[hello_tyler]

They broke the TOS on purpose and are now crying about that Apple actually held the line. I think Apple is way overpriced too, but when you go into their ecosystem and profit on it - you have to play by the rules. If you break the rules, you get removed. I would expect the same treatment on any app store.

[tln]

They broke a guideline on purpose. Apple responded by removing from the app store. That's normal.

Apple's other actions are just retaliatory: threatening the unreal engine, terminating developer accounts from affiliates, and yanking Apple login. It's those actions that you shouldn't expect.

[KMnO4]

It seems like Apple's retaliation was prompted by Epic's lawsuit -- not by the (trivial) breach of ToS.

The precedence Apple wants to set is: break ToS, get kicked off the store. Break ToS and then try to take Apple to court, get kicked off the platform.

It's pretty obvious that Fortnite is just the pawn that Epic used to wage war. This is obvious to Apple too, hence their counterclaim for punitive damages.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

Yes, and that is the textbook definition of retaliation.

This is the same concept as tenant rights. Just because you are renting someone's house doesn't give them complete control over your life. A landlord can't randomly barge into your house (even if technically belongs to them) and sell your stuff.

And before someone comments "But there is no tenancy here", well it's an analogy and it's the same idea. The reason tenant rights exist is because we recognize that having a place to live in is a basic existential need for an individual and therefore we place restrictions on what landlords can get away it, despite the fact that being a landlord is far from a monopoly.

Something similar needs to happen for these bottlenecking platforms that are basically existential requirements for a lot of companies. Also applies to payment processors btw.

[mlindner]

Tenant rights is completely different. That's regarding someone's life not someone giant corporations competition with a similar product.

[danesparza]

I disagree. I think Epic Games and the affiliates didn't think through the ramifications for the actions taken by Epic Games.

Epic Games is free to build their own phone and app store platform. There is nothing stopping them. Other than the risk that people don't want to buy into whatever they build. But Apple had the same risks.

If this is truly a good faith negotiation (and not a stunt) on the part of Epic Games, they need to understand they're just losing the negotiation -- that's all. Business is business. Epic Games is just bad at it.

[IncRnd]

Epic isn't negotiating with Apple. They are suing Apple.

[munificent]

To a sociologist, lawsuits are simply another form of negotiation.

[mcv]

They often are; many get settled out of court.

[nafey]

Qualitatively different. Apple's cant risk looking weak here because this issue went to court. Epic could have had an out of court settlement with much better terms.

[danesparza]

I didn't say that Epic games was negotiating WELL. :-) I just said "it's a negotiation" that Epic games happens to be losing at the moment.

[danesparza]

Objectively speaking, all negotiations seek to bring about change. The parties use whatever tools they have at their disposal and start the conversation wherever their experience, tools, and ethical bent leads them.

Epic games (AFAIK) started (the public portion of) this conversation by violating terms that Apple set forth in a contract that Epic games agreed to. Apple is defending their contract with their behavior. They have the stronger position unless the law comes to the aid of Epic games (which is what I'm assuming Epic games hopes to induce).

Sidenote: The only law capable of negating a contract is a bankruptcy. Neither party has declared bankruptcy. I have a feeling the law is going to be on Apple's side too.

[CydeWeys]

Why do people show Apple's ToS so much deference but then (rightfully) shit on all other ToSes by other people? ToSes suck. Most people don't even read them. I'm sure big companies like Epic have lawyers that do actually read them, but still, it's not like you have a choice in the matter. You can't just not publish on the biggest mobile market. The ToS isn't a negotiation, it's just a big monopoly owner exerting their will over others.

[ksk]

That is exactly right. Comcast's TOS allows them to discriminate on internet traffic. Maybe Comcast can even make a twisted argument that its in the user's best interest. I'm sure nobody here wants them to do that. We already fight against things that we find unethical, or against our principles. This is no different.

Whats being asked isn't some massive change to their software. Its freedom for the developer and user to have a choice in payment platforms. As much as Apple tries to obfuscate it, the AppStore is not the kernel, its not the graphics layer, its not the file system, its not something that is needed to run software. The other OS components are already being abstracted away to some extent by cross-platform tooling, and the AppStore is way way easier than those.

