If some other business is "putting your business model at risk," isn't that called competition? Since when is Apple's business model sacred? I don't think Sweeney is some kind of good guy, butI know for sure Apple is a predatory bully who would love to own the world, just like some other giant tech companies we could all name.
Well Apple is not saying it is putting their business model at risk ( it does and it should) they are saying their philosophy to user security is at risk . i.e. if Epic wins in court apple has a tough choice, either reduce their own rates substantially and / or allow alternative stores .
For all apple's flaws, having single app store is better for user security as you know who to trust, it also gives conveniently makes Apple monopoly that they exploit to make 50B+ a year.
The question is will Apple sacrifice revenu for user security or is security and privacy are only there when it makes Apple money.
Well, I see this as a good thing for Apple's consumers, and to some degree Apple.
Apple might lose distribution of some things, but they can justify higher commission rates with a market that has a reputation for security, versus newly competing markets. I can see this being very beneficial for consumers, with a series of choices that will have different costs associate with them.
Short-term, Apple will lose revenue, but this is also a good justification for Apple to open an App Store in the Android ecosystem and offer a "more secure" app store than Google.
Long-term, I don't see this as a negative shift for really anyone. If the App Store expands to other platforms, Apple might focus on exclusive distribution rights agreements which would probably give them a greater degree of competition.
I don’t want .msi like installers for iOS apps scattered across the web... I know this is an unpopular opinion among techies, but I quite like the garden that Apple has walled off.
The problem here is not the walling itself , it is lack of regulations over what they can, they cannot do. Which allows walled gardens to kick out apps they don't like, impose all sorts of rules, and charge outrageously
Developers associate the freedom of open standards and protocol to these abuses. In the early GNU years, the same philosophy applied to source availability. Closed source does make similar abuse fare more easier.
Abuses can be prevented with well built regulation. Developers do not like to get into governance and policy so they want to solve it technically, Open Source or open protocols and standards etc, sometimes that opens up avenues vulnerabilities in design, which devs generally are tech savy enough to be immune to and come up with even more tech like https, adblockers hardware keys etc.
This cat and mouse game leaves rest of the population far behind and vulnerable, sometimes you just have to do governance than look for pure tech solutions.
Please don't make up figures and share them in public.
No, Apple didn't make $50B in profit "a year" or last year or in ANY year from App Store fees. Takes about 30 seconds to look up Apple's financials and disprove that. And no, Apple doesn't have a "monopoly". Sony, Google, and Microsoft also get 30% of all revenue from their app stores. Claiming Apple has a "monopoly" is ludicrous and just shows that you don't know what a real monopoly is.
It is next to impossible to calculate the profit of any business unit in isolation . As it extremely difficult to split shared costs . I have enough time in my life doing ABC (Activity Based Costing) to know how it usually goes.
I did not say they made profit, I said they made , in my part of the world made means commonly revenue not profit.
The 50B is well established estimate of App Store revenue.
They processed $50B is perhaps better way to put it, 50 B is not their actual revenue yes.
However using GMV[1] as a proxy for revenue is fairly common practice in retail industry. Walmart's revenue in similar sense is not really $500B, while it bit more complicated as Walmart buys from producer/ wholesaler and sells to the consumer (less so by Amazon as significant chunk of their inventory is owned by the sellers directly however revenue numbers are counted the same way).
The revenue for their operations is only the difference between selling price and buying price, profit is after you remove the cost of operations from that number. Ecommerce / travel/ delivery startups etc have for long time used this as somewhat misleading metric.
This practice used to particularly annoy me few years back, during fundraise pre-series A especially angels used to somewhat blindly compare retail statups "revenue" with SaaS startup numbers.
At which number does that "you know who to trust" break down? Clearly it is >1, as e.g. Android users seem to be doeing just fine without Apple's store being the one and only. So Google is ok as well? Who else? Amazon? Lenovo? Huawei? Epic? Blizzard? The German Governement? The EU Commission store?
