They seem not quite the same to me. A game built with Unreal Engine is essentially powered by it and would not exist otherwise. A game deployed to an iPhone could theoretically be acquired through an alternative app store or just direct download. Apple's app store provides no utility to developers other than being the forced walled monopoly that all developers must list through.
The proper analogy to Epic charging for its game engine is Apple charging for its developer licenses - which it already does separately from the app store.
So if stores don’t provide any utility over side loading, how come Epic gave up on relying on side loading on Android, which allows it, and ended up on the Play Store? It’s literally that exact scenario.
So that when a teenager types "fortnite" in on their phone they can install it. That's the only reason. It's a little different from organic "discovery", like search and recommendations.
FWIW, Google (illegally? according to Epic, anyway) blocked Epic's attempts to address this through partner deals with phone manufacturers, so their hand was relatively forced.
If Google and Apple didn't require all installs to go through a blessed path, people would just type "fortnite" into their search engine of choice and install that way instead. Of course, Google & Apple have good reason for not allowing that, but in the case of Fortnite they really are not delivering much for the 30%.
I suspect the OP is referring to the fact that Epic is also suing Google, because they consider the "inconveniences" that Google places on sideloading to be a form of unfair, illegal restriction. This strongly suggests that if Apple offered sideloading but still had the same fees and restrictions in the official App Store, Epic would still be suing them.
Stores do hold a value. A great one. BUT there has to be a few tiers between we are really losing money by hosting this to we are raking in hundreds of millions. If should cover cost, it should cover opportunity, it should have a margin.
In essence Apple is running an Apple App incubator :) Getting 30% of anything, anybody ever makes on it, with basically no risk on it since the actual cost of reviewing the apps and hosting them is pretty fixed.
The App Store generates nearly 10 times as much revenues for developers per device sold as Google Play. How is building a safer walled garden that attracts the highest spending customers and makes them extremely comfortable with buying apps and subscriptions not a massive amount of utility?
I pretty happily try out subscription apps on iOS (which I rarely to never do online). Why? It's darn easy to cancel. I get a reminder in advance even. This contrasts in my experience with nearly EVERY other auto-billing approach out there. The time I sometimes spend calling people to cancel stuff (that I could sign up for online) is ridiculous.
Another nice touch that builds trust. I once deleted an app and iOS reminded me to cancel the subscription if I wasn't going to reinstall! I mean, every other store will keep the auto-bill going forever.
Apple once let somebody hack my account and purchase the same $20 app 15 times. When I complained, they ignored me. When I charged back the purchases, they canceled my Apple account. Purchasing the same app more than once on the same device shouldn't even be possible. This was back in 2011, but... definitely didn't build trust.
But you guys aren't arguing the actual point anyway. The question is whether the forced app store is always a plus for developers, not users. The answer is certainly no. And the answer is also no for users who can manage their own trust, and could happily live with direct downloads outside of the app store. They pay higher prices, and are forced to effectively subsidize everyone else.
Apple has made a decision not to target folks who want direct downloads. They are targeting a different (and very large and lucrative group). They've also managed to block direct download of built in / unremovable apps by carriers and to some degree pioneered the direct to consumer model of cell phone sales, all consumer benefits.
One result - they have a pretty high level of trust among users. And so they can charge a pretty remarkable premium. This level of control has also made them popular for developers. Their ecosystem has a much more consistent development experience, many more users are on a relatively recent iOS and the per user spending is far higher to name just a few elements.
Many of these things are benefits for DEVELOPERS. Sony and Microsoft make the PS and XBOX, also closed systems with networks they hope benefit developers.
And finally, does apple have an obligation to help developers make money or is their focus more properly on consumers?
But Apple believes the opposite of you, has direct contact with nearly a billion customers, and spends massively on safety/security which they wouldn’t do if it wasn’t important to customers.
I have nothing wrong with that. But again, besides the point that this path is always, necessarily beneficial to all users and all developers. It isn't.
It doesn’t have to be. It only has to be beneficial for the vast majority of Apple customers, and it is, which makes it beneficial for the vast majority of Apple developers.
Because if the app was permitted to be installed outside of the app store, it would make more money, meaning the app store offers negative utility to some developers. Fortnite is a huge brand outside of iOS. It iOS did not make the success of Fortnite. Epic doesn't need the app store's advertising to succeed, and being forced to go through this bottleneck only hampers them.
This is all my opinion and most importantly feelings about spending money though the AppStore and through any other channel.
I will say, for me no other company has built the good will that Apple has. I really doubt that Epic understands the “trust” I speak about. Both because of the general sentiment I see online and as a Fortnite player.
Do any of you know how many bugs exist in that game? I’m not even talking about “wall hacks”, rendering issues, difficult collision detection stuff or the many in game broken mechanics. I’m talking about the many, many out-of-game user interface bugs. Logging in fails 1/4 the time (need to reboot the app). Matchmaking fails 1/10 the time (just stuck in an infinite loop). Matchmaking for groups fails 1/10 the time (at least one person in the party will not be in the same game!!! How does a software company fuck up atomic transactions for the full party?)
lol Epic is not a company I want handling financial transactions. I’m very happy to buy Vbucks from Apple/Google/Sony and then “safely” use Vbucks in the Fortnite store.
The data for this does exist, it is the fact that Epic does want to offer its game outside the app store, as evidenced by their statements and also by having attempted it for Android.
This answer feels disingenuous. I feel I’ve made my point fairly clearly.
The type of trust building Apple does is a “value add” that a company like Epic doesn’t understand yet.
Epic choosing to make this decision isn’t data about Apple’s ability and mindset to earn trust. Epic choosing to make this decision seems to be a short term play at rent seeking before Fortnite stops being popular.
Also please read my other comments in this thread for anecdata about my experience/feelings as a customer of both Apple and Epic.
The answer is not disingenuous at all, I think you just find it hard to accept because it is simple. You are actually trying to argue that a walled garden app store where users and developers have no other choice is always better for everyone, and that everyone should want it, because the single point of failure man-in-charge knows what's best for everybody. Do you even believe that? Or do you feel compelled to defend Apple?
You're not even making a coherent argument. Epic is making a short-term play at rent seeking? That doesn't make any sense. They're trying to be able to charge for individual products the way they do on any other open platform. Platforms that do not filter through single monolithic app stores, and which - surprise - are successful and enjoyed by millions of users and developers.
FYI, the person you are responding to, does not want to actually address any of your points or arguments that you are bringing up. Instead, they just wants to sidestep your points.
He copy pasted the exact same comment in a conversation with me, which is why I am bringing it up. Instead of actually saying anything related to what I said, he just posted that copy-paste comment.
Likely, because they had nothing to add, related to the actual comments and points that you or I brought up.
Before continuing to participate in this discussion, I'm curious as to the character of person I'm discussing with, how many years have you,
- used an iPhone as your primary device?
- used an Android as your primary device?
- played Fortnite, and on what device?
For me it was 6 years of Android before switching to an iPhone for the last 4 years. I've been playing a lot of Fortnite (less during the waterworld season) on a PS4 over the last 11 months.
Rationale:
Especially because you're arguing for sideloading and Android already allows that, yet Epic is still suing Google. I ask because when you keep saying you're arguing "for customers" and "pro-competition".
I'm just wondering what background experience you have with all of these different companies and platforms that helps you judge what is best "for competition and the customer".
> Because if the app was permitted to be installed outside of the app store, it would make more money, meaning the app store offers negative utility to some developers. Fortnite is a huge brand outside of iOS. It iOS did not make the success of Fortnite. Epic doesn't need the app store's advertising to succeed, and being forced to go through this bottleneck only hampers them.
It’s the same for Epic on PlayStation, Switch and Xbox.
>A game deployed to an iPhone could theoretically be acquired through an alternative app store or just direct download.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. A game produced with the Unreal Engine could just as easily be created through a natively developed engine or another licensed engine instead of Unreal. Unity, for instance:
It's $100 because there's no other distribution method. If tomorrow you could use Apple's libraries and distribute the App by yourself, the cost of the Libraries wouldn't be $100. It'd be $100 and 30% of your revenue. It's not meaningful to draw out 1 bill when we all know that what's important is the total cost.
And you can bet that Epic and many other companies reaction to that pricing would jut to be to create their own set of libraries instead of paying for Apple's...
No, but you do draw to the screen by reverse engineering whatever os level graphics api is available and using it, and at a 30% cut on every app here there is literally billions of dollars of funding available to do that.
I imagine if Apple tried to restrict third party apps from doing that through the legal system, we would see another suit but this time about "graphics" instead of "payment processing".
>A game deployed to an iPhone could theoretically be acquired through an alternative app store or just direct download
This is false; unless theoretically means there's no concept of "money" involved in our world.
A game deployed to an iPhone must be compatible with the hardware chip supplied on the iPhone, must be built using APIs designed, built and committed to be supported by the iPhone.
Apps can't be built out of thin air. Programming languages, debuggers, IDEs, distributions channels, commitment to support cost money, time and people's energy. Apple, as a private business, can choose to monetize however they wish to. It would be really dumb for the govt or other parties to dictate what pricing policies Apple has to set for a product they're building. Heck, they're free to ask for a million dollars for each copy of Xcode people use.
Apple is trying to balance the costs of building an iPhone ecosystem with the benefits of ease of accessibility to that ecosystem.
Customers pay Apple to handle _everything_ from rearranging sand to naming functions accessible to developer to make the iPhone.
> > A game deployed to an iPhone could theoretically be acquired through an alternative app store or just direct download.
> This is false; unless theoretically means there's no concept of "money" involved in our world.
I am fairly sure that Apple has already produced a general purpose computing device that also requires applications deployed to it to be compatible with its CPU and to be built using APIs designed and built by Apple, but nonetheless lets applications be acquired for it through other means, including direct download.
Not only that Apple has produced the exact same platform with the same CPU and development tools and APIs as iPhone which it is set to launch later this year where sideloading is completely allowed.
Yep that is true. That doesn't justify that Apple _should_ enable side-loading on the iPhone. Just because they _can_ do it doesn't mean they're _legally, ethically or morally_ obligated to do so.
Ultimately, it's their product. I mean, can you imagine the world we'd live in if some arbitrary group of people (who are _not_ the product developers) decided that the iPod should be opened up to side-load any arbitrary software, such as a music store, run by some other company.
In what world is that legal? Just because the iPhone has majority profits of the smartphone market doesn't mean they ought to share that platform with everyone else. If developers don't like Apple's policies they should not build for Apple's platforms. It's pretty simple.
Go make your iPhone, and App Store, and Retail distribution channels and marketing that works to your specification. Isn't that what competition means?
The proper analogy to Epic charging for its game engine is Apple charging for its developer licenses - which it already does separately from the app store.