Or we'll have to wait until regions that actually care about consumer rights (eg, Europe, not America).
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Epic vs. Apple: ”Developers are fleeing Unreal engine” says Epic to court
- Thread starter Infinity Times Two
- Start date
Or we'll have to wait until regions that actually care about consumer rights (eg, Europe, not America).
Imagine using this logic in your everyday live:
"Welp, my ISP contract allowed them to charge me for 200 bucks more because of some stupid shit and now they are threating me to cut my internet access and my phone if I don't pay. I guess I deserved it, I broke the rules so I should suck it up!"
"Welp, my ISP contract allowed them to charge me for 200 bucks more because of some stupid shit and now they are threating me to cut my internet access and my phone if I don't pay. I guess I deserved it, I broke the rules so I should suck it up!"
We were always going to have to wait for the EU to solve this properly. I'm honestly surprised that Epic didn't simply provide evidence in support of the ongoing EU investigation against Apple.
They have almost no choice of success in the US court system.
I'm glad that it seems the Unreal Engine won't be affected. That's unquestionably good news for every developer. Having it as a choice for development is good.
Well now they're disagreeing. Agreeing to something doesn't necessarily make it fair/legal (e.g., indentured servitude). UE4 content creators are also hurt by getting 30% of their revenue vacuumed out by monopolistic entities such as apple / google app stores.
It is somewhat weird to me that this forum trends far left economically, but when Epic purposely provokes an antitrust action against arguably the biggest digital storefront in the world people are against them. As the judge notes -- there is no competition.
There's the argument that Epic isn't better, or worse, and just cares solely about revenue. Obviously true. Who gives a fuck. Two parties having control over these marketplaces is obviously not creating competition, and should be broken up for the sake of consumers and creators.
I mean are there employees contributing to the Unreal Engine payed solely by Epic International vs Epic Games? Epic Games holds all copy rights for both Fortnite and all of the unreal engine. The only time Epic International is referenced is for international payments.
No? This is more like you decide to not pay your bundled internet/wireless/cable bill knowing full fucking well what you agreed to, or otherwise breach that contract, then disingenuously act surprised when they cut your access to all your services.
Fucking LOL at comparing a fair, market-standard fee Apple charges for a huge value-added service on a platform they control and nobody is forced to participate in to slavery. Like really, holy shit, will y'all stop at nothing?
If you suspect your contract is 'illegal' is in your right to dispute it and not pay. Even if you agreeded to it dosn't automatically make it 'right'.
Not necessarily. Sometimes, if you deem something worthy enough you have to take a stance, even if that stance is highly risky. Otherwise things like monopolies will continue to exist.
Cool, and it'll be within the company's rights to disconnect your service. Let's not pretend otherwise. There is also zero reason to believe this case will be won in Epic's favor and that Apple is actually doing anything illegal.
Especially if you use that stance to try and draw up publicity by virtue signaling and reaping even more money from your customers.
Correct. You cannot sign a contract that, for instance, says that if you breach it, the remedy is that the company can murder you.
Illegal contracts exist. We want people to be able to challenge legality of contracts without abusive retaliation meant to silence.
I can understand people who think Apple is right and Epic is wrong on the value of the legal arguments. I can't understand those who support Apple's clearly illegal and disproportionate retaliation that has no function other than to attempt to silence the lawsuit.
Hard to feel bad about Epic when they handled this situation like fucking children. Sure, I'd like to see Apple lower their margins so that smaller developers get more of that money, but the whole thing with the video, the hats, the skins and weaponizing Fortnite players, nah, fuck that.
Super unclear on what you believe the recourse should be when somebody breaches contract. If I don't pay the ISP you're talking about for my internet and they say I have 10 days to comply or my internet cuts off, I don't get to reply to that with "but I host a business out of this ISP! You're punishing my customers!" Apple didn't charge "200 bucks more for some stupid shit", the contract never changed, Epic just decided one day they didn't like it anymore.
We don't need analogies because the situation isn't confusing on it's face. The only new information here is that technically Epic had two contracts from two different companies (which Apple argues are shells / not truly seperate). This is something that only companies can do, because if we tried to convert this analogy to what you're talking about it would be the equivalent of someone claiming that they put down "John B. Doe" on their internet bill but actually their name is "John Bannon Doe" and that these are two seperate entities so they can't possibly cut off John Bannon Doe's internet because he didn't forget to pay, John B. Doe did. Analogies are rarely good.
