from Hacker News

Apple kills many browser games in the EU: unprecedented affront to regulation

by agust on 2/13/24, 11:38 PM with 52 comments

• by snvzz on 2/13/24, 11:50 PM

  Apple sure has a lot of money, but this doesn't mean they can be allowed to think that they can do whatever they want.

  EU can and should tighten the screws. Exponential fines. It is free money for the EU.

• by kj99 on 2/14/24, 12:35 AM

  People keep saying things like ‘affront to regulation’, but the regulation wasn’t written to make iOS more open. It was written to enable certain other middlemen more access to specific parts of iOS.

  If the EU wanted to force iOS to be an open platform, they could have written a law to that effect.

  I wish people would realize that just because the EU is regulating Apple and it’s fun to see power be brought to bear against Apple, it doesn’t mean the EU is actually competent to regulate the market.

• by Something1234 on 2/14/24, 1:34 AM

  Are there really still good browser based video games out there? It seems like after flash died the only things out there are based on mobile games with very frustrating time based mechanics. There's no adventure or story in them. There's very few platformers if any. The vast majority are the cursed idle game.

• by wpwpwpw on 2/14/24, 12:58 AM

  The problemare the walled gardens. I believe if people could own their hardware, as in install the OS and bootloader they want, all of this wouldn't matter. Just make this and common interfaces for hardware mandatory and let companies create their own ecosystems compete with the preinstalled ones.

• by jmull on 2/14/24, 1:08 AM

  It looks like this is just in a beta version of iOS.

  I’ll worry if/when ios gets released like this.

• by LeoPanthera on 2/13/24, 11:45 PM

  I have some sympathy for Apple here. The EU required Apple to offer the option of multiple browser engines. PWAs cannot integrate with iOS without using iOS's engine. So there's no way to legally offer that feature.

• by alberto180 on 2/14/24, 10:53 PM

  At this point they are begging to be punished. No way the EU can save their face without a reaction after all these Middle fingers from Apple

• by nonrandomstring on 2/14/24, 1:00 AM

  I am having most extraordinary deja-vu. How have we got to be in the same place 20 years later [0] !

  Back then it wasn't even the E.U. but the US Government prosecuting the case. Apple have learned well from the masters, and are claiming the same pathetic, dishonest drivel as Microsoft tried at the start of this century.

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

• by AlDante2 on 2/14/24, 1:27 AM

  I read many articles like this, protesting that Apple doesn't do this, Apple doesn't do that.

  Apple isn't a monopoly, by any stretch of the imagination. 13% of the US market in Macs, 25% in mobile phones. Starbucks has a markup of 90%. Named brand spices, 100%. Hotel mini-bars, 400%. But Apple, which built the concept of an App Store, built the platform and the payment infrastructure, advertises and delivers the product, is somehow the bad guy for charging for it.

  Have you tried asking Walmart how much you would have to pay to sell your product in their store?

  I understand. Apple targets the high-end, so their consumers tend to be the well-heeled and hence a truly desirable market. It's like being a goat behind a fence, where all of the best green is on the other side. But, to leave the caprine behind us, what would you pay for access to a customer basis like the iPhones, including billing and distribution?

  It's not as if you have to use the App Store. Deliver your apps via your own web page, advertise accordingly, and implement billing, with the attendant security.

  Bob is then your uncle.

  Or sell to the majority market - 75% of mobile, 87% of desktop. You know it makes sense.

  Until you realise that there is minimal protection against wrongdoers, which makes your market skittish. Nor much support in the way of promotion. Still, most studies state that PC and Android are the way to go if you want peak sales.

  Just do it.