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My money is on Apple cracking down hard on this. It looks clearly as if Epic remotely activated this direct payment option, thereby bypassing Apple's App Review.

Apple will not take kindly to this. Best case scenario for Epic (and Fortnite players): they invite Sweeney in for some hard negotiations. Worst case: Fortnite ends up getting removed from iOS for this.

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It’s possible Epic are baiting the app stores, betting that the current anti-trust questions around Apple and Google support a change. Either Apple and Google capitulate to this move by Epic, and Epic wins. Or Google and/or Apple come after Epic, creating a public scene that emphasizes their monopoly-like behavior, and failed lawsuits or government action mean a win for Epic. The third option—the big guys come after Epic, Epic enjoys no support and simply lose—is relatively unlikely right now. So perhaps Epic is forcing the issue, seeing an opportunity for their own gain in the midst of societal gain.

Google at least can argue that if you don't like their rules, you're free to distribute the app yourself. Whether that will convince lawmakers who knows.

Which Epic has already done. They have their own Epic Store that instructs you on how to sideload the apps, etc. They got shit on for this by Google for doing a run around and by users for security implications.

Edit: It seems like Play Store has a category restriction on Games without exceptions.

Google doesn't force payments to go through its channels based on some conditions. A lot of app developers including Apple makes use of this.

So it might just survive on Play Store.

Games and most apps must use Play's in-app purchases as the payment method: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Yes, but you can sideload on android and in fact that's just what Epic did with fortnite on android.

Google at the very least can point to that, Apple cannot.

Ah, didn't know that. I thought they could make the argument of Fortnite being cross platform but it seems Game as a category is disallowed.

IIRC some games in Google Play supports to apply "item code" to get item, but same game in AppStore doesn't support.

That's exactly what happened as Epic has filed a lawsuit immediately after Apple banned them today.

> My money is on Apple cracking down hard on this.

Of course, but that's beside the point. This is bait. Epic can point to it later as an example of how Apple's anti-competitive practices increase consumer prices. The worst-case scenario for Epic is that Fortnite gets removed from the App Store for a few days.

...well, I guess the worst worst-case scenario for Epic is that Fortnite gets banned permanently, but I don't see Apple doing that.

Pull it is exactly what I would do. Apple gets a cut of the paid apps, but $0 from free apps who show ads. Take away getting a cut from the paid apps then free apps suddenly cost the developers money—no more free apps.

Imagine going to Walmart and telling them what you want them to give you all the revenue. Walmart will tell you exactly what they want to pay you, or you can leave.

Maybe 30% is too much, but 0% is a terrible idea.

In the old days before the web I had to pay up to 70% for distribution for my apps. If I was lucky I might get my cut 3-6 months later, plus I had to pay for the packaging and shipping to the warehouse and take it back if they didn't sell enough. 30% seems like a bargain.

My god, Apple requiring a price for apps would be best thing that's happened to the mobile environment in AGES.

I'm a mobile game dev and I would sacrifice a child to go back to the days when people would pay 0.99 for a game.

The current mobile F2P game market of about half a dozen distinct types of Skinner box, copied precisely and rethemed a zillion times, is quite grim. (Fortnite is an actual game, to be fair)

Apple really should shake up that market, though it's hard to say how a $0.99 minimum would work out in the end.

Surely all free games currently would just be $0.01?

On Apple, the minimum price for anything is $0.99.

You can't set arbitrary prices - only price bands.

Except that the apps help sell the phone. Just look at Apple's marketing since the App Store came out. Having an ecosystem of easily accessible free and paid apps is a huge driver in terms of the iPhone's popularity.

Your Walmart analogy would make more sense if Walmart sold tickets for admission. For example, Costco, a store that does in fact sell memberships, does buy and resell some products for no margin or even at a loss in order to cultivate a variety of goods to incentivize people to maintain a membership.

> In the old days before the web I had to pay up to 70% for distribution for my apps.

In the old days it cost your distributors much more to distribute those apps. Charging $1 for 99¢ of work is okay; charging $1 for 10¢ of work is not. With competition, this is rarely a problem, but no one can compete with the App Store—short of creating an entirely new OS and getting everyone to port their apps.

