The whole strategy here feels pretty unprecedented.
Usually these kind of lawsuits happen in the background but Epic seems to be going full force with making it a public campaign.
> Apple is blocking your ability to get the latest Fortnite updates! All players should have a choice in payment providers and save up to 20%. Apple wants to limit your payment choices! Join the fight against @AppStore on social with #FreeFortnite
Can't imagine being in the room of Apple's PR team reacting to this.
For better or worse, many individuals and companies have realised that the court of public opinion can have as much (or even more) of an effect than the legal system can. Hence instead of settling issues in private, now a lot of organisations are trying to set off a negative PR storm aimed at their opponents that paints them as the victim/underdog.
So that's the real goal here. To cause enough of a social media controversy/enough drama over this that Apple is pressured to back down/reverse their decision without a court case, while the court case itself is a backup in case that doesn't work.
I think we're going to see a lot more of this going forward, especially when it comes to individuals and companies going against opponents with significantly more resources than them. They may not fear your legal team/resources, but they might well fear their reputation being torn to shreds.
It really seems that the court of public opinion has risen out of a dissatisfaction with courts of law. Of course, maligning the public opinion of your opponent is not a fair way to deliver justice, and it's a kangaroo court, but I wonder - if our legal system were better, would this phenomenon still arise?
To some degree this phenomenon might arise (simply because social media makes it really easy to form mobs/start controversies/whatever), but you're right, a lot of the reason this is so common is that people aren't happy with the legal system right now.
Oh man, you put this into words so well exactly what I have been thinking. We have a justice system that has massive problems, and there is very little change or improvement happening. Confidence in the system is at all time lows. It's not surprising that in these circumstances people are going to look elsewhere for whatever justice they can find.
I'm not a fan of what Apple is doing, and am happy to see it be tested in court.
But, I'm not a fan of another multi-million dollar company making such a blatant appeal to emotion, as if Fortnite needs to be "freed", to the common person who has no concept of how nuanced the legalities of this entire thing are.
I'll be happy when the theatrics are over with, and we can simply view the outcome of the legal precedent that is about to be set. This is a battle for the courts, not Twitter.
If they did so without overtly manipulating people via appeal to emotion and over-simplification, and not attempting to simultaneously run a PR campaign designed to whip people into a social media frenzy, I would not have the dirty taste in my mouth.
It’s the same bs that tv networks pull on subscribers when they have disagreements with cable providers over the rates they get paid. They air commercials saying “Verizon is trying to keep you from seeing your favorite shows!!” when they are the ones demanding increases from Verizon et al. Newsflash: neither of the parties are the good guys. It’s all manipulative and a pathetic attempt at portraying themselves as the victim. Meanwhile consumers, the real victims, are constantly getting random price increases forced upon them with no option to go elsewhere. It’s transparent and it’s moronic, and I wish it were different.
personally, i feel very different when the dispute is "they're charging us too much" versus "they are not paying us enough", though i guess the underlying cause is the same - companies trying to profit out of the fact that they have access to consumers.
Yes it's another Billion dollar company going against Apple, but then, who else can actually go against them and not financially ruin themselves? Smaller Indie studios definitely can't
I get their desire to have the fight be a fair one instead of Epic rallying its positively massive fanbase to suddenly start viewing Apple as the bad guy... but I also don't think it'll be that relevant to the court case. Both companies have the best lawyers money can buy, I'm sure they'll be able to throw out any "but think of the fans, look how mad they are" accusations.
I don't think the court case is the only thing that matters. iPhone sales might see a noticeable drop if Fortnite fans pull off. That would make a lot of sense, if Epic would not try to combat Google at the same time.
I think the larger move here is to start a fight, which other devs join soon after, so that eventually with critical mass, they can bully Apple into bending the knee.
The legal channel isn't the only one though. Sure it would be amazing if the court would do something, but let bet honest here, like you said, it's just a billion dollar company versus another one, except a shit ton of cash, nothing will come out of it.
