[bnt]

Rich guy complaining about another Rich guy. I don't care. If this was a small app developer complaining, I would care. The more little devs complain, the more can come together and sue the crap out of Apple. 1 big Co suing another big Co = nobody cares. Tim isn't helping the small developers, he just wants to make more money for himself. Small devs will still get screwed.

[lwansbrough]

What an incredibly lazy argument. Sweeney is a developer through and through, not some soulless suit like Cook. Relatively speaking, Epic Games is a "small app developer". You're talking about a billion dollar company with a single game they want to sell vs. a trillion dollar company that owns the entire ecosystem.

[cnst]

Did you not bother to look at the facts of the case?

I don't play games on iOS, I don't even develop on iOS, either.

I do use both iOS and Android as a consumer, and I'm totally team Tim Sweeney on this one, even though I also own AAPL — my freedoms as a consumer are more important to me than whoever is bankrolling this case and what their reasons may be. Besides, their reasons aren't that bad, either, and closely align with mine — more choice for the consumer.

[simion314]

Because of Epic now iOS users have more payment options (including the Platinum Apple with included Apple tax and protections), more options are good (except if you suffer of a brain illness that makes you unable to chose and have to always use a coin)

[aeyes]

No they don't, the only difference is that developers can now tell their users that they can pay on a different website.

The Netflix app never had an Apple payment method. The first screen is the login screen with no way to sign up at all and no explanation how or where to do it.

[dwaite]

Netflix for several years allowed you to sign up on the front page of the App, giving apple a percentage of subscription revenue.

[simion314]

So now you might get a link to Netflix website and some text, as a user lost nothing.

[vernie]

Sweeney's out here fighting for the right of the little guy to groom young gambling addicts.

[simion314]

Timmy from Apple could ban lootboxes if he cares, instead he is taxing them and makes ton of cache(it was revealed that Apple makes a lot more money from games then from apps)

[tapoxi]

Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes.

[ziml77]

I had to look it up myself because I didn't believe you, but it really does appear to be the case that Fortnite doesn't have random loot boxes and they removed them from Rocket League after purchasing that game.

[spywaregorilla]

A lawsuit helped them get there, but sweeney's gone on the record to state that random lootboxes should not be a thing. So... net good?

[api]

Yeah honestly neither of these two have our best interests in mind. Apple wants to keep their walled garden walled, and these game companies want to make it easier to exploit quasi-gambling "loot box" and similar revenue centers without paying Apple. There are also a lot of vendors who want to bypass Apple so they can bypass Apple's privacy protections.

The entire mobile ecosystem is full of user-hostile business models and behavior.

[spywaregorilla]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51502592