Android users are not doing fine security wise, the OEM update model, shitty locked ROMs provided by some carriers, the unpatched vulnerabilities especially on older devices is a security nightmare, tens or even hundreds of millions are likely already compromised. Apple devices are much more secure in comparsion.
Until the epic took this to court, nobody has the balls to challenge Apple. Epic has standing to sue and is ready to fight it.
This is going to be decided in U.S. courts.
WTO is unlikely to step in, they do not take disputes at a company level, usually betwwn country , unless another country sues the U.S. government for unfair trade practices over allowing this WTO has no standing to take the case. I don't see any country taking it to them , that country will need to show damage to their own app developers, this is difficult as Apple charges the same for U.S. devs too.
The EU anti trust and competition does have standing to take it up, and in the past they have fought Google and Microsoft over similar things (promoting own products and browser choice respectively), but I have not heard anything till now. Perhaps epic may also sue/ file complaint in europe and they may take on Apple in the future.
> Android users are not doing fine security wise, the OEM update model, shitty locked ROMs provided by some carriers, the unpatched vulnerabilities especially on older devices is a security nightmare, tens or even hundreds of millions are likely already compromised.
Mildly OT, but this applies to Lineage users as well.
How did that whole browser choice thing work out? IE stayed dominant until Chrome took over almost a decade later based solely on the popularity of Google’s home page and Google bundling Chrome with third party software along with Bonzi Buddy.
I.E. was loosing market share long before Chrome even was a thing, largely because Firefox was eating their lunch, Chrome later overtook Firefox and IE as you say. [1]
I am not sure how much of EU's intervention helped Firefox however given Mozilla's connection to Netscape. Netscape being the reason MS was being investigated by EU in the first place, it is not implausible.
I am not saying EU did a good job of it, just that can and do fight large American tech companies, it is not unlikely they won't take this up.
Yes, they want to own the world by selling products that costs three times more than the competition. Apple is the last company you can accuse of going after global domination by chasing market share.
The newest iPhone is $399. The iPad $299. Which competing products are nearly as desirable in that price range?
They now have 50% market share in the US and there’s no sign of that stopping when 90% of the youth market only wants an Apple. They’re a monopoly through and through at this point. If this lawsuit doesn’t get them another one will. It’s just a matter of time.
That’s worldwide. Nobody wants cheap Android devices in the US.
That is how monopolies work. You don’t need 50% market share to be a monopoly, but having that certainly grants you monopoly power. Here's an example of 2 things that Apple can currently do, straight from justice.gov:
"Market power and monopoly power are related but not the same. The Supreme Court has defined market power as "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market,"(8) and monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition."(9)" [1]
You can't have a very successful app business without being in Apple's app store in the US, which would exclude you from half the population.
The Department is not aware, however, of any court that has found that a defendant possessed monopoly power when its market share was less than fifty percent.(30) Thus, as a practical matter, a market share of greater than fifty percent has been necessary for courts to find the existence of monopoly power.(31)
You don’t technically need 50% though. Anything can happen here.
Also those numbers you linked to are quarterly sales, not current active users. Not sure if that makes a big difference.
I’ve seen other comments saying that it’s 50% but like I said, 90% of the youth market wants an iPhone so it’s just a matter of time. If this lawsuit doesn’t get them then another one will soon.
That’s worldwide. Nobody wants cheap Android devices in the US.
Have you seen the phones sold at the MVNO’s like MetroPCS, Boost Mobile, and whoever Walmart uses? You’re in a bubble if you don’t see all of the people with less income who don’t go to the major carriers.
And you can quote websites, but is there precedent in the last 50 years that the government has ever gone after a company with 50% market share?
And those MVNOs also sell older models of iPhones, which would seem to contradict the root assertion that Apple is only chasing market growth by selling luxury phones, and not also seeking to gain customers who buy last year's (or earlier's) iPhone.
What if the other business is taking benefits and agreeing to contracts, then breaks that contract? Isn’t that called a contract violation?
Epic could make their own platform to sell games on, but they want the market Apple has built and the devices Apple has created.
The courts will decide, and since for decades courts have sided with platform creators being allowed to police content and charge access fees (SEGA, Nintendo, and later Sony, all have such cases), I think Epic will lose.
