Apple is still standing in the way of Epic’s app store

Xatolos@reddthat.com to Technology@lemmy.world – 128 points –
Apple is still standing in the way of Epic’s app store
theverge.com
24

Apple is like a predatory landlord and hoa all rolled into one pile of fuck you towards it's developers. A reckoning cannot come soon enough for them.

2 evil companies who get off on huffing their own facts.

Let them fight.

I'm a bit more pathetic to epic since they actually do push the industry forward. Apple have done f all for the gaming industry. In fact they've largely held it back for a long time by having such terrible support for graphics drivers.

push the industry forward

Oh they have reviews now?

Unreal, nanite, lumen, foliage renderer, RdS, The fortnite scripting language which has been ported over to UE5, by far all the best contract for indie devs of all of the non-free game engines.

So, yeah, quite a lot.

Your parent comment was mentioning the fact that their store still does not support user reviews, which should be one of the most basic features.

Yeah I know but I'm saying that they do push the industry forward and then gave examples I'm not saying they're perfect or even very good but their existence extends beyond the epic game store.

Games built in the epic engine can be put on the Steam store no problem. So the fact that the epic store is subpar does not detract from the great advancements in their engine technology.

Do they have their own app store on Android where it's easy?

Edit:
Apparently they do: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/mobile/android
I just never heard about it.

IIRC, they even have a rewards thing right now where you can get some free stuff for playing their games specifically on mobile, trying to draw more attention to their new store.

I don't understand how Apple is getting away with charging other app stores. At most they could charge for hosting the either app store's app on their store, but that should be it. They have no other costs that they can justify since they aren't hosting, vetting, or curating the other store.

I think it's just that government bodies like the EU move slow so it'll take a while for them to bonk Apple, not that they're "getting away with it" in anything more than the short term.

I could be wrong though.

I don't understand how Apple is getting away with charging other app stores.

Because the gov allows it.

Meanwhile California says Google has a monopoly on their game store 🤷

To sell a game outside Apple’s App Store, developers must effectively pay a 50 euro cent per user per year installation fee once they reach a certain number of downloads. If developers want to link users to purchases outside the app, they’ll also need to fork out a 10 percent commission on all sales made “on any platform” — including outside of iOS. That’s on top of a 5 percent commission on purchases made within one year of the app’s installation. Then, they’d have to pay any fees charged by the operator of the new marketplace. In Epic’s case, that’s 12 percent — a significant discount on its own, but a major addition once you factor in Apple’s costs.

Checking Apple's fee calculator, apps that publish exclusively on third party stores don't have to pay Apple any commission, just the core technology fee. That makes it a bit less crazy, and I don't think article mentions it. Epic could save itself a lot of money by just not using the App Store but complaining is much more fun for Tim Sweeney.

Rare Good Guy Epic moment, here. That heavy breathing in the corner is the EU commission getting ready to send a sternly worded letter to Apple after investigating for 18 months.

They just want to carve up a bigger piece of the consumer pie, they're in no way a "good guy" in this.

They are fighting against a platform that needs to be dismantled and opened to the market. They’re absolutely a good guy here.

Two giants fighting over who gets to squish a village... sure, the one closer to you is totally a good guy!

Im with you on this one. Corporations are never your friend no matter how they try to frame it.

  • Epic market cap ~ $30b
  • Apple market cap ~ $3,000B

That's literally 100 times bigger.

I don't want more app stores I just want something like a cross platform version of obtainium