Epic Games has filed a lawsuit [1] and published a Fortnite-themed parody of Apple's "1984" [2] to get some publicity for it.
[1] https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf
replies(8):
[1] https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf
The idea that a large platform like iOS can only have apps loaded through a market place controlled by the hardware manufactured is clearly in violation of the spirit of anti-trust laws.
However there's no legal precedent on this because no one with deep enough pockets to fight Apple has been angry enough to do it yet.
Meaning this could be great news for everyone if this goes to court and Apple loses as they should.
The big differentiator is that phones have become the most frequently used personal computing device for many people, and we expect the freedom to use it how we want.
But the situation being almost the same, a ruling in one would trigger a tidal wave in the other.
There was a fun moment in last year’s vergecast interview with a lawyer on the App store issue, also related to Epic I think. The case of console stores was brought to the conversation, and the lawyer bailed out of it pretty fast with a “there might be similarities but we need to look deeper before saying anything, let’s put that aside for now” kind of answer.
The original Apple parody was to convince consumers to switch from one platform (PC) to a different platform (Mac).
Now, maybe you believe Apple, in the form of iOS, has become Big Brother. Fine, in that case, Epic should provide its own gaming platform.
But Epic isn't trying to destroy Big Brother here. It still wants to run on Big Brother's platform. It just doesn't want to give up any revenue to do so.
Shrug.
We should! I would love to run Steam on my PS4.
But Sony already invests in some studios to develop games for their platform.
In general, those console platform owners have been much friendlier to publishers than Apple (and maybe Google) since game publishers generally have much more negotiation power against console platform holders. Nintendo's primary weak point has been lack of 3rd-party games. MS and Sony compete with each other to gain more exclusive offers and they even provide substantial subsidiary to developers. If you want to enforce your own arbitrary rule at the cost of losing CoD, I don't think it's going to be a good trade-off. Creative contents are usually not replaceable and publishers don't really have incentives to attack game platform holders in this dynamic.
The same thing doesn't really apply to App stores since 1. the upfront cost for buying a phone compared to usual apps is much higher (>100x), especially for the premium phone comparable to iPhone, while it's <10x for usual consoles 2. Apple (and Google) also has their own alternative services for many popular apps so hurting competitors by setting arbitrary rules is actually beneficial for them. In short, having a monopolistic status itself is not problematic but exercising it is.
That argument would ring less hollow had they done that on the platform that does allow side loading, but they eventually published on the Google Play store.
Actually they just got banned on android as well, so now they only allow sideloading on android.
If every Tom, Dick and Harry could setup an app store for the iPhone, this doesn't necessarily give me more control. It might mean I am then forced to use the Epic platform for all Epic related products. Now how do I know that Epic have appropriately vetted their application? What if they start producing applications for the iPhone which are terrible?
This is a big problem on the Google store whereby plenty of the apps are rubbish.
The word you’re looking for by the way is “financially”. Fiscally is to do with taxes.
The OED establishes a North American usage of this term as "relating to financial matters", and is not exclusive to taxes.
Arguably I think there would be a reasonable anti-trust suit against the OS as well, it's not clear to me why it isn't illegal to utilize their monopoly on their hardware to create a monopoly on the OS running on the device.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gamin...
https://twitter.com/FacebookGaming/status/129170874980819763...
It seem like something their lawyers pitched to them as “hey if it works, great, you save millions a year on the App Store percentage, and if it doesn’t, hey, at least you’ll get a whole lot of publicity, which should drive your sales up enough to more than compensate for the losses of being off the stores for a bit.”
1. The historical origin of "decimate" does not define the English word. Many words have historical origins that differ with their current definitions.
2. The word "fiscal" does not refer only to "taxes" but also to financial matters in general.
If I have a son, in December, then I have another son the next year in January, which one is my first son?
> The idea that a large platform like iOS can only have apps loaded through a market place controlled by the hardware manufactured is clearly in violation of the spirit of anti-trust laws.
By the way, I never the said the guy was wrong to say fiscally. It was sort of a sloppy usage of the word—in my opinion of course. Which I hope its obvious that this is, seeing as its a comment in a forum!