Despite some claims Apple has some monopoly, their share of mobile is far too small to count as such. I expect the courts to tell Epic to sell Android only if they don’t like Apple terms.
>Epic could make their own platform to sell games on, but they want the market Apple has built and the devices Apple has created.
logic also works the other way around. Without software smartphones are expensive scrap metal. Every popular piece of software that runs on the phone adds value to it.
I would say that for Basecamp’s Hey. But Epic selling virtual currency to buy costumes and dance moves add as much value as Candy Crush Saga. The entire free to play games with in app consumables is a stain on the entire mobile market.
So that means third parties have the legal right to put on Apple phones whatever they please? I think not.
As such, the contract between the companies is the legally binding method to access Apple hardware. Apparently Apple has designed the contract so millions of apps got developed for the phones. Epic wanted different terms, but has no legal right to unilaterally break contracts to do so.
The courts will likely side with Apple. There’s ample precedent for platform owners to have wide latitude on fees to publish.
>So that means third parties have the legal right to put on Apple phones whatever they please? I think not.
It just means that the argument was terrible because Apple didn't 'built the market themselves'. Developers and third parties are what made smartphones so valuable, and Apple is a part of that, but not some sort of messiah, and not even the major contributor. the market value of everything that runs on the phone is much larger than the phone.
As to what should be the case, yes I think people should have the right to run on their phone whatever software they want. If they only want to run Apple software they can do that no problem, there is no downside here. What are you afraid of, too much competition and freedom? If the Apple experience is so great they've got nothing to lose.
Also applies to game consoles in my opinion. I'd love freely moddable console games and if developers could publish on a playstation without paying fees to sony or being limited by them. I'd love to see platforms unlocked so that there is a maximum amount of opportunity for everyone to do what they want with it. That's how creative things are made.
> the market value of everything that runs on the phone is much larger than the phone.
Not by any metric I can find.
Apple has a market cap of 2 trillion; half their revenue of 260B is phone. The market cap of all mobile companies is dwarfed by Apple.... Mobile app sales total 76B a year, including both iOS and Android. The iOS part is around half of that value.
So by one simple metric, Apple revenue on phones is around 130B a year, mobile revenue on iOS is around 38B.....
What metric did you base this "much larger" claim? Did you base it on market numbers or make it up?
>I'd love freely moddable console games and if developers could publish
There's plenty of such platforms. They don't take off. Ask yourself why. Conspiracy stuff like "the big men stop them" is not the answer.
Even huge players like Steam have tried - and they certainly have the resources to push such a thing. It failed.
Why didn't developers rush to these free to publish on platforms? Maybe you are missing important things about the value of the platform versus the value of the software.
>What are you afraid of, too much competition and freedom?
Competition is not breaking contracts as you see fit. Competition will not exist without rule of law - this is basic econ. You'll end up with chaos and theft when contracts cannot be enforced.
And you're welcome to do whatever you want. Buy other hardware if you don't like Apple's terms of service. Build a product and sell it if you think there's demand for a different product.
People buy Apple because they find more value in it, as is, than their other choices. The same as people who value freedom and openness are allowed to buy other products as they see fit.
I don't understand why people continually think they have some rights they simply don't historically, legally, or even morally. Just like I'd expect you to claim it's immoral for some other entity to force things you created to adhere to their whims, or hand over value to you because you demand it, you have no moral right to do that to others.
I guess we just see it differently on the morality of forcing others to bend their work to our whims.
You also forget that once Atari did let developers publish will nilly on Atari 2600, and there was such a deluge of crap, that the market and platform crashed. Nintendo and all following companies learned that lesson: everyday consumers don't have the skill to protect themselves from crap, so to make a solid consumer platform, the owner of the hardware should provide significant protection for users.
I literally use Apple devices for everything except my gaming desktop, but I can't defend for Apple in this case, and for the game streaming block.
It's like if Apple built houses, it would make no sense for them to force house owners to only buy furniture/services from Apple verified entities and take 30% of the cut. The most it should be able to do is just provide a list of services it thinks are safe to use.
