I understand Apple's decision to do this. They want to stick it to Epic. Completely understandable desire on Apple's part. But, sadly, Apple is letting their desire to get vengeance outweigh the interests of their users in having all the games they want to play on their devices.
I have been realizing lately that my loyalty to Apple has been waning over the years after having invested heavily in the ecosystem. This is another representation to me of how Apple's ecosystem is something you have no control over, and you are at the whim of Apple's legal team in situations like that to be able to play the games you want to play on your devices.
Apple remembered their corporate games they were playing and forgot who their real customer and focus should be: the end users. This decision doesn't benefit their end users in any meaningful way. It hurts end users to score points in their feud with Epic.
> But, sadly, Apple is letting their desire to get vengeance outweigh the interests of their users
Of course they are, that's Apple's standard business relationship practice. See also why Mac's still don't have an Nvidia GPU option, because Apple & Nvidia got in some spat a decade ago and Apple has been holding a grudge ever since.
The more Apple brings stuff in-house the less this matters to the bottom line, but it shouldn't be surprising. Unless not having Fortnite begins to seriously impact iPhone & iPad sales, Apple isn't going to care regardless of whether or not it's hurting their customers.
I think it was a system design issue because of lack of proper cooling from the integrator (Apple). Maybe someone can look it up, I'm going off of memory here..
Yeah, inadequate cooling caused the BGA to pop free, with the recall "fix" being to just add some rubber to smash it down. iirc Apple tried to blame Nvidia for it and Nvidia didn't take it, blaming instead Apple's design.
Since then Apple has repeatedly had inadequate cooling and power delivery issues, just typically resulting in throttling instead of recalls. Sooo Nvidia was probably accurate and it was Apple's fault. But regardless of whose fault it was, the end result is consumers were stuck with some truly second-tier GPUs for many years
Apple has a long history of inadequate cooling, ostensibly because Steve Jobs hated fans. The apple II overheated, the apple III famously overheated (causing the motherboard to warp and chips to pop out), the original macintosh had no fan either. For decades there was a suite of aftermarket fans for Apple computers, although that's less practical with a laptop.
No, this was 100% Nvidia material engineering fail and affected whole industry. Dell, HP, all heavyweights had huge costly recalls. Apple cooling strategy of having internals as close to 100C "to keep the fan noise down" might of contributed to earlier failures, but pretty much _every single_ Nvidia G84/G86 series GPU died in same way.
No multiple laptop manufacturers had this same issue. Toshiba and Sony were two of them. Heat was the cause but it was operating within the specs of the GPU manuafacturer. The issue that soured NVidia with these manufacturer was when it came to fixing the issues they told them to go suck it. Example when Seagate had an entire batch of 2.5 drives dying within a year of manufacturing, they worked with Apple and HP to get them replaced and the cost was shared by both.
Also NVidia has issues with their driver development and refuse to let Apple have a say in it.
Apple's slavish obsession with passive cooling, indeed. It doesn't matter how many times it has been proven to be a bad idea, they're still going to use it.
I'm not sure it's such a bad idea. You can take it too far of course.
I for one love passive cooling. I select my (no Apple hardware in my house) hardware for silent operation where possible. Started with selecting the right fans and sound proofing my desktop PCs back when and now I'm only buying laptops that do well with the cooling noise. Meaning, if all I do is browsing HN, you better not turn on any fans on me. And when a fan is turned on, it has to be silent and have the right "sound profile". There's just some noise that's very very irritating and the decibels are just one aspect of it.
So if someone does everything they can to do without active cooling, I support that. Now if they can't, put the right kind of fan in there, sure. E.g. on a GPU I'm fine with some cooling noise, but it better only happen when I'm likely not to notice because I'm loudly slaying aliens or something like that.
Well liked yes, but it throttles due to overheating, though it will only typically be noticeable on long running tasks. Adding a simple thermal pad so it makes contact with bottom case cover makes a big improvement.
I saw a Linus tech tips video where they made that mod, and they found that it heated the chassis well beyond the regulation limits, while Apple’s original design falls just within it.
In no way thanks to Apple's insistence on using weak solder and forcing the device to be as thin as possible. I've heard people argue this up and down the street, but I have a hard time believing it when most Windows/Linux devices have no problem managing their thermals in a way that doesn't destroy their hardware.
Yes, but we are talking about the interests of users here. The idea that apple would prevent Nvidia GPUs from being used with their machines is further to the point of Apple putting its grudges ahead of the interests of their customers.
