[dgellow]

I agree that seemed to be the predictable outcome. But then I cannot understand what was Apple trying to do. What is their strategy here, why be so agressive toward Epic's Unreal Engine? It feels as if they wanted to be proven wrong, but I don't understand why they would do this. If someone has some insights to share, I would be interested.

[madeofpalk]

I don't believe they were specifically targeting Unreal Engine, it just got caught in the cross fire and Apple didn't really care.

Apple wanted to terminate all the dev accounts belonging to Epic which "just to happens" to include Unreal.

[dgellow]

From a comment by onion2k in the other HN thread:

> This is a quote from the letter that Apple sent to Epic;

>> If your membership is terminated, you may no longer submit apps to the App Store, and your apps still available for distribution will be removed. You will also lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities:"

>> [...]

>> - Engineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware; optimize Unreal Engine on the Mac for creative workflows, virtual sets and their CI/Build Systems; and adoption and support of ARKit features and future VR features into Unreal Engine by their XR team

> That is a statement that Apple made saying they will stop all help they give to Epic getting UE running on all Apple hardware. With the other stuff in the letter it makes it very clear that the problem is not just one for Epic Games, but all of Epic.

> You can read it yourself - https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327.... (Apple's letter starts on page 51 of the PDF)

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269719

So they seem to be very specific and specifically call out work on the Unreal Engine.

[madeofpalk]

Yes, I've read that.

What they're calling out is that Apple engineers will no longer prioritise improving the performance of Unreal on macOS and iOS. This is kinda outside the developer agreeement.

[hnick]

What is the text in the agreement that blocks developers from building against it though?

If a third party developer uses an open source library instead of Unreal, must that library belong to an entity that signed an agreement with Apple or the whole app is banned by default?