I would ask why can't Apple just allow other app stores, and just say any apps not from "the" app store may not be secure. But ultimately it's probably just because Apple doesn't want to let go of the ridiculous 30% cut, since if other app stores had a lower cut, why would developers release on the official app store.
Why can I order takeout though restaurant apps on my iphone and Apple doesn’t take a cut? Does the 30% only apply to digital goods/services that can be delivered or accessed through device?
even funnier imagine if Windows had only allowed people to install software through the Windows Store and siphoned 30% of all revenue from every developer who has ever written commercial software for Windows simply for participating.
Imagine if we had grown up like this let alone anyone defending it
Perhaps apps could actually ship you something IRL, and give the digital item away 'for free'.
Example: Wordpress sends you a letter with an activation code. Then it's a physical good you're paying for.
Kind of like how people sell coupons on eBay, but you aren't paying for the coupon, but for the lister's time/effort to list it.
Apple's fee is draconian and people are happy to manage these things via plain web applications. There is nothing special about apps. If anything, with all the extra special access they get (contacts, camera, gyroscope) they're a liability.
Apple is not letting apps do that anymore. You can have payment through your web app, but you must also permit payment via the iOS app, where Apple gets 30%.
Apple requires that apps provide a way to signup, but Apple has no say over whether you already have a paying account with Microsoft. Apple wouldn't even know.
I'm okay with Apple's vision of intermediating my digital relationships with regards to the iOS platform, most especially for summarizing all ongoing app subscriptions.
"Requires a way to sign up" undersells this. This forces apps like Hey to use the app store payment system even when they want to have their users do payment entirely outside the app store and download the app afterward.
And there's nothing stopping you from having a paying account with Hey where you didn't signup via the Apple platform. Hey is also free to charge some customers more than others. Customers get to choose whether they want Apple to intermediate financial relationships that ultimately involves a digital good being supported by the iOS platform.
Where there was one choice now there are two — the choice to deal directly with Hey or to have Apple intermediate.
Wouldn't you get a better user experience having your payment method (like your credit card company) managing all of your subscriptions? Surely not everything you subscribe to happens via Apple's ecosystem.
It really ought to be that way, and as banks modernize that may become the case, but right now I feel like runaway subscriptions are a huge problem, and credit card companies don't provide elegant summary or control of your financial relationships and transactions.
When you leave big problems unsolved, then you're also leaving power on the table. Credit card companies are leaving a lot of power on the table.
Yeah, physically items are exempt. That’s why the amazon app doesn’t send Apple a cut, but they don’t allow you to access the kindle store because that would require payment to Apple.
I'm a developer who sells on Steam. With a 12% commission instead of 30%, my actual profits would be about 50% higher and I would invest more money into post-release updates and support, and pay my staff bonuses.
People are generally supportive of gamedev workers getting better deals and paid more - let me tell you the quickest way that could happen is if all these platform commissions were lowered.
There are many things you can do like that - that basically just represent increased overhead and non-game activities.
If you follow all of that logically enough - you start to wonder, why even work in game development?
Indie development right now is basically a mirage, because the only people making sustainably good profits are those with access to lower commissions by owning their own platforms or by getting better deals from platform owners due to their size. There is a huge survivor bias.
I am only still operational because I am in Ukraine. It would be impossible in a 1st world country.
True, but then steam does provide value to you. I would assume a revenue share of 30% is acceptable albeit painful in your case, since otherwise you wouldn't do it.
I have been thinking lately that the app stores, the food delivery apps and others, are reproducing on a b2b scale what happened with the industrial revolution, when factory owners became effectively monopolists of the job market and, in a framework without rules, forced everyone to work on the terms most profitable to them.
Perhaps then what we miss now is the possibility to unionize businesses with respect to the tech/ internet giants. Form providers unions (e.g. restaurants, app developers, etc.). Force every single web or internet store to provide a switch to allow each provider to stop and restart their sales/ deliveries at will and display messages explaining why. Organise coordinated strikes in which those businesses halt their sales en masse until their demands have been met.