I honestly don't see how using NVIDIA would be in the interest of users.
e.g. AMD's GPUs have full documentation, and high quality open source drivers. Same deal with Intel.
NVIDIA, you have to deal with their blob, and tough luck if it doesn't work, especially if NVIDIA has decided not to support your hardware anymore. They do that fairly quickly. In that sense, their GPUs are comparable with PowerVR, and your average shitty android SoC.
Flash was absolutely NOT killed by Apple. Adobe killed Flash, and it was unrelated to Steve Job's letter.
Source: me. Was working at Adobe at the time, probably at the thing that actually led to the demise of Flash (not that it was my intention in any way to contribute to the death of Flash, the decision to kill it was a surprise to me as much as it was to anybody else).
I didn't leave _that_ long ago, and don't want to look up my contract/NDA to see when it expires, so I don't want to go into too much detail.
Flash cost Adobe a lot to develop (it was a big team). At some point, I speculate[+] that Adobe simply decided they no longer need the runtime, since the browsers have/will soon have all the capabilities that they need, natively. So why waste the money?
[+] I don't know for sure (e.g. I didn't participate directly in the decision); but still, I believe my speculation is much more informed that the typical net user who just noticed the coincidence and wanted to believe the narrative.
"Adobe simply decided they no longer need the runtime, since the browsers have/will soon have all the capabilities that they need, natively."
I think that ignores a very very significant reason for the browsers getting to that point of being able to supplant Flash being that is was terrible and security nightmare and Apple had shifted mindshare against it and shown it wasn't needed in a mainstream platform. It wasn't just Adobe graciously terminating a successful platform that gave them a lot of influence.
Never claimed that it was without problems. But look at the timeline: Steve Jobs letter was April 29, 2010. About a year later Adobe stopped development of Flash on mobile (that's when they really killed it, the next 10 years were necessary to implement the decision basically). You really think that letter shifted mindshare in 1 year? Trust me, the opposite was true, there were some really big players that wanted to announce flash support on mobile and were caught completely off guard.
Using flash cc several years before EOL, it just wasn't a particularly consistent environment to develop in regardless of target device, and if you wanted to make ipad apps you ran into lots of limitations on what you could actually do with a release build, not sure if flash ever got the opportunity to use runtime interpreted actionscript 3 on release builds for iOS... that would have been nice to have.
> The main reason flash was killed by Apple was also spite toward Adobe
Prior to and subsequent to Flash (a Macromedia product, fwiw) Apple & Adobe have had extensive relationships and interaction that are in no way indicative of spite.
The main reason Flash died is because performance & power consumption on mobile never got past garbage, despite the platform wars going borderline nuclear on the topic.
> they made valid excuses sure,
Perhaps it's my becoming an ol' fogey, but it's crazy to see the Apple haters of yesteryear also move toward historical revisionism.
While the best approach is to just ignore such FUD like "valid excuses, sure", it's also important the record not be owned by zealots and those who preach spite.
I mean, for a company eagerly (and correctly) removing the headphone jack for phones, it's the least surprising thing to remove GPU options. All that's left is RAM and HDD.
I briefly tried to use that. The Lightning port is centered in the case, so it's impossible to use the device in landscape without your hand knocking the connector loose. No, it doesn't work.
I don't necessarily agree with Apple here, but couldn't your same arguments be made against Epic? They want to "stick it" to Apple and are harming their customers in the mean time?
What this comes down to is an argument over money, and what percentage apple should get of that money. I don't think either company has a moral high ground in their negotiations on what percentage apple deserves.
Epic is the customer here also and they want to be able to provide a convenient and cheaper way for their customers. Their asks are not only reasonable, they are consumer friendly.
The judge did say Apple has a right to collect a commission , but did't rule if 30 % was fair.
"First, and most significant, as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
Indeed, while the Court finds no basis for the specific rate chosen by Apple (i.e., the 30% rate) based on the record, the Court still concludes that Apple is entitled to some compensation for use of its intellectual property. As established in the prior sections, Apple is entitled to license its intellectual property for a fee, and to further guard against the uncompensated use of its intellectual property. The requirement of usage of IAP accomplishes this goal in the easiest and most direct manner, whereas Epic Games’ only proposed alternative would severely undermine it. Indeed, to the extent Epic Games suggests that Apple receive nothing from in-app purchases made on its platforms, such a remedy is inconsistent with prevailing intellectual property law."
Yeah - I think Apple's 30% cut is a racket and a bad incentive for them. They should make money by shipping incredible products, not taxing everyone who builds for them.
