The interesting looking subscription gaming service for iOS brought to you by Big Fish Games? Apple has decided that it’s not allowed to run.
Bloomberg reports that Apple’s had the app yanked, and talked to Paul Thelen, founder of Big Fish. He told Bloomberg that
We were notified that the app was removed. We’re trying to follow up with Apple to try to figure out what happened.”
Thelen states that the press release for the App had been sighted by Apple, and that they’d worked hard to stay within the official developer guidelines. [Bloomberg]
Ozoneocean
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 3:51 PMYou know, if any other company exercised this sort of absolute , unmediated control over any other market, totally without any transparent oversight of any kind, then they’d be up before the courts in an eye-blink.
Not even governments (in free countries) are allowed to exercise this sort of control without any transparent oversight.
I really have to wonder why they’ve been allowed to carry on like this? Corporatisim gone absolutely fricken insane.
Kent
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 3:55 PMWhat are you jabbering on about? This is Apple’s pool, if you want to swim in it, then don’t piss in it.
Jon
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 5:18 PM+1 agree , by the end of the day.. it’s Apple’s … if you want to stay in it, then play by the rule they give you. as simple as that.
Ozoneocean
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 6:17 PMThe market is too large for that now. Perhaps you’re totally unaware of its breadth, though they have been boasting about it constantly for the last 3 years or so. Basically they’re in almost exactly the same place Microsoft was in the 90s, except with a far higher control over their monopoly market.
Richard
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 7:23 PMI think it’s hard to call iOS a monopoly but. Sure, they control the application channel for that device, however so do device venders in multiple other related markets. In regards to the mobile market as a whole but they are anything but a monopoly, so developers have other platforms they can develop for and they will reach a large number of users (noting that for WP7 and the like they will be bound to similar issues around a closed ecosystem).
Also having a monopoly isn’t illegal. Abusing one is. You’d have to prove that Apple is abusing its position however it could be hard to show that since moves like this may in fact be weakening their position, not to mention theres the fact they only have a percentage of the market under their reign anyway.
You could say actions like this are anti-competitive, but I don’t think the word “monopoly” has any place in the argument.
Sam
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 4:06 PMInteresting point. While I have no issues with what Apple wants to do within it’s own app store, the fact that they do not allow any alternative source to sell/download/install apps to their own official app store (without jailbreaking) surely would have to be treading on shaky ground with anti-trust ligislation.
Hell, Microsoft got in the shit in the EU because Internet Explorer was preloaded within Windows – and they don’t even make money from it.
BenDTU
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 4:42 PMConsole makers have gotten away with this for ages. I don’t see why it’s suddenly a problem when Apple does it.
Antonia
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 5:09 PMYou can’t play something from both sides at the same time. You can’t have a device that you push as a replacement for a computer and then tell people how they can put software on it. Try developing for an iPad: buy a Mac, pay an annual fee to Apple, pray they accept your app… To me this is the worst of MS and then some.
Sam
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 8:22 AM@BenDTU – That’s only a half truth. Yes, console makers owned the rights over their hardware, to which developers had to pay to release games on their hardware – BUT the price to the end user who actually bought the game was set by retailers, and there wasn’t a single monopoly on which story you could buy your games from.
Licenencing and royalties are one thing, control over market availability is another.
BenDTU
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 9:47 AMThe price is set by the developer, what’s the problem there?
Amazon are the only ones who set prices as far as app stores go IIRC.
Alan Zeino
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 5:04 PMThat’s because Microsoft carved itself a monopoly with IE; Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on mobile devices, so that’ll never happen.
Ozoneocean
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 6:22 PMThat is completely incorrect Alan. Microsoft had a monopoly with its PC OS on IBM compatible computers, they abused that monopoly to push forward their own browser over the top of all competing equivalents, dominating overnight.
Apple has complete control over iphones and ipads and the colossal app market attached to them, they abuse their monopoly as much as it is possible to do so.
Alan Zeino
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 5:06 PMThis headline is misleading – Apple never ‘allowed’ this app to change its subscription model – there’s no proof of Apple having done so, and no announcement was made to developers of the change.
Big Fish Games passed the review process, and Bloomberg decided ‘Apple allows’ was the right spin for the story. A lot of stuff gets past the reviewers, but it doesn’t mean Apple tacitly approves.
olearymo
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 9:09 AMThankyou Alan, I was thinking this too. DaringFireball has some excellent reading on the matter. It seems nothing was ‘allowed’ at all. Apple never made a statement about allowing in-game subscriptions.
Jayant
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 7:56 PMAs much as Apple has created an Ecosystem for developers and created business opportunities, it has *abused* the control it has, it has taken the *sandbox* a bit too far.
I agree with OcenZone and a couple of others on the fact that Microsoft was in trouble over IE which was hardly an issue, they had not blocked any other, they just used IE integration in their shell. Which was logical as it helped them achieve some cool things.
Microsoft has created the wonderful Ecosystem with VB where just like App developers, there were thousands of VB Developers, Microsoft brought in DotNet and killed VB which irked a lot of developers to move to Java and some that waited moved to the Intel Mac platform and ultimately iOS development.
Oceanzone is correct on the fact that if this was a country and a government, there would have been war on the strong unilateral practices imposed upon other by Apple or maybe it might not. The point is where is the DOJ, the EU and the advocates of FairTrade, why is Apple allowed to be a big bully in the small sandbox?
BenDTU
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 10:10 PMBecause it’s THEIR sandbox and there are alternative platforms. They hardly have the 90% share Microsoft did.
Osiris Fox
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:35 AMBenDTU, here are your Pom Poms! And by the way, Apple doesn’t give two hoots about you, stop being such a dweeb.