And I’m certainly not wrong to say that fiscally is to do with taxes. I might have been wrong assuming that he or she was looking for a less ambiguous word. I do tend to assume the best in people, and am often wrong.
I'm no fan of Apple -- they engage in massive tax avoidance, labor arbitrage, and are just too big for my taste. Same criticism of Google. And Facebook. But you don't go from emotion --> must be illegal. There has to be some reasonable standard you can apply that will make sense across time and across companies/industries. What is that standard?
Perhaps congress should legislate the share of revenue that a platform is allowed to take. Not being ironic; if we are going to regulate this, let's do it with lawmakers instead of courts.
No, I just understand that words can have multiple definitions and any of them is perfectly valid to use. You were simply wrong to "correct" them in both cases.
Here's what you did:
> "...a comment in a forum"
I think you meant "a comment on a web site" because a forum means an ancient Roman marketplace...see how stupid this game is?
Both comments were tongue in cheek.
Apparently since more explanation is clearly warranted, I’ll provide it.
In the comment about fiscally, I thought it odd that the person appeared to be concerned with whether indie developers, of which I am one, were going to be contributing to government revenues, since I’ve only ever heard fiscally used in a tax context by professionals. And certainly when I approach my financial strategy, taxes are always a consequence of the goal, and not the goal itself.
In the other comment, I was making a joke, which seems to have gone a bit over your head.
By the way, a “web site” is simply the location where an arachnid...
All of Apple Arcade's games are just mobile games already available in the App store and reviewed individually. The above options are quite a different proposition and Apple's only grievance is they can't review the PC-style game content they are distributing.
It's probably more like Netflix than Apple Arcade, since they are streaming arbitrary content with subscriptions. But games have always been treated different, so again they are not being uniquely targeted.
(Not that I agree with blocking them)
Anyway, I think you get my point and hopefully I wasn't too harsh but sorry if I was. Have a good day/night!
There no such clear cut on what is acceptable or not. In fact, typically console makers charges much more than 10% but not much companies are complaining about that because it's more negotiable compared to the app store situation. The court may decide how to remedy this, but the decision won't be made simply based on the app store cut but take care of other contexts as well.
The real issue is, Apple has designed their product in order to retain complete control on potential customer facing interactions and is blatantly exercising their market power. The game platforms are usually not in a position to do so. Android might be slightly better but IMO this also needs to be addressed.
> There has to be some reasonable standard you can apply that will make sense across time and across companies/industries. What is that standard?
The existing antitrust framework is already capable of handling this app store situation; even assuming Apple is not a dominant player (which is a very optimistic assumption in favor of Apple; app store is likely a monopoly based on hypothetical monopolist test), tying iPhone, App Store and its payment module already brings significant legal risks. Though it still needs to evolve to address other situations such as Amazon or Google.
I invite you to read even the headline of the article this thread is about.
How has apple done this in a fundamentally different way from sony? I'm not seeing the difference here, which means I'm not seeing what you consider to be the real issue. Care to elaborate?
> The existing antitrust framework is already capable of handling this app store situation;
I think you are going to be dissapointed. Maybe EU antitrust would adopt more of a philosophical criteria for fairness, but US antitrust is unlikely to side with Epic here.
Some of them are just better at bamboozling schmucks^Wmore naive consumers into becoming their loyal fans and projecting some nobler characteristics onto these corporations, and even identifying with their brand, and becoming an unpaid extension of the corporation's PR department by arguing for them ferociously on online forums.
There is nothing ideological about why Epic is doing this. The merely did their calculations and determined (or at worst made a safe bet) that the money invested in this will cause them to get more money in the long run, regardless of the outcome.
Epic is the maker of unreal engine, which collects a 5% royalty on licensee game sales over $1M.
So they would stand to profit somewhat more than just from lower fees on Fortnite.
This way of viewing things leads to some really silly conclusions. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the iPhone, the premise is intrinsically absurd. By this argument literally any non-commodity product is a "monopoly" of the company that distributes it.