No, this case is about a temporary restraining order.
The eventual antitrust case, when it is heard, also will not be able to make that kind of ruling. Any ruling that is made will apply only to the market as it gets defined in the case. If Epic win, that's likely to be very close to their definition of the market, and in both of their complaints they are talking about iOS-specific markets only.
If Epic thought that they could kill all walled gardens with one case...well, they wouldn't have launched two cases, for a start.
Smartphones are more like PCs for a lot of people these days. The same justifications for not allowing Microsoft to be super anti-competitive apply today to smartphones IMO. Doesn't matter if the company wants it to be walled garden. Smartphones are now essential for communications and health. Such an argument cannot be made about a Playstation.
Indentured servitude is a great example of why signing a contract doesn't necessarily bind you legally or morally. I'm using this as an "analogy" to emphasize my point. When people use "analogies" it doesn't mean that its a direct comparison. Let me know if you have any other questions regarding basic reading comprehension.
There was no need to breach the contract before filing an antitrust lawsuit. That's on Epic 100% as a PR stunt.
Analogies are hard. At least it wasn't a food one though.
I would say the ISP situation isn't like this I Phone store situation, but it checks out. Some ISPs in America have straight up monopolies and territories they defend. R.I.P. Google Fiber, fingers crossed for Star Link, and whatever it is the other big satellite grid company is called.
Yes in my opinion, since we're all basically just here talking about our opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Despite the fact that nobody calls Sony/MS/Nintendo monopolies, this legal action could stand to rock the foundations of the entire console industry and possibly beyond. Only makes sense that there's pushback against it. A huge contingent of people genuinely like walled gardens and the security and reliability they provide.
The idea that platform creators can no longer control access to their platform if they get to be to big/important is also kind of a dangerous one.
These hearings are just for the TRO about the Unreal Engine, it will probably be years before this is settled. But down the line any decision would be pretty limited to smartphones and any other walled gardens would have to be challenged in future lawsuits, though the decisions in the Apple and Google cases would certainly be referenced as possible parallels.
You don't need weird analogies. Microsoft in the 1990s fits.
People use their smartphones as their wallet, to authenticate for work VPN, for critical health services, and for some poor people it's their only way to get to the internet.
Just like Microsoft with PCs in the 1990s.
People use their smartphones as their wallet, to authenticate for work VPN, for critical health services, and for some poor people it's their only way to get to the internet.
Just like Microsoft with PCs in the 1990s.
Epic is arguing it's paying two fees, and signing the agreement twice, so they're legally distinct, yeah. Apple is effectively punishing the Unreal team for the Fortnite's teams actions, probably to make an example of Epic.
Apple pointed out in its filings the agreement was signed by the same individual, on the same device, using the same credit card, with the same tax code, within a minute of each other, so they're arguing there is no real distinction between these two entities except the one Epic wants to portray.
Yes there was. They needed to show damages and that Apple would, in fact, react the way they did.
My guess is they expected exactly what happened - that Apple would abuse its market position in retaliation, which would help Epic win a TRO.
Although I expect they were hoping for a TRO on both Unreal and Fortnite - which might have happened with a more sympathetic judge.
And that should 100% matter. It is a shell corporation at that point.
I mean yes a court could easily rule that way that walled gardens are an antitrust violation.
You realize that you said "you don't need weird analogies" and then came up with 3 weird analogies, right?
I think that's what Apple is going for here. They're arguing they don't trust Epic because they snuck something into their app surreptitiously, so they don't trust them to keep these pieces distinct from each other.
It's quite unprecedented in tech. I can't really think of anything that's similar - essentially they're arguing that closed software ecosystems aren't legal, at least once a threshold is crossed and it becomes more popular than some unknown value. They have 39% marketshare, so it's not clear why for example this case, if found in Epic's favour, wouldn't also apply to a variety of other tech companies, forcing every platform to be open implicitly. Whether or not you support that idea, it's quite earthshaking in it's implications.
A lawyer wrote a lengthy post on Era 1 or 2 days ago about why comparing the current situation with Microsoft in the EU from the 90s is pretty stupid.
