Amazon have launched their own cloud gaming platform, and while that's good news in itself, the implications of circumventing Apple's iOS fees are likely to be even better news.
What Amazon did with Luna is launch it as a progressive web application (PWA). In other words, it's an advanced app but still running through a browser, which effectively allows it to circumvent Apple's mandatory 30 per cent iOS payment.
Granted, the "mandatory" part doesn't cover Amazon, who worked out a sweetheart deal with Apple for a lower payment. Others, however, have not been as privileged, and some like Epic Games are even in court over matters closely related to this.
We're talking about Nvidia's GeForce Now, Microsoft's xCloud and Google Stadia, all of which have had unpleasant run-ins with Apple in regards to their services.
Amazon, however, cleverly utilised Apple's game streaming guidelines and went around it. And the guidelines state that game streaming is permitted as long as it adheres to the following:
"Each game update must be submitted for review, developers must provide appropriate metadata for search, games must use in-app purchase to unlock features or functionality, etc. Of course, there is always the open Internet and web browser apps to reach all users outside of the App Store."
If you take note of the last sentence, it pretty much means - you can do whatever you want as long as your goal is not to offer it in a native iOS app.
Amazon
Whether Google, Nvidia, Microsoft and even Epic Games will, or even can, resort to workarounds that will look like Amazon's, remains to be seen. The way it looks like right now, though, is definitely not something that would qualify as a level playing field.
