[0x402DF854]

From a preliminary statement of Epic's motion:

> Just over two weeks ago, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was asked during a Congressional hearing whether Apple has “ever retaliated against or disadvantaged a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store”. Mr. Cook testified, “We do not retaliate or bully people. It’s strongly against our company culture.”

[pwinnski]

Some might see a difference between "a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store" and a developer who deliberately violated the policies and then filed a lawsuit and started an extensive PR campaign.

[modeless]

Epic needed to demonstrate that they and consumers were harmed in order to have standing to sue. If Apple's policies are illegal then Epic is not bound to follow them and retaliation is unjustified. It won't be known until it's decided in court. That's why Epic's motion should be granted to prevent retaliation until the court decides.

[zip1234]

How would Apple's policies be illegal? Epic entered a contractual agreement with Apple and then knowingly and intentionally broke it in order to benefit themselves.

[laser]

I'm not a lawyer, but presumably because there's US antitrust law, under which the courts may find Apple's contractual impositions to be illegal. They may also find they are legal, but if the court has any doubt they should grant Epic's request to stop retaliation.

[ChrisLomont]

I doubt this is antitrust. There's a zillion other places to sell a game (as Epic has shown). If you want to claim the entire market in question to be Apple products, I doubt that will get very far. Everything is a monopoly when you make your market hyper specific.

[ben-schaaf]

This isn't some hyper specific market. Mobile games are a $76 billion industry (and rising) with the overwhelming majority of users only having access through either the Google play store or Apple store.

[tc313]

Well that’s Epic’s argument, so it’s the question that the courts will resolve in this case.

[modeless]

Epic is specifically arguing that Apple's policies violate the Sherman Act, the California Cartwright Act, and the Unfair Competition Law of California. For more information, refer to the complaint: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf

[Sebguer]

You realize that contracts don't override the law, right?

[romanoderoma]

If we sign an agreement where in exchange for my services you have to give me your first daughter, you can break the contract and refuse to pay, even if you signed it, because it's illegal.

[greggyb]

In legal terms, a contract is an enforceable agreement; by definition if it is illegal or void or unenforceable, it is not a contract. Breach is a thing you do to a contract. Therefore you can't breach an illegal contract - you never had a contract.

[pwinnski]

Epic's motion is to allow them to continue to deliberately flout the rules of the App Store, which opens up a lot of other issues.

Apple has signaled that Epic is welcome to submit a version of their app which does not violate their rules, and they will approve that. They're walking a fine line, but I think their legal argument is sound on that score.

We can agree or disagree about the overall right or wrong of Apple's rules, that's separate from the issue of Epic's motion, which is absolute nonsense.

[naikrovek]

Yes, this exactly. I hope everyone reads this.

[ProAm]

> a developer who deliberately violated the policies

Are you talking about Netflix?

[ascagnel_]

I'm unaware of any current legal action Netflix is taking against Apple.

[senko]

That's not what the parent said.

[pwinnski]

I listed three conditions: "[1] violated the policies and then [2] filed a lawsuit and [3] started an extensive PR campaign"

Netflix arguably did the first, but I don't recall them doing either of the other two things.

[ProAm]

Because they were not kicked from the app store for doing so.

[627467]

Some might also see that to breakthrough a totalitarian platform good coordination of efforts (lawsuits, PR, etc) are needed.

[fxtentacle]

The acceptable punishment part is when Apple closes the Fortnite developer account.

The unacceptable retaliation is that Apple threatens to close the developer accounts of everyone working on the Unreal Engine, which is used in millions of projects in addition to Fortnite.

What Apple is doing here is akin to mafia punching your sister to get you to pay up.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Why closing Fortnite developer account is acceptable? If they have one app that was banned for 'violating guidelines', and another one that doesn't violate anything, why should the second app be removed, too? Because the unruly developer must be punished?

[koboll]

Some might. But Tim Cook seems not to, because his answer, "We do not retaliate or bully people", was unequivocal.

[victords]

It’s still retaliation. No way around that.

[nomel]

Some would consider this enforcement, which is not the same as retaliation.

[manquer]

How so ? They are pulling access to all platforms including desktop, also unreal is sdk/library used by ton of third parties , all of them are impacted too

[judge2020]

It's equal enforcement among all developers. Every other time that a developer has intentionally broken app store guidelines Apple has terminated their entire Developer account.

[manquer]

epic size orgs would not just use one account. It includes preview access and to clot products .

