How to complete the Fallout 76 Legendary Run
While this is intended to be a how-to guide, it also offers my take on whether or not this new rewards system is worth it. This article also serves as a review. Let’s explore.
[Updated for 9/29/2020]
The new ‘Legendary Run’ has started with a new game board. This game board is completely different from the images shown in this first Legendary Run. The rewards are similarly spaced and similar in style. However, as of the update needed to install this new ‘Legendary Run’ game board, Bethesda also made some very big (and unnecessary) changes to the game, shattering the already faltering game balance. As of this update and second legendary run, Fallout 76 is officially an unmitigated disaster. There is officially no game balance in Fallout 76.
Effectively, no matter what level you are, Bethesda has excessively nerfed ALL weapons and over-powered ALL enemies. A level 50 (max level) Bloodied Lever Action Rifle, which could pretty much one-hit and kill any enemy in the game and 3 hit and kill some of the hardest enemies (other than a Scorchbeast Queen), is now no better than a level 10 weapon of any kind. Any remaining balance that had been in Fallout 76 has been utterly destroyed by this latest update. To be honest, Bethesda has destroyed any remaining reason to play Fallout 76 in one update. There is absolutely nothing at all fun about Fallout 76 at this point… no, not even to play this updated second Legendary Run game board.
If I had even the tiniest of cravings to play this newest game board in Fallout 76, that craving has been totally and completely squashed by Bethesda’s ruining of the game balance.
The Legendary Run
What is it? As stated above, it’s a new rewards system for Fallout 76. It somewhat replaces the daily Atom rewards with a new type of currency called S.C.O.R.E. (another insipid acronym). For this article, I’m simply going to call it Score. Score points are given when you complete daily or weekly challenges.
By ‘somewhat’, I mean that the older Atom challenge system was designed as a loose, non-competitive system. You did these challenges at your leisure with no ramifications. This new system, on the other hand, sees a competition between you and a foe, forcing you to complete the game board ahead of the foe. Okay, so maybe ‘force’ is a strong word. However, it has the same effect as force because of the urgency required in keeping up with Zorbo’s game piece. Skipping a day of challenges can see you lose. Zorbo’s ship is the little teal ship where the gamer’s is a bright orange ship. See full game board image below:
What does ‘lose’ mean, exactly?
By ‘lose’, this is not yet clearly defined by Bethesda. It is currently believed that Bethesda will reset the board to start over with a new ‘season’ of The Legendary Run including all new rewards… after Doctor Zorbo (foe) reaches the final position on the game board. It has been confirmed as of September 1st that The Legendary Run ends September 8th (see image at right) at 12 noon Eastern / 9am Pacific. Additionally, not only is Bethesda offering double Score points until that time, they have added extra challenges to the board to help those who wish to get to the finish line and need a bit more effort. Still, it doesn’t absolve Bethesda from the OCD and anxiety issues that this challenge system brings.
If you haven’t completed the board, the clock is ticking on whether you will be able to complete it and get all of the remaining rewards. Remember when I said ‘force’ was too strong of a word above? Well, here is exactly where Bethesda applies the pressure. The assumption is that if you don’t complete the board by the time the foe reaches the end, you will not be able to finish the game board at all or receive any remaining rewards. You may even lose any unclaimed rewards (see CAUTION below).
For anyone not very far along, this means that to complete the board before the timer ticks down to zero, you’ll need to pay your way through the board using Atom (see the Pay to Win section below for more details) before Zorbo reaches the end and the board closes. In other words, if you’re still in Chapter 1 when reading this article, you’re going to be required to pay a LOT of Atom to fully open up the game board to the end.
CAUTION: As a warning, I strongly recommend that you claim every reward you are given. Don’t be lazy about this. Don’t leave any rewards unclaimed. Once the game board closes for the next season, you will likely not be able to go back and claim any unclaimed rewards. In fact, the board may be entirely wiped and reset losing any unclaimed rewards. Be extremely cautious as Bethesda is not likely to be forgiving about this at all.
Score Points
Score points are accumulated into a progress bar that’s either at the bottom or top of the screen depending on which screen you are in.
The Legendary Run also has a game board (see above) with individual rewards in each spot. As you progress and gain Score, your game marker moves to the next spot after you accumulate enough Score points for that specific place on the board. Each new game place increases the amount of accumulated Score it requires to move to the next game board section.