This "analogy" of yours has no fucking worth then, because slavery doesn't have anything to do with Apple's 30% cut at all.
Yeah and note that the judge is examining the 30% rule on other platforms as an industry standard in trying to determine if Apple is exploiting its market position or not, which means they aren't considering consoles exclusionary to their reasoning.
The analogy works, because contracts can be 'illegal' or breach legality. It can be your ISP contract or in this case Epic and Apple contract. Epic belives Apples rules breach antitrust laws. You might believe it dosn't, you might believe is the 'standard' (how something being standard automatically makes it right?) but in the end is not your call and mine neither, is a judge that has to make the call.
But the ultimate point is that Epic is right it defying Apple's rules if they break the law and it dosn't matter they breached the contract or whatever if that's the case
We can discuss how they went about it, the ridiculous performance, the damn ad, weaponizing kids in some kind of media war, whatever. Is a fucking billionaire capitalist company. But the notion of 'they broke the rules! what they were expecting?" is ridiculous.
No company should impose their rules if they are illegal, be your ISP company or Apple's contract with Epic.
In fact the Apple store is being investigated by the EU for the very same reason Epic is doing this:
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Honestly, the big difference is EU vs US. A US court has never taken anywhere near as aggressive action against anti-competitive behavior as the EU.
The situation is absolutely comparable. Certainly not identical, but it is certainly precedence in the EU.
It's not like Apple started with the 30% from a dominate position though, 12 years ago when Apple launched the AppStore there really was no online app market that developers needed to interact with, and Apple didn't have a "monopoly" on phones, developers could have easily ignored it and it would have died, but they instead saw an opportunity to make money, even if Apple was charging 30%, so at least at that time it wasn't seen as unreasonable.
Whether Apple's market constitutes a monopoly and it is an essential service that everyone is entitled to, is not dependent upon whether or not they actually enforce their rules for developers. They 100% could have filed this lawsuit without the performative bullshit. "Apple is enforcing their rules we agreed to." Isn't the own people think it is.
Windows had like 90%+ market share in the 90's, and neither of the main mobile operating systems is anywhere close to that.
The big difference is that the Microsoft case had a completely different premise than the Apple vs Epic case.
The only similarities are that in both cases there were Tech gigants involved and Microsoft had a bigger market share.
Again, I don't think Epic expected this to go to a courtroom (which will take years). I think Epic wanted the TRO to get egg on Apple's face, show that they're not invulnerable (and perhaps additional lawsuits will start), and force a settlement.
I'm not sure the TRO only covering Unreal Engine will do that.
At this point, the only play here is for Epic to fold. I still think it's a big win for them in PR.
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This is from a while back but it's relevant to how petty Apple can be when they feel you aren't following their rules. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrILfIE9IB4
(don't want to watch?) A molecular biologist fixes a ladies iphone and gets banned from the Apple forums for doing so.
(don't want to watch?) A molecular biologist fixes a ladies iphone and gets banned from the Apple forums for doing so.
They could have, but then they don't get Apple's reaction out of it which could impact the case. Apple threatening to terminating the Unreal Engine developer account could actually be a bad move for Apple and would work against them which wouldn't have happened if Epic didn't do what they did. It'll be interesting to see how Apple's move impacts things moving forward.
they can rule that the 30 percent is monopolistic but they may not because as she stated its the industry standard but i mean she also said theres no competition therefore apple and google and the other platform holders set these standards. apple is only pertinent here but it would set future case law if epic sees such a judgment. apple would appeal and appeal however i don't see this going well for epic? its still SUPERSUPERSUPER early tho. they could just settle for instance lol
no! it was okay then but now it's not a lot changes in 12 years, friend.
I mean, that's cool that they have a different perspective. I don't agree, and if there's any implied appeal to authority I honestly do not care if that person is a lawyer or not that doesn't mean people can't have differing opinions. Just because it's not literally the same situation in that Apple isn't a monopoly, the end result for a poor person is the same - their smartphone is their only way to get to the internet. And they have to pay 30% for all store purchases to Apple or Google.
Probably for the majority of people, their 1 smartphone is their internet. They're not going to get another smartphone, tablet, or PC to get the internet because they're poor. Consumer rights > Apple/Google's highway robbery