Exactly, in the days before the web.

The majority of software sold for computers isn't sold through the Microsoft store or Apple store, it's through other channels with much lower costs. Apple won't let you load apps onto the hardware you own unless they go through the App store and pay the Apple tax.

Developers (and users) shouldn't settle for "better than retail, even if it's worse than the open web".

Depends on how much value Apple (not anyone else) puts on having Fortnite on the App Store. They are infamous for disregarding what customers say; sometimes with great results, other times, with less success.

Apple decided, a long time ago, that their platform would not be a gaming platform. Even though they often show off games at WWDC, they aren't really there for much more than eye-candy, to get developers thinking about using the base tech for other purposes.

I would love to be able to play better games on my Mac. I have a few games on the iPad (none from Epic), and I really only play solitaire on my phone.

For all the scorn heaped on Mac as a "toy" computer, it's a terrible gaming platform. iOS, on the other hand, is supposed to be a big gaming platform, so Fortnite might be quite important, there.

The problem is that the app store is an artificial market. It's entirely possible to load apps on a phone without an app store or any of the infrastructure it provides.

There is no reason our phones need to be so locked down today that they only allow apps to be easily installed via the app store.

Instead the app store should be able to stand on it's own and developers should be able to decide if the exposure gained by it is worth the cost.

Digital goods have almost zero cost other than the payment processing, compared to manufacture, distribution, warehousing, retail space... This is apples and oranges. I can sell a SaaS license thru Stripe for 3%. A subscription through the App Store takes 30% every single month.

I am absolutely sure this is a play to give their lawyers more ammo to claim monopolistic practices in the App Store. They want to get shut down.

> It looks clearly as if Epic remotely activated this direct payment option, thereby bypassing Apple's App Review.

Is that against Apple's store terms? Because that's a common feature of ReactNative based app, you can update them by deploying new JS files without having to pass by a new app store release.

> Is that against Apple's store terms? Because that's a common feature of ReactNative based app, you can update them by deploying new JS files without having to pass by the a new app store release.

I think the point of contention is not that people can add new content without a full app store review. Any app that can access the Internet can do that[see rant below]. The point of contention is whether a direct payment option violates Apple guidelines.

Personally, I think adding a payment option should not violate guidelines. What should violate guidelines is if they do NOT offer Apple pay at a rate at or below their lowest price elsewhere. Yes, Apple gets a cut of the proceeds if the user chooses to use Apple pay. No, it should not against the law as long as Apple allows the user to pay using alternate means within the app.

No, the app publisher (Epic) may not

1. NOT offer Apple Pay (sorry for double negative)

2. Discourage users from using Apple Pay (rewarding people for using other payment options by means such as offering lower prices elsewhere, exclusive content, etc)

3. Make it difficult to use Apple Pay (by increasing friction as opposed to other means within the app, I'm a bit torn on this one).

I think all of these points are fair. The only thing I think Apple should allow is let people add payment method other than Apple Pay.

[rant] Unrelated rant: No third-party app (not published by Apple) should have access to the Internet by default. An app should prompt the user for the ability to access the Internet.

Requiring companies to use Apple Pay elsewhere as a condition of being in the app store is literally a textbook case of antitrust.

I've never made any real money from my apps so I can't comment too much but something similar was discussed on ATP podcast fairly recently, I think this approach would go a really long way to solving 90% of iOS developers current frustrations with the appstore.

Yes, it's directly against the terms, but in practice it's not always enforceable. I deployed multiple apps to the App Store using RN and PhoneGap in the past. Some were rejected for basically using these web based technologies. So my experience is that if you're using web-based tech and left clues in the UX that gives away the fact that you might be loading some external code, the reviewer may catch it and reject.

Depends, this is allowed to some degree, buit if you change functionality you have to go trough the review process. Changing the payment method definitely should go trough the review process.

Yes its against terms, but in practice almost every app developer I've known has used some sort of dynamic code distribution, regardless of runtime.

More fuel on the fire for the anti-competitive narrative regardless what the outcome is.

It's probably just a webpage that is loaded.