True, it's not the same as masses of workers picketing factories. Not everything transfers from one case to the other. But the fact is that today app developers, or restaurants, are as fungible as factory workers used to be in the nineteenth century. Don't like the pay and the hours? F.. off then, there's the queue at the gates of the factory of people trying to be hired for the day. You can look for a job somewhere else (I'm sorry if the factories are all mine here).
Granted, it might not work. But it could be tried, and it would need to be enforced by regulation as workers right were. Where's the right to strike and to let the reasons for the strike be known, in these environments? Can I force Apple to stop and restart the sales of my app at will, without consequences? Can I inform my customers of the reasons I did it? Can the restaurants of a city organize and stop deliveries in a coordinated way for a week?
I would definitely like to see other App Stores, so that the low-dollar, shifty shovelware apps get moved out of the Apple App Store. It would allow Apple to focus on the true nest-in-class apps that follow the design cues and security guidelines to make usable, truly secure apps on their platform.
They could market it as Trusted by Apple and if you’re not in the Apple App Store, you don’t get that mark. Heck, make it such that software not from the Apple store doesn’t get the digital signature that allows apps to start up with one touch. Require user consent before starting a non-approved app.
I would absolutely love to see this. All ad supported games and games with in app consumables get kicked off the App Store and are forced to use a ghettoized third party store. The only games allowed on the App Store are pay up front and demos with a one time fee to unlock all content like Nintendo’s games.
Then charge 10% for all the apps that are on the App Store at most.
I wonder if apple could have their cake and eat it too.
i.e. if you don't want to pay their normal rates, you can get lower rates, but you are not discoverable in the app store. i.e. you are in the app store, there is a way for companies to directly link to it, and open in store (or perhaps itunes, and perhaps only itunes if apple really wants to make it difficult). So you lose all the advertising value of the app store, but you get to pay apple lower rates.
For companies like Epic with fortnite, perhaps that would be a reasonable tradeoff, but I'd imagine its not a tradeoff most app makers would be willing to make.
I wonder how much revenue apple would lose from apps that are willing to opt out of discoverability.
Finally, it's only 'at risk' of Apple putting some more effort into the poor experience that it is so far to get an app and ability to explore and find apps that aren't in the top 200.
My main gripe with apple is their tactics around subscription fees.
You can't direct your customers to sign-up via your website, circumventing apple to receive a 30% discount. Ultimately the customer suffers. They should have consumer awareness and choice, it's their right.
Then they give Netflix special sweetheart treatment, why?
I find these examples both deceptive and anti-competitive.
Every company gives better deals to large companies than consumers. This is no different than any other industry. A starving singer discovered at a night club is not going to get the same deal from a label as Beyonce or Taylor Swift.
Probably because Netflix is a more predictable income and was well-established before being available on iOS. There’s no way to know if your average fly-by-night 5$ app is going to be worth the disk space it’s stored on in the long haul. It may sell well, thereby justifying the expense of vetting it or it may be a total dud, in which case you’ve wasted staff time and energy putting it through the process allowing it to be sold.
Netflix also fills a very broad niche, so big that it can’t really be called a niche. Giving them some leeway makes sense.
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
Users defend it because it’s a user friendly experience. The concept is good, even if you think apple’s cut is too high. Imagine going to a grocery store and needing to go through several different checkouts depending on which products you bought.
It not the starting of price of 30%, the problem is Apple will not adjust it one bit for anybody[1]. Microsoft or Sony will happily negotiate with AAA developer, none of the top devs will pay close to 30%.
You think Naughty Dog or Bethesda will pay 30% and also do exclusive releases etc? Sometimes MS or Sony will even pay developers to support their platform, there is always room to negotiate unlike Apple.
[1] Streaming services being the exception in virtual goods, if Apple charges Hulu or Prime 30%, the studios which also license content to Apple TV will not be happy. It could get Apple TV locked out or deals will become expensive.
Back catalogue is really, really valuable in Music and TV, Michael Jackson ownership of ATV is famous example of this
Syndication and streaming now is where the money is Apple cannot afford to antagonize the content industry .