Under each game board section, you will find a specific reward. The rewards sometimes include currency like Atom, Legendary Scrip or Gold Bouillon. Other rewards include digital cosmetic items like Ghillie Suit paint jobs or Atomic Onslaught paint. You can even get consumables like Scrap Kits, Repair Kits and Perk Card packs. It also includes CAMP cosmetic items like a tree, a door or wallpaper.
Each spot on the board is already pre-marked with its reward. You only simply need to hover over the game board spot to view its reward. You can even click on it to get more details. There is no mystery involved. You know exactly what you’re getting all throughout the game board.
What I’ve Learned — The OCD Run WARNING
Playing through and completing this game board, I’ve come to learn a few highly negative things about this system. As a result, I’m not a fan of this new system at all.
The first thing I noticed about this new system is that it is not at all forgiving. If you miss a day of challenges, you’re probably okay and can make it up. If you miss a week of challenges, you’re likely to be so far behind you can’t complete the board. Because of this primary problem, this system can easily trigger anxiety and obsessive compulsion to complete this challenge system in gamers. Gaming is supposed to be recreational, not something to become OCD over.
If you’re easily triggered by OCD, then you should completely avoid participating in this reward system. In fact, this game mechanism is so heavily tied to reinforcing obsessive compulsive behaviors, it should be outlawed in games. To me, a system like this is just as bad as for-pay mystery boxes. Hear me, Bethesda.
Obsessive compulsive disorder is not something we need to be indoctrinating into children using video games. Something like this is bad enough for adults, but training kids for obsessive compulsion early is a recipe for problems later in life. In fact, I’d suggest that a game board system like this is just as bad for children as are for-pay mystery loot systems which train those portions of the brain about gambling. Both gambling and OCD are equally damaging to growing and developing children.
I have a lot to say on this topic, but I’ll forgo that for now and focus on how to complete this game board. Suffice it to say, if your OCD is easily triggered, stay far away from this challenge system and focus entirely on just Fallout 76’s main activities.
How To Complete The Legendary Run
The bottom line in completing this run is not missing a day or week of challenges. You can skip one or two daily challenges per day, but you will need to complete every weekly challenge.
For example, I skipped every daily Nuclear Winter challenge (I despise that game mode and refuse to play it) and I was still able to complete the run. However, it did require hitting every weekly and as many daily challenges as I could complete. Yes, you will need to play through every daily challenge that you can. This means playing every single day’s challenges, seven days a week.
Yeah, that’s why I wrote the above warning. If you can’t commit to playing this game every single day, then you likely cannot complete the run through challenges alone.
Pay to Win
There is a way to get to the end without playing at all. You can rank up fully by paying 150 atoms for each board space. In fact, you can pay your way through the entire game board if you want. If you’re willing to run to the PlayStation, Xbox or Bethesda’s store and buy Atom, you can use that Atom to pay your way through each game board spot.
This can help you if you need to catch up. But, you can also simply avoid the daily grind and pay your way to the end.
The choices you have then are as follows:
- Grind your way through the daily and weekly challenges every day
- Pay your way through the board entirely with Atom
- Combine some grinding and paying some Atom to get you through to the end.
In fact, I believe most players will end up falling into category 3… which is exactly what Bethesda hopes. That means you’ll have to pay for Atom (or get it through other Atom challenges which are still available) to make your way through The Legendary Run. Though, Bethesda is also enamored with gamers who fall into category 2.
The one thing to realize about The Legendary Run is that you must forgo playing the game to solely focus on completing the challenges. This means spending most of your time working through the challenges and, you know, not playing the actual game itself. In other words, these challenges waste a LOT of time doing inconsequential things instead of completing the main quest line. This is such an unnecessary diversion, it actually undermines the game.
Design Failure
In fact, this entire challenge system runs 180º counter to what the design goals for this board were stated to be. It was claimed that this new challenge system would work in concert with gamer’s actual game play. In reality, it’s just the opposite of that. To complete this board, you have to focus on the challenge tasks 100% at the expense of all else. Many of the challenges are esoteric. You don’t naturally go looking to kill 3 Deathclaws unless it’s part of a quest line. Even then, I don’t know of a single quest line in Fallout 76 that requires you to kill 3 Deathclaws as part of the quest.