In my experience , I usually sign different agreements with different products for such diverse access . Sometimes it is with different legal entities .

I don’t know if Apple does an MSA which is the kind of document which covers the general engagement , so unless such a MSA exists and allows for this kind of termination , I am pretty sure this cannot be done for violating guidelines of single agreement to cancel other contracts in place.

Apple probably has clauses to unilaterally terminate agreements and is invoking that, but that is not remotely the same as closing down a account for violating guidelines

[romanoderoma]

Well mafia could say the same thing

But if you use a gun like Apple did...

[jrhurst]

All that really will matter is how the government and courts see it. Those words will be used in court.

[AcerbicZero]

Its a little surprising how effective that PR campaign has been so far.

[yholio]

Your sentence for today to write 100 times, Bart Simpson style, is: "I shall never use my monopoly power to restrict access to justice for my clients".

[mirthflat83]

A PR campaign geared towards kids... which is quite embarrassing

[askl56]

https://twitter.com/slasher/status/1295434558112960519?s=21

This may have consequences for Unreal Engine too.

Without a dev account, how can they maintain it?

[danudey]

They can still build and test on-device, they just won't be able to publish anything to the app store.

Specifically, in XCode, they can add an Apple ID (any Apple ID) and use that to build on a device.[1] This creates a "personal team"[2] which you can use to test on your devices.

[1] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devaf282080a [2] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/dev17411c009

[kalleboo]

That would work technically, but legally would a company that has been banned from the developer program have their developers use "Personal Teams" also be against the Terms of Service?

[saagarjha]

You can’t use Apple’s developer tools, period.

[danudey]

You absolutely can use Apple's developer tools without a developer account, and you absolutely can build and run code on a device without a developer account. I'm not sure why Epic claimed otherwise (other than that losing their developer account makes it far more inconvenient), but it's really just fearmongering to try to get the public on their side.

[nodamage]

Just because you're physically able to download, install, and run something doesn't mean you have the legal right to use it. The developer tools come with a license agreement in which Apple legally grants you the rights to use the tools, and those rights can be revoked.

[kalleboo]

Apple told Epic they will lose access to "all Apple developer tools" https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/12954667012204666...

[saagarjha]

The tools have EULA on them, though.

[mvn9]

Why then all those monopoly-discussions? Cannot any program be 'side-loaded' by creating a personal team?

Or the other way round: What good would be a personal team for epic if they cannot test their games on actual phones?

If personal teams allow side-loading of apps, why isn't this a way to distribute apps? Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

[misnome]

You need to re-sign it frequently because the certificate is only short-lived, and I think there are difficulties in signing existing binaries that make it mostly only useful for things you can distribute the source for.

It's not really an alternative to an app store. There are also enterprise signing certificates for distributing custom apps within large companies without these restrictions, along with cases in the past where people have abused this to distribute; these are usually shut down pretty quickly as a blatant violation of the licencing agreement.

[johncolanduoni]

Re-signing iOS binaries is tedious, but ultimately scriptable (including creating certificates, provisioning profiles, etc.). Android’s sideloading is significantly easier, and it still hasn’t led to anyone competing with their App Store.

[mvn9]

>still hasn’t led to anyone competing with their App Store.

F-Droid.org?

[anchpop]

Amazon at one point made a strong attempt to compete, and I actually bought a few apps from there. Also, on Android Epic made their own app store you had to sideload to download Fortnite.

[mvn9]

How can they shut down distribution? If a personal team can install any sourcecode, how could apple block the distribution? Even if they scan for a binary hash, all it takes are some minor modifications to have a different program to install.

[misnome]

Oh, no there are a few of things here, and I think I got slightly confused. There is local signing, which I believe is short term - e.g. your own machine and device, which doesn't require paying anything to apple for a developer membership. This is for on-device testing.

There's also Ad-hoc signing, which I believe is longer-lived, requires a developer account, but has restrictions on how many people you can send it to.

As an enterprise user you can also distribute apps yourself to company employees without going via app store verification, though I think it's much harder to get onto this program https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/ . This is what has occasionally been abused, I don't know how the certificate is revoked centrally though, but it's not for [user] self-compiled code.

It's possible that my knowledge of this is slightly off, because it was a few years since I worked with this stuff.

[Someone]

They can’t shut down distribution of source code, but:

- your typical user wouldn’t know what to do with it

- every install would run only for a limited time (only apps distributed through the App Store have a certificate that doesn’t expire), so those users would have to reinstall the app every week or so.

