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.
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.