Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dns_snek 839 days ago
The PC isn't "supposedly" open, but open. Steam do collect a 30% fee but crucially, they have to work for that fee by competing on core service quality and quality of life features (like cloud saves).

Apple is perfectly entitled to ask for a 30% fee, as long as they allow for competition on equal footing (for clarity, this means they don't try to collect exorbitant rent from their competitors first). Let the free market sort it out.
1 comments
Aloisius 839 days ago
> and quality of life features (like cloud saves)

You mean like CloudKit?

Apple SDKs exist and do things - including everything Steamworks does and quite a bit more.

If Apple decided to only allow apps distributed through them to use their SDKs or services, then would it would be fine because they'd be like Steam?

link
int_19h 838 days ago
As a user, I have to pay for iCloud storage for apps that use it. There is a free tier, sure... which most users will fill very quickly just with device backups and photos alone.

I don't recall ever playing for cloud storage on Steam, though.

link
ElFitz 838 days ago
CloudKit uses the user’s iCloud storage for private containers and bills the developers (although it’s usually free) for "public" CloudKit containers[1].

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/icloud/cloudkit/

link
Aloisius 838 days ago
They have different QoS levels.

Steam Cloud is truly a backup service. It's not fast even for tiny amounts of data. They'll even kick you over to an even slower lane if you store anything over 250 MB.

Meanwhile, you can do near real-time app synchronization over iCloud between devices.

But yeah, it'd be great if Apple bumped up the free tier size. That said, I've never actually had any problems storing app data on iCloud. Apple users seem to either pay for more storage or not backup to iCloud, so from a developer perspective, eh.

link