Ex-App Store head says Apple Arcade violates Apple's own policies

A previous head of the App Store told the US House of Representatives that Apple rejects subscription game services because they compete with Apple Arcade.

As the dispute between Apple and Epic Games continues, a former App Store manager has claimed that Apple does reject apps that compete with its own services. Questioned by the US House of Representatives in its antitrust investigation, Philip Shoemaker said that the App Store had been used to protect Apple's interests.

"[Apple] was not being honest," he said when asked about the company's claim that it treats all developers the same. Calling the App Store rules both "arbitrary" and "arguable," he said that, "Apple has struggled with using the App Store as a weapon against competitors."

"Apple has complete and unprecedented power over their customers' devices," he continued. "The decisions they make with regards to third-party apps needs to be above reproach, and currently are not."

Shoemaker, who was senior director of Apple's App Store Review team from March 2009 to April 2016 and had nothing to do with the Apple Arcade decision, nor the recent rules revision about game streaming services said that it is also untrue that Apple will not favor its own apps over those of competitors. He said that Apple Arcade was a type of app that was "consistently disallowed from the store," if submitted by a third-party.

Shoemaker's testimony in the House's full report — embedded below — was first spotted by Business Insider.

The House's antitrust investigation was into Amazon, Google, and Facebook as well as Apple. Recently, however, firms such as Microsoft have also claimed that the App Store game rules are unfair.

During his seven years at Apple, Shoemaker says that he "built [the] App Store Review team from 4 to over 300 employees... reorganizing as necessary to support international growth." He also represented the company in what he describes as "numerous hearings with DOJ and FDA, as well as numerous legal depositions for legal proceedings related to the App Store, national and international."

Since leaving Apple, Shoemaker has been a critic of the company's App Store practices. "In-app purchase is broken," he said in June 2020. "As Apple is entering into more and more of these areas and putting out of business more developers, they really have got to think differently."

He has praised how Apple originally assigned three reviewers to every app, but says that this was later cut back to one. And that even though the curation is still done by people instead of algorithms, "there's a lot of stuff in the store that shouldn't be there."

Shoemaker has himself been through the App Store review process as a developer. He founded the entertainment software firm GrayNoodle, and ran it for a year before joining Apple.

GrayNoodle does not appear to currently have any apps on the App Store, but it previously had ones including a urination simulator named "iWiz," and a flatulence one called "Animal Farts."

Investigation of Competitio... by Mike Wuerthele

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42 Comments

elijahg 18 Years · 2842 comments

About 4 years ago

That's not going to sit well with Apple. If Apple sues this guy for libel, we know he's lying. Otherwise he's telling the truth, or paid off by Epic. Though that then would be lying under oath.

Will be interesting to see if Apple has a response other than “we refute this”. Because when one of your own says this kind of thing, there’s very little defence - as long as the guy wasn’t dismissed for poor conduct at least, as then he could be saying this to get retribution.

GeorgeBMac 8 Years · 11421 comments

My sense is that much of what he said is opinion rather than hard, cold fact: that it is interpreting the intent behind decisions by Apple. Unless he has something in writing it is essentially just his take on it.

But, that does not detract from the seriousness of these allegations because: essentially, they are not claiming a simple business dispute between Apple and developers but something that hurts Apple customers because Apple is artificially restricting their options to favor their own bottom line. In other words while the customer reaps no benefit of any kind and only experiences harm, Apple enhances its bottom line at other's expense.

That is not what has made Apple a great company. A great stock. But not a great company. Quite the opposite really.

The question though remains: Is what he said/suggested true? Was this Apple's conscious intent?

perezonomics 9 Years · 5 comments

If by “competes with its own services” he means Apple is going to squash alternate app stores, of course Apple is going to do that. Everything he alleged could also apply to Sony or Nintendo. But Apple allows alternate calendars, email, or calculators so it’s not like they’re out to protect all apps Apple.

EsquireCats 8 Years · 1268 comments

Seems like a slightly disingenuous wording of apple not allowing a store within a store.

Also to saying that the reason for this is due to competition with Apple Arcade is bizarre, Arcade is relatively new - the desire of 3rd parties to run a store within a store is not.

[Deleted User] 9 Years · 0 comments

elijahg said:

That's not going to sit well with Apple. If Apple sues this guy for libel, we know he's lying. Otherwise he's telling the truth, or paid off by Epic. Though that then would be lying under oath.
Will be interesting to see if Apple has a response other than “we refute this”. Because when one of your own says this kind of thing, there’s very little defence - as long as the guy wasn’t dismissed for poor conduct at least, as then he could be saying this to get retribution.

There are a couple problems with your comment. First the testimony was oral and not written so Apple couldn't sue for libel it would have to be slander. Second, you can't simply sue someone for saying something untrue you have to show damages were incurred and given the testimony has been public for a few days Apple would be hard pressed to show any sort of damages. When it comes to lying during testimony to Congress being under oath doesn't matter. Lying to Congress is a crime if you are under oath or not. That said it is something that can be difficult to prosecute as the person has to knowingly and willingly make the statement. In this person's case what he said could have been accurate 4+ years ago when he worked for Apple but inaccurate presently. In that instance he would have told the truth based on his knowledge but said knowledge is out of date. As for Epic, what do they have to do with the Judiciary Subcommittee's report? This testimony would have been well before the Epic/Apple pissing match started. Lastly, Apple provided a statement to. Business Insider, the publisher of the story AI is referring to in this article, but AI opted to not include it or make reference to it in this article.