Apple wins appeal against Epic

[JRLMustang]

The point I was attempting to get across for those that might not be aware is that the 30% Apple charges is a BARGAIN compared to the slotting fees vendors have been paying for years, and they bid on these slots! By the way, I forgot to mention that these fees are usually per store! Every section of the supermarket retail space is bid on, right down to magazine racks and candy slots; even the shipper count and placement is bid on.

I want to know why people believe Apple should allow vendors a free ride? The devs are already making tons of money and they’re not even moving any physical freight. These devs have zero standing. Just the eyeballs of Apple’s customers alone are worth the cut. Again, this isn’t the Apple of the 80s and 90s.

 

[Cmaier]

The point I was attempting to get across for those that might not be aware is that the 30% Apple charges is a BARGAIN compared to the slotting fees vendors have been paying for years, and they bid on these slots! By the way, I forgot to mention that these fees are usually per store! Every section of the supermarket retail space is bid on, right down to magazine racks and candy slots; even the shipper count and placement is bid on.

I want to know why people believe Apple should allow vendors a free ride? The devs are already making tons of money and they’re not even moving any physical freight. These devs have zero standing. Just the eyeballs of Apple’s customers alone are worth the cut. Again, this isn’t the Apple of the 80s and 90s.

You’re not going to find a lot of people who disagree with that here. People who want to complain about Apple tend to congregate on other forums.

 

[JRLMustang]

You’d be surprise. Many folks never really get the whole story, only the narrative the media loves to weave and throw in our faces.

Like *GHASP!* the pearl-clutching 30%!!! How dare they!

It tangentially relates to the tired trope of macOS being less of a draw for developers of games. As far as third-party hardware vendors? I think they’re learning the hard way. Apple has obviously been playing the slow, methodical long game. (Hello Apple Silicon soon to be on 2nm!)

 

[mr_roboto]

It's not a trope at all that macOS isn't a draw for game devs, it's reality. Apple spent a couple decades pissing game devs off in various ways, and that means it's going to take a little more than just Apple Silicon to lure them back to the Mac. Especially since some of the non-hardware reasons why many game devs don't like Apple are still actively in play.

 

[JRLMustang]

Apple spent a couple decades pissing game devs off in various ways

Maybe, but I’m fairly sure there’s plenty of blame to go around, and let’s be honest, it wasn’t like the devs and third-parties were going out of their way the way as you seem to imply. Like I said, it was easy when Apple was the small fry. That’s no longer the case. I guess Apple can always do a Microsoft and buy up a few game developers, third parties and other competitors, end support for the Windows and console versions while leaving only the Mac version to concentrate on. What do you think?

 

[mr_roboto]

What exactly do you think I'm implying? I have no idea what you mean by that and I meant exactly what I said: Apple did lots of things which actively drove game devs away from the Mac. Trying to twist blame back in the other direction isn't helpful either. For what it's worth I don't think it was ever intentional, but try telling someone who keeps getting their toes stepped on to not get mad. Especially when the party doing the stepping claims to want the other party to be their friend, but just keeps on blindly stomping around, occasionally landing on toes...

As for your idea - well, sounds like you want Apple to throw its weight around and monopoly power its way into the gaming market. I don't think that ends well for Apple, they're already attracting regulatory scrutiny.

Seriously, taking a bunch of popular games Mac/iPad/iPhone exclusive would really piss off consumers who were used to having those things on platforms they own. They will not welcome being required to pay Apple hardware prices to continue enjoying the newest releases. You can buy a 16GB RAM / 1TB SSD Playstation 5 for $450, while Apple's cheapest Mac is the $600 M2 Mini 8/256. If you want to upgrade it to 16/1TB, Apple charges you $600 more. People are not going to like that one bit, especially if it's a performance downgrade (I suspect it is, I don't recall the M2 GPU being in the same class as the PS5 GPU, probably takes at least the M2 Pro to get there). You couldn't ask for a clearer reason for regulators to step in.

 

[JRLMustang]

“Especially when the party doing the stepping claims to want the other party to be their friend, but just keeps on blindly stomping around, occasionally landing on toes...”

It seems we’re in agreement that Apple didn’t get to the unimaginably successful position they’re in by kissing the asses of the game devs.