- it would make it harder for them to make money from it (they would give away the game for free. The in-game store wouldn’t give away stuff, but the source likely would soon be changed to support alternative stores)

[arcticbull]

> Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

Honestly, for most people the App Store is good enough. For a long, long time, it wasn't good enough, and Apple was much stricter. As it got better, Apple started loosening the restrictions around deploying whatever you want to your device. People didn't really notice, and that's because the App Store was good enough. I suspect this was the game plan all along.

[danudey]

Other people have pointed out that the certificates don't last as long and you need to constantly re-sign your apps. This can be worked around, for sure, but it does mean that if you're out of the house when the cert expires, you cannot use that app until you get home.

It also requires a Mac; Windows or Linux owners of iPhones are out of luck.

Lastly, you lose access to a lot of features; push notifications, IAP, automatic updates, iCloud, etc.

Basically, if Epic wanted to do this, they'd have to let everyone download the code and assets for Fortnite (likely hundreds of GB), then users would have to build it on their devices (which probably would take hours), then install it on their devices, then they would have to pay via Epic and not through iTunes. Whenever they wanted to update Fortnite they'd have to update the source tree and assets and rebuild the app again.

And again, all of this would have to be on a Mac. I know a lot of people who own Macs which don't even have enough disk space to build something like Fortnite, even if they used it for literally nothing else.

TL;DR Epic would have to open-source Fortnite and users would have to jump through irritating and potentially impossible hoops basically every day.

[grishka]

Or, alternatively, use a jailbroken device for testing and modify the SDK to not require code signing when building for ARM.

[saagarjha]

I’m fairly sure the SDK is only meant to be used by approved developers.

[Hamuko]

Are there Apple Arcade games that use the Unreal Engine? Is Apple shooting itself in the leg to punish Epic?

[gamblor956]

Many of the biggest Apple games use Unreal Engine, including many that Apple features in the Arcade.

[pouta]

Slasher isn't and never will be a trusted source.

[ArchOversight]

This isn't retaliation though for Epic going on Twitter and being angry about the App Store practices, or the situation like Hey where the was a lot of press and negativity.

Epic breached the terms of the agreement for their app, so their app was removed from the App Store. Other than needing to fix their app to no longer be in violation of the guidelines, they could have cured that breach of the contract.

Instead Epic decided to sue Apple in court.

According to the Apple Developer Program License that you agree to (section 11.2 specifically) states:

> This Agreement and all rights and licenses granted by Apple hereunder and any services provided hereunder will terminate, effective immediately upon notice from Apple: > (a) if You or any of Your Authorized Developers fail to comply with any term of this Agreement other than those set forth below in this Section 11.2 and fail to cure such breach within 30 days after becoming aware of or receiving notice of such breach;

and section (f):

> (f) if You engage, or encourage others to engage, in any misleading, fraudulent, improper, unlawful or dishonest act relating to this Agreement, including, but not limited to, misrepresenting the nature of Your submitted Application (e.g., hiding or trying to hide functionality from Apple’s review, falsifying consumer reviews for Your Application, engaging in payment fraud, etc.).

This is not retaliation, this is simply following the license agreement that Epic agreed to.

[woofie11]

A one-sided agreement containing a retaliation clause, followed by exercising that clause, is retaliation.

Say you're desperate and need water in a crisis, and I offer you some, but only if you sign an agreement which gives you water, but says I can punch you in the face whenever you say something I don't like. Say you say something I don't like, and I punch you in the face. Did I just retaliate? Or did the contract make it not retaliation?

Apple is clearly retaliating, and I think it's gonna cost Apple way more than it realizes. Removing Epic games is one thing. This is a whole different can of worms.

[danudey]

Apple said "Here are the terms, you can use our services if you agree to them, and if you break them we'll close your account."

Epic said "Okay, we agree.", then broke the terms they agreed to, so Apple is closing their account.

This seems like pretty straightforward break of the terms of use to me.

The reasonable way Epic could have proceeded is to have submitted an update with the "third party store" stuff added, gotten it rejected, and then rolled it back while suing Apple.

Instead, Epic pulled a publicity stunt by sneaking it in, specifically so that Apple and Google would remove their app, and then suing, in an attempt to make themselves look like the good guy (which, depending on your perspective, might be true).

It doesn't feel any more mature than goading someone into throwing a punch at you so you can claim to be "defending yourself" when really you were just being a douche and you got what you asked for.

