If you thought Epic Games would just go away quietly, forget it. Coalition for App Fairness launches with founding members Epic, Basecamp, Spotify, and others. I support this.
@manton Why do you think it talks about "apps" in gebneral but then only focuses on Apple and not Google or others? Because that will get more press focus and attention? Curious how many companies will "join" this for other axes to grind.
@Burk I think the main "fight” is with Apple, and the Epic lawsuit with Google is just a sideshow. I have nitpicks about Google but because they do allow side-loading, many of these core complaints do not apply to the Play Store.
@manton Seeing extreme what-aboutism in reply to this elsewhere. This is what happens; people want to put these efforts through un-winnable purity tests and then reject them out of hand. This is why nothing gets done since so many people have lost sense of compromise and pragmatism.
@manton I wonder if this is ‘winnable’ without many of us (developers and users) just simply leaving the platform.. I’m not even sure we know what winning looks like 🤔
@manton It would be extremely bad if they win. The restrictive app store is the reason for its success. If Epic gets its own app store, the entire ecosystem will diminish, especially for independent developers.
@clonezone Winning could take several forms, such as loosening restrictions for in-app purchase, so it doesn't necessary mean Epic would have their own store. But I don't think it would hurt the rest of the App Store, either, just like having Steam on macOS doesn't hurt Mac apps.
@manton I think using Apple for payments should not be required, but otherwise the rules should stay the same.
The total size of the PC and Mac markets are dwarfed by the mobile phone markets because of their restrictions.
@manton But the group doesn’t only want payments. They want their own stores. And that would be bad because consumers wouldn’t know who to trust. They’d primarily stick to the major vendors, just like on PCs and Macs.
@clonezone Yeah, I think there's broad support now for not requiring Apple’s in-app purchase. My 2 cents: best to push for even more major changes, and maybe the compromise will be somewhere in the middle. (This is also why Apple should make changes on their own. If the government does step in, the changes might be way more significant.)
@manton But my problem is if that asking for more actually succeeds. That would be worse than the current situation.
@manton I think Apple is seriously considering these changes as we have seen so far. They're slow - meaning there's a lot of internal debate going on. Hope that they can act faster.