“As for your idea - well, sounds like you want Apple to throw its weight around and monopoly power its way into the gaming market. I don't think that ends well for Apple, they're already attracting regulatory scrutiny.”

Doubt it. Microsoft gets away with it. Besides, how do you “monopolize” your own platform when you literally own the entire vertical stack, when you offer the whole widget? There are plenty of other options for phones and gaming options as well; including consoles. Still, Microsoft has been doing precisely that. They’ve been acquiring game studios for years and they probably tally around 25; maybe more.

As far as the rest of your post, well the “mega gamer” crowd last I looked doesn’t seem to care about how much they drop over the lifetime of their hobby. Look what they spend not just on hardware, but subs. In many cases it’s insane. As far as regulators… Remember, antitrust isn’t about ensuring low prices for consumers, it’s about ensuring competition exists. Don’t take my word for it, go look it up for yourself. Last I looked, there’s more than enough competition in the video game sector.

 

[Cmaier]

US Supreme Court snubs Apple-Epic Games legal battle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a challenge by Apple to a lower court's decision requiring changes to certain rules in its lucrative App Store, as the justices shunned the lengthy legal battle between the iPhone maker and Epic Games, maker of the popular...

finance.yahoo.com

The Supreme Court declined to hear either Epic‘s or Apple’s appeal. Depending on the bias of the publication you read, the headline will either say “Supreme Court snubs Apple” or “Epic Loses in Supreme Court”

In the end, this is a big win for Apple, though they do have to allow (in the U.S., anyway), links to alternative payment methods (but don’t have to allow integration of such payment methods within apps, alternate app stores, side-loading, or any of the other crap Epic wanted).

 

[Nycturne]

(but don’t have to allow integration of such payment methods within apps, alternate app stores, side-loading, or any of the other crap Epic wanted).

Not by the US anyhow. EU is another story. I smell a “Windows N” coming for iOS…

 

[Cmaier]

Apple is charging 27/12% commission on such sales (instead of their normal 30/15), and has very specific rules for how the outgoing link must appear. You must request an entitlement from Apple and use a specific SDK to check if the user can make purchases and is in the U.S. And you have to submit reports to Apple every month so they know how much money they are due.

This is not going to be a popular mechanism for developers (or users, who lose out on features like family share, parental monitoring, central unsubscribe, the ability to contact Apple for refunds, etc.)

 

[Cmaier]

Epic to contest Supreme Court ruling on App Store in-app sales

After a long legal dispute, the US Supreme Court ruled today that Apple will have to relax some of its...

9to5mac.com

The very poor headline suggests Epic plans to somehow appeal the Supreme Court action (they cannot). Epic is babbling about going back to District Court to allege that what Apple is doing (i.e. the way they are implementing this new purchase mechanism) is still against the law somehow.

This time I don’t see how they have standing to do so - they aren’t in the App Store, as far as I know, so what Apple does can’t affect them.

 

[Cmaier]

Apple taking a nice dig at Epic in its notice of compliance with the injunction:

 

[Cmaier]

And now Epic has to pay Apple more than $70 million in legal fees….

Apple bills Epic Games $73 million in legal costs

Following the end of the Epic Games vs Apple case, the "Fortnite" developer will be required to pay Apple over $73 million in legal fees.

appleinsider.com

 

[Cmaier]

Ben Lovejoy had some horrible takes on this (I won’t help him out by providing a link to his story).

First, he argues that it’s crazy for Apple to claim that all apps use Apple’s intellectual property. I guess he thinks all these App Developers are somehow not using Apple’s SDK and literally running code written by Apple, and he doesn’t know that Apple has to continuously spend billions of dollars to pay the developers who write and maintain this code.

Then he argues that by charging 27%, Apple is sending an f-you to the trial court. I guess he didn’t watch the whole trial and read the entire opinion, and doesn’t realize that the judge specifically said Apple is entitled to collect royalties on sales that occur outside the app, and that the court said that knowing that Apple asserted that only around 3% of the fees went to payment processing and the rest were royalties.

 

[Cmaier]

Epic’s developer account was reinstated?

Epic Games Plans for Alternative App Marketplace in EU as Apple Reinstates Developer Account

Epic Games today announced plans to bring the Epic Games Store to iOS in the European Union, with Apple reinstating the company's developer...

www.macrumors.com

I wonder if this a different kind of account, that only enables them to be notarized and to get whatever entitlements they need to operate outside the App Store.