On one hand, Apple will never take legal responsibility to audit software on their App Store and certify it free from malware, because doing so will be cost prohibitive and/or impossible. But at the same time, they want to claim its this 'utopia' that will get destroyed if users are allowed the freedom to pick a different store. How about you let us decide that?

[smachiz]

That's always true though - what you're saying is "I don't like that some entities are more powerful than other entities".

Even at much smaller scale, you may need someone more than they need you, and they will negotiate like it - for legal and commercial terms.

Also, terms of service are usually negotiable - presuming you're worth negotiating with. GE has no problem negotiating with Google - you as an individual might have to take what their standard is.

[foota]

I believe epic's point is that they believe the ToS to be illegal.

[thdrdt]

Then they should first fight it before breaking it.

[xmprt]

You can't sue someone unless you can prove damages. There's no way to fight this without breaking the rule first. I'm not a lawyer though so maybe there's an exception to this rule.

[judge2020]

NAL but you can sue without breaking contract if you're challenging the contract's legality. Epic also is generally challenging Apple's use of their position to 1) not allow other app stores, and 2) take 30% of each sale (while other processors take 3%), which would be enough damages to sue over. Epic breaking contract is entirely a PR move.

[manicdee]

An App Store is not a payment processor.

How much of a cut is Steam taking when you sell software on their store?

How much of a cut will Epic be taking when you sell software on their store?

This is completely different to how much Mastercard charges you for selling stuff from your store.

[giovannibajo1]

They have proved that, already. They could have reverted the direct payment system, kept only Apple IAP, and then sued even for damage recovery of 30% since the beginning of the lawsuit (or even the beginning of Fortnite on iOS). Apple has clearly written even in legal documents of the lawsuit that reverting the direct payment change would have been enough to keep operating Fortnite on iOS fully featured.

[nodamage]

I'm not sure why people keep repeating this. Epic already had standing to sue from the $300 million that Apple has collected in Fortnite IAP fees.

[gorkish]

Sure they could; but I find it kind of hard to criticize their strategy of getting a hundred million people to commiserate with them before they try. Even better that Apple has decided to act like a big ugly baby about it; they must be over the moon.

I've owned and used Apple products continuously for over 30 years, and I'm not ashamed to say that I am rooting HARD for Epic on this. Apple doesn't give a shit about innovation when they are making money hand over fist. They are spending all their time nurturing their cash cow. It's time to butcher that motherfucker.

[FractalParadigm]

> Apple doesn't give a shit about innovation when they are making money hand over fist

It's crazy but I didn't even notice this paradigm shift until they announced their credit card. Apple used to be the company to push boundaries and revolutionize computing in some way every few years. The last real "innovation" I feel Apple has come up with was the Retina display, pushing OEMs everywhere towards higher pixel counts and better overall user experiences. Before that we got everything from the iPhone and iPod and even iTunes, to USB and WiFi brought to the mainstream, to crazy, beautiful designs that worked well, like the iMac G4.

Just for instance working off local memory, The iMac hasn't seen a form factor update since what, 2012 when they slimmed down the curve? Which even then was a minor facelift of the 2007 design at best, which itself was an aluminum facelift. Before then we had new iMac designs every few years, between the G3 in '98, the G4 in '02, and the G5 settling on the current form factor in '04.

[viraptor]

> to USB and WiFi brought to the mainstream

Not sure what you mean here. USB was used everywhere and around the time iPhone launched, microusb was used by a large portion of new phones. Apple is pretty much the only actively USB-avoiding company left. They still use a proprietary connection for their devices.

They certainly sped up the wifi on mobile trend, but I would argue with bringing it to the mainstream.

[FractalParadigm]

It was meant as a separate statement to the iPod/iPhone one, separate innovations that (I would argue) Apple majorly popularized or brought to the mainstream. The iMac G3 and PowerBook/iBook G3 brought USB and WiFi (Airport) to the masses, respectively. The iMac G3 famously came with FireWire and USB as it's only peripheral connections, while the iBook was the first consumer laptop period that included WiFi standard, and IIRC Apple released one of the first consumer WiFi routers as well.

