Yeah WTF is going on with Apple? I’m suddenly seeing reports of out-of-app purchases or something? Every development I’ve seen with the app store has seemed to be an EU thing but did something happen in the US?
Apple and Epic were locked in a battle because Fortnight (And Epic game) charged more for in-game credits on the Apple store than it did in-game through Epic's store (30% more).
Apple won the original battle that was put against them from Epic as they hosted a "Paid for" game on their store and therefore Epic couldn't make any profit from Apple users if they hadn't already made profit through their services. A model Apple used across all of its services.
Epic then made Fortnight free-to-play (With exclusive skins for players who had already bought it) which pulled that rug out from Apple's feet. Apple then took them to court stating that they were required monies from Epic for 'Hosting' their content in their store in the first place.
Long(ish) legal battle later and Apple lost, and some of the EU rules for microtransactions are now in place, by US law, on the Apple store.
In future, at the moment at least, it will now be more profitable for a company to release a free version of a game which they charge for later through optional DLCs/microtransactions which bypass the vendor of said gatekept community.
This will be appealed and there will be more tussle but, for the moment, Apple users would benefit from going for free AAA games as more money can be turned to more development of said games.
Yeah WTF is going on with Apple? I’m suddenly seeing reports of out-of-app purchases or something? Every development I’ve seen with the app store has seemed to be an EU thing but did something happen in the US?
Apple and Epic were locked in a battle because Fortnight (And Epic game) charged more for in-game credits on the Apple store than it did in-game through Epic's store (30% more).
Apple won the original battle that was put against them from Epic as they hosted a "Paid for" game on their store and therefore Epic couldn't make any profit from Apple users if they hadn't already made profit through their services. A model Apple used across all of its services.
Epic then made Fortnight free-to-play (With exclusive skins for players who had already bought it) which pulled that rug out from Apple's feet. Apple then took them to court stating that they were required monies from Epic for 'Hosting' their content in their store in the first place.
Long(ish) legal battle later and Apple lost, and some of the EU rules for microtransactions are now in place, by US law, on the Apple store.
In future, at the moment at least, it will now be more profitable for a company to release a free version of a game which they charge for later through optional DLCs/microtransactions which bypass the vendor of said gatekept community.
This will be appealed and there will be more tussle but, for the moment, Apple users would benefit from going for free AAA games as more money can be turned to more development of said games.
43 year old Muta has a video on it all :)