Apple boots Fortnite off the App Store

[Weavus]

Quote

Apple seems to have come at Epic with every possible violation of the agreement it could find. The company cites not just the “Epic direct payment” feature — which kicked off this whole conflict — but also a lack of descriptiveness in Fortnite’s app update notes, saying it used too much of a “generic statement.” Apple sent its warning letter on August 14th, giving Epic until August 28th to make the changes.

 

Don't want to sound like an Apple apologist again, but if the only thing that comes out of this multi-billion dollar pissing match is forcing developers into writing more descriptive app update notes then it will be well worth it.

[phillv85]

Damn, this is escalating.

 

[Alex W.]

5 minutes ago, Weavus said:

 

Don't want to sound like an Apple apologist again, but if the only thing that comes out of this multi-billion dollar pissing match is forcing developers into writing more description app update notes then it will be well worth it.

Do you think they are angry that it said:

 

* Various fixes

 

and not:

 

* The code elves have been hard at work fighting all those naughty bug goblins to make your app experience even better than ever!

[Isaac]

2 hours ago, moosegrinder said:

 

 

 

This is a really fucking stupid thing to do when you're fighting anti-competitive lawsuits in multiple geographies, each of which could go independently against you.

 

Proper left hand not talking to the right hand stuff.

 

Either that or some lawyer or team of lawyers has told them this is a fucking stupid move and some blowhard executive has pushed it through anyway due to a damaged ego.

[Alex W.]

If Apple really needs this to go away they could just buy Epic. Epic’s a vast corporation but Apple’s got more cash on hand than they can usefully apply. They wouldn’t even notice the money was gone.

[footle]

I’m not sure buying the company suing you gets you out of the antitrust ruling in Europe.

meanwhile, if they think Epics patch notes are bad, I’d love to see their opinion on their own security fix patch notes.

[layten]

8 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

If Apple really needs this to go away they could just buy Epic. Epic’s a vast corporation but Apple’s got more cash on hand than they can usefully apply. They wouldn’t even notice the money was gone.

Sweeney alone owns 44% of Epic, Apple might find it hard to wrest control.

Also

 

[Broker]

Why is this so bad for UE? I can’t read legalese. Is it not being able to have UE development on macs? Or not being able to port UE stuff to iOS?

[Ferine]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

Do you think they are angry that it said:

 

* Various fixes

 

and not:

 

* The code elves have been hard at work fighting all those naughty bug goblins to make your app experience even better than ever!

There's always the third option, checking the Update History of a freshly patched PS4 game only for it to tell you to go to a URL to see what's changed. (And then you go to the URL and the patch notes aren't up yet.)

 

Regarding Apple's new scorched earth strategy, outside of all the people using Unreal for iOS games I imagine it would also be damaging to Epic's burgeoning presence in the special effects field.

[footle]

12 minutes ago, Ferine said:

There's always the third option, checking the Update History of a freshly patched PS4 game only for it to tell you to go to a URL to see what's changed. (And then you go to the URL and the patch notes aren't up yet.)

 

Regarding Apple's new scorched earth strategy, outside of all the people using Unreal for iOS games I imagine it would also be damaging to Epic's burgeoning presence in the special effects field.

Or to Apple, who want to move people onto a whole new processor family.

The very concept of closed development tools is something that even Microsoft at their worst didn’t get into.

[MK-1601]

Blocking Unreal would also mean Apple kicking several current and forthcoming games off Apple Arcade.

 

It's an insanely disproportionate response to an unrelated contract violation.

[Hass]

Apple reportedly building its own game streaming service. Sometimes these anti-competition suits just write themselves!

 

[MK-1601]

Or rather they've filed a patent and a content mill has used this to pull a story directly out of their arse.

[Eighthours]

15 minutes ago, MK-1601 said:

Or rather they've filed a patent and a content mill has used this to pull a story directly out of their arse.

 

Even if Apple pursue this, as the patent mentions the need for 5G tech it would be years away from becoming a realistically releasable product given the slow rollout of that service.

[Mr. Gerbik]

2 hours ago, MK-1601 said:

Or rather they've filed a patent and a content mill has used this to pull a story directly out of their arse.

The fact that they've filed that patent is by itself more than enough to use as evidence/an argument when you're making a case for alleged anti-competition practices when they're preventing any other company from streaming games.

[Disgraced Toblerone]

1 hour ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

The fact that they've filed that patent is by itself more than enough to use as evidence/an argument when you're making a case for alleged anti-competition practices when they're preventing any other company from streaming games.

Evidence? In court? 

[Mr. Gerbik]

I've seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know how that works.

[Disgraced Toblerone]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

I've seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know how that works.

Fair enough!

[deerokus]

13 hours ago, Hass said:

Apple reportedly building its own game streaming service. Sometimes these anti-competition suits just write themselves!

 

How can they patent that? 

