/phones/laptops that could use
a cloud based service number well into the billions at this point.

As for your point about lag - sure it's not going to be as low latency as a
local LAN system, but honestly I don't think a lot of customers will notice
this too much or care - people are already happy with 30FPS consoles with
often terrible controller latency on some titles. Sure there will be those who
still want the best, and they will continue to build expensive gaming towers.
The Playstation Now game streaming service has been relatively successful
despite having all of these problems and more. I recently finished The Last Of
Us on playstation now. Again, it wasn't the best, but it was very close to
"good enough".

Many kids today are happy playing "Fortnite" on a phone. A phone, playing an
online FPS with touch controls... It's clear that perfect playing conditions
are not the primary driver for a lot of people.

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voidwtf
Well, That's extremely disappointing. They're only shooting themselves in the
foot though. I'd planned on purchasing an Apple TV to give this a try (a
single box to replace my Fire TV and Steam Link).

I'll give nVidia Shield a try instead. Still a bit disappointed I won't be
able to play from my phone, but who knows maybe that'll change too. Only one
month left on my iPhone 6s plus payment.

I can use one of several apps to do effectively the same thing, but they lack
the Big Picture and Steam Input API integration. Moonlight, Parsec, etc...
Some of which are open source. Even if they were rejected down the road I
could just run them myself using my dev account.

~~~
scarface74
I have four Apple TVs - three third generation and one 4th generation ATV. The
only reason I have a 4th Gen one is because it was free with DirecTVNow.

But if that weren't the case, my next purchase was going to be an Nvidia
Shield once my old 2009 Core 2 Duo that I'm using as a Plex Server bit the
dust. The idea of having a $200 Shield that could also serve as a Plex
_server_ is very enticing. I would have a NAS in my office and the Shield
connected to one of my TVs.

I was not going to spend $200 on a 4K Apple TV.

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tabs_masterrace
This is unacceptable, Apple will have to give in on that one. I hope Valve is
going to fight them with everything they can do, so this gets resolved in a
timely manner. Many people were looking forward to use the app.

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pier25
It's a shame. I was really looking forward to playing controller based Steam
games from my iPad Pro.

I think Apple is shooting itself in the foot with these stupid decisions, but
time will tell.

~~~
aaomidi
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Valve sued Apple for this.

This is definitely anti competitive practices and I think there is a case to
be made for it. Even more if they decide to do it in EU.

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ascagnel_
Would Valve even need to do so, or could an EU government (or the EU itself)
step in?

~~~
londons_explore
The EU tends not to step in to protect the interests of non-eu companies.

That's why the EU action against Google was initiated by some shady comparison
shopping websites from the EU, and by Opera (also an EU company). They were
financially backed by Microsoft, but they kept their name out of it.

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e1ven
While we don’t have the full story here, I’m betting that Valve isn’t being
entirely forthcoming on the reason.

One of the features that Valve talked about was using their Steam Controller
with the app.

Since the Steam Controller is not MFi-certified, there was speculation that
this feature worked by emulating a keyboard, and sending input as key presses.

This similar to iCade, which has been in the App Store for quite a while.

I’d wager that it’s this bypass of the MFi program which is irking Apple, not
the screen sharing function.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> While we don’t have the full story here, I’m betting that Valve isn’t being
> entirely forthcoming on the reason.

I was expecting someone to find a way to blame Valve for this, rather than
admitting that Apple likes to abuse its position.

They definitely lost me as a customer.

~~~
e1ven
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think that Apple is totally wrong for blocking the
app.

If they’re blocking because it doesn’t use MFi that’s a blatant cash-grab.

I’m not trying to justify it, just trying to understand wtf is going on.

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singularity2001
'Business Conflicts' a.k.a. monopoly abuse.

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frio
I was looking forward to this, but Apple keeps competing stores out of their
ecosystem -- you can't buy books in the Kindle app, for instance. If the Steam
Link app lets people buy games from Steam, I can see that being a problem, but
I'm surprised it got as far as it did before being rejected.

I hope we still get our hands on this sometime soon.

~~~
lathiat
The reason you can't buy books in the Kindle app probably has more to do with
the fact that Apple requires payments for all digital goods to go through it's
service and collect 30% of the revenue (15% if its a subscription after the
first 12 months). It does not make the same requirement for physical goods.

I continue to be divided about this, the point of view is understandable, as
it would threaten app store revenue (every app would just switch to a digital
subscription outside of apple and never charge for the apps) however there's
also a clear line of digital goods that are more physical like in nature
(rather than just the software) such as eBooks etc and the 30% margin is high
enough to ruin most business plans.

This particular rejection is somewhat irritating though.

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ksec
Sorry to ask, where Could I read this in more details? I have been wondering
what classify as Physical Goods and Digital Goods. Example why aren't Bitcoin
charged with 30% fees? And If I brought Amazon / iKea or StarBucks Credit, why
aren't those charged 30% fees?