Sure. Apple negotiates with indy game developers all of the time for exclusive releases via Apple Arcade and they pay them an up front fee.
Streaming services being the exception in virtual goods, if Apple charges Hulu or Prime 30%, the studios which also license content to Apple TV will not be happy. It could get Apple TV locked out or deals will become expensive.
One has nothing to do with the other. The studios deal with Apple TV because Apple gives them a boatload of money to produce shows for AppleTV. The studios also license content to be sold via iTunes. This was the case before the iPhone was released.
Apple doesn’t pay for syndication rights for older TV shows but for one or two exceptions.
No third party is counting on syndication. Not Netflix or Apple. All of the studios are taking their ball and going home. That’s why there is such a push for original content.
Apple Arcade explicitly forbids any in-purchases or ads. So not sure if we can compare a subscription service to a marketplace like App Store.
In Arcade of course Apple is paying money now to get enough content on the platform to make subscribers come, same MS did with Windows phone etc. Market place always need boosting either on supply or demand side to get started, it is unlikely Apple or anyone else starting a market place will continue to pay once the market is large enough.
Xbox/ PS keep paying since they know that marquee games are reason many times one the console is bought. For android and iOS market to be considered as one market there should be that level of competition at least.
While streaming has reduced privacy to large extent, the streaming business model whether subscription or micro-purchases (rent/ buy or song / album etc) have been always a threat to studios. Everyone is rushing to do original content yes , Netflix, Prime and Apple are already able to produce similar quantity and quality to studio in new content or will soon enough, however streaming companies cannot compete with the back catalogue for next 20-30 years.
Disney+ and is pulling out of other streaming services today. 5 years from now, Netflix may be ready to multiples than they were paying, just for non exclusive access to that back catalogue of Disney.
Disney will not care whether Prime or Netflix is also showing older disney back catalogues as long they have enough people paying for disney+ , where newer and some exclusive content is available. Their ownership of Disney+ means they can always negotiate from a position of strength. Studios are distribution companies first, content producers second. If you control distribution you control the price.
While the studios are taking the ball home today, I am not sure they will not be back later . I am not saying any of this why Apple is why they charge differently for streaming, just that the industry is in flux currently.
P.S. Had Jobs been alive, things would have turned out differently, I think Apple would have likely acquired Disney, it is a good fit, Jobs owned substantial stake in both.
Apple Arcade explicitly forbids any in-purchases or ads. So not sure if we can compare a subscription service to a marketplace like App Store.
This is a good thing. I hope Apple Arcade completely turns people against games with in app purchases and ads. Just like Netflix has turned people against ads and encouraged people to pay for content. This may also make room for non slimy indy developers.
it is unlikely Apple or anyone else starting a market place will continue to pay once the market is large enough
If the market grows large enough that developers can convince people to pay for content one time and no ads or in game purchases - that sounds like a win.
The PC is still a viable alternative for gaming that doesn't have such restrictions. I wouldn't mind if Google and Apple didn't have a virtual monopoly on mobile devices. Users don't really have another option
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 $$$!”
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.
Please omit swipes like the one at the end. Lots of people use accounts with names like that. It doesn't mean they're actually throwaway accounts or breaking the rules. Personally I wish they'd have more readable names, because it makes a difference to the quality of the threads, but that's a separate issue.
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.
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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I just read the barrage of email exchanges between Epic Games CEO and Apple before the incident took place. It's clear that Sweeney was acting as a self-entitled guy--asking for an under the table deal in a rather immature way. Apple's strong response to the lawsuit by putting out the facts only goes on to show how Epic Games' PR stunt was a lame effort. It'll hurt them in the long run. I'm on Apple's side.
Those emails were purely grandstanding on both sides. Neither side was trying to convince the other. Epic knew that Apple would drop them from the store, Apple knew that Epic would try to get dropped and then sue. The real audience was the public.
How is it under the table? Apple's secret 15% deal with Amazon can go unnoticed, but everyone in the world would notice if Epic suddenly came out with an alternative app store on iOS.
