<story><title>Apple Terminates Epic Games&apos; Developer Account</title><url>https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/28/apple-terminates-epic-games-developer-account/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>veilrap</author><text>I bought a $1000 device because Apple gets to decide what can run on it. I like iOS, and I like that Apple provides a great user experience on the device.&lt;p&gt;I was not in any way coerced into buying said device, and there are a plethora of other options for substitute devices had I wanted more control of what runs on the device, which I do not.</text></item><item><author>Aeolun</author><text>Yeah, I bought a $1000 device, but somehow Apple gets to decide what I run on it? I just cannot see how that is a desireable situation.</text></item><item><author>_qulr</author><text>The iPhone is not a store. The App Store is a store. Epic wants to be on the iPhone, but not necessarily in the App Store. Ideally, Epic wants to run its own store on the iPhone.&lt;p&gt;In any case, App Store is the only store in town, where the &amp;quot;town&amp;quot; is the 1.5 billion iOS users. If there&amp;#x27;s only 1 store, with no competing stores, that&amp;#x27;s an entirely different situation legally.</text></item><item><author>mattmanser</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t see how Epic wins this.&lt;p&gt;If Stripe can claim Wells Fargo doesn&amp;#x27;t want to process porn payments, and that&amp;#x27;s legal, how can an American court rule for Epic?&lt;p&gt;Epic are obviously going to lose, and lose hard, or set a precedent that&amp;#x27;s going to screw every payment provider in America and open a flood gate for fraudulent payments.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t force someone to sell something they don&amp;#x27;t want to, especially because Apple is nowhere near a monopoly in games or gaming sales, they can just point at steam.&lt;p&gt;If somehow the American courts arrive at that judgement, and I am a non-lawyer, I put my hands up, but surely it&amp;#x27;s going to set all sorts of nasty precedents?&lt;p&gt;Edit: The more I think about it the more absurd this is. It&amp;#x27;s as if some random brand of Mayo is suing Wallmart for not stocking their brand on their shelves.&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no way they can win this, unless American courts are going to start allowing &amp;quot;mom &amp;amp; pop&amp;quot; random ketchup brand to force Wallmart to stock it on their shelves. Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on phones, it doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on games, it&amp;#x27;s got a store front you can buy stuff from, and if you don&amp;#x27;t want to play by their rules, then bye-bye. Wallmart choose their suppliers, and sets the markup, why can&amp;#x27;t Apple?</text></item><item><author>_qulr</author><text>My feeling is that this whole situation is mostly going as Tim Sweeney intended. He was itching for a fight, wanted to sue Apple. The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic&amp;#x27;s court case. Apple is playing right into his hands.&lt;p&gt;Did Sweeney anticipate Apple&amp;#x27;s threat to Unreal Engine? Maybe, maybe not. But the temporary restraining order did block that threat, at least for now.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think Epic ever intended to release the new Fortnite season on Apple platforms.&lt;p&gt;This is a long play, not a short play. In the short term, Epic loses money by not having Fortnite on Apple devices. But in the long term, it&amp;#x27;s much better for Epic to break Apple&amp;#x27;s App Store monopoly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>greggman3</author><text>What other things in your life would you accept similar limitation?&lt;p&gt;Would you accept a house that only allowed furniture, food, books, electronics, devices from the company that built the house? Do you think it should be legal for a company to make a house with those conditions?&lt;p&gt;Would accept a car that could only take gas, tires, oil, electricity from the company that built the car? Should it be legal to offer such a vehicle?&lt;p&gt;You used to be able to buy a VCR and choose only to rent videos from Blockbuster video if you wanted &amp;quot;safe and clean&amp;quot;. That didn&amp;#x27;t require any company making the VCR to force people to only to go their &amp;quot;safe and clean store&amp;quot;. Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t need to force everyone on iOS to go to their store for you personally to continue to only get apps from their store.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple Terminates Epic Games&apos; Developer Account</title><url>https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/28/apple-terminates-epic-games-developer-account/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>veilrap</author><text>I bought a $1000 device because Apple gets to decide what can run on it. I like iOS, and I like that Apple provides a great user experience on the device.&lt;p&gt;I was not in any way coerced into buying said device, and there are a plethora of other options for substitute devices had I wanted more control of what runs on the device, which I do not.</text></item><item><author>Aeolun</author><text>Yeah, I bought a $1000 device, but somehow Apple gets to decide what I run on it? I just cannot see how that is a desireable situation.</text></item><item><author>_qulr</author><text>The iPhone is not a store. The App Store is a store. Epic wants to be on the iPhone, but not necessarily in the App Store. Ideally, Epic wants to run its own store on the iPhone.&lt;p&gt;In any case, App Store is the only store in town, where the &amp;quot;town&amp;quot; is the 1.5 billion iOS users. If there&amp;#x27;s only 1 store, with no competing stores, that&amp;#x27;s an entirely different situation legally.</text></item><item><author>mattmanser</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t see how Epic wins this.&lt;p&gt;If Stripe can claim Wells Fargo doesn&amp;#x27;t want to process porn payments, and that&amp;#x27;s legal, how can an American court rule for Epic?&lt;p&gt;Epic are obviously going to lose, and lose hard, or set a precedent that&amp;#x27;s going to screw every payment provider in America and open a flood gate for fraudulent payments.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t force someone to sell something they don&amp;#x27;t want to, especially because Apple is nowhere near a monopoly in games or gaming sales, they can just point at steam.&lt;p&gt;If somehow the American courts arrive at that judgement, and I am a non-lawyer, I put my hands up, but surely it&amp;#x27;s going to set all sorts of nasty precedents?&lt;p&gt;Edit: The more I think about it the more absurd this is. It&amp;#x27;s as if some random brand of Mayo is suing Wallmart for not stocking their brand on their shelves.&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no way they can win this, unless American courts are going to start allowing &amp;quot;mom &amp;amp; pop&amp;quot; random ketchup brand to force Wallmart to stock it on their shelves. Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on phones, it doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on games, it&amp;#x27;s got a store front you can buy stuff from, and if you don&amp;#x27;t want to play by their rules, then bye-bye. Wallmart choose their suppliers, and sets the markup, why can&amp;#x27;t Apple?</text></item><item><author>_qulr</author><text>My feeling is that this whole situation is mostly going as Tim Sweeney intended. He was itching for a fight, wanted to sue Apple. The harsher that Apple retaliates, the better Epic&amp;#x27;s court case. Apple is playing right into his hands.&lt;p&gt;Did Sweeney anticipate Apple&amp;#x27;s threat to Unreal Engine? Maybe, maybe not. But the temporary restraining order did block that threat, at least for now.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think Epic ever intended to release the new Fortnite season on Apple platforms.&lt;p&gt;This is a long play, not a short play. In the short term, Epic loses money by not having Fortnite on Apple devices. But in the long term, it&amp;#x27;s much better for Epic to break Apple&amp;#x27;s App Store monopoly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>d3nj4l</author><text>In that case, you lose &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; even if Epic wins: the msot hey can do is set up their own store, and nobody&amp;#x27;s forcing you to use their store. If there&amp;#x27;s an app you want to get on a store you don&amp;#x27;t want to install, just don&amp;#x27;t download that app. &amp;quot;Free choice&amp;quot; works both ways: you can choose to remain within Apple&amp;#x27;s ecosystem, and others should have the choice to go out of it if they want.</text></comment>