People need to understands the power Apple has (and Google, and so many others, too by the way). When the theatrics are over, is when people will stop caring... there's nothing good about that. People needs to be aware that companies abuse their monopoly and they need to be aware that when they choose a platform that decide to abuse their monopoly, that they help that kind of abuse.
They not only had the lawsuit in hand and ready, but an ad and a deployment strategy to get it launched in game. Epic was clearly planning to go fully public at scale on this issue.
Estimates place it higher than that [0]: "Broken down further, "Fortnite" is said to have made $1.6 million each day on Apple's devices; if Apple is pulling in its standard cut of 30%, Apple made somewhere in the realm of $136.5 million on "Fortnite" in 2018.".
And some here argues that Apple gets paid fairly for what they provide.. I'm sure many could build payment + distribution cheaper than 100 million dollars..
Still, they are unlikely to be the real issue for Epic. I'm fully expecting some anti-consumer behaviour from them if they get away with their own payment system, like difficult to cancel payments, gambling or similar.
Apple is in a constant state of being involved in lawsuits, though of course not all are of the same significance. Their legal team has a lot on their plate.
You don't know that unless you know what the legal costs are, their odds of winning the suit, the lost $$ and opportunity cost due to no sales on iOS, the revenue loss from their 20% discount on V-Bucks, etc.
The existing iOS devices that have the app installed seem fine unless Apple disables the certificate. So, it won't be no sales on iOS; just no new user sales.
Yeah but this was obvious from the moment they first announced the update. You don't do that without a plan, you certainly know what Apple's policy is.
What does a PR response to something to this look like? This happened late in the work day, does that mean that people stay longer, or is it handed off to a PR team in another timezone? Do executives like Tim Cook play a role in the response? I've never really thought about the PR response and would love to know more about what goes into it.
The video also uses the word "monopoly", which plays right into the current anti-trust sentiment. Now's the best time to pull something like this. If I had to guess, Fortnite players probably drive a lot of demand for iPod Touch.
These public battles are commonplace when it comes to cable television carriage fees. The big media conglomerates will often raise fees causing a battle with the various big cable providers. Sometimes the cable providers will decide to walk away form negotiations and the media company will respond with a rash of TV commercials telling viewers to call their provider and demand they make a deal. However none of those commercials are even as well marketed as this ad.
Basecamp (dhh at least), were very vocal about Apple's app store shenanigans when Hey was under a similar threat. Not quite as loud as Epic here, but still pretty visible. Maybe dhh influenced Epic.
I'm trying to remember how active Apple's PR was during their lawsuit against Samsung. I doubt that this is the first time that a corporation has tried to polish the optics around a lawsuit.
I can't put my finger on its validity, but it all resonates the same to me:
- Listening to billionaires arguing with each other about what society should be for the benefit of all since this recession started
&
- Trillions and billions of dollar companies battling it out as if they were the underdog in the public arena for the sympathy of us mere wage earners.
The pervading sense I think from Left to Right is the system is rotten and we're mere spectators being told to root for one unfathomably rich entity vs another unfathomably rich entity. You can almost understand the anarchist, burn it all down meme.
I partly agree, but I think it's awesome that a huge company is taking on the fight instead of "negotiating" special fee adjustments like Amazon is doing in the backroom.
If the fight is successful, that will benefit everyone.
The funny part here is that Epic is partly owned by a Chinese company, just makes the whole 1984 just that more ironic, but hey, we live in a clown world now so get used to it.
That's how I felt like when I got the Google+ class action lawsuit email. Potential payout of $12... oh ok, thanks. I guess that also fixes similar problems in the future?
No no no, that's because you didn't burn it down the right way. You just need to fundamentally change human behavior and motivations for it to work. I don't get why this is so hard to understand
Of course it doesn't scale. The idea of it needing to scale is part of the problem. When we implement scale, people get lost in the aggregate, their voices drowned out by their apposited group.
There was a great deal of "burn it all down" sentiment around Trump's election. From my perspective, it wasn't and isn't productive. I'd rather see energy behind a sentiment like "real reform now" instead.
