This is just putting Epic's decapitated head on a pile outside the town gates as a warning to others at this point
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Apple will no longer allow users to sign into Epic Games accounts using “Sign In with Apple” as soon as September 11, 2020
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
So is this an extra action Apple took or a natural consequence of Epic losing their dev account?
Can't wait to get an Android phone, my goodness. I don't even play Fortnite but this company is just bad.
For all these reasons I'm going Android next chance I get. Refuse to give this company anymore of my money.
Part of the process, this is not Apple been petty, angry, or retaliation, it's just a consequence of Epic Games losing their Developer Account, without that they don't have access to Apple Dev services, this includes the Sign with Apple. The Sign process is usually associated to an Application, so they can Display the message "Application X is requesting your permission to .....", to have an application with Apple you need an active dev account, without that you can't use anything.
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This won't help Apple at all in the courts I would think. They are showing they can completely act like a monopoly over both their customers and the companies using the app store, and that they are willing to act in a unilateral and bullish way.
I thought the takeaway was the other way around, don't trust Epic not to screw around with even more services, and memorize your account login details before even more login methods are gone?
For me, the classic way of registering to a service might be the way to go from now on. This just sucks for me as a consumer
It's so tragic, that it's 2020 and we still don't have a solid solution for authentication in the internet.
Then it's depressing how many posters bought into Epic's framing of this. This news is from an Epic tweet when they knew full well when starting this whole charade that this would be a natural consequence of their actions.
But it's also Apple who disabled the developer account, they could have also stopped after removing Fortnite from the store, right?...
I'm not an expert though, but it fucking sucks (I don't play Fortnite), and leaves a very sour taste in my mouth as an iPhone user
Tim has been banging this drum about keeping platforms open for decades. The furthest back I can remember is when windows store was first announced. He has been making speeches since against companies restricting programmable space.
If you get banned on Era for breaking the rules then your whole account gets nuked and not just your access to the Gaming OR the Etcetera side.
I don't think you can compare it like that?
are all developer accounts disabled by Apple when the app violated some rules? For me it feels like two companies are flexing their muscles.
I guess I don't feel banning their account was at all a dramatic response given how Epic went about things. I honestly will be surprised if their account is ever reactivated. If I were a business, I wouldn't want to do business with somebody who started an ad campaign against me.
i have no sympathy for Epic. they brought this upon themselves out of pure greed. i don't know how anyone can defend them. ain't defending apple but you want to use their platform you play by their rules.
You can pretty much exactly compare it like that.
The Era user "EpicGames" decided to create a thread on gaming side to advocate piracy and tell users how to circument the security mechanism. Era bans that user called "EpicGames". This user goes to a judge and demands that a) they still should be able to post on Etcetera and b) post in all other topics on gaming side and c) that the ban gets lifted asap because the moderators have an unfair monopoly on Era and "EpicGames" should be free to post here whatever they want. While that user is demanding that their ban should be lifted this user also starts a public campaign to shame the Era moderators. Meanwhile Era decides to nuke the alt-account called "TotallyNotEpicGames" as well because it belongs to the same user. "EpicGames" then goes again to court claiming that developers will get harmed if their alt-account gets banned and the judge lifts this specific ban.
And right now we're at the point were "TotallyNotEpicGames" is unbanned while "EpicGames" remains banned and also can't use features ("sign in with apple id") like the ability to send private messages anymore which were tied to their former Era account.
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No. They intentionally violated Apple's terms of service and deployed the app update stealthily. Why work with a company that is actively suing you and violating an agreement? Sign in with apple exchanges some apple customer's information to epic. I'd disable that for epic as well. I wouldn't want epic having any association with my company or give any of my customer's information to epic.
Honest question. Is Apple doing this? Or is Epic lying again
Edit: Never mind! I just read it's tied to the developer account. Did Epic think this through?
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Some of you are playing right into Epics marketing on this.
