Famously vindictive
Epic and Apple's squabbling is both very funny and completely exhausting, isn't it?
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“I can’t get Fortnite on my phone because two billionaires are fighting” is kind of where we’re at with Epic vs Apple. (Thanks to Nilay Patel of The Verge for the pithy soundbite.)
The saga’s latest turn came this week when Apple terminated Epic Games Sweden’s developer account, citing the Fortnite maker’s previous rule-breaking.
At least, that’s one of the reasons. Epic also cheekily published some emails exchanged between Tim Sweeney and Phil Schiller, in which Schiller suggested Sweeney’s criticism of Apple was also a factor in the termination of the account.
It’s not a good look, is it? Governments around the world are dragging Apple through the courts for being a monopolist, so it’s probably not wise to so brazenly behave like one. The EU, of course, wants further explanation of the decision – and this has come in the same week the EU hit Apple with a €1.8bn fine for its stifling of the music streaming business.
In the flurry of reaction that followed, one phrase on Daring Fireball, a blog widely read by tech types and Apple executives, stuck out to me. Apple seems to be “going out of their way to look vindictive,” said writer and commentator John Gruber.
Now, where have we heard that before? In last week’s Apple Arcade report, of course, in which my sources described the tech giant as tricky to work with, “spiteful” and yes, “famously vindictive”.
The Epic-Apple emails suggest that attitude goes all the way up Phil Schiller himself, who also, incidentally, sounds like a charming fellow. Schiller’s former colleague Phillip Shoemaker told us last year: “It was tough working for Phil…he was one of those guys that would love to throw insults at people, right? I mean he had no boundaries – he’d insult your children.” All perfectly cool and normal.
This is all pretty exhausting. Apple should just take these EU regulations on the chin and open up the App Store in the ways it has been told to. I don’t really get what Apple is afraid of here; people don’t like change and everyone’s already using Apple’s default options. It’ll take a huge shift in player behaviour for alternative stores and payments to truly make a dent in Apple’s colossal IAP earnings.
And even if Apple is worried about competition, it could make more of an effort to make its App Store the best designed, most elegant, most personalised, most relevant and useful option out there. It’ll win on that front too – it is home to the best designers in the world. Also, this is how competition is supposed to work: the best product wins.
Just help developers out and treat them like partners, not enemies. Fix app review. Clean up the App Store and make it genuinely useful. Comply with the various rulings coming into effect properly. All of this bluster will probably just go away if Apple does all that. Acting like a feudal lord, as Sweeney put it this week, will just make all this worse.
Phew. Next week: an exclusive interview with one of the most important and influential figures in the games business. Until then, the rest of this week’s stories are below, and thanks for getting all the way to the end. Remember – you can support my work here:
This week on mobilegamer.biz
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