 

[Nycturne]

I never understood what the real gripe was with the App Store. Was it the 30%? If so, that’s utterly dumb. That’s a bargain for these vendors considering the extremely fertile and lucrative market folk with iPhones represent. The eyeballs alone are extremely valuable.

The PC/Mac space didn't operate like consoles or stores though. Both Mac and Windows were very open platforms. They didn't offer as much in the way of an SDK, and there was less help to be had from the platform owners, but the result was that there were no distribution fees from the platform. If you sold your software in stores, your distributor would take care of that. If you sold via the Shareware model (which includes some big titles like Doom), then the only fees you realistically paid were payment processing fees as you effectively had volunteer labor in terms of folks making copies to share with friends on floppies, and BBSes distributing the software on your behalf. With the internet, this generally continued. So there were certainly fatter margins for developers on Mac/PC doing digital distribution before Steam, App Store, etc started to suck the air out of the room.

But Sweeny should be well aware of all this, with Epic paying distributor fees for their boxed games in the past, paying platform fees on consoles, etc, etc. So really, it's a fight between a platform owner and someone who wants to be a platform owner. Epic sees being an App Store as the next way to grow the business and Fortnite is the lever to do so. But the PC world has an entrenched player (Valve) that vexes even Microsoft and the consoles are non-starters. Epic has an app store on Android where they are using Fortnite as the means to drive installs. I think Epic is gambling that cracking open iOS might give them a sort of first mover advantage against other players, especially with IP that makes billions a year.

Epic’s developer account was reinstated?

Epic Games Plans for Alternative App Marketplace in EU as Apple Reinstates Developer Account

Epic Games today announced plans to bring the Epic Games Store to iOS in the European Union, with Apple reinstating the company's developer...

www.macrumors.com

I wonder if this a different kind of account, that only enables them to be notarized and to get whatever entitlements they need to operate outside the App Store.

Probably is the same account but with flags/notes attached to block use of things Apple doesn't want to give them access to. Apple wants folks doing everything under a single developer ID based on their behavior up to this point.

 

[Jordanmarkstone]

The PC/Mac space didn't operate like consoles or stores though. Both Mac and Windows were very open platforms. They didn't offer as much in the way of an SDK, and there was less help to be had from the platform owners, but the result was that there were no distribution fees from the platform. If you sold your software in stores, your distributor would take care of that. If you sold via the Shareware model (which includes some big titles like Doom), then the only fees you realistically paid were payment processing fees as you effectively had volunteer labor in terms of folks making copies to share with friends on floppies, and BBSes distributing the software on your behalf. With the internet, this generally continued. So there were certainly fatter margins for developers on Mac/PC doing digital distribution before Steam, App Store, etc started to suck the air out of the room.

But Sweeny should be well aware of all this, with Epic paying distributor fees for their boxed games in the past, paying platform fees on consoles, etc, etc. So really, it's a fight between a platform owner and someone who wants to be a platform owner. Epic sees being an App Store as the next way to grow the business and Fortnite is the lever to do so. But the PC world has an entrenched player (Valve) that vexes even Microsoft and the consoles are non-starters. Epic has an app store on Android where they are using Fortnite as the means to drive installs. I think Epic is gambling that cracking open iOS might give them a sort of first mover advantage against other players, especially with IP that makes billions a year.



Probably is the same account but with flags/notes attached to block use of things Apple doesn't want to give them access to. Apple wants folks doing everything under a single developer ID based on their behavior up to this point.

Looks like it's a new developer account.

"

Update on Epic's return to iOS in Europe: Developer account secured!​

We've received our Apple Developer Account and will start developing the Epic Games Store on iOS soon thanks to the new Digital Markets Act. We plan to launch in 2024. Epic Games Sweden AB will operate the mobile Epic Games Store and Fortnite in Europe, with the Store team leading development."

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2023-year-in-review

 

[Nycturne]

We've received our Apple Developer Account and will start developing the Epic Games Store on iOS soon thanks to the new Digital Markets Act. We plan to launch in 2024. Epic Games Sweden AB will operate the mobile Epic Games Store and Fortnite in Europe, with the Store team leading development."

Yeah, that makes sense if a subsidiary is going to be running it.