Glad someone is suing them. Why the fuck would apple treat devs like shit. Why do you want 30% of every penny I make? Then why the fuck do I have to pay you $100 every year? And what about not allowing me to choose my own payment system? Some are understandable but you still can't threaten to remove app from store if the dev don't want to do what's profitable for you.

So many examples of victims - Hey, Spotify and there's a ton of independent devs out there who have been exploited so far.

Your platform is attractive to users because of those thousands of devs who build apps despite your greedy policies, so fucking treat them with respect.

It would be great to see ither companies join the fight

This is a false flag operation on their part. It's their standard (anti)competitive market strategy; if you can't release features, cut fees and insist you're taking a moral high ground.

They're playing the victim to grab media attention. They've been on the app stores for all of 4 months, and there was actually no reason for it. They don't *need* the app stores, their distribution model and pay online system has worked fine since launch and cost them nothing. It's not like they gain any name recognition by being listed in a who's who of Chinese knockoff apps.

With all the bombastic pandering they did with the epic games store launch and all "we are the good guys trying to make the industry fair for the devs," it was a hypocritical move. This is the payoff for that; months after joining, they shoot themselves in the foot and claim that the app stores assaulted them to get back in the headlines. This will undoubtedly be a precursor to a große Lüge-laden "Epic Games Mobile store launch."

Isn't Epic Games kinda throwing their dick at Steam as well?

@SortOfTested I agree with you that they probably don't actually want to help, but as long as it helps other devs, I think we should support them

I'm not saying epic is saint or anything. But the fact that app stores are exploiting regular developers is definitely not good. But I hope this lawsuit would shed more light on app stores' greedy anti competitive policies. There are far too many independent devs and small companies that have fallen victims to the threats from app store and they have surrendered coz they can't go against these giant app stores.

The key difference is that Android can side-load apps while Apple blocks that for iOS.

I'm of two minds here, because I do kind of support what Epic is doing due to how Apple and Google take such a large cut of profits. 30% is ridiculously high, given the gross revenue of the app stores to begin with. Even if they only took 10%, they'd still each make over a billion annually just from their app stores, let alone everything else.

But I'm also really on the fence about Epic. They already got into both of the app stores, after agreeing to all the terms and conditions and everything. And then they blatantly violated those terms, got in trouble for it, and are now suing, supposedly on behalf of all app store developers. It reeks of a publicity stunt.

That said, I jumped on the Epic hate bandwagon when they started poaching exclusives from Steam, but after doing some research I was less concerned than I expected to be. So I guess I want them to win this, if only for the sake of smaller devs that don't have the power to fight back.

In this case I do support Epic and their intentions but I fucking hate them when it comes to them trying to dick steam out of games. Which I wont get into.

@Bubbles
This. It's a disservice to customers on the order of freemium and pay to win.

I refuse to be so idealogically flighty and utilitarian as to assume the enemy of my enemy is my friend when they've historically been my enemy.

I don’t get the App Store hate. Just recall the times when you could build mobile apps for Symbian, Blackberry or Windows Mobile.

We can discuss the 30% but I would not be able to set up a world wide distribution and billing system that complies with the local law in all countries.

@Fast-Nop Side loading is one security nightmare for company phones.

@lastNick That should be the decision of the phone owner, in the case the company IT, and not of the phone manufacturer.

But with iToys, you don't actually own them anyway.

@AkshayTolwani That's only for recurring payments, after you are subscribed for a year

@Fast-Nop Never had a real problem with Apple products and my wife use Apple devices at home and at both of our workplaces.

@lastNick One tiny example where this is fucked up, which is playing chess.

On all other OS, you have GUI and engines separated. This allows you to have one GUI that you like and countless engines underneath. On Android, Droidfish is very popular, and you install additional engines just by copying them over into the Droidfish directory.

Enter iOS. You can't install anything without the store, and Apple blocks applications that can start other processes, so GUI and engine have to be baked into one executable like in the 1980s under MS-DOS.

Since few engine devs bother to deal with Apple's shit show, you have only a handful of engines under iOS, and then even with a different UI for each engine.

On top of that, Apple's store conditions don't allow GPL software, at least not under GPL (dual-licencing required).

@Fast-Nop I am aware of that and we used Unity or native iOS frameworks to develop iOS apps without problems. We ran into the problem of not being able to run the app in the background but we removed this functionality for the iOS version and later for the Android version as well. We started to reimplement the app as PWA despite existing limitations.

Having your app baked together in an universal binary only using official APIs is a good way to enable sandboxing.

So most of the complaints from devs will simply break iOS security, privacy, or power saving features. Only a minor part of the complaints is related to Apple using its power to eliminate apps competing with existing or upcoming Apps from Apple. But that won’t be a problem if you are big enough (see MS Office vs. Apple Pages/Numbers/...)

@lastNick Without problems, without problems, without problems. You didn't address ANY of my points. Stockholm syndrome live.

@Fast-Nop Your points and my comments (please correct me if I’m wrong):

1st Other engines: As a dev you are able to use other engines like Unity to build apps but as a end user you can only use complete pre-built apps. As mentioned this is a precondition to have effective sandboxing.

@Fast-Nop

2nd You can’t install anything without the store: This is true for end users and made iOS devices nearly fool proof. As a dev or company you can install and test your own creations including 3rd party libraries without the App Store.

3rd Apple blocks applications that can start other processes: This is not true. We start one of our AR measuring app from a button within our diary app and hand back the data to be saved in the history of the diary app. When one of the apps is missing, we open the App Store page of the missing app.

4th Apple does not allow GPL software: This is true but some examples with a dual licensing model exist.

No one is forced to be an iOS dev. Apple’s playground, Apple’s rules

I hope epic games double pump them like the old days.