Apple and Epic and you, the megathread

[hard_code]

It was not too long ago that Apple decided to kill an entire development platform known as Flash by refusing to support it on IOS. I don't have official numbers but Flash was a really big development platform and Apple just laid waste to it.

Will game companies continue to go with unreal if Epic is unable to offically support IOS? How will this effect the future job market for unreal? Will UE become the next Flash?

It's easy to underestimate Apple's power here. I think Epic took too big of a bite and went about this the wrong way, but I agree with them on principal.

[LordLytonn]

It was not too long ago that Apple decided to kill an entire development platform known as Flash by refusing to support it on IOS. I don't have official numbers but Flash was a really big development platform and Apple just laid waste to it.

Will game companies continue to go with unreal if Epic is unable to offically support IOS? How will this effect the future job market for unreal? Will UE become the next Flash?

Flash was kinda dead anyway, not like iOS was the only reason it got phased out. Security issues and other technologies like HTML5 played a big role in its demise.

Apple can't kill Unreal by blocking it on iOS, because Unreal is much bigger then just that one mobile platform, and it's mostly a tool for high quality PC/Console games. And it's currently becoming THE game engine out there, it might lose on mobile but UE developers are doing good job overall.

[hard_code]

Flash was kinda dead anyway, not like iOS was the only reason it got phased out. Security issues and other technologies like HTML5 played a big role in its demise.

Steve Jobs brilliant PR lies still at work a decade later. Steve Jobs had to kill Flash by any and all means necessary so that he could control the sales channel for all apps and therefore guess what...charge everyone high rents, 30%.

This is what Epic is up against. Everything started with Flash. If Epic thinks Apple won't set out to destroy Unreal the same way they did Flash to protect their complete control of the sales channel then they are naive.

And we are all caught in the cross fire. Same thing happened to a bunch of my friends with flash.

[Allenheathx]

What if a developer wanted to process in app purchases through Apple Pay? Apple Pay has a merchant program that takes 1-3% per transaction. So Apple has created a payment processing system created specifically for monetary transactions that it denies to software developers. How do they explain that...

[Allenheathx]

If IOS really did ban all apps developed by Unreal Engine then that would make ALL software developed with Unreal Engine exclusive to Android.

[AnotherZach]

This is what Epic is up against. Everything started with Flash. If Epic thinks Apple won't set out to destroy Unreal the same way they did Flash to protect their complete control of the sales channel then they are naive.

Oh I'm sure Epic is aware Apple will fight like a rabid dog. They were quick to kill Epic's dev account, and point out that this could affect future Unreal versions. The Flash comparison to the status quo is good for understanding what Apple wants to do, but Unreal is so much more than Flash. Ue4 is the product of six years of post release refinement, plus however many years it took to build it. Throw in some extra experience for lessons learned from the prior versions. Even though there are other options for 3D such as Unity, Cry Engine, and Godot, none of them come close to what Ue4's out of the box features. (Unity's plugin land leaves it in a weird spot.) Secondly, Unreal Engine can be used to make console games. This is a huge audience Flash never had, that Ue4 isn't endanger of losing.


Unreal being left out the Mac environment wouldn't be great, but so many developers don't publish Mac versions. (Source: I have a Mac, not being able to buy games I wanted because they don't have a Mac build is a pain. Many games were also left to be sad after Apple dropped 32 bit support for Mac. Heck so many of Epic's free game giveaways weren't made to work on a Mac. Point is so many developers don't build for Mac. )

[hard_code]

Oh I'm sure Epic is aware Apple will fight like a rabid dog. They were quick to kill Epic's dev account, and point out that this could affect future Unreal versions. The Flash comparison to the status quo is good for understanding what Apple wants to do, but Unreal is so much more than Flash. Ue4 is the product of six years of post release refinement, plus however many years it took to build it. Throw in some extra experience for lessons learned from the prior versions. Even though there are other options for 3D such as Unity, Cry Engine, and Godot, none of them come close to what Ue4's out of the box features. (Unity's plugin land leaves it in a weird spot.) Secondly, Unreal Engine can be used to make console games. This is a huge audience Flash never had, that Ue4 isn't endanger of losing.

There is no question that UE4 is great and the superior option, but too bad 99% of us in the forum will ever in a million years get a game onto a console. That is what Unreal was before UE4. So maybe Epic is fine with going back to being an engine used only by companies with the means to get on consoles. Just too bad for the rest of us...

[GRADgr]

Ok, so there's Apple we know and dislike and Epic that we actually do not know but we like... why? Maybe because we use UE as a tool for development.. yeah it's great no doubt, but are there alternatives yes, so if you want to work on iOS you will have to consider a change, because judging from Epic's stance, they won't stand aside.

And you know what, i like that stance, i like the revolutionary ideas and actions. Giving UE4 for "Free" (5%) on 4.07 if am correct, launching a 12% EpicStore and hitting the monopoly of Steam, free revenue for up to 1.000.000$, and now Apple. So my question is, What is next Epic?

And am just wondering why all the fuss... and yeah that is all about it, Fuss. Epic is attacking every front protesting for devs and customers interests. If you see this picture only, yeah i mean they are heroes and every other megacorp is the vilain. I like all of these even when am trying and see a bigger picture of this story, because yeah we only see a picture, not what's going on backstage.
But please don't do this by inviting children to join your fight within Fortnite, that's a shame... you were getting ready so much time, but why now? why not wait for ue5 to arrive and flood the market?

Epic has the product and it's not Fortnite it's UE. Denying Epic Apple SDK/API access will definately ruin Epic's business plan and not Apple's, but wait will this happen soon and how? Guess we will see when iOS 14 arrives, it is just so simple for Apple to make UE apps useless and yeah if this happens an app with with crashes etc. won't be a fit on AppStore, so yeah they will have the right to remove it from distributing it through AppStore, because, you will simply violate their terms of usage.

