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Usually I’m on the fuck Apple side, but context is important:
Epic hasn’t reviewed all these games, and Apple noted that its standards are different from the Epic Games Store’s. The list includes, per Apple’s attorney, a game called Sisterly Lust that includes “a list of fetishes which include many words that are not appropriate for us to speak in federal courts.”
They are using Epic’s failure to ensure that 3rd party store is complying with their own standards guidelines, in a case about Apple’s refusal to accept 3rd party stores in iOS. I am against walled gardens myself, but heck they did make a good point with Itch in this case.
Both companies are acting incredibly cynically here and I don’t think apple actually makes a good point.
Epic only has this partnership with itch so they could prove the point “it’s cool and easy to provide third-party stores.” Then they accidentally proved the point “you can’t moderate content on a third-party store and it’s content may run contrary to the first-party’s policies which may confuse users.”
Notice how Epic was like “uhh we probably won’t do this on mobile though” when they realized what had happened. They don’t actually give a shit about itch beyond using them as a pawn. Hopefully creators on the platform are getting some increased sales out of it though.
But ultimately, apple should not block additional stores. If they’re as worried about content moderation as they say they could only allow sideloading and instead of serving them via the app store.
They did not, they do not give a fuck about this, this is simply a smoke screen to be able to keep its garden walled.
If this would be the case the conversation would be different; it would be on how we can improve the situation of video games as a medium in order to make it less toxic, instead they are denigrating it as if it were not art, or some lower form of art …“if you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app.”
It is not that video games can’t critize religion or talk about sex in a respective manner, it is an issue that is and was within society way before video games emerged, it was just transferred into it.
The conversation was never about “delete Itch from your store so that it complies with our agreements”, or “improve the requirements for games to be published so that Epic store can be on the Apple store”, it is about targetting smaller projects which can be a threat in the long term for Apple’s monopoly in any way.
If this would be the case the conversation would be different; it would be on how we can improve the situation of video games as a medium in order to make it less toxic
This is not a business meeting to brainstorm ideas, this is a court, Apple is defending themselves on court, they don’t give a F about what is or isn’t in EGS, as long as EGS stays away from their walled garden, that’s the whole freaking point. But anyway, all they care about in that court is to defend themselves against Epic, not to brainstorm how to fix gaming or whatever, and they made a good goddamn point for their defense using the Itch store in EGS.
EDIT: and just to make it clear, I know, they just want to control and take a bite from every source of monetization they can on iOS. BUT, as long as they use curation as an argument, bringing up Itch on EGS is a good godamn point in their defense. It has nothing to do with attacking small projects that are not even in the same business segments as Apple or whatever.