This is the first week in two months that there have been fewer than a million new unemployment applications. There are a million jobs and 40,000,000 unemployed. Evictions are starting, and noon to night in courthouses across the country it's people losing their housing, probably forever. But Bezos is doing all right, he's up a few billion so he'll let it ride. And Congress must agree, because they're taking a break until Labor Day.
Stop making strawman arguments around billionaires and trillion $$ companies. The only company which can take on Apple is another large company with passionate user following. Small developers like you and me just come here on Hacker News and argue. But it leads to nothing as Apple simply ignores us.
I remember walking into the latest generation of flagship Apple store (the cantilevered one) and thinking “man, who’s job is it now to throw the sledgehammer at the jumbotron?”
I wanted to do it but didn’t want a felony on my record. I think that would have been sort of neat, but didn’t know a good way to get the Ridley Scott five minutes hate clip played on it, which would have been critical for the gag.
I bet Epic also sent out news stories to every network to get a jump start on the narrative. They clearly spent a lot of time and effort getting everything ready before pulling the trigger on this. It has been awhile since I've seen such a media blitzkrieg on a contract dispute.
More than that. They had all this (the vid, the lawsuit, the social media campaign to mobilise their fans) ready to go, and baited Apple into kicking them off the App Store.
Pretty much the definition. They could either play Epic's game by booting them off or face potentially other apps breaking TOS in response. Epic was aiming for a certain reaction and they achieved it.
“Schaulust” literally translates to “joy of watching.” Schaulustige are bystanders who watch a brawl, accident or some other incident for their personal entertainment.
"Schadenfreude" comes to my mind, and the proverb "wenn sich zwei streiten, freut sich der dritte" (when two are fighting, the third is the lucky one). But Schadenfreude is more general than what you are describing and the proverb is not quite on spot, because you are not really involved in the story. I'll probably spend the next hour trying to think of a better word ;).
I'm curious as to why as a user you want alternative app stores? I understand as a developer why you would but it is less obvious to me how it would improve the experience for users.
>It's hard to understand why as a user you want alternative app stores?
I, for example, want to be able to install things like the HK protest apps if I want
Or better yet, just to have the choice beyond Apple's overly Christian/American censorship of apps that _might_ have porn on it.
How is it hard to understand why a consumer would want a third party store? Is it hard to understand why people want choices when selecting an internet provider as well?
There are lots of private apis in iOS which developers are not allowed to use but would allow for a richer, wider variety of apps.
For example f.lux has a large feature set which isn’t built into Apple’s night shift. F.lux relies on a private api so the only way to get it on iOS is through Cydia or some other jailbreak App Store.
Also I can imagine there would be lots of possibilities for third party watches if apps could have properly backgrounded processes. Android watches are generally crippled on iOS when compared to the Apple Watch.
I didn't consider that angle. Although to me that is almost a separate issue. Even If Apple allowed separate App Stores I suspect they would still find a way to prevent access to private APIs.
On Android I always have one or two apps that are sideloaded because they do something Google or Samsung doesn't like. For example, I have an app that requires a lot of effort to install that lets me remap the Bixby button on my phone to whatever I want.
In addition, some open source software is only available this way. iOS, as it stands now, is actually incompatible with most open source licenses.
Yeah that is fair. That assumes that the developer passes the cost on to the user and the alternative app stores take 0-10%.
Here is my fear. I like most, not all, of the restrictions the App Store puts on apps. If there were alternative app stores developers might only provide their apps on those stores that don't provide the same user protections I value. This is why I would prefer Apple to resolve this without allowing other app stores. I think this could be done by adjusting their rules and reducing the amount they take.
You're getting downvoted but this is a legitimate response. Epic tried pulling out of Google Play, but due to the number of gates a user has to go through to install an app from outside Play, they ultimately had to add it back.
You're falling in their marketing trap. They are passing it now because it helps their case, but had they a lower percentage to begin with, they'd keep the price as it was. You think Epic is a benevolent corporation? No, they're a money-making machine selling pixel clothes and dances for their hit game. (I'm a gamer and I find Epic revolting.)
"Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney has effectively thrown down the gauntlet to Valve, saying that if Steam matched the Epic Games Store in terms of dropping the cut it takes from developers to 12%, Epic would stop pursuing the policy of securing big-name exclusives."
The entire point of the EGS is to get the industry to lower their skimming. And you don't even have to invoke altruism: if Epic continues to take 12% of every transaction and grows the market ten-fold, that's still more than a 30% cut of the market today.
It is a sad testament to our time that it is inconceivable that a person just wants to better the situation for all involved.
I'm a game developer and the EGS is the best thing that's happened to us as developers AND to us as gamers. And our games aren't even on the EGS.
Other digital distribution platforms, like Bandcamp, only take 10% to 15%.
I'm sure if there was true competition in the app store market, other app stores could be more efficient with the 30% cut that the App Store takes, and pass the savings off in order to compete with rival app stores that take 30%.
itch.io allows developers to set the take, down to 0% if they want. Patreon allows users to adjust the take in exchange for less / more features. There's lots of alternative models that aren't a flat 30% fee.
This is going to be a fascinating PR war. Apple was probably caught by surprise with how immediately public Epic was willing to take this.
But besides the fun of that wonderful drama unfolding over the next months/years, I actually feel like this could be catastrophic for Apple's image. Epic has an underestimated amount of influence and clout over the Gen Z crowd, and by aggressively rallying teenage gamers against Apple, I think anti-Apple sentiment could become popular (or viral) where it basically was nonexistent before (outside of some techie/developer circles).
I don't think Epic has that much influence. If I were Apple's PR team, I think I'd just completely ignore them. Treat them as utterly and completely irrelevant.
Personally I think Apple's 30% cut is ridiculous and the fact that there is zero market pressure on that them to price it appropriately should mean something. But at the same time I'm not sure Epic has any legal leg to stand on.
And that is exactly why you are not Apple's PR team.
I understand your POW and I would have shared it also if not for the kids in the house where you can actually see how dominating Epic is.
There is a whole sub-culture around Fortnite, it expands from just playing a simple game on your iPad to being a way of communication on TikTok (e.g. dance moves).
And you bet that when those little kids start whining to their parents, some noise will be generated.
I have honestly nothing more to say, except well played Fortnite! Perfect execution.
I play Fortnite and my kids play Fortnite and I still don't think it's that dominating. Kids have plenty of outlets and Fortnite is one of many. But even if I agree what, exactly, is Apple going to be able to say or do? What response could they possibly have that would placate children?
Fortnite is very popular and this together with other companies jumping in on it has the potential to bring the tech monopoly discussion even further into the mainstream discourse. Epic is big enough for that and I think that's the battle they're trying to fight, not a legal one.
I don't think any other companies are going to jump on board. How many other companies have their own payment processing that will incorporate into their apps just to be banned? If nobody else is banned then they not really in the fight like Epic is.
Epic, in my opinion, can only briefly bring this into mainstream discourse. Maybe we'll hear about next week in mainstream media and then it will be forgotten. If this starts a whole movement, that's something else entirely, but I don't see many other companies willing to risk their business for this. Epic is mostly unique in that it's both big enough to do this fight but small enough not to get special treatment like Amazon.
On the other hand I suspect Boomers and Gen X are the ones actually purchasing the devices Gen Z own, not least of all for the many “family” features/restrictions. Enough parents have either had or heard of crazy games-related credit card charges they could view this positively.
A decade ago, yet another company (the upstart doubleTwist) dared to challenge Apple's control of their platform by advocating for a secondary content store:
Didn't these guys build their own distribution channel and withhold their best game from a competitor so they could 1) build their own walled garden and 2) avoid Steam's 20-30% fee?
I hate the epic store. It's riddled with strange and frustrating choices.
But there isn't any reason why they couldn't have created it. Steam was (still is?) the monopoly, so they are increasing choices on PC (however awful their specific offering is).
It's a tried and true approach at this point in history. Remember Steve Bannon? [1] Weaponizing (angry, disenfranchised) gamers is the hot trend of the last decade.