You might find yourself near Deathclaws as a result of a quest line leading you there, but you don’t need to kill them to progress the quest. The most famous of these main quests is the Enclave quest which leads you to the Abandoned Waste Dump to begin this quest line in a bunker inside of a cave, with the cave infested by Deathclaws. Naturally, Bethesda assumed you might kill those Deathclaws being in close proximity. However, you can sneaky sneak your way through that cave and avoid killing those Deathclaws entirely. You can even flat out run through the cave to the elevator and be on your way. In other words, killing these Deathclaws is not naturally part of your game play activities.
That’s just one example. There are many other such useless challenge examples, such as taking over workshops. You don’t do this as a natural part of any quest line or as a natural part of game play. If you take a workshop, it’s entirely your choice and you must go out of your way to do it. To take a workshop comes with its own game baggage, the least of which is paying for the workshop in caps, the immediate Defend Event and any PVP activities assuming you do it in a public world.
As a final example, if you never play Nuclear Winter, you are now forced to enter that game mode to do whatever is required to pick up the NW challenges. That’s the very definition of unnatural game play.
While there may be a handful of activities that are considered ‘natural gameplay’ such as chewing bubblegum or collecting water, there are just as many that require you to spend time doing things you don’t normally do.
The Legendary Run forces unnatural game play onto the gamer (in addition to the anxiety and obsessive compulsion to complete the board). You must first find out what the challenges are for that day and then explicitly spend time completeing them. I ended up spending most of my play time grinding the challenges and not progressing quest lines. The Legendary Run is not a natural game play system and diverts attention away from playing the actual game.
Atom and Rewards
Another negative about this new system is that we have lost our most basic way to gain Atom. Yes, there are spots on the board that occasionally award 150 Atom, but that’s ultimately way less than the amount of Atom we were getting before this system launched.
Before The Legendary Run, we were getting around 50 Atom for daily challenges and up to 1000 Atom for weekly challenges. At 7 days, that would be 350 + 1000 = 1350 Atom per week. With this new game board, that dropped to around 150 Atom per week. That’s way, way less Atom than we were formerly getting by completing daily and weekly challenges.
Yes, in somewhat of an exchange, we are now getting some exclusive board rewards, but at the expense of not being able to buy much stuff in the Atomic Shop.
Bethesda’s Greed
I get it. I really do. Bethesda wasn’t making enough money off of selling Atom in the digital stores. I guess they thought they were giving too much Atom away. They felt they had to cut down on the amount of Atom being given out by challenges to force more sales of Atom. As I said, I get it. Greed rules.
Unfortunately, because of Bethesda’s greed, they have now saddled everyone with a system that so highly triggers OCD in gamers and wastes so much in-game time that it’s actually a huge loss for the game.
I mean, Bethesda’s systems get worse every single time they release and The Legendary Run is no exception. This is truly one of the worst ideas that Bethesda could have implemented in Fallout 76. Not only is The Legendary Run unforgiving, not only does it completely trigger OCD, not only does it force gamers to pay real money for Atom, not only does divert the gamer away from questing and towards spending time question for Score, the rewards offered are mostly inconsequential and the run itself is completely unfulfilling.
Worse, everyone gets the SAME rewards, so they are not at all unique. I preferred shopping at the Atomic shop directly. Everyone can pick and choose the things they want, so not every gamer has the same things. When it’s all cookie cutter, there’s nothing unique about what’s being given away. Everyone who reaches a specific game board spot gets a Ghillie suit paint, big whoop. So now, everyone who completes that spot has it?
What happens when you complete the board?
Good question and one Bethesda should have solved before rolling this system out. Yet, they didn’t. When you complete the game board and there’s nothing else to be had, the daily challenges still issue Score. Score that has no place to go and nothing to win. Once you complete the game board, there’s no reason to complete the daily or weekly challenges as it’s simply a waste of time and effort.
Instead, Bethesda should have planned for this eventuality and converted the system back to the older Atom system after the board is completed. This would allow gamers to still continue to get SOMETHING after completing the game board. We did just complete the game board. Shouldn’t we get some kind of continued reward for completion? Where’s the incentive to continue? There isn’t any. Crap design in my book.
Repeat?