[greycol]

There's a reason contracts of adhesion are very often not binding. I'm not saying that's the case here (as B2B it will be more likely that the oppressive terms in the terms of use could be upheld) but it's worth considering when saying Epic agreed to the contract.

Like it or not IOS has 2/3rds of revenue in the mobile apps market and how many businesses can afford to leave 46%(0.7*0.66), of their revenue on the table?

It's pretty obvious that epic has goaded apple into punching them. But there's plenty of people who feel it's the equivalent of apple saying you have to give me your lunch money every 3 days or I'll beat you and epic making sure the teacher is watching when they maliciously don't hand over their lunch money (I'll add I'm not arguing that the schools football team wouldn't have much fewer wins without apple, to stretch the metaphor to breaking).

[arcticbull]

> It doesn't feel any more mature than goading someone into throwing a punch at you so you can claim to be "defending yourself" when really you were just being a douche and you got what you asked for.

Still, illegal, and that's the question being litigated here.

You can stick anything you want in an EULA but it's not automatically enforceable. If Apple started adding a stipulation that your first-born would be a slave to Tim making iPhones for life, that wouldn't be enforceable. In general you can't sue until there's damages -- so you couldn't sue just for that term existing in the EULA. You wait for your first-born to enter slavery, then sue.

[WindyLakeReturn]

>This seems like pretty straightforward break of the terms of use to me.

And closing the account is retaliation.

I think people are giving different meanings to words, with moral judgment tied to some of these meanings, and these meanings are causing confusion.

Let's take the word discriminate. Is it wrong if I discriminate when hiring someone? Many will say yes, but because they are thinking of specific forms of discrimination such as based on race or gender. But if I choose to not hire someone because of a lack of programming skill, that is still discrimination, but isn't wrong.

So back on topic. The action of closing the account is retaliation. So the question becomes is it wrong, but to answer that clearly depends upon if Apple's terms are right to begin with and if it is possible to offer someone terms that are wrong to uphold.

[ChrisLomont]

>And closing the account is retaliation.

What good is a terms of use if that use cannot be rescinded upon breaching the terms?

[jkulubya]

Implicit in your question is that the terms are valid. Epic will make the case that they’re not.

And if they succeed, then the terms will be worth nothing, and Apple would have to explain why they go around signing illegal agreements that for example allow them to punch people in the face.

If Epic fails, then yeah, the legal terms say for example that the punishment for what Epic did is a punch in the face, and Apple is just enforcing that legally.

[misnome]

> Instead, Epic pulled a publicity stunt by sneaking it in, specifically so that Apple and Google would remove their app

I definitely remember cases from the early years of the App Store where people would deliberately sneak e.g. tethering apps into the App Store in the guise of a game, and usually came to public attention when their account was banned.

[Guvante]

What are the damages in your hypothetical?

Because Epic knows the damages in this real situation and everyone agrees what they are.

[aaomidi]

The idea that "it was in the contract that Epic agreed to" is ridiculous. It wasn't a contract that Epic could've disagreed to.

This is the same for end users, but we don't have the power to start a lawsuit against Apple.

[jerf]

The legal term you are looking for is "contract of adhesion": https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_%28contrac...

However, a lot of the text around those contracts you'll find centers around a powerful entity like Apple adhering the contract to a nearly-powerless entity, like an individual consumer. I'm not up enough on the details of what case law has been created to know what happen to a contract of adhesion legally when the signer (Epic in this case) is not powerless themselves. Since Epic is at least nominally capable of negotiating their own contract with Apple on roughly equal terms, the contract may be treated more like a normal contract.

My uninformed, personal guess is that Epic isn't conceptualizing this as a legal fight; I bet they think of this as a PR fight where the lawsuit is part of their PR narrative trying to get Apple to back down on their take. As a pure legal fight this doesn't strike me as a strong hand, but as a part of a larger PR fight... who knows. They may be trying to create a position to negotiate a settlement from.

(If this is correct, and I were Epic, I'd be looking to partner with other very large and peeved developers, and create a de facto app producer strike... but maybe they think they have enough market clout to go it alone.)

[Despegar]

>(If this is correct, and I were Epic, I'd be looking to partner with other very large and peeved developers, and create a de facto app producer strike... but maybe they think they have enough market clout to go it alone.)

This would actually be a violation of the antitrust laws. And it'd be a straightforward Section 1 Sherman Act cartel case.