[prewett]

Apple is still pretty innovative, but it hasn't been as visible as a new product for a while. They already shrunk computers down to the size of a watch, it's not obvious what more they can do, and the technology is probably not ready for wearables, etc.

Some innovations I can think of are force touch, fingerprint sensor (arguably), Face ID, T2 chip / hardware security, Touch Bar, the heart sensor on Watch, and (possibly) wireless charging. Now, some of those, like the Touch Bar are widely reviled here, but whether or not you find it useful, it is an innovation.

Design-wise there's been incremental innovations, some of which haven't succeed (scissors keyboard). The Jet Black iPhone was a design innovation, or at least a manufacturing innovation, since they had to preprocess the metal surface so that the black dye would soak in beyond the outer layer.

[dmitriid]

> Even better that Apple has decided to act like a big ugly baby about it

You mean, Apple, like any grown-up company would do in their place, has rightfully shown Epic the door? Google kicked Fortnite from Play Store for the same reason. And had they tried this against consoles (where devs also pay 30%), they'd be kicked out of the respective console forever.

What's a "non-cry-baby" reaction in your opinion?

[viraptor]

Blocking the new release and blocking the version which allowed out of ecosystem payments. That's it. It's not like Apple gains anything from further actions.

[dmitriid]

Further actions, unless I'm mistaken, are the direct application of TOS. Epic kept on pushing updates to Fortnite that violated TOS. Your dev account will be disabled if you keep violating TOS.

Epic hoped for preferential treatment just because they are big, and they've enjoyed preferential treatment on consoles. hey've run into Apple applying their TOS equally to everybody and are now somehow pissed.

[CydeWeys]

Why? That wouldn't work. You don't win changes by meekly arguing over things.

[Rebelgecko]

Would they have standing if they weren't punished for violating the TOS?

[liability]

Why?

[pbalau]

You should never fight the law, you should fight to change the law.

[TedDoesntTalk]

"I Fought The Law and the Law Won" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL8chWFuM-s

[judge2020]

That's exactly what they're fighting. Surely Epic winning will mean a court order to reinstate Fortnite and other of Epic's games onto the App Store.

They should have sued and never have done their "pay direct" thing if they wanted to stay operational on Apple platforms during the lawsuit. Apple couldn't retaliate at that point since any termination attempt would be reversed by a court order.

[HideousKojima]

>They should have sued and never have done their "pay direct" thing if they wanted to stay operational on Apple platforms during the lawsuit.

That would have made the chances of the lawsuit being thrown out over BS standing issues much higher

[TedDoesntTalk]

> They should have sued and never have done their "pay direct" thing

If they did that, any court hearing the lawsuit would throw it out because Epic would not have standing. Epic had to do it this way to have any hope of a court hearing their case.

[judge2020]

They would only have no standing on the fact that you can't provide other payment methods in your app. They bring up many complaints in their lawsuit[0], mainly there being no competing app store for iOS and 30% being 10x the 3% most regular payment processors charge for processing and fraud detection. I (and you) obviously can't say whether or not the case would be thrown out in a different situation since it didn't happen, but I don't see why it would be thrown out since both of those points seems fair for a antitrust lawsuit, and 30% of sales is enough to mean millions in potential damages.

0: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf

[nodamage]

Epic already had standing to sue from the $300 million in Fortnite IAP fees Apple has collected.

[tyingq]

They broke the TOS for the App Store. Did they break the TOS for "Sign in with Apple"?

[danesparza]

It's not clear that there are any specific legal TOS for 'Sign in with Apple':

https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/resources/

[ilogik]

the whole point Epic is trying to make is that the rules are illegal, as they are anti-competitive

[Fnoord]

The law is above ToS. If you believe ToS are unlawful, then you breaking them might be lawful (to be decided).

[jl6]

It’s OK to insist on players sticking to the rules, but Apple is no longer a player - it’s the game.