This is normal for when a developer account is suspended or expires. You need one in order to perform the credential handoff on the back end.
This is normal for when a developer account is suspended or expires. You need one in order to perform the credential handoff on the back end.
lol. They did't force anyone to use it, they only require that if an App uses some kind of "sign in with" (like Facebook and Google), they also have to use Apple as an option to the user to decide. But if you don't wanna use any of this options, you don't need to use Apple login at all.
Also, this is not Apple retaliating, is just a consequence of Epic's moves and the Judge decision.
Stop being disingenuous or at least search for correct information before make this kind of takes.
It was a decision made for a breach of contract. Also Apple gave Epic two weeks to fix the problem. The judge did approve this measure.
I recommend you to watch Hoeg Law videos in Youtube, he explains this in detail!
I'm confused and admittedly only slightly knowledgeable about this. Can you not login normally? Are a bunch of people locked out now?
The point that Epic is trying to prove in the courts is that Era in your analogy, is the only message board that people using Era-sold hardware can use, as well as the only way any developer can reach those users, and as such it constitutes a monopoly for both the hardware users and the developers. The analogy breaks because with any computer you can access any message board you want, unlike the case of app stores and Apple hardware.
But in this case, I'm buying the Era hardware to access Resetera. It wouldn't matter to me that I can't access other message boards because if that's what I wanted then I would have bought the more popular hardware with greater market share that lets me do that.
They cannot set up a shop on any console nor do Apple's policies prevent them from putting their product on other hardware. You are also misunderstanding their argument. They want to continue using the App Store. They in fact want the App Store to let people download the Epic store.
Well, I'd say that's very, very debatable. Apple sells the iPhone as the place where all the apps and developers are, often before Android. And it's hardly a curated experience considering you can sell whatever shit you want in the Apple Store, including apps that violate intellectual property of other companies, provided you follow Apple's TOS and pay them their cut. Apple sells the iPhone as a general computing device, simply one where you can only get apps through them and nobody else. I think the point breaks before people aren't there for the app store, but rather the apps they can get in the app store.
Well, their argument is that Apple holds an illegal monopoly over the software you install in Apple devices, and they want the courts to give iDevice users and developers to sideload apps.
Personally I think they have a pretty strong argument because people buy these devices without really having this knowledge and expecting to be free to install what they want.
That is not correct. Again, they are not arguing for the ability to side load apps. You are already allowed to jailbreak your phone and side load an app. You can also side load on Android without jailbreaking. They are arguing that they should be allowed to host their epic store ON the App Store and pay Apple nothing for any transactions. They also suggest alternate business models, like charging developers per download - which would hurt millions of smaller developers. Don't confuse what you want with what Epic is asking for.
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Man, the amount of people that act like Epic just got screwed over every time Apple so much as breathes in their general direction is... weird.
No matter whose right or wrong in all of this, the fact that it's affecting the end user so much is ridiculous. And I don't even play Fortnite or own a iOS device...
So much for "an automated process". Good for the people using it to play Fortnite
Nothing about this means it's not automated or how they normally handle suspended accounts. I'd be shocked if they couldn't manually override an automated system. They also may have decided that:
1) they will eventually settle and it will be a pain - and possibly their loss - if they stop letting users login with Apple IDs and then later try to re-enable the feature
2) this might make them look bad to the judge and isn't worth the risk
Not necessarily.
I run a game that uses Epic services (EOS) for the first time
I get asked to log in
I choose to log in with Apple
I don't get given any epic login credentials, my credentials for the game are essentially the apple login.
Say I have done this and played on one device, and go to another to continue my game
I fire up the game for the first time on that second device and what I need to do is log in with my Apple creds to access my saves etc. If Apple has nuked this, I can't. If I tried to log in with some Epic or Switch creds, it wouldn't find my account and I'd have to go and log in as Apple, and then link that Epic or Switch to the Apple account but I can't even login.
For people to be safe, AFAIK you have to make an EGC and then just link accounts to it. That way you always have your EGS login.