That said, I like the app store rules they can enforce like IAP - I just don't think they should be taking a cut. If they want to charge a flat one time fee of like $100 to publish then fine, but profit sharing seems wrong to me.
My worry is their aggressiveness in defending their tax will cause blow back that damages their ability to leverage their rules. A worse outcome is one where they keep the tax, but app devs are allowed around the rules. This is starting to happen (an admittedly tiny bit) by them being forced to allow links out to sign up off of the phone.
If they just forced people to use IAP for their user's benefit (easy cancellation, easy account subscription tracking and privacy, easy payment), but didn't take a cut that would be the best outcome for their users and it'd be an easier argument to win in the public eye.
Commission does not matter. It could be 300%. What matters is whether users can use another method of payment without artificial difficulties. If I can press "Apple Pay" and pay $120 or I can press "Paypal" and pay $40, I'd choose Paypal. If it would be $41 vs $40, I'll consider Apple. But that's me. Some people surely value Apple services more than me. So when competition is allowed, Apple will be able to price their commission competitively.
Apple only was slapped down on anti-steering to other payment options, NOT in collecting a commission.
That includes potentially changing their developer agreement to now require developers to meter and perhaps even audit external payments to submit Apple's commission.
Because they can no longer differentiate payments made independent of the app (because the anti-steering clauses are gone) this could result in required commission to apple in cases which it formerly was not required.
Imagine you want to sell a valuable, consumer friendly product that is cheaper than some alternatives and will save people money, but in this case, in a brick and mortar store.
The brick and mortar store says "we agree to stock your product, and will take 30% off the top for our troubles."
Would we be saying the same things? It's the same dynamic, in my view.
Except that it's not. The ruling clearly stated that Apple has to allow other payment providers inside the apps, but obviously anything sold on the App Store can still attract the 30% payment fee.
In your example, it's like if you bought a TV from Walmart, took it home, and then any content you wanted to buy on that TV had to have a 30% fee paid to walmart since....that's where you bought it originally? It doesn't make sense there, and it doesn't make sense here. When epic sells you a fortnite skin within fortnite, apple provides literally no value to this transaction, other than being a gatekeeper between two legitimate sides wishing to engage in a business transaction - so that's why Epic wanted to make sure they can process their own payments within the app(and the court has agreed).
What about in app payments in XBox or PS4? It will not surprise you to know they also take 30%.
I can't help but notice that Fortnite is also available in the PS4 store as well.
This is simply Epic doing their own money grab against the the platform they can most afford to alienate:
>The documents show that from March 2018 to July 2020, the
>breakdown of Fortnite revenue by platform was as follows:
>PS4: 46.8%
>Xbox One: 27.5%
>Android, Switch, PC: 18.7%
>iOS: 7%
This is a flyer for Epic to try to take a bigger percentage from their ecosystem partners and devalue them. Commoditize your complement. And they simply started with the one they could afford to alienate.
I don't have links handy but Sweeny directly addressed this. Sony and Microsoft are willing to negotiate with Epic. They get to find a middleground that both sides are happy with. Apple does not negotiate, a developer that has $5 in sales get's the same deal as Epic. Sweeny stated that if Apple had been willing to negotiate similar to Microsoft and Sony then we wouldn't be here.
That's a good point. Not a big Apple fan, in fact I hate most what they do, but for that particular thing I don't agree with Epic. Those things are anti-competetive and hurt everyone else.
> What about in app payments in XBox or PS4? It will not surprise you to know they also take 30%.
What about it? It's the same kind of anticompetitive practice. Except that Apple devices are used by billions every day across whole software market and consoles are entertainment devices used with much narrower market impact. Punishing them is less urgent.
What if the TV manufacturer didn't even need retail distribution because they have their own warehouses, trucks, etc and will gladly send you a TV for $0 and charge on-device subscription fees to cover it.
But sadly, you bought your home in a neighborhood with an HOA, and even though you own your home, the HOA requires all retail purchases have to go through them, and they take a 30% cut of everything and they won't let you order that TV directly from the manufacturer to put in your house.
But this is ok, because this is what you agreed to when you bought your home.
Then you’d have a different situation. The warehouses, trucks etc are the app store and iPhones. In order for that TV manufacturer to have their own, they’d have to build their own devices, OS and cloud services.
The iPhone is your house -- you own that. The HOA is Apple -- the people who make the rules. The trucks and warehouses are the servers and the internet.