But please guys try see a bigger picture here, where eveything is going in next years... for me at least there's only one answer... ARM. Do you thing Apple's market share will shrink? no away, i must say the opposite :-) . Will Apple's choices for moving Macs on ARM be worthy? definately! why? Apple's has proved their innovation and will prove it again. So again why this move from Epic? How about Facebook? or Tencent? or even the China Vs USA? Just food for thought :-)

Lastly i want to point that Apple's and Google's IAP is beatable and will be beaten. Some examples are Amazon or Ebay, but yeah they sell physical goods, OK, so how about Netflix? or even better how about YouTube, AND as you imagine the list goes on... Restricting IAP/Subsriptions on GameApps and not in GeneralApps of other megacorps isn't an exclusive deal that violates Apple's Terms?

Epic's business plans are clear

Disrupt the current market > reinitialize it > control it

So, what's not to love about Epic? :-)



ps.Thank you if you read all this mind screwing ideas ;p

[BrUnO XaVIeR]

Epic is following the natural path to stay relevant.
There's a major mistake in all this tho, Unity partnered with Apple to support their new Mac hardware with ARM processors. So with this move Epic just made Unity relevant to desktop development again, instead of stealing their market.

There's some interesting GDC talks about how Platforms fight for control, how they start small and friendly until they grow like freekin Jupiter and begin to enforce policies on everyone to retain control.

Epic tried to take control out of big boy's hands, but I don't think Epic is big enough right now to cause any meaningful damage to Jupiter. and now Epic is going to be bullied, hard.

[Per Holmes]

As much as I detest Apple's 30% tax, I'm spooked by Epic's behavior here. I'm re-developing an already successful tool with about a million users across all platforms. I had originally started in Unity, but migrated to Unreal because quality scaling across platforms is much better, where Unity forces you to choose render pipelines ahead of time.

So I'm a couple of months into development in Unreal, and now I suddenly don't feel like I can trust Epic to keep supporting Unreal on Apple platforms. My project is not a game, so I have to think in 10-year time scales. I'm spooked that Epic is playing pattycake with this. Why did they put everything into the same Apple account? Why are they taking no steps to protect the ridiculous investment many of us are making in their engine? Don't they understand that a small studio having to change engine suddenly will lose a million dollars from it and will probably go under? Why are there no assurances about their commitment?

It's not reassuring that iOS and Apple are such small platforms for Unreal. Suddenly everything looks like they're willing to walk away to play hardball, and every developer that needs to be cross-platform and that has invested in Unreal development is just being left out to dry.

We're a couple of months in, and this is the last chance to change horses back to Unity. Then I'm only throwing away a couple of months work, which is a lot better than throwing away two years of work in two years.

I feel like Epic has a responsibility to their customers here. This is completely reckless. Just the fact that they're even playing hardball like this (with us being the ball), sounds like they can't be trusted again, even if they work it out with Apple in the short term. If someone threatens to kill you and then takes it back, can you really ever trust them again?

[Per Holmes]

The Flash comparison is poor as to Apple's intent. Yes, for the browser, they killed it.

But Flash (AIR) has been running just fine on iOS for a decade. Apple just didn't want VMs or interpreted code, and insisted on AOT compilation. Unreal and Unity do the same thing, it's no big deal. This is one of the few Apple arguments that's actually reasonable, there's a security implication to allowing runtime code changes.

[hedgie17]

I feel like Epic has a responsibility to their customers here. This is completely reckless. Just the fact that they're even playing hardball like this (with us being the ball), sounds like they can't be trusted again

You make it sound like this is the first time Epic did something that lead to mistrust of the consumer. But, I believe they have a solid case and will win especially with the EU on their side. This should benefit us in the end, but it may cause some delays for a while. Hopefully it will not take too long but with covid and everything going on, to see this go trough all court stages, it may take until next year. Let's hope not though, a lot of us dedicated all of what little we have to making our dreams happen. But at least we can still release on android and other platforms (for now).

[spacegojira]

Neither Steam nor Apple are a monopoly, when will this nonsense ever stop? A lot of people seem to have no idea what this word actually means.

[spacegojira]

You make it sound like this is the first time Epic did something that lead to mistrust of the consumer. But, I believe they have a solid case and will win especially with the EU on their side. This should benefit us in the end, but it may cause some delays for a while. Hopefully it will not take too long but with covid and everything going on, to see this go trough all court stages, it may take until next year. Let's hope not though, a lot of us dedicated all of what little we have to making our dreams happen. But at least we can still release on android and other platforms (for now).

The EU is not on Epics side. If anything, they will go down hard on microtransactions in the near future, and then Epic will lose a huge chunk of their income (Fortnite) AND this while battle with Apple will have been for nothing.

Remember, this is about Epic getting a bigger percentage from the microtransaction prices through Apple devices.

[Allenheathx]

Remember, this is about Epic getting a bigger percentage from the microtransaction prices through Apple devices.

It's really not. It is about opening apple up to be a more open source platform. Apple also banned Google Stadia and Microsoft Xcloud (game streaming services). They want to consolidate any and all programs ran on ios to go through them so they can take 30% of every transaction done on their phone. But the Internet complicates that. If you buy a digital good off a website from safari then ios doesn't get a cut. But if you buy a digital good from an app that is stored locally on the iphone apple gets their cut. We are quickly moving into an era where programs/apps no longer need to be stored locally on the device. Games, apps, programs, websites...they are all the same thing now. Therefore the notion that apple has a "Store" selling "Apps" is disintegrating. The "App Store" is really an "App Browser".