That's literally forcing people to implement it. And working in your app to make sure it handles multiple kinds of logins now. That's a huge pain in the ass. For developers, designers, customer service walkthroughts, internal QA, everyone.
But Apple knew unless they forced it on everyone, no one would use it.
No, it's not a pain in the ass, it's adding literally a few lines of code and it's done, because it's automated via API.
And it's only fair to require it in your App if you're implementing "login with Google" so you can give users the option to use an alternative that is more privacy sensitive. And even if there's a requirement, they're not forcing it yet because I have plenty of Apps that still didn't integrated it.
I myself contacted many developers of Apps I like and use daily asking them to implement the function because I prefer using the randomly created relay email Apple creates with this, than giving my real address or giving access to Facebook or Google if I want to create an account quickly. And guess what, most of them implemented it rather quickly.
The idea that "they're forcing it because otherwise nobody would do it" is ludicrous. iOS and macOS users will demand it like with FaceID, TouchID, Apple Pay, saving in iCloud and other features they've been adding these years...
And the funniest part is that they literally did it to themselves!
This was all very carefully planned out by them a long time ago.
Look how the media is creating all this attention for them, (any press is good press for them) and how about that spin they are putting on it.
I warned people on here about how crappy Epic's practices were years ago and got hate for it, well now we have come full circle. I hate to say "I told you so" but here it is, crystal clear, black and white.
Zero sympathy.
ok, it's disconcerting that apple's making this move.
why would anyone sign up for anything with apple id when apple could just pull access from companies they don't like. in theory they could jeopardize my associated data on any platform they choose if i happened to sign up with apple id.
what if you signed up for netflix with apple id and netflix decides to pull the same stunt as epic? could i potentially lose my watch list and tailored queues if the issue goes unresolved? fuck that.
why would anyone sign up for anything with apple id when apple could just pull access from companies they don't like. in theory they could jeopardize my associated data on any platform they choose if i happened to sign up with apple id.
what if you signed up for netflix with apple id and netflix decides to pull the same stunt as epic? could i potentially lose my watch list and tailored queues if the issue goes unresolved? fuck that.
I am a developer myself.
I can tell you we ARE forced to include it. But many titles have been given extensions because it's been more work than most people realize.
"API" isn't just some magic thing that makes it easy. Especially if your game isn't written in Objective-C or Swift, so you have to use fun callbacks and workarounds to get the calls patched in correctly. I have to account for resizing all the login windows now, especially with rotation. I also have to make sure any popups that use strings about logins get re-written and localized across all the languages. We also have an incentive to login with FB for some free coins. Do I set it up so AppleID is the same? Okay, that means we have to update the banner art to show both login styles. I also have to coordinate with my backend team to handle new login identities, making sure the game tracks the source of what login type they used now, because before we only used Facebook. And I have to put in additional code to make sure you can only login with one type of ID at a time. Could I support both at the same time? Sure, but that also means coordinating with the backend team to make sure we have new server calls to merge accounts. And for the CS script to be updated to handle that, especially with merging level data if someone has an account on each and decides to log into the other later without logging out. We also show your friends on the map, using their avatars with the FB icon in the corner. Now that means I have to detect their friend type, and swap in the appropriate art of their login type. Or do I just not implement that feature at all anymore? Sharing buttons now need to be re-routed to handle multiple styles. Do I post straight to FB still? Disable it? There's a LOT of art we had to use to match up with the blue that Facebook uses. Now that means we have to reconsider that if they logged in with the Apple ID. Make it gray now? An independent color?
It's not an easy situation for everything. It takes time out of other work I have to do.
it's a pain in the ass depending on the framework. making ios native apps with xcode and implementing apple id is probably a breeze but i can vouch for apple id being a massive pain in the ass for both flutter and web. by extension i'd bet it's also a pain in the ass for react native devs and every other cross plat solution
i could rant about apple developer related stuff for hours actually.