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.)
>(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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)