In September, Epic's century lawsuit with Apple came to an end. California District Court Judge Rogers formally ruled on apple's injunction: Apple will no longer be allowed to prohibit developers from offering users non-Apple payments through links or other means of communication, and the ban will take effect in December 2021.
Not surprisingly, on October 8, local time, Apple formally appealed to the court on the verdict. Apple mentioned that without just the right amount of regulation and protection, changes to the App Store rules could hurt users, developers, and the iOS platform itself.
This was quickly met with strong opposition from Epic, which recently filed a new filing saying that Apple's current requirements do not meet the criteria for a moratorium on the ban.
Epic argued that Apple could not prove that complying with the verdict would cause irreparable harm to its company, while also saying: "History shows that Apple will not make any changes without a ban." The court will also hold a hearing on November 9 to rule on Apple's appeal.
However, in recent days, Apple has made concessions first. According to foreign media reports, on October 22, Apple updated the App Store review guidelines, allowing developers to contact users about third-party payment methods.
Attitude changed, and Apple finally gave in
In the face of recent pressure from global multi-party supervision, Apple's attitude towards three-party payment has long since ceased to be tough.
As early as August, the Wall Street Journal news, Apple announced that it would make changes to the existing App Store rules, agreeing that developers would inform users of payment methods other than iOS. In the same month, Apple also reached a settlement with some small and medium-sized developers in the United States, allowing developers to share iOS out-of-app payment information with users through email and other means.
Now, Apple has chosen to make concessions during the ban buffer period, with the intention of becoming more obvious. After all, Apple also mentioned in the appeal grounds that the App Store will make a series of policy changes in the future, which may make the effectiveness of the original ruling unnecessary.
Specifically, Apple has made three major updates to the App Store rules, including in-app payment methods, app access to user information, and in-app events. In addition to adding a new App Store feature, which is not related to the ban, the other two updates mean that Apple has indeed made concessions on the issue of three-party payments.
Apple removed a clause in app store review guidelines 3.1.3 that developers may not use information obtained from within the app to direct individual users to locations outside the app to use purchase methods other than in-app purchases (for example, after an individual user registers an account in the app, sends that user an email introducing other purchase methods).
With the removal of the clause, Apple now officially allows developers to communicate with their users about payment methods other than in-app purchases. At the same time, Apple has also added a new section to guide 5.1.1 (X) that further explains how developers can request user contact information: Apps can ask for basic information about users, such as names and email addresses, but only if the user has the right to choose, not force the user to open permissions. At the same time, Apple also prohibits developers from forcing users to provide information based on the premise of using the app's features and services.
Email contact user? Slightly conservative concessions
In terms of results, Apple did make some concessions, modifying store rules to allow developers to contact users to discuss other payment methods.
This move is conducive to breaking the uniqueness of Apple's ecology, but the problem is that Apple has given a three-party payment option, but refused to publish announcements in the app, which also makes developers in a rather delicate situation. It is not easy to achieve icebreaking, but how to contact core users has become the first hurdle to access three-party payment. After all, in the specific implementation process, the behavior of "email notification" alone poses a challenge to developers.
Although in Europe and the United States, the use of e-mail communication is still the mainstream. However, with the rise of instant messaging, the use of e-mail in various countries and regions around the world began to deviate greatly. Especially in China, most of the daily life office is mainly based on communication applications such as WeChat and DingTalk. Emails are more like "old antiques" from many years ago, basically out of people's sight.
The movie "E-Love Letter" (released in 1998), about falling in love with email, has been in the history of the last century
What's more, as the mobile game market enters the stock era, the competition is fierce. In order to simplify the difficulty of registration and quickly drain new traffic, most game manufacturers often no longer require new users to register with an email address or provide email information.
Overseas, for example, a large proportion of players are able to log in with one click through social accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. In China, this trend is more obvious, in addition to accessing the manufacturer's own account, as well as common WeChat, QQ, Weibo and other mainstream social accounts, game applications basically only provide players with the form of mobile phone number quick login.
"Original God" - Only the Miyousha account and mobile phone number are allowed to log in
This means that how to directly contact all players has become the primary problem for developers, especially domestic manufacturers, to truly access the three-party payment method.
The tripartite payment was opened, but it didn't seem to be open
Unfortunately, contacting the player is only the first step. Looking deeper, how to access third-party payments is undoubtedly another mountain in front of developers.
Honestly, this App Store rule update is more like a concession in form than meaning. The judge's initial ruling required Apple to allow developers to point to their own websites in their apps, allowing users to pay directly and bypass Apple's payment system. However, Apple does not currently allow other payment systems to be embedded directly in the iOS app.
This also forced developers to start looking for other scenarios outside the application to access the form of three-party payment. In GameLook's view, it is very likely that the following three forms will appear:
1. Browser jump to the official website to recharge
2. Provide charging services
3. Cross-platform games are centralized to the PC side to recharge
This speculation is not empty, in September Apple issued an announcement that in order to reach an investigation and settlement with Japan's Fair Trade Commission, from 2022, "reader" iOS applications can use third-party payments by jumping to websites, but do not include game applications.
Now, with Apple officially allowing the addition of three-party payments, it may become possible for players to pay by jumping to the official website of the game through mobile phones or PC browsers. However, compared with the one-click payment in the application, the complicated and lengthy URLs are not only difficult to remember, but also greatly reduce the convenience of payment, which will naturally have a certain degree of impact on player payment.
In fact, the payment rate of mobile games is not high. The conversion threshold brought by email notifications is more likely to cause a reduction in the payment rate. After that, every additional link in the recharge process, the conversion rate of user payment will inevitably be compromised. That is to say, even if the apple tax is bypassed, the revenue increase will still not change much.
From this point of view, the biggest winner may be cross-platform games. Of course, new users or pure mobile gamers may not be greatly affected. But you know, the game flow mainly comes from big R players, as well as a large part of the "thin water long stream" small Krypton players. Most of these users are highly sensitive to price, and after comparing the store prices of different channels, it is naturally easy to be biased towards getting rid of the commission and discounting more PC-side payments.
But in the end, can Apple's concessions satisfy developers around the world and help the appeal overturn the previous judgment? Whether Epic can hold on to the only crushing victory in this showdown still needs to wait for the result.