Will I do it again? No. It’s a waste of time and effort. It diverts away from completing game world quests. Seriously, these daily challenges can sometimes take over 2 hours to complete. That’s 2 hours I could have spent finishing up quests. That’s 2 hours I could have been having fun taking over and building workshops. That’s 2 hours I could have spent hanging out with a few friends. That’s 2 hours I could have spent building out my camp. That’s 2 hours lost to challenges that get me what, yet another Ghillie or Onslaught paint? Heck, that’s 2 hours I could have spent writing a blog article.
Yet, if you really want that Fireplace secret door, you’re going to spend a massive amount of time enduring challenges and fighting OCD compulsions.
Triggering OCD behaviors in video games is not something we should be encouraging in video games. Bethesda shouldn’t be rewarded for creating this system. They should be scolded. Better, these kinds of OCD compulsion inducing systems should be outlawed in video games for the same reason that mystery loot boxes have been outlawed by triggering gambling compulsions.
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Grahm’s Meat Cook Tips
If you’re reading this, you’re probably playing Fallout 76. This likely also means you’re playing the Meat Week event, until August 26th, 2020 (i.e., two more days left as of this post). This event runs every hour on the hour. Let’s explore.
Playing Drums and Turning Spits
A lot of people seem to think that these activities don’t matter to the event. They do. In fact, they’re very important to the event succeeding.
Both playing the drums and turning the spit do several things at once. The first important thing these activities do is to majorly slow the decrease of the Event’s progress bar by a lot. This gives those performing collection more time to complete their collection activities in larger quantities. The more people who are handling these two activities, the slower the progress bar decreases. While these activities don’t increase the progress bar by themselves, they aid in reducing the decrease. This is why these activities are important.
Further, these activities significantly contribute to the 100% success of the event (i.e., getting the best prizes from the event). If no one is playing the drums or turning the spit and everyone is running around collecting meat and greens, contributing Chally’s feed and cleaning up messes and fires, that’s not enough to get 100% event completion.
All aspects of the Meat Cook event need to be touched, including turning the spit and playing the drums in addition to all of the rest. More than this, these two activities are important to contributing to the 100% success of the event, which affords the best prizes. When I have played through this event without these activities, even when the progress bar reaches the steak, you won’t necessarily see the best prizes without these stations having been manned.
Not only do these give the best chances at the best prizes, these slow the progress bar’s decrease by allowing the collectors to collect more. Without these being manned, the progress bar decreases quite a bit faster.
Also, manning the spit 100% of the time during the event raises the chances of getting the best prizes. Keep that spit manned at all times!
Collecting
It seems that everyone prefers to run around finding and collecting greens and critter parts. It makes sense. It’s the only combat activity at this event (such that it is). I get this aspect. This activity alone can’t carry the event.
Cleaning up and Putting out Fires
This is also an important activity. Cleaning up dirty messes, putting out fires and picking up after Chally is also important. Don’t forget this activity.
Prime Meat Collection
Here’s one aspect that doesn’t seem to be that important to the event. Grahm makes it a big deal, but the best that contributing Prime Meat does is give you Scrip at the end of the event.
Chally’s Feed
You’ll learn how to create Chally’s Feed the first time you play the event. To make Chally’s Feed, you’ll need 2 Boiled Water, 2 Carrots, 3 Razorgrain, 3 Tatoes, 1 Wood. This means you’ll need to plant carrots, razorgrain and tatoes at your camp or in a workshop. You can use Green Thumb to double what you pick and Super Duper to help in duplicating more quantities when you craft. You craft this recipe on a cooking station.
Contributing Chally’s Feed to the hay pile near Chally will help you gain a better reward at the end. I don’t believe Chally’s feed contributes to the overall reward of the event, but it does give you a personal reward for feeding Chally. You can feed Chally once every minute or so as there is a cooldown timer after you deposit.
Depositing
When you’re done collecting, you’ll need to deposit your collected items into the Critter Chunks or Greens area. Don’t forget to do this.
Here’s where people make the mistake of attempting to drop what they collect in one by one. DON’T DO THIS. You need to collect as much as you can, then drop it all in at once in a large amount. The more you collect and deposit together, the larger of a deposit bonus you will see. This can move the progress bar very far, very rapidly.