[to11mtm]

> My uninformed, personal guess is that Epic isn't conceptualizing this as a legal fight; I bet they think of this as a PR fight where the lawsuit is part of their PR narrative trying to get Apple to back down on their take. As a pure legal fight this doesn't strike me as a strong hand, but as a part of a larger PR fight... who knows. They may be trying to create a position to negotiate a settlement from.

IDK. The jaded part of me asks whether Tencent pulled some strings here; a US company with Mindshare (Epic) is a better looking actor than the swaths of shovelware publishers that would stand to benefit from the long-term effects of a victory here.

[Joeri]

I hope Epic doesn’t have a strategy that hinges on a PR win forcing apple to back down, because (A) as this thread is showing there are still a lot of people on apple’s side and (B) apple is usually quite vengeful in these things and will not back down here until compelled by court or law.

Just look at what happened to nvidia, for far minor offenses. They were blacklisted from apple’s platforms very thoroughly, and people still mostly side with apple on that one.

[munificent]

> (A) as this thread is showing there are still a lot of people on apple’s side

HN is unlikely to be an unbiased sample of the general population, along many axes.

[bsder]

Erm, people blame Nvidia because that one was Nvidia's fault?

Neither Apple nor the PCB manufacturers specified the failing solder balls that Nvidia used. Nvidia made and packaged those chips.

And then Nvidia failed to take responsibility when they failed because it was going to be so expensive.

[tdrp]

This. Some people seem to be on the "Apple deserves a cut of 30% because they run the app store and 30% is reasonable etc." but what if tomorrow Apple just said: "OK we've bumped up the 30% to 90%".

The exact same set of arguments would follow. The users already own the phones so for the "market to adjust" to such changes would take years.

[gowld]

It's a "standard form contract", aka "contract of adhesion".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract

> we don't have the power to start a lawsuit against Apple.

Of course you do. You can go to small claims court for a claim of up to ~$5000. Or you can file a class action lawsuit.

[aaomidi]

> You can go to small claims court for a claim of up to ~$5000.

Until there is forced arbitration. You're not really going to say I as an individual have any power in the legal system against Apple, right? This is just a bonkers statement.

[gambiting]

In US, maybe. Forced arbitration is just not a thing elsewhere - you can take Apple to a small claims court in UK and they can't really do much about it other than actually respond.

[baddox]

This argument seems to hinge on the assumption that two parties are experiencing similar "levels of desperation": a person dying of thirst, and the developers of a video game which is available on half a dozen platforms and is probably the most financially successful video game of all time.

[AnthonyMouse]

Could it have been "probably the most financially successful video game of all time" if it hadn't agreed to the terms of the various consoles and phone stores?

[baddox]

I'm not sure why that's relevant. Am I only not dying of thirst because I agreed to the terms offered by the local water company? I think it's not contradictory to believe two things simultaneously: that people should not be held to the terms of a contract they signed when they were dying of thirst, and that it's okay that I needed to agree to certain terms with the water company in order to have running water in my home.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Am I only not dying of thirst because I agreed to the terms offered by the local water company?

It is if they have a monopoly on water.

Imagine their terms were manifestly unreasonable. If you want water service you'll have to pay $50,000/year. What would you do? If the answer is that it's reasonable to dig a well or something like that, they haven't got a monopoly. If the answer is to pay the $50,000/year because the only alternative is to die of thirst, there you are.

[Brendinooo]

I'd imagine there's a spectrum of "retaliation clauses" that includes acceptable things and unacceptable things, and that whatever is happening in the App Store is pretty different than withholding water from someone who would die without it.

Epic may be smaller than Apple, but they are by no means a "little guy".

[Closi]

This isn’t the sort of lawsuit a “little guy” can win.

[nodamage]

It is really bizarre to think that language in a contract that says "if you break the agreement, the rest of the agreement terminates" is one-sided or retaliation when it's included in basically every contract ever written.

[quotha]

So any action what-so-ever in response to an action you claim is called retaliation? Fine, call it whatever you want, it is reality. Epic clearly picked this fight, let's see how it goes for them.

[gowld]

Clearly not retailation. It may be an unconscionable contract, but it's not retaliation.

[gokhan]

Not all agreements are enforceable. For example, non-compete agreements are not enforceable in California. There's nothing honorable about Apple, it's just like every other company [1].