It's going to be interesting. Epic might be able to reposition the image of Apple phones. Black and white design, dull colors, fragile... Old people phones.
I think they stopped hating it when they walked away from the openness of Apple II into the all-closed design of the original Macintosh.
Apple wanted to be a huge corporation, and they succeeded. They also wanted to be a sexy and adored big corp, and here their success is colossal, no IBM could compare.
Google used to compare, but they started to lose their luster in the eyes of the tech-savvy trendsetters some time around 2015. I suspect Apple is going to get a similar treatment some time in the future.
I find it fascinating that in that ad the schlubs that are sitting there watching the television are Fortnite default skins and not say, replicas of the characters that hold the same position in the original Apple ad. This really supports Dan Olson manufactured discontent assertion[0].
Even if you support them and play their game, if you don't spend money for skins, you're still in Big Brother's audience. The wildest thing is that the Jackboots behind the hammer thrower are approximate replicas of the Apple Ad.
I don't play games anymore and I'm not a big fan of the whole microtransactions/F2P model, but I found that video somewhat uncompelling.
Not that long ago, the MMO standard was $15 a month* (plus the initial $50+). Not to unlock the cool stuff, but simply to play at all. And nobody felt like there was anything sinister about it.
With Fortnite, you can play for free as much as you like, or (based on what I gathered from the video) pay <$10 every 2.5 months to be on the cool track. Seems like a pretty good deal in comparison, assuming that they're rolling out new (non-shop) content at a reasonable rate.
Even if you support them and play their game
How are you supporting them if you don't pay? Sure, they benefit from network effects, but ultimately they obviously need a lot of paying customers. Have we really gotten to the point where people expect to play AAA games for free and view it as audacious if the developers incentivize people to pay for things? As mentioned, I did much prefer the old model because it precluded this kind of stuff from seeping into the experience, but I don't think there's anything fundamentally sinister or wrong with trying to push people towards paying for your game (though I will say the "let me see your Marsh Walk emote" stuff was pretty cringey, but that's another story).
*I realize that Fortnite is not an MMO but it seems to fit the bill for something you would pay a subscription for these days. You could hold the Battle Pass for over a year for the classic $50-60 game price.
Do the ends justify the means? The way I see it Apple will be rightfully scrutinised but only because a giant corporation used propoganda on its users. The lowest common denominator: "they're stopping you playing the game!!!"
They’re only preventing new installs. Most Fortnite fans with iPhones will already have the game installed. It still works fine. I just tried it myself
Interesting. Does your ability to download past updates mean you'll be able to download future ones though?
There's no doubt in my mind epic are using the they are stopping you playing argument - they literally say in the advert it's been blocked from a billion devices.
I mean if that statement is technically not true then don't you think it's propoganda?
Edit: I shouldn't have said technically not true but that they are being very economical with the truth.
In all the hullabaloo around this drama, I haven't seen any actual mention about what anti trust/ competition is supposed to be about. All I see is "private company, anything goes" vs "Apple owns the market. Apple bad".
Not a lawyer. But I've heard some podcasts with lawyers on them. So I'm basically an expert. Isn't the whole pov of courts supposed to be: is this harmful to the consumer? They arrived at this "razor" because just being big and successful by itself isn't automatically bad. What if you're huge because run your business better than everyone else? What if you use your size to invest in more efficient capex that lets you make stuff cheaper? If you pass those on to the consumer, that should be kosher.
If you use your large size to push for things that's only good for your own bottom line and pass that cost on to your partners, who then have to pass it onto the customer, then by my crude layman's definition of anti competitiveness, Apple looks very naughty. Especially when the reason you can push certain unpalatable things is because your business is so pervasive and has high switching costs. Most of the time it's fine to let businesses charge whatever the hell they want. If eBay went from 10% fees to 30%! fees people could just go to any other market place. Yeah it sucks to relist inventory, copy photos over, start with no feedback, but it's doable.
But I can't just switch simply from Apple to Android. Do you remember the first time you tried to use Linux or macos? How painful was that? And we're nerds! How is the majority of people who don't give a shit about tech deal?