This is why sometimes the bar moves from chicken leg all the way to steak with one go. It’s because people are collecting massive amounts of everything and depositing it all at once. Don’t collect and drop one by one. Do it in bulk and you’ll get a bigger deposit reward.
[Update 8/25/2020] One thing I forgot to mention about Grahm’s Meat Cook is … if 3 people are on the drums and 3 people are on the spits during the entire 2 minute countdown timer before the event begins, this can sometimes start the event just past the turkey leg icon (middle of the progress bar). This means that it only takes a tiny bit of work to complete the event. I’ve seen events that have completed in around 30 seconds if all 6 people are manning these two activities before the event begins. Apparently, these activities do contribute to the event even during the pre-event 2 minute countdown timer. I can’t tell if this is an oversight by Bethesda or intentional.
Hopefully, this helps you win this event if you’ve been having troubles. Please leave a comment below if you have questions.
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Rant Time: Is Apple protecting our devices better than Google?
While many people believe that Google’s App store is a far inferior store to Apple’s app store, there is also a misplaced belief that Apple’s store offers more propriety than Google’s Play store. We need to understand more about both ecosystems to better understand the answer to this article’s question. Let’s explore.
App Protection
Certainly, iOS appears to be more resilient to malware on the surface, but is it? Google’s Android also appears way more prone to malware on its surface, but is it? We need to understand more about both of these operating systems and each OS’s overall ecosystems.
Let’s understand better how and why Apple has garnered its appearance of propriety, with “appearance” being the operative word. The first reason that Apple appears to have a better system in place is primarily because iOS doesn’t allow side loading of apps. What is side loading? Side loading is the ability for the user to load apps outside of the Android app store, for example using a USB cable or, more importantly, by downloading an ‘APK‘ file directly to your device from any web site.
While there are means and methods of side loading apps on iOS, it can only be done through Apple’s developer toolkit. You cannot perform this process directly on a phone in the wild. You can’t even do it with iTunes. If you had even wanted to side load an app, you’d have to jump through some fairly complicated hoops to make that happen on iOS. Because of this one thing, this forces you to download ALL apps from the App store.
On Android, you can not only use the App store to download apps, but more importantly, you can side load them. Side loading an app on Android does require some security setting changes, but this change is easily done in about 3 simple steps.
Does side-loading account for all of Google’s malware?
No, it doesn’t. After all, there are many who likely haven’t changed the necessary side-loading parameters and have still been hit by malware. So then, how did the malware get onto their phone? Likely, through the App store directly.
One App Store
Here we come to the second reason why propriety seems to prevail at Apple. With Apple, there is one and only one app store. With Google, there are many, too many. Google not only runs Google Play, but there are many other App stores including:
- Amazon
- Samsung Galaxy Apps
- Aptoid
- Sony Apps
- Huawei App Store
- F-Droid
- GetJar
- AppBrain
- SlideMe
- 1Mobile
- Opera Mobile Store
- Appolicious
- NexVa
- Kongregate
- Appland
- Itch.io
These stores are all independently owned and operated. This is not a complete Android app store list, but it gives you an example of how many different app stores are available for Android. This is significantly different from Apple’s iOS, which only supports one app store and that store is operated by Apple and Apple alone.
There is no such thing as a third party app store for iOS. It simply doesn’t exist.
Multiple App Stores
Because of Google’s insane choice to allow many app stores to operate simultaneously by different companies, Android users are at the mercy of each of those app store’s propriety. The difficulty is, there’s no rhyme or reason or protection afforded by many of these app stores, let alone Google Play. The secondary problem is that some of these app stores come preloaded as the primary download store on some Android devices.
Clearly, Google branded devices come shipped with Google Play set up. Amazon devices some shipped to use the Amazon app store. However, no-named brand Android devices likely come shipped with one of the above non-Google stores installed. In fact, it could even be set up to a store not in the above list… a store operated by the manufacturer of the device.
Careful with that App
The difficulty with multiple app stores is one of, you guessed it, propriety. What I mean by using this specific word ‘propriety’ is the app store’s ability to police its content for completeness, functionality and, yes, malware. In short, propriety is a company’s ability to protect its download users from malware or dangerous software.
The difficulty is that while Google might have enough money to throw at App vetting to ensure higher quality apps reach its stores, not every store in that list has the money to afford that level of commitment.