Moreover, what Apple sells isn't hardware, it's hardware with software on it. That's the product. As far as I know there is no official way to buy either iOS or an iPhone that doesn't have iOS installed. Sometimes companies take an opinionated stance on how they distribute their products, like a firearm manufacturer that only manufactures firearms that have a safety. Framing that sort of thing as an antitrust issue is unreasonable.
It's the large scale clients that are hurt the most by the 30% cut. Old timer indie devs who used to have to manage payment and distribution themselves, like Jeff Vogel, will tell you that Steam's cut is absolutely fair given the value it brings. On PC there are different platforms competing for Steam, which might be a reason why Valve introduced discount tiers for more successful titles. If an outcome of the PR stunt is that Apple decreases its cut, it will likely be a similar arrangement which does not benefit the small businesses.
The issue with the App Store is not the cut, but that it is the only gate to the iOS walled garden.
In essence, any practice that helps compete in the market by other ways than increasing value to the consumer is suspect. Incidentally, this is a double edges sword, as this is the interpretation of the antitrust laws that has enabled the rise of so many monopoly-like companies in the last few decades. (e.g. Amazon: we're increasing value to customers because we can offer lower prices if we're larger)
If Apple changed their stance to "all services and digital goods associated with your app must included in the original purchase price", that might meet the court's requirements for legality but it would leave Epic without their current revenue stream.
It's not the same.
> Blizzard raises this argument in its motion, contending that Defendants cannot establish antitrust claims based on its users' voluntary consent to the EULA and TOU. (Mot. Br. 22–23.) Although Blizzard does not argue this point in the market power analysis, the Court finds that this discussion is applicable to whether the market power requirement is established. Blizzard cites Newcal, Queen City Pizza, Inc. v. Domino's Pizza, Inc., 124 F.3d 430, 441 (3d Cir.1997), and Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp., 586 F.Supp.2d 1190, 1201 (N.D.Cal.2008), to show that Defendants cannot base its claims on the aftermarket restrictions. ( See Opp'n Br. 17.) These cases explain that the law prohibits an antitrust claimant from asserting an antitrust claim “resting on market power that arises solely from contractual rights that customers knowingly and voluntarily gave to the defendant” when they purchased the initial tying product.
https://casetext.com/case/blizzard-entmt-inc-v-ceiling-fan-s...
My point was, they had the chance and in fact did go completely sideloading on Android, but eventually caved and joined the Play store. Obviously there’s value enough for them to take Google’s 30% cut in the Play store, so why did they do it? Why wasn’t staying sideload only enough, especially when they are arguing they should be able to do it on iOS.
> Which was actually what their update did on Apple too
Sorry, but that’s 100% false. Adding an extra payment option in your app is not the same thing as sideloading and not going through the App Store for publishing and distribution. Apples and Oranges so you speak.
The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's order and ruled that Accolade's use of reverse engineering to publish Genesis titles was protected under fair use, and that its alleged violation of Sega trademarks was the fault of Sega.
I suspect Apple will argue the oppose. The "freedom" argument has been common in the perennial "iOS v Android" discussions, from which I'd note that iOS appeals to many because it's locked down; it's easy to use and it's not junk. The Play Store was a mess last I remember it. Some consider that freedom, others dislike it. It's a brand perception thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple makes the same point, that an open platform would harm their brand reputation.
It's good that Steam has competition! And I wish Epic's was competing on features, but at the moment their platform only competes by having a lower cut and payed exclusives only. The only benefit to users has been that Epic funded certain games that would otherwise might not have happened.
I get what you're saying, but I think companies monopolising eyeballs then charging you an entry fee is... Kinda bull. Skimming is fine, but I want their margins to be tiny.
Having done a little digging into the relevant case law I agree with your assessment, US courts have generally been very reluctant to find antitrust violations in aftermarket scenarios where the customer was fully aware of aftermarket limitations before purchasing a product, had the opportunity to buy an alternative product without such limitations, and proceeded to buy the original product anyway.
I think the most likely outcome is Epic's case is dismissed based on failure to establish that "iOS app distribution" is a separate and relevant market for antitrust purposes.