[socialist_coder]

This will certainly get appealed and bogged down even more in the legal system, right? What are the chances this actually happens? And when?

Secondly, this is such an easy way to increase your take by 20+% that I would imagine almost every publisher is going to be offering their own payments platform, not just the biggest ones like Epic.

[bberenberg]

It will be interesting to see how many small companies figure out that tax and general compliance is worth every penny that Apple charges them. Smart ones will opt for a seller of record approach, but many will get burnt.

[manquer]

Stripe provides a lot of tooling ( more than apple) for compliance. Apple is hardly the only payment provider which simplifies payment processing for small developers.

[TillE]

"Tooling for compliance" sounds a hell of a lot more complicated than "you sell my app and send me a check", which is the deal on the App Store, Steam, etc.

[manquer]

Finance and compliance is lot more complicated than send me a Cheque for most businesses.

Stripe ( and others) have products right from incorporation (Atlas?), identity verification, custom reporting, fraud/risk, Charge backs, Tax reporting/ filing and even PoS terminals etc.

Most businesses have to deal with multiple channels (Android, web, iOS and others), custom reporting, and different risk/compliance will need solutions well beyond what Apple is offering

[cblconfederate]

Definitely not every penny. E.g Xsolla, a payments provider/merchant-of-record charges 5%

[colinmhayes]

NYT article said this goes into effect in 90 days, although I assume an appellate judge could change that.

[dathinab]

> What are the chances this actually happens? And when?

If new laws/regulations are made which are clear about this, then potentially very soon.

For such thinks sadly "making more clear laws" is sometimes faster then "enforcing not fully clear laws".

[nullspace]

Yeah, agree. I think this would kill the App Store model. It's surprising that the stock only dipped by 2%. What am I missing?

[jeroenhd]

Why would the app store model stop working? Paying through the app store has a direct benefit to usability. Before in app purchases the app store model worked fine.

Even if the Epic lawsuit goes completely off the rails and Apple is forced to allow external app stores on iOS, they can still maintain a profitable app store if they provide the best experience to end users. Building an app store is very hard, and convincing people to install an alternative store is even harder, so I doubt they'll lose much there.

The app store is so ludicrously profitable that the exclusivity they enjoy can't possibly be the only reason it's making them money. This cut into Apple's (and Google's) profits, but it certainly won't mean the end of app stores as we know them.

[gokhan]

> if they provide the best experience to end users

I don't think they can. Their DNA on this evolved as a monopoly. They won't be able to compete, they will be slow and boring while clever people will overpower them.

[jeroenhd]

I think they will find a way. The Mac App Store is far from a monopoly yet it still remains profitable as far as I know.

My grandma isn't going to use any alternative store, she probably doesn't even understand the concept of different app stores. I think Apple will be fine, at least until competitors somehow gain a MASSIVE usability advantage.

[dathinab]

> I think this would kill the App Store model.

It doesn't kill it much more then it killed the android store in the past when it wasn't (roughly, in practice) enforcing the same thing.

It's a revenue cut, but at least for the beginning it won't be a problem at all for apple, this might change at some point, but stocks have no reason to majorly drop now they still can do so in the future if it makes sense.

[akmarinov]

This ruling enables devs to use third party payment providers, it doesn't force Apple to let alternative App Stores on iOS.

Apple can and will still reject any apps they feel like.

[tompazourek]

> Apple can and will still reject any apps they feel like.

Apple now cannot reject apps because they have "Buy" links that redirect users elsewhere. And that's still a big deal.

[shuger]

It's not going to end this quickly. Whichever side loses will keep going at it until they exhaust all legal paths.

[f6v]

> What am I missing?

Google drive and Dropbox didn’t kill iCloud.