Gregory's ServerPeople ask me why we don't support Apple products. Well, it's shit like this https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/9/24216181/apple-eu-app-store-services-fee-external-links
 63 comments
Seriously, when I was porting Spectrum Break to mobile, some friends from SnowedIn were kind enough to let me test on their array of iPhones. I also borrowed an old Mac laptop from a friend's father to submit the release... but I couldn't submit the build because it had to be sent from a NEW mac which was $2k. I was broke and couldn't afford 2k, so I never ended up releasing it on iPhone. A few months later, a copy cat game was released on iPhone that looked eerily similar to my game. @JHein sometime during support of MidBoss our mac mini basically aged out of being able to even be used for standalone builds, so yeah very similar experience and it's so much worse nowadays  @eniko Long story made short, I think we released 7 ? 8 games on iOS, they ALL got VERY GOOD reviews/been mentioned on magazines/sites/etc. .. you will think "you should do some money" .. SOME .. BUT .. then there's the fact .. "the game HAD to cost 99p" .. then "NO the game SHOULD BE FREE ( with ads ) " that we refused .. MORAL : work 3000%, investment in HW 4000%, return, almost 0.00000001% with increasing costs to maintain "the same thing". Unless you are super lucky or dunno who .. don't .. @eniko a decade ago I was Mac-first on everything but these days I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. Absolutely poisoned the well for developers, even those with a long history and massive investment with Apple are unhappy, never mind people like me who converted for a while @sinbad apple has a very "we came in here to tell you to go fuck yourself. also, we broke your shit" attitude to devs that i do not vibe with @eniko It’s the money that’s gone to their heads. When they were less powerful they didn’t do this, especially before the Mac App Store. Everything was so much more flexible, an Intel Mac was the most versatile machine you could own as a dev for a little while. Now it’s so restrictive, so expensive, and Apple want to put you on a choke-chain so you know who’s boss, it makes zero sense for anyone with any self respect @sinbad well its not like its a sensible financial investment as a gamedev so its an easy choice to just drop them on the floor @sinbad @eniko In all an all, "despite everything" ( about Apple ) and despite once we managed to be in the top 10 on the OSX and I repeat we had "very good reviews" in "supposedly the RIGHT PLACES" .. we sold very little, then when people were MOANING that 2 pounds for a game was TOO MUCH that been "the final nail in the coffin". We did leave the games on iOS store as much as we could .. the profit .. "almost nil". So all I can say "Good Luck" Maybe it's different for you .. mah .. @gilesgoat @eniko I take it as read that iOS is a complete waste of time for everyone except gambling companies with enormous amounts to spend on user acquisition (and I mean “user” in the most exploitative sense), I was mostly talking about Mac  @eniko I don't think this will go well with EU authorities, but I would refrain from doing anything with Apple until the antitrust has thoroughly mopped the floor with them, which will take a few more years @eniko From what I was able to read of this, it feels like they need a really hard smack to get it through to them that this shit isn't okay. @eniko something like "Due to bad behaviour, you will not be able to operate within our domain until you have negotiated a contract outlining what you can and cannot do, and the earliest such a contract will take effect is at the start of the next financial year" @eniko gonna go ahead and bookmark that for later in case anyone ever asks me why I'm not putting Foxblade on iOS  @eniko As someone trying to get away from Google and completely outside of the Apple ecosystem, I *was* considering to make the switch as soon as the EU started forcing Apple to allow sideloading. However, their actions leading up to that and afterwards are so hostile against all non-Apple parties that I quickly reconsidered.  @eniko this is so infuriating to read. Apple very well knows the spirit of the law but jerking around the developers just because of the power they have. @eniko My cross-platform experience with the (mostly) mobile platforms is that Apple (iOS) isn't too bad. Apple (macOS) is a lot of work for very little return (approximately 0% of total sales). Google Play is a lot more work for around the same return as iOS. On Steam, macOS is around 5-6% of total sales and Linux is around 2-3%. @maltzen so for us on steam for midboss, mac is 3.5% and linux is 3.0% that's not the interesting part though. for kitsune tails the linux share is 22.6% of units, presumably because of the steam deck. that makes a native linux port very worthwhile (even with proton) and makes mac look rather weak  @eniko It doesn't surprise me that Steamdeck is higher. My numbers go back to well before it, so I expect there are a lot of Windows purchases that have moved over. Those still show up as "Windows" in the stats, because those are based on the platform used at the time of purchase. @eniko Though TBF, despite 6 figures of revenue and a decent long tail, Steam *still* doesn't let us request "Steam Deck Verified" status, so that probably hurts our Steam Deck numbers. @maltzen yes i was complaining about that the other day. we were also not given the button in the lottery. though apparently complaining about it loudly online helped cause suddenly the next day we were informed there was a steam deck review and we were verified  @maltzen @eniko I think what would be most interesting to consider for Steam sales data, is Steam Decks versus Laptops. Because part of me feels that the *big* draw of the Steam Deck has got to be the same as the Switch - the ability to effectively treat it like a home or handheld console, and that...sort of sounds like the laptop market for PC gaming?  @maltzen The hardware upgrade treadmill means our mac mini build server is probably on borrowed time, and that's in a data centre so a pain to replace. @maltzen Getting to that point was a lot of sweat and tears though. The scripting around it all isn't something I could replicate easily. @eniko Disgusting, and also the classic Apple playbook. They're making the EU play whack-a-mole via malicious compliance. Eventually the EU will win, but it'll take years and years.  @eniko i wonder if there's any reason for cases where a game supports windows and macos (so not built specifically for windows) and yet doesn't support linux, i mean, linux support is literally free compared to macos, and you can even half ass distribution and the users will just figure it out anyway @eniko Apple is just plainly defying EU courts rulings. They assume they have absolute power, sitting atop their piles of money. It's way past the time this modern days "absolutist monarchs" face an adequate "legal guillotine".  Jason Hall of Pirate Software talks about this. Dealing with Apple isn't worth the tiny increase in sales. On the other hand, deal with Linux actually improves the game, because Linux people are so used to putting in high-quality bug reports that they are like free QA testing. @eniko Microsoft has done so much awful and dumb shit but at least they tend to understand the value of "hey just let people make shit for your platform, because then there'll be shit for your platform" @JoshJers apple is like "pay me a yearly fee so you can make software for our OS" microsoft is like "oh you wanna make software for our OS? here, have the professional suite of development tools for free" @eniko Also, as someone who has had to work on both, Microsoft's developer documentation is a fucking GODSEND compared to the cobweb-infested wasteland that is Mac's docs OSX/iOS technically have documentation of everything, but a lot of the time it's a page with the type name on it and no additional information  @JoshJers afaik they also haven’t dumped toxic waste into residential neighborhoods like Apple has. @antijingoist @eniko whomst among us hasn't dumped just a little toxic waste into residential neighborhoods from time to time  @JoshJers @antijingoist @eniko Neighbourhoods can have a little toxic waste, as a treat. It was honestly funnier when it was a shitty movie plot "LOL bad guys do bad stuff for a few dollars." In this case, it could be comical as a story, but Apple has met their decreasing landfill targets by using the neighborhoods they are in. 😐 And with other US air quality shit going on, and forced covid exposures, in the middle of an intentionally untrackable surge, It's all very exhausting. @JoshJers @eniko Also "Hey, if people only have to make stuff once for your platform and then have it work from then on out, it's basically free marketing for your platform. Any amount of work that we can do to make sure that the stuff - even if we think it's bad - still works on our platforms, we should do.". @AT1ST @eniko oh god, also that Microsoft does absolute fucking BACKBENDS to make sure that some obscure-ass thing from 1998 still works (like the things I wrote in DirectDraw around that time, which still run) Apple is like "that thing you developed last month? it doesn't work any more. Also you have to buy a new $3000 development kit because we switched the entire processor architecture again" @JoshJers @eniko Yeah - I'm reminded of the story that allegedly SimCity and it's sequels use the same exe name because Microsoft saw that it has memory management leakage, and instead of just letting it BSOD after a while, made their OS detect when it was running, and gave it a *custom* memory manager that properly did the freeing and allocation instead of expecting it tobbe done correctly. And then SimCity devs essentially said "Well, it works, and it doesn't cost us to reuse our code..."... @JoshJers @eniko ...and while I'm sure Microsoft is ripping their hair out over maintaining that throughout the OS versions, it's an amazing testament to their commitment to be willing to eat the technical debt of other developers. That, and the whole "This Windows version is 3.99, because some developers had a bad check that their software was being installed on Windows 3.1 or higher." thing. @JoshJers @eniko To some extent, it's making me realize that Texas Instruments doesn't get that kind of rep, and it feels like maybe they should've tried for it. Like, "Yes, we have a new version of our TI-Nspire models, but they will still run that program of Doom from your father's TI-83 if you upload it to this new calculator model, no changes to the code necessary.". I have a feeling they didn't do that. @eniko Trying to get the game native on Apple Silicon also opened a whole world of Apple policy shit too. macOS is gonna be as locked as iOS in a few short years. 😕 @eniko I got ripped of by Microsoft and decided my next desktop would be an Apple. I wanted to punish Microsoft, but I think I mostly punished myself. @MaierAmsden @eniko really the only thing going for Macs is the hardware. MacOS is dogshit. I have always been mostly a PC guy but my company provided a new M3 Mac a while back. The battery life and form factor is great. Getting any kind of device to work with it that isn't brand new from their store is a crapshoot at best. And it really has problems with external monitors and Bluetooth. I just want a decrapified Windows 11 machine on hardware that's on par with the new MacBook Pros  @eniko agreed, do not buy a new mac As an Apple user, technology enthusiast and quasi-fan… it is incredibly disheartening to witness the number of rakes that Apple leadership has stepped on over the last 5 years.  @eniko i hope they get bonked to hell by the EU for adding all those arbitrary requirements and limitations |
I'm just not interested in signing up again to be abused by Apple forever in order to increase sales by 1% and thats assuming that 1% even earns back the cost of a developer account + notarization + having to buy new hardware every few years as Apple drops support for it