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Fortnite returns to iPhone app store in US, ending exile imposed by Apple
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Apple wouldn't have to if they didn't artificially prevent competitor app stores from being installed on iPhones. An app store is just software that tells the OS to install another piece of software. They are not complicated or hard to code, Apple just installs one with your phone and prevents any apps from being installed except through it, and then they refuse to host other app stores.
This is them using their market share in phones, to avoid competing fairly with third party software app stores like Steam.
They claim they have to install every thing through their app store for security reasons and there's no possible other way to build it (horseshit), so rightfully then, to prevent them from illegally tieing two unrelated products together, they have to host Fortnite on the App Store since it has to be the neutral competition hosting level of abstraction. It wouldn't if Apple would allow competitor app stores like they do on MacOS but they won't this is the bed they made.
And let me be frank. Your assertion that Epic is not a good company and Apple is not a good company, in the same breadth, is false equivalency horseshit.
Apple charges mafia 30% of all software REVENUE fees in addition to their other anti-competitive bullshit. They use their dominant platform position to be an absolute drag on the economy at large. Epic bought some game exclusives for a couple years. They are not comparable.
Have you actually looked at the iPhones market share? They don't have a monopoly, far from it - Android is the market leader in phone OS's by a country mile.
Not at all. Epic have rules on what games can be hosted on the Epic Game Store too btw.
Apple don't have a dominant platform position. They do not have a monopoly. They do not have to allow competitors to operate on their platform.
Your entire post is based on an incorrect premise.
57% US market share. This decision has no bearing on any other market, and to expand the view to the global market is disingenuous.
I can install Steam if Epic doesn’t allow a game I want on it, or install it directly from the developer. You don’t have that option with the iPhone.
Yes, they do. Especially when that platform is synonymous with 57% of the hardware in use.
Ironic.
I have maybe a handful of people on lemmy tagged, if that. That means, those were the most stupid, ignorant, obnoxious, disingenious people, or otherwise not worth of serious discourse, to the point i felt it necessary to remember that with a tag.
Now this guy i have put down as "that weird guy who really loves corporations". Make of that what you want for your conversation.
So well outside of monopoly territory. Thanks for checking :)
And you're not entitled to that option. It's apples product and they don't have to build ways for competitors to eat their lunch, nor should they. If you want a platform that allows you to install stuff from any source, get an android phone or one that does.
Why? 57% is far, FAR, below where anti-competition and anti-trust rules come in to play.
Says the guy who thinks 57% market share in a market with 2 players is a monopoly lol.
I mean sure, ignoring the fact that the justice department is actively suing Apple for being a monopoly, Apple isn’t a monopoly.
Ignoring the fact that a court of law ordered the situation being reported on, there’s no reason Apple should have to do what they are doing.
As long as we ignore reality, the things you’re claiming make perfect sense.
👍
FYI, FreedomAdvocate is a prolific sealion. Their MO is stringing people along with bad faith arguments in an attempt to waste their time. You’re better off ignoring them and reporting where appropriate.
Appreciated, just threw a user tag on them so I can ignore them in the future.
They're accusing them of having a monopoly. That doesn't mean they have a monopoly. Remember, the FTC sued Microsoft to try and stop them buying Activision because they claimed that would give them a monopoly on "high powered gaming consoles" despite Playstation - the clear market leader for 5 generations straight - outselling them 3:1 at the time, and probably closer to 10:1 right now. Not every lawsuit wins. The government aren't always right. The FTC got laughed out of court for that monopoly lawsuite against MS btw. The judge tore them apart.
Also courts ruled in this very case that Apple do not have a monopoly:
I'm saying no court or government should be allowed to order a business to allow someone to sell something on their store, or build functionality for them to be able to have their own store on a device. It's absurd.
Apple weren't ordered by the courts to put the game back on the store btw. They were ordered to not reject applications for the store based on them linking to an outside payment method. The Judge said if they rejected the application for any reason they would need to go to court AGAIN to prove that it wasn't because of that. Apple just approved it instead.
Please do us all a favour and go and read the Wikipedia article on anti-competitive behaviour and anti-competition laws before commenting.
And just in case you lack the mental faculties to actually parse that Wikipedia article, the key lesson we're looking for you to learn is that you do not need a a monopoly to behave anti-competitively, you just need market power, and to abuse it in a way that avoids fairly competing on the merits of your product.
Apple forcing people to use their payment system for no reason other than it lets them make more money, is anti-competitive behaviour. They are not competing on the merits of the best payment system, they are using their dominant market share in phones to force people to use their payment system where they can charge whatever they want.
Quite frankly, there are a huge number of examples in society of companies behaving anti-competitively. It's largely what happens when you let business people run things, since they can organize your company structure and reporting to be efficient, and then they run out of ideas for legitimate ways to improve the company's products.
Anti-competitive tying is a long standing, textbook, example of anti-competitive behaviour, it's just often not prevented in the US because US law basically requires you to have a full monopoly before anyone will do anything which is dumb as tits. It'd be like in hockey if the refs were only able to give you a penalty after all your opponents were too injured to play anymore.
It also ignores other ways of gaining and abusing market power. Walmart is the textbook example of a monopsony, where there market power comes not from being the only store, but the only customer, they are famous for using their size to crush and control their suppliers in ways that are flat out illegal in most of the western world.
At the end of the day, our economic system is based on the idea that people should compete to produce the best product or service, and then consumers will reward the best one with proportionally more resources based on which one is their preference (best, cheapest, etc.). That falls apart when you start using software to artificially tie every product to every other product. Suddenly AI can't fairly compete to produce the speaker without also producing a phone, and watch, and laptop, and have everyone have a network of friends and family all also using those. It literally undermines the entirety of capitalism.
They don’t have dominant market share, so everything you just said is irrelevant.
[citation needed]
Where’s the source for your claim that they have a dominant market position?
The court ruling that we're discussing.