And I see the argument of "Apple good" because most of the experience just works so I can definitely swallow a closed appstore with any fees they want to impose.
That's exactly the problem though. This is using their size and prevalence in their customers lives to their own disadvantage. This feels anti competitive
Not really. It's basic contract law versus some small game company lawyers (compared to Apple's). Also, putting out parody ads and making fun of the whole thing will get you zero points in any court. Even if a court accepts this at all it will take years to finish. Meanwhile Epic is out of luck.
Netflix and Amazon make you carry out purchases offline, and then they don’t pay for the store fee.
Why doesn’t Epic just have a subscription model, wouldn’t that circumvent the App Store?
Credit card companies charge 3% just to swipe a credit card (and fixed fees can make small transactions 10-15%) — Apple is charging for hosting the game, certifying and ensuring security for its user base, and carrying out the financial transaction. What would be the appropriate percentage?
No - hey.com tried to have an outside subscription model and they were rejected from the app store.
Netflix and Amazon have special deals in place - the Amazon deal was made public in the recent investigations. Apple claims that the special deal is only available to select video streaming services.
I wonder if anyone has any data on what percentage of the kids who play Fortnite on iOS have access to anything else to play it on. Because I feel like that number will be very important to anyone at Apple contemplating "okay, fuck it, who cares, what if we just pulled Epic's authorization to run these things on iOS entirely".
There are probably a bunch of other reasons to not consider that option but I would bet money there are people on both sides of this argument giving serious thought to that option.
If I was apple I'd quickly exempt Epic and allow them to charge however they want, but not change the rules for anyone else. The number of other players that are large enough to have this kind of sway (so could try the same thing) must be pretty small, and going through the courts might hurt more.
I know this is almost off topic, but I find it fascinating and really funny that a company/game well known for "borrowing" pop culture (i.e. the whole dancing thing) is doing the same thing to get their message across.
I'm interested to see if other companies will join or not. It would be interesting to see if Apple will remove every one of them from App Store or not.
Who watches this ad and doesn't immediately realize how ridiculous it is? Epic is a multi-billion dollar company taking pot shots at another multi-billion dollar company.
Are people so easily swayed to their particular favorite capitalists? Have we really not moved on from "Sega does what Nintendon't"?
Edit: To be clear, I'm not supporting Apple here. I just think this particular ad is a wild shot to take. I know it's a reference to the original Apple ad, I just think it's completely overdone.
Apple is providing the platform that enables Epic to distribute their game for FREE to a billion+ users. Why shouldn't they take a cut from the in-app purchase monetization? It costs Apple server hosting, bandwidth, engineering to provide this service.
Providing an alternative payment method at a discount is not the answer here, obviously players will choose the cheaper option.
If Epic wants more money, maybe they should negotiate a smaller cut.
> Apple is providing the platform that enables Epic to distribute their game for FREE to a billion+ users. Why shouldn't they take a cut from the in-app purchase monetization?
Then they should charge the developer for install costs + profit, not charge for all transactions happening in the game that have nothing to do with Apple and impose no cost on them. That's retarded.
It's like a landlord taking 30% of sales from the local florist rather than just charging rent. Totally messed up.
I'm not surprised! It seems like a reasonable option for those who have no initial capital to pay for their lease.
But for those who come with capital ready, it can be a horrible deal. Being made to accept that option when you don't need it means you end up wasting much more money than you otherwise would.
Same happens in the app store, in its absence of an option between these methods.
Independent of whether I agree with you, you may want to consider finding a better way to express your disapproval than using people with developmental disabilities as an insult.
The game is free to users but that doesn't mean Apple can't charge the developer for installs, especially if the developer is making a profit through in-app sales.
Usually these kind of lawsuits happen in the background but Epic seems to be going full force with making it a public campaign.
> Apple is blocking your ability to get the latest Fortnite updates! All players should have a choice in payment providers and save up to 20%. Apple wants to limit your payment choices! Join the fight against @AppStore on social with #FreeFortnite
Can't imagine being in the room of Apple's PR team reacting to this.