What this means for consumers is, when you use a random app store, you take your chances with malware. Multiple stores combined with side loading is nearly the sole reason why Android gets a bad rap for malware. These two things are something Apple doesn’t do in its ecosystem. For Android, it’s worse still. As a consumer of a device, you don’t really know which app store is the default on your device. Most app store manufacturers properly label their apps, but cheaper devices made by random Chinese manufacturers tend to play games with naming and might name their app store app Goggle Play or Gooogle Play or even simply Play Store. There are many ways that manufacturers of cheap phone devices can trick you into thinking that you’re getting your apps from Google’s store… when, in fact, you’re not.
Not only are there too many app stores that can provide questionable apps, Android has been licensed by so many random Chinese manufacturers (okay, so perhaps licensed isn’t necessarily the correct word here… it’s more like, ripped off). Anyway, if you buy into any of these super cheap Chinese phone brands, you have no idea where your apps are really coming from. Although, because it’s Android, you should be able to load Google’s Play store (the real thing) and use those apps instead… with should being the operative word. The device manufacturer could have instituted a block to prevent the use of the Google Play store.
However, replacing a crap store with Google Play typically takes effort on the part of the consumer… that and knowledge that they must take this step. Most consumers are oblivious to this aspect of their phone’s use and naturally assume the included app store is looking out for their phone’s well-being and their own best interest. You should never assume this, not even with Apple devices.
Apple’s App Store
Here we circle back around to Apple. We are beginning to see why Android is in the state that it’s in, but how much better is Apple’s ecosystem of devices?
A lot of people believe that because there’s only one iOS app store and because Apple is the sole operator of that store that this somehow makes Apple devices safer to use.
“Security through Obscurity“
This is a phrase tossed around in the security communities. What it means is that because a platform is more obscure (more exclusive and closed), that that somehow makes the platform safer to use. Security through obscurity works maybe 10% of the time. Maybe. The other 90% of the time it’s less about obscurity and more about best practices.
For example, you should never load random apps from any store. It doesn’t matter if it’s Android or Apple. If you don’t know anything about the developer, you shouldn’t trust them. Why?
App Store Approval Process
Apple’s app store approves apps for release into the store based on specific usability criteria. For example, that the developer is not including terms-of-service restricted content or features. Restricted content being whatever Apple or Google or that specific app store deems off limits within an application.
The developer must verbally or on a written form affirm that their app does not contain such restricted content when submitting it for approval. Even then, Apple may or may not be able to verify such an affirmation. Basically, developers can lie and say their app doesn’t do something that it does, in fact, do. Apple and/or Google may not be able to see the app doing it until that specific set of code in the app is triggered. In other words, the app may appear totally genuine enough to pass Apple’s and Google’s store submission criteria.
We have seen some apps which have been released into the app store as a result of such affirmations only to be pulled from the store when it is found that the developer lied about what was affirmed and stated to have not been included in the app. Apple doesn’t take kindly to lying about app features, particularly when you can see the app doing things it shouldn’t be doing.
Apple is relatively quick on removals of offending content from its app store. Google Play and other Android stores may not be quite so nimble in this process. In fact, many of the third party stores may not even police their apps at all. Once it’s in the their store, it may be there more-or-less permanently. Apple is much more active and selective with maintaining that their apps are upholding developer agreements. However, there is a limit to even Apple’s propriety.
Epic Games
This is a recent fight between Apple and Epic Games. Epic Games apparently decided to change the way it utilized in-game purchases, which has since culminated in Apple rescinding Epic Games’s license to use Apple’s developer tools. Both Apple and Google have since removed Fortnite from their respective app stores citing violation of the store’s terms.
In-app payments require that developers hand over a portion of their profits to Apple and Google. However, there are ways of circumventing that by including outside payment systems in apps. I don’t know exactly what was included by Fortnite that triggered this specific problem, but apparently Epic wasn’t satisfied by Apple’s greedy in-app payment system and decided to take a stand.
Some may think this is about consumer protection. It’s not. It’s about Apple profiteering protection. Apple cites its terms that apply equally to all developers, but in fact, this specific condition is intended to maintain Apple’s profits. Yes, it does apply to all developers (well, almost all developers… see Amazon below), but it is also a condition that is unfavorable to developers and extremely favorable to Apple’s bottom line.