[MechE]

Phones are everything. All of life. Almost all of my interactions with the outside world are through my phone. This is only going to continue to increase. Several developing countries are very rapidly moving from physical cash to phone based money.

 

Two Silicon Valley companies own the whole app market place. You want to enter this digital world, you've got to hand over a hefty chunk of cash to these two rent seeking parasites.

 

I'm a civil servant who designs policy for some of the most vulnerable people in society. If we designed an app for these people to access and pay for certain services and put it on the app store, Apple would demand a 30% slice of any payment made and would insist that we couldn't inform people that they could pay through a website.

 

Google and Apple have too much power over this incredibly vital part of the smooth functioning of modern society and some genuine democratic oversight is required before we sleepwalk into a dystopian Weyland-Yutani future.

[deerokus]

With the latest injunction, I must say, as much as Apple are pretty evil, they're not obliged to offer Epic development support, surely. 

 

 

It's like getting kicked out of their house and suing to be allowed to watch the TV. 

 

I suppose their real goal here is to be able to set up a rival app store. 

[Popo]

On 17/08/2020 at 22:37, Alex W. said:

If Apple really needs this to go away they could just buy Epic. Epic’s a vast corporation but Apple’s got more cash on hand than they can usefully apply. They wouldn’t even notice the money was gone.

“I bought the whole games industry... it seemed neater.”

[Isaac]

2 hours ago, deerokus said:

With the latest injunction, I must say, as much as Apple are pretty evil, they're not obliged to offer Epic development support, surely. 

 

 

It's like getting kicked out of their house and suing to be allowed to watch the TV. 

 

I suppose their real goal here is to be able to set up a rival app store. 

 

Except it fucks over all of the companies developing for iOS using Unreal engine, who have no part in the original dispute.

 

It's a really really shitty move by Apple. It will play very well in the lawsuits currently running though, it's pretty much textbook anticompetitive behaviour.

[deerokus]

22 minutes ago, Isaac said:

 

 

It's a really really shitty move by Epic. 

Corrected. 

 

Epic broke the terms and that's the consequence. It's just like the brexiteers who wanted to be out of the EU but have all the benefits. 

 

Hopefully lawyers will get rich off of these two ridiculous companies 

[Isaac]

5 minutes ago, deerokus said:

Corrected. 

 

Epic broke the terms and that's the consequence. It's just like the brexiteers who wanted to be out of the EU but have all the benefits. 

 

Hopefully lawyers will get rich off of these two ridiculous companies 

 

Nah, the fundamental issue is Apple being a gatekeeper and taking a huge cut of all revenue through a platform that is more and more necessary for basic functioning of life - although @MechE puts it far better than I could.

 

Apple are the ones abusing their position in the market here.

 

Eventually legislation will catch up and mandate a more sensible cut though - I imagine 5-10% will become the limit.

[footle]

18 minutes ago, deerokus said:

Corrected. 

 

Epic broke the terms and that's the consequence. It's just like the brexiteers who wanted to be out of the EU but have all the benefits. Hopefully lawyers will get rich off of these two ridiculous companies 

Depends if the terms are fair and reciprocal. It’s nothing like the brexiteers at all.

[Mogster]

1 hour ago, deerokus said:

Corrected. 

 

Epic broke the terms and that's the consequence. It's just like the brexiteers who wanted to be out of the EU but have all the benefits. 

 

Hopefully lawyers will get rich off of these two ridiculous companies 

That's like saying all Ford owners should be banned from driving due to a new Ford car including a mounted machine gun, or something. It's hardly a proportionate response.

[amc]

Hope I can still download the Infinity Blade games in the next few days. Bought the lot of them a few years back when I dabbled with iOS and I'm going to have the ability to dabble again tomorrow. They've probably been nuked already knowing my luck.

[Ste Pickford]

On 17/08/2020 at 22:51, Broker said:

Why is this so bad for UE? I can’t read legalese. Is it not being able to have UE development on macs? Or not being able to port UE stuff to iOS?

 

I presume it means, in immediate practical terms, that the UE development team at Epic can no longer continue to develop and update the engine to work with the latest iterations of iOS and iPhone hardware, and provide these updates to UE developers working on iOS games.  Which, with the rate at which Apple modifies the OS and makes things obsolete, means UE would be out of date in a matter of months and no longer usable to create submittable apps.  Apple could probably make a change to the OS tomorrow which meant apps built with the existing version of UE were no longer submittable.

[Alex W.]

When push comes to shove, there are a few companies which have a very fundamental role in modern software development and infrastructure, and whose opinions shape Apple’s policies. Epic is just the most recent and belligerent of them but they’re not the first. Apple only takes a 15% cut of recurring payments after year one because companies like Netflix lobbied for it. They have a whole program for letting sufficiently large video and music providers bypass the Apple payment system entirely individual item purchases. Epic is just using their strong position to push things their way.