Apple uses being a secure device manufacturer for marketing to geeks in US, with a completely different stance in Chine [2]. Do people in China have access to VPN apps in Apple's app store? "Today, Epic Games ... violating the App Store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users." Safety first, unless you're a citizen of authoritarian regime where Apple's profits justify to look elsewhere.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2014/05/23/4-tech-companies-are-payi...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-has-apple-by-the-iphones...

[mcintyre1994]

I'm not sure I see what you've quoted actually matches Epic's behaviour. They've certainly breached the agreement and failed to cure it, but it hasn't been 30 days. I don't think they've hidden functionality, the way their game engine works and lets games update without new review isn't secret. They haven't falsified reviews or committed payment fraud. The wording there is obviously super vague, you could argue what they did is "improper" in the same way you could argue literally anything is improper.

Can you be a bit more concrete? What exactly of what you quoted in section (f) do you think applies to Epic?

And actually on your first part, they broke the rules and their app is off the store. Is Apple’s usual policy that if you do that and you choose not to put the app back up in a compliant form within 30 days then you get permanently banned from developing for all their platforms?

[gpm]

The contract is almost entirely besides the point.

Either Apple is violating the law, any contract terms related to this violation are void as a result, and Apple is illegally retaliating.

Or Apple is not violating the law, and they are generally free to do as they please.

I say "almost" for the same reason I say "generally". It might be the case that if Apple is not violating the law and they wrote the contract badly then they aren't free to do what they want. But no one is arguing that because it's highly unlikely to be the case.

[pier25]

I would understand Epic being banned from the iOS App Store, but why is their dev account being suspended for macOS development too?

[naikrovek]

Epic isn't suing because Fortnite was removed from the App Store...

[diebeforei485]

Just because two parties agree to a few things, it doesn't necessarily mean those things are enforceable or even legal.

If that were the case, the entire field of contract law wouldn't exist.

[Despegar]

>Instead Epic decided to sue Apple in court.

This gives the impression that suing them is what led to Apple terminating their relationship, but that isn't the case. Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine. They didn't even need to violate the terms of the developer agreement to bring their antitrust lawsuit, which is largely about the developer agreement.

[Hamuko]

I imagine what Epic did helps them out in the legal proceedings considering how the antitrust laws in the US are based on consumer benefit.

Epic introduces a new payment system and passes on the savings to the consumer. Thanks to payment system competition, consumers can save 20% when buying the same items. Apple sees this and completely removes Epic's game to protect its own interests.

It's not hard to see how Apple's behaviour is harming consumers.

[gpm]

> Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine.

Without the "theatrics" epic would not have had standing to sue and the case would have been dismissed.

[Despegar]

As a party to the developer agreement with Apple they clearly have standing to sue. And since one of the counts in their complaint is that they're being denied use of an "essential facility", they wouldn't even need to have a contractual relationship to have standing to sue.

[zucker42]

Is this true? Can't you claim standing based on something you would do except for an illegal contract or illegal law?

[gpm]

I don't have a good quick cite for you on contract law, but here's an example for criminal law

https://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2015/05/07/judge-...

[kalleboo]

I'm not at all on Apple's side in the App Store battle, but on this point, Apple is still consistent. Anyone breaking the App Store rules this blatantly would have their developer account terminated, wether they went public or not.

[arvinsim]

It's not consistent at all. App Store rules are basically whatever Apple deems it to be. Why do you think Amazon, Netflix, et al can get away with some "violations" while small developers cannot?

[kalleboo]

Epic added the violating payment system to the app in an update internal to the app (not through app store review). Doing an end-run around review is what gets you terminated.

Amazon, Netflix etc submitted their payment systems to app review and got those updates rejected, which Apple is fine with.

[jmull]

OK, but does that have something to do with my comment or the comment I replied to?

[wdr1]

Epic should have done this a week or two before the hearing.

[weixiyen]

Missed opportunity for sure, the video was probably taking longer than expected.

[jmull]

Do you mean to imply Tim Cook lied in that statement?

That doesn't work, though. Epic clearly, purposely, and egregiously violated Apple's TOS. It seems like that is the reason Apple's terminating their accounts, not in retaliation for "going public".

(BTW, I think Apple needs to let companies control their own payment systems outside the App Store.)

[modeless]

Epic needed to demonstrate that they and consumers were harmed in order to have standing to sue. It's not illegal to "violate" a TOS that is itself illegal. The legality of what Epic did is yet to be decided in court.

[stedaniels]

This is their standard TOS.