Ramifications
Apple picked a fight with the wrong company in this “epic” (ahem) fight. Epic Games also happens to be the developer of the Unreal game engine. This is a very widely used game engine throughout the gaming industry. It’s probably one of THE most commonly used engines, particularly on gaming consoles.
Without access to Apple’s iOS developer tools, this engine is effectively dead on iOS (and MacOS) devices. Worse, developers who rely on Unreal to drive their own iOS games may soon find that they have to find another game engine. These Unreal engine users may wake up to find their Unreal-based game removed from Apple’s app store as a side effect of Epic Games’s removal.
If Unreal can’t be supported, then neither can the games that utilize this engine. This Epic Games fight has deep reaching ramifications for not only Apple, but also impacts every iOS device owner and every developer that uses Unreal to drive their game. If that game you love was built around Unreal, you may find that app no longer available in just a few weeks.
If you have the app downloaded onto your device, you can still use it. Bought a new Apple device? Well, don’t expect to cloud download that app again if it’s been removed. You’ll need to rely on iTunes backup and restore instead of Apple’s cloud storage… which relies on downloading the app again from the app store. If it’s been removed, the app will be unavailable. Only backing up and restoring through iTunes will recover apps you presently have on your phone device and which are no longer in Apple’s app store. Didn’t do this? Oh, well. That app is gone.
Apple’s Ramifications
Apple’s once burgeoning gaming section may soon become a ghost town. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but maybe not? Let me explain. The loss of the Unreal engine from the iOS platform is a huge blow to iOS game developers worldwide. It means game developers must either now build their own engine instead (to avoid such engine removals in the future) or rely on another gaming engine that supports iOS (at the peril of it being removed in the future).
Apple is effectively “Cutting off its nose to spite its face”. In other words, Apple has most likely done more long term damage to its own brand and products than it has done in short term damage to Epic Games. Sure, Epic’s loss of Fortnite on iOS is a big loss to Epic, but Apple’s loss of the Unreal engine is a much, much bigger problem for Apple.
If developers can no longer turn to the Unreal engine for use on iOS, then that means fewer games will be developed for iOS… at a time when iOS doesn’t need this gaming speed bump. Fewer games developed means fewer game apps in the app store. Fewer game apps means less revenue for Apple. Basically, Apple’s loss of revenue from cutting off developer access to the Unreal engine will come back to bite Apple hard in the ass.
Apple relies on that in-app revenue for its continued operation of the App store. If that revenue dries up, well so too will iOS devices while also undercutting MacOS notebook sales. It’s not just about Fortnite here. It’s about every iOS game using Unreal that also uses in-app payments legitimately. People won’t buy into a mobile platform when they can no longer find and play their favorite games, particularly if those games are on other platforms. The loss of the Unreal game engine is a big deal to Apple. Considering Apple’s paltry 10-13% mobile device market share as of 2019 (and shrinking), killing off development tools that bring revenue to the platform should be a big deal to Apple, one would think.
However, there are still other game engines that developers can use, such as Unity, BuildBox and AppGameKit. With the loss of the Unreal engine, of which many, many games are built on consoles, that means straight ports of well recognized and popular console games to iOS will become almost impossible. Very few console developers choose Unity and none use BuildBox or AppGameKit.
If Apple was hoping to pull over the bigger console titles onto iOS, they’ve just lost that opportunity by kicking Epic Games off of their platform. No console developer will spend several years porting their Unreal based game to Unity or one of the other game development kits. Without Unreal on iOS, the much larger money making console games will forever be locked out of iOS, simply because of Apple’s stupidity.
Instead of trying to work through a compromise with Epic Games over this issue, they simply pulled the plug. They’ve “thrown the baby out with the bathwater”. They’ve as I said above, “Cut off their nose to spite their face.”
Apple’s Stupidity
This is a huge blow to iOS devices and to consumers alike. Within the next year or so without Epic Games support on iOS, Apple’s gaming community is likely to dry up. Games like Fortnite can no longer come to exist on Apple’s platform because of the loss of the Unreal engine.
There is a bigger danger to using a third party game engines for iOS games. If you, as a developer, settle on a third party game engine and that engine developer has a fight with Apple thus causing their developer licenses to be rescinded, just like Epic Games, you could see your game