Epic already runs a store they don't need the app store to distribute their apps and do payments. They're only required because Apple gives them no other option.
Apple isn’t an HOA, HOAs dictate what people can do with houses that the HOA had no hand in building. Apple built the houses and the logistics network that made building and selling them possible.
Also, the majority of people do not own their houses, banks do. Try financing a house and then stop servicing your loan. That’s essentially what Epic has done: breached contract.
Epic’s “store” is an app, and evidently they do need Apple to distribute it to Apple devices, unless you can tell me how to install it right now on my device?
You're muddying the issue here on purpose. Mortgages are irrelevant to the analogy. The logistics network is irrelevant. If you buy a TV, there is a big logistics network in making and building them too -- so what?
> unless you can tell me how to install it right now on my device?
This is the dictionary definition of begging the question. You can't install apps on the iPhone because you can't install apps on the iPhone -- that's not an argument.
Software distribution and installation, historically, not required an "app store". That's a relatively new invention.
They definitely entered into that contract without duress.
But the majority of other neighborhoods are also run by HOAs with similar terms. There are a few neighborhoods that are completely free of HOAs that but those houses are not as nice and neighborhoods not as nice. If you want a nice house in a nice neighborhood, an HOA is your only option.
I'm positive some people, if they had the option, would prefer to buy their current house free of the HOA. Others, on the other hand, like that HOA protects their neighborhood and don't care that they can't paint their house a different color or buy TV's directly from manufacturers.
Sadly, the house and neighborhood you want determines whether or not you'll have to enter into that contract with a particular HOA.
> There are a few neighborhoods that are completely free of HOAs that but those houses are not as nice and neighborhoods not as nice.
I think the HOA tries to argue that this isn't coincidence - its the HOA's policies and governance that have resulted in the niceness (we can cite examples that both support this and contradict this, of course, so its hard to assess whether this is true).
Folks might argue that it isn't fair that the most desirable goods are encumbered, but then its kind of up to them to create or support institutions that can manufacture the unencumbered version. That's the promise of a market opportunity where we can create brand new neighborhoods to test your hypothesis that people will prefer the nice-but-no-HOA version (I think the recent buzz around the Framework laptops is an example of this).
Well but that TV requires power lines to operate, and fiber to get its content. Insofar as the neighborhood (or whoever) paid for those, they deserve a cut too.
The HOA forces you to use their power and fiber, so in that case sure. But if you could get power and fiber directly from the TV manufacturer or someone else, then the HOA doesn't need a cut.
In this case, the TV manufacturer already has all that infrastructure and they use it in neighborhoods without an HOA. It would be no cost to you or the HOA for you use it but the HOA just doesn't allow it. For obvious reasons, of course, because then they wouldn't get their cut.
You want a nice home in a nice neighborhood or a nice phone with a nice OS. Maybe you want to avoid an HOA but the home/phone you want isn't available without it. You can always choose another phone/home in another HOA controlled neighborhood. Or alternatively you could get a PinePhone or a crack house.
> The ruling clearly stated that Apple has to allow other payment providers inside the apps
This was widely misreported as true, but is in fact not what the judge ruled. If you read the full ruling rather than just the single page injuction, it seems that the only thing that Apple is being forced to allow is in-app communication about / linking to places outside the App where purchases can be made.
In fact, the Judge goes so far as to say that Apple can still legally use their contracts with developers to require Apps to pay commission on out of app purchases. This case was a far bigger win for Apple than was initially reported.
To fix this, we need new legislation. The courts seem clear so far that they can't reign in this behavior using the existing laws on the books.
> The ruling clearly stated that Apple has to allow other payment providers inside the apps, but obviously anything sold on the App Store can still attract the 30% payment fee.
Incorrect.
The ruling said that Apple cannot have anti-steering provisions that prevent developers from advertising alternative payments on content outside the app (web pages, emails).
- Apple is still allowed to forbid in-app purchasing through alternative systems
- Apple still has the option to require commission on purchases made externally in the future. Currently they do not, but they were previously able to draw a clear line using anti-steering provisions.
Apple has used other techniques like minimal usability to pressure apps to support in-app payments - e.g. Hey.com was rejected because their app was unusable on download because they did not support in-app subscriptions and anti-steering meant they did not refer people to instructions on how to sign up. Presumably anti-steering solves this - right up until Apple changes their rules to say that the external payment needs to result in a commission payment.
