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by mhoad 1488 days ago
That’s really just more evidence to support the theory and is in no way exculpatory.

The only thing it adds to the picture is that the majority of their revenue is also extremely predatory and the underlying model essentially works the same way as slot machines.
2 comments
scarface74 1488 days ago
What should they do? Ban pay for win games? They already offer Apple Arcade that doesn’t have any of the predatory practices. They can’t be making that much charging $4.95 and paying game developers an advance.
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mtomweb 1488 days ago
It’s an awful business model. It’s one thing to have Safari hobbled because of high quality business apps and games, another for loot boxes, gems and countdown timers to exploit whales.
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scarface74 1488 days ago
If only Safari is hobbled to not allow games - why are all popular games native apps on Android?
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mtomweb 1488 days ago
The main advantage of the web is interoperability, if you don’t have that and the game engines developers just go for native.

Once the core gaming APIs are supported across both iOS and Android (WebGPU, SIMD, WASM threads, fast storage, install prompts, notifications), I think you will see the main gaming engines implemented and then you’ll see the games move.

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scarface74 1488 days ago
The game studios like in app purchasing where you get to buy loot boxes and other zero marginal cost goods without thinking about it.

We have a control in the experiment - we have an “open ecosystem” in Android and supposedly a much better browser - yet and still, game developers still choose to give Google the same 30% cut as Apple. Maybe it’s not because Apple is holding the web back?

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mtomweb 1488 days ago
I think it's one of those things, that if you're not using Safari to develop Web Apps it's very hard to see what the problems are from the outside.

If you get some time we've written a lot of detail about it here: https://open-web-advocacy.org/walled-gardens-report/

Personally I hate loot boxes etc, It's an awful business model.

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scarface74 1487 days ago
I’m not claiming or not claiming that Safari is best at supporting “web standards”. I’m simply saying that if Apple supported every web standard in the world, the revenue generating apps would still be native.
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etchalon 1487 days ago
Quiet, or you'll logic everyone out of their sincerely held conspiracy theories.
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