Welp, I spent a few thousand dollars just so I could work with Apple products on my first indie game release. The first half of the year was me making my game without an existing game engine using html5. It was coming along fine but the limitations were creeping. I switched to Unreal for the other half thinking it would be great, it has been and I genuinely enjoy it. But now this hurts. I hope that this ends quick because not being able to release to iOS will be annoying but if Epic does win, it’s a win for all of us even developers not involved with Epic. Apple has always been exclusive, it’s in the brand and why a few people obsess to buy the name at a premium.
I was just trying to port one of my games from a epic mega jam to macos the other day for a friend to play. I don’t own a mac, but was trying to run their os. Turns out they don’t support nvidia driver’s anymore, which is all I own (what os doesn’t have nvidia drivers?), so that is not an option. Honestly, with their reputation, if they want to stay in their bubble, they should be allowed to (but I like the publicity that this is getting), just know the world will pass them by.
Really disappointed in Epic and Apple. Just bought a new Mac and called them today to return it so I can buy a PC. I don’t have the luxury to wait around while they quibble. Artists and developers are just road kill to both companies. Maybe I should get out a pencil and paper and revert to hand drawing. Thinking of dumping all my Apple devices, they’ve just become monsters.
Gentlemen, synchronize your death watches.
That’s not relevant to the fact that a quick Google search shows Apple has a ~45.2% percent of the smartphone market share in the United States. Monopoly is a monopoly, regardless of whether it is water, or electricity. While it is Apple’s hardware, they’ve had the App Store of over 10 years and grown HUGE. Like 500 pound women huge. Spotify’s allegations that Apple Music has unfair advantage over Spotify is considerable. Nevertheless, lets take a look at what FTC has to say about anti-competitive practices.
Now Apple terminating all future support for Ue4? I think that is a bit unfair to both Epic and the developers who depend on Ue4 to ship to IOS products. Its worth noting that terms of service related arguments fall flat if courts don’t find the terms of service legal.
Not affected in the slightest.
Originally disliked Apple products for being overpriced.
Later as their products got locked down, content was wrapped in DRM etc, I was glad I did.
Fast forward to the current situation, and I can sit here on my high horse knowing the blame lies with those that have been, and continue to buy, from Apple.
To cut my own horse down a little, I am typing this on a machine running Windows 10 
This is interesting, because there are posts on Hacker News right now from developers who have been continuously punished by Apple. One guy has had seven apps in seven different categories wiped out for essentially being successful.
Imagine the anti-trust suits in the 90s if Microsoft had also made the hardware.
Anyway, now that everything’s a bit calmer and we’ve had time to think, the thing we’re probably most interested in is: will Epic keep supporting iOS if they can’t release their own games on the iOS app store?
Developer accounts schmeloper accounts. They can still maintain it. But will they? That’s essentially the number one concern we all have right now. Fortnite has been a huge driver of continued iOS support in UE4. I love the hardware and the simplicity and security of the platform about as much as I hate Apple’s other practices. And despite that environment iOS support in UE4 has been a little bit limited.
Can anyone from Epic speculate on this please? It’d be a good thing to let us know as soon as possible and probably head off some panic.
In case anyone is interested, here’s the injunction: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v…-768927327.pdf
What tools? What Epic Account’s have anything to do with SDK licences? They lock Epic Game’s tools (profiles, accounts they sign apps). This should only effect Epic games. We still get access IOS as we have own use licences and own accounts.
When did they say this? It looks like illegal move, I do not think they will block UE games. Moreover, we already signed by licences with Epic and Apple, so you are able to use what you’ve already signed for. They are not able to take what you use right now by a licence.
Can anyone proove anything, that can stop us from releasing a game on iOS?
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.
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…
If IOS really did ban all apps developed by Unreal Engine then that would make ALL software developed with Unreal Engine exclusive to Android.
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. )
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…
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 *
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.