There are only two chains of brick and mortar store in the world and one with double digit market share (Apple) has decided to take 30% off the top for all goods sold in all of their stores and have banned products from having any indication on their packaging that they can be purchased elsewhere for different pricing. Entering any store also requires an extremely expensive chain-specific device that most people purchase on credit every few years, eliminating the ability to easily shop around at both chains.
If this were to happen outside of tech, the perpetrator would get crushed by anti-monopoly legislation.
An App distributed on the immensely popular iOS platform can be used to advertise alternative platforms at different pricing. The “fair” price if this was allowed to happen would be a 0% cut since no one in their right mind would pay any amount extra if given the option.
The only real restriction Apple currently has is that apps should do no such advertising of alternative platforms (payment methods).
> An App distributed on the immensely popular iOS platform can be used to advertise alternative platforms at different pricing. The “fair” price if this was allowed to happen would be a 0% cut since no one in their right mind would pay any amount extra if given the option.
Prior to the recent ruling, this was untrue (unless I'm mistaken).
It's even worse than that, because each of the stores are in different cities and if your customers want to patronize the other store they first have to move to the other city.
Disagree. Adding 100 files on an FTP site is nowhere near as complicated as adding 100 boxes of frozen yogurt in a grocery store. Physical goods occupy space, need (sometimes) specific storage conditions, packaging, etc. We need to re-evaluate these concepts for digital-only goods. I'm not denying that running a store has costs, but grabbing 30% of sales for a digital-only good is immoral IMHO.
To make the analogy accurate it would need to be stipulated that this brick and mortar store is the only place that customers can go to buy products.
edit: I wouldn't even say "two chains" like a sibling comment suggests because the reality is that customers have to invest hundreds of dollars on an exclusive membership to one or the other, picking and choosing from both is not an option.
> What this comes down to is an argument over money, and what percentage apple should get of that money
A lot of things have been litigated in this dispute, this is not one of them. What this comes down to is questions about control over iPhones and contents of apps, questions the court was asked to answer were things along the lines of:
- Whether Apple can restrict iPhones to only installing software received via Apple.
- Whether Apple can control how software installed through their platform collects in app payments.
- Whether Apple can control how software installed through their platform informs users about not-in-app ways to pay.
...
Not "what cut is appropriate". That wasn't the legal or moral point.
That sounds like "sticking it to them" to me. The alternative is that Apple lets them back on, stops paying for an expensive lawsuit, and gets extra revenue from fortnite.
Mobile Fortnite has been dying for over a year before all this started so not much of an income. Note: Most gamers move over to a non-mobile device for these games or at least a Nintendo Switch.
I tried to explain the details to my son, but he's just disappointed that he can't play a game he liked. He wants to buy a Windows computer and is saving up for it.
Trying to get him interested in writing a bit of code, which to me is more fun in some ways than playing games, without pushing it too hard, and so far no luck.
Maybe let him try modding existing games? Steam's community workshop pages are thriving, especially for easily modded titles like Bethesda games.
Back in the day, Warcraft III had a built-in script and level editor and people thrived on making mods and entire new types of games with it (murder mysteries, tower defense, battle royale, DOTA...). It's how I got my start as a coder, modding games that I enjoyed without the boring pressure of "business logic".
I think there's a slight distinction to be made between "games that have built-in low/no-code content editors" and "games that can be modded via an SDK, but you have to code".
The former are good for any creative kid (or adult!) and don't require you to learn a programming language, just logical thinking (as in logic gates/flows). The latter, depending on tooling, can require everything from simple Lua scripts (a common game modding language) all the way up to learning UnrealEngine or Unity.
Games with built-in content editors:
* Warcraft & Starcraft series (oldies but goodies)
In particular I'd check out Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights' DM mode, and the DOS editor for a good sampling of what the industry can offer. They are a great stepping stone to actual programming, with triggers, conditionals, and other flow control structures all wrapped behind a veneer of fantasy gaming.
(edit: sorry for potato formatting. no idea how HN handles text formatting)
Side note, but fun fact! Fortnite, the uberpopular battle royale game, is actually itself a mod of the original Fortnite (now called "Fortnite: Save the World").
Originally a tower defense game (you build structures and traps to defend your base against invading alien zombies), some Epic & Unreal Tournament developers decided to fork it into a PvP (competitive player-vs-player) battle royale game instead, loosely based off Player Unknown's Battlegrounds.
It became a surprise hit, propelling Fortnite from "niche DIY tower defense game" to global pop-culture phenomenon.
Have you been framing the coding as a way to make games? Basically the only reason I'm here was because I thought making games would be rad, then I realized programming on it's own is pretty rad, and then eventually adult life showed up and it was a natural step to make it a career.
Is that a good reason to give them a pass? By that reasoning, you probably shouldn't mind if you're out eating and someone walks up to you and just takes your plate of food for themselves. Honestly, it's probably not in the top ten of problems you deal with in a month or week.
> Apple is letting their desire to get vengeance outweigh the interests of their users in having all the games they want to play on their devices.
Post-NeXT (or at least post-iPod) Apple has always been about total control of user experience, not letting users do all of <whatever category of activity> that they want.
I don't think that vengeance is necessary to explain this.
It's literally just one game? Fortnite? Which is really a cash cow at this point. Epic couldn't care less about you, or smaller developers. Which is what is most disingenuous on their part, to pretend like they're the "small guy".
I think Apple is also risking what this all looks like to lawmakers. Lawmakers who currently seem to be in a frenzy around anti-trust and/or anti-competitive behavior.
Exactly this. I bought iPad Pro to play Fortnite with my nephew, and in less than a month it was removed. Epic broke the agreement, fine remove them from the App Store, but there's no reason to not being able to install the game from an external source except for Apple's greed. I, for one, not going to purchase anything from Apple anymore. I spent over 20k on Apple devices in the last 8 years or so.
On top of that, there's a pretty strong argument to be made that Fortnite is as much about socialization and open-ended interaction as it is a game. Apple banning what's potentially a next-generation social network from their platform isn't a great look.
A counter point is that it was an extremely reckless move for Epic to risk the banning of their next-generation social network (which to my kids, it definitely is) from the largest mobile store. Epic thought they were forcing Apple's hand, but they lost in court on the points they really cared about the most. And they got confirmation that Apple was well within their rights to cancel the developer account.
I'm not sure the risk was worth it... especially since they didn't need to take that risk to file the lawsuit.
From the first moments, Epic has been running a PR campaign, which doesn't really help you in court.
As an adult who's partner plays and plays occasionally, Its honestly really about group chatting (voice comms) with friends/relatives as much as it is about the game for us. I mean the game is silly and fun, but really its a group thing. I almost never play when not with friends.
And occasionally there are group events/ a concerts and movie screenings.
We're all on PCs/ Consoles, but if your a kid a free to play game your friends are on you could join in with a tablet, would be nice.
Fortnite notwithstanding, Epic also makes the Unreal Engine, which is one of the biggest ones alongside Unity -- especially for cross-platform games. Hindering iOS development of UE will affect a lot of other game devs, both huge and indie.
Unreal Engine is under a different developer license than the one Apple canceled, though the judge did rule it would be legal for Apple to cancel all of Epics licences.
"(2) a declaration that (i) Apple's termination of the DPLA and the related agreements between Epic Games and Apple was valid, lawful, and enforceable, and (ii) Apple has the contractual right to terminate its DPLA with any or all of Epic Games' wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games' control at any time and at Apple's sole discretion."
Epic's first-party games are often a showcase / development driver for new versions of UE, though (the way Unreal, the game, first popularized UE, the engine). If Epic can't publish their own games on iOS anymore, they would have less incentive/ability to iterate UE on that platform even if that license wasn't canceled.
It's a loss for cross-platform gaming altogether. Apple just really doesn't give a damn about their users =/
Think about what is important to the demographic that is playing Fortnite, is playing the game more important or is having an Apple device?
There are kids that are in elementary school that wear Fortnite clothing. The brand is everywhere. I am sure some actuary did the math on it so that Apple will come ahead, but the optics on something like this will sway brand loyalty for years in this demographic.
Where you are wrong is believing Apple considers its users customers...
They do not, this clear by the way they handle the ecosystem. See a customer buys something from a company, after which they own it
Apple on the other hand does not have customers, they can not because they do not sell anything, dont be fooled by the high prices, and verbiage that indicates you are "buying" something, marketing that in a sane and just society would be considered illegal as deceptive
No no, you simply rent the device from apple for a period of time determined by apple, and are given permission to use the device in ways only the owner (Apple) approves.
I have been realizing lately that my loyalty to Apple has been waning over the years after having invested heavily in the ecosystem. This is another representation to me of how Apple's ecosystem is something you have no control over, and you are at the whim of Apple's legal team in situations like that to be able to play the games you want to play on your devices.
Apple remembered their corporate games they were playing and forgot who their real customer and focus should be: the end users. This decision doesn't benefit their end users in any meaningful way. It hurts end users to score points in their feud with Epic.