Apple Terminated Epic’s Developer Account
epicgames.com
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/10062367
Apple Terminated Epic’s Developer Account
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cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/10062367
Apple Terminated Epic’s Developer Account
Sucks to be an iOS developer. Apple will never give up it's 30% of your money. EVER.
And the flat $100 fee, which disproportionately iffects small devs
I took an app development course in college. Everything was android and I tested on my own device, except one project had to be on apple. I managed to snag an ancient iPhone off a friend to test, but no, turns out you need a dev account to even be able to load your own code on your phone. Fuck apple forever.
Dev accounts are free. It’s only when you want to post stuff to the store that you start paying.
You mean when you want to make it available to download in the only way Apple makes possible? It's not like you can just send the apk to someone to run on their iPhone, if you want to share the app with others on an iPhone, you have to use the Apple App Store, you have to pay them $100 + the cost of an Apple computer. Just to share your FOSS app with your friends.
on iOS its called ipa
If dev accounts are free your friends can get their own accounts and load the app.
It just works™️
Sideloading on android is also more complex than the play store
You're not even good at whataboutism, lol. Changing one setting is not even comparable to Apple's perfection. The message that you need to allow it first even takes you straight to the setting.
So... More complex than the play store?
Not really: You don't need to log in. That is more effort than enabling sources ;)
Don't forget that registration also requires an email account! And a phone number! All of that is not necessary for sideloading in Android.
You log in once when you buy the phone, for email, maps, calendar, play store, browser, messaging, drive, home automation, YouTube...
And before that you need to register and validate your contact data. Even the act of that one login is more work than changing one setting to allow sideloading. Your point is just completely wrong.
Did this change? It was about a decade ago. I could develop and test on an emulated device, but testing on hardware was 100% locked behind a $100 paywall.
I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like TestFlight allows you to distribute internally without going through the App Store.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/distributing-your-app-for-beta-testing-and-releases
It mentions the apple developer program which is what I assume the 100 dollar subscription is. I keep seeing people say dev accounts are free but any tools beyond the dev environment are paywalled.
I wasn't even talking about app stores; I never published anything to Google play, just loaded through usb from android studio. The apple program didn't allow even that.
Before TestFlight was a thing, you could self-sign your own apps (.ipa) and install them to local devices through iTunes over a USB cable connected to the device. The developer signing certificate for this was/is free, included when you sign up for the free version of Apple Developer account.
Nowadays it looks like you can still do this directly from Xcode. See section: “Connect real devices to your Mac”
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/running-your-app-in-simulator-or-on-a-device
*The mention of Apple Developer Program in the bullet points of this section is an “if” and is optional. It’s not required for testing apps on local devices.
Everything disproportionately effects the little guy. Just look at laws that have fines instead of jail time. Or just getting a lawyer. Or eating out or buying groceries.
Are you claiming those are good?
How is the $100 a obstacle to any legitimate developer? The only one it hurts is those who would otherwise flood the app store with crap submitted from throw away developer accounts.
Say you you're maintaining a FOSS app on your own time. How interested would you be to pay Apple $100 annually for the privilege of giving their users free stuff?
Depends on the reason you’re maintaining that app to begin with. If it’s a hobby, then $100/year is a pretty cheap hobby.
As an open source developer, you're right IMO.
It's a shame you're being downvoted based on feels.
Who said anything about legitimacy? I said small, synonyms hobby, FOSS. It is an obstacle to be forced to pay money to Apple for the 'privelidge' of being able to install it on their devices. And they are Apple's devices, you do not own anything you buy from Apple.
It’s $100, basically a symbolic amount.
Ah fantastic, can you give me $100? It's basically nothing, a symbolic amount.
Signed, a disabled and unable to work guy who enjoys IT and programing
You don’t need to pay to develop an app, you only need to pay to put it in the store.
So develop your app. If it’s any good, pay the $100, sell it in the store and it’ll pay for itself. It may even make you a little profit. If it’s not good enough for that, why does it need to be in the store?
Some capabilities actually need a paid developer account even if you don’t plan to put the app on the store.
https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/dev88ff319e7
Sure, but that is for capabilities where it makes sense. For example if your app wants to use iCloud.
Last time I checked that also affected nfc (I don’t mean Apple Pay, but plain nfc)
Good for you you have so much disposable income. Many hobby devs such as myself aren't so lucky, which is one reason why I don't make Apple apps.
Go talk to some random people and ask them how much they spend on their hobbies, I bet you won't find many people who have a hobby that costs less than $100/year. It's a damn cheap hobby.
That's probably a good thing. I don't think we need more apps made by amateurs in the app store.
What the hell is this condescending, elitist, gatekeeping nonsense? $100 is a lot of money for some people. Hell, in some countries, that's a sizeable chunk of someone's monthly salary. We should be encouraging and supporting developers from all backgrounds, not just ones that are middle/upper class from developed countries.
In countries like Georgia and Syria, the minimum annual wage is below $100.
Do people really write apps and maintain them as a hobby?
Maintenance is the hassle, especially when your app needs to adapt to 3rd party changes.
I've found a way to make a thousand people's life's a tiny bit easier, and it only costs me a couple of days per year, so I keep the apps running out of a sense of civic duty.
Having to pay one off the most profitable companies in the world before I can provide that service seems weird.
Like charging charity workers for the privilege of helping.
I've just checked the apple app store. They is an lack of apps in my niche, the nearest available is significantly more basic, costs $3 and has only one review.
And having said all that, Android's Play Store has been getting increasingly annoying with policy changes in recent years, and if it wasn't for the positive reviews I'd have abandoned the apps.
So your argument is that because Apple is very profitable they should give you free shit?
You realize that charity workers have to pay for all kinds of things, right?
Naw.
When I was a student or freshly qualified, $100/year would've been a lot.
But it's more than just the money.
I've coded hobby / small android apps. I was charged a one off fee of $25, and I can use my nice gaming PC with my lovely high end mouse and keyboard, and over the years I've used Windows and Linux to write the apps, both from a shared hdd.
My apps aren't useful to the general public, but I've got a couple of decades experience in my field, and those apps are genuinely helpful to the people that use them.
For apple, the last time I looked into it, I'd have needed a specific type of apple computer (one with an intel chip, couldn't compile on the cheaper non-intel chips).
That automatically makes it a pain in the ass, I couldn't just use my normal PC for coding. I'd need to transfer assets to a network share or use a convoluted way of keeping the same assets updated on two computers, and look into ways I could use the same mouse/keyboard on both machines. Would using a splitter or KVM cause problems? Input lag when gaming? Would it need a power brick? Just finding the desk space for another PC case would mess up my speaker layout.
It just adds unnecessary complexity, and to slap a $100 yearly fee on top is just insulting.
Absolutely not worth my time for apps that would never make $100/year in sales (which after apples 30% cut, would need to be $142/year. Plus extra for taxes and occasional iMac upgrades).
Maybe things have changed since then, but every time I use a small, niche app or find a wonderful free app, I wonder if it'll exist on apple.
You’re looking at this the wrong way. Why would you want a KVM? What you want is a genuine Apple (tm) Mighty (tm) Magic (tm) Mouse (tm) with a single button.
When I was in college, I was pulling in just enough money from work to pay for rent, food, essentials, and over drafts from the previous week, that $100 was more than I had available for a good 3-5 years of my life. A college student looking to develop and publish apps is the very type of person most hurt by this.
Thanks for the block request
Every other store charges 30% including Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Google Play, etc. Epic doesn’t and they aren’t profitable, so I don’t know why people pile on Apple.
Edit: the downvotes are funny. Why? You don’t like someone pointing out the truth?
At least with Google Play and Steam you are not locked into it due to your device of choice.
This is just a list of shit service providers leeching profits from developers and making the gaming industry worse.
Oh yeah Steam is totally making the gaming industry worse!
🤡
It is. But gamers are dumb as shit so it doesn’t matter.
You seem like a fun and positive individual.
Sucks to be a Steam dev then
Does it? Steam does not monopolize a platform, or demand exclusivity. With Steam you are 100% free to sell through other channels, and even be able to still use Steam. Also there are actual services on Steam, and there are possibilities for lower rates.
IIRC there are still rules regarding pricing in other platforms if you want to be on steam.
AFAIK that's only if the games purchased on that platform have Steam keys. Otherwise you are free to have sales or cheaper prices on other platforms.
Earlier you could sell cheaper on other platforms and still have Steam keys, for instance Humble Indie Bundle had that.
If you go to GOG, you can see they often have games that are also available on Steam, but at lower prices.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/tomb_raider_underworld
Sold here (Denmark) for DKK 8,70 = $1.30 USD.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/8140/Tomb_Raider_Underworld/
Sold here for €8.99 = $9.80 USD
This example is 7.8 times more expensive on Steam at this moment.
Well, they've become ubiquitous, but I get your point.
Well not really, AFAIK they sell only about 20-50% of games sold for PC, depending on source. Not at all comparable to Apple that has maintained 100% for iPhone.
Also Steam is an independent alternative to Microsoft store on Windows now. So again quite the opposite of the Apple monopoly control of their platform.
I don't know where you got that 20% statistic, but everything I've read and can find on short notice has it up around 70%.
I just checked up on it, because it's a number I remember reading earlier. What I have noticed is that when the 75% market share is mentioned, it's downloads, that's a pretty meaningless number. The only number I could find was 18% SALES from 2013. No doubt that has increased in 11 years. I corrected the number to 20-50% since there is no way it can be 75% with several of the biggest game developers like Microsoft, EA, Epyc and others almost completely avoiding Steam. Together with independent sales, and Epic and Microsoft store, and smaller outlets like GOG and Humble Bundle.
Yeah, percent downloads is particularly difficult to extrapolate for steam: they host a number of extremely popular "free" games, and are notorious for their sale pricing. In addition, they have (IMO) very generous policy for providing devs keys for use on their platform.
Steam and AppStore are not equivalent in many important ways, though
I don't need steam to install your app on my pc, unless you choose it to be that way.
Replace steam with console and your statement has a fighting chance
Maybe, but on the other hand, fuck console WiFi subscriptions, so I think the fighting chance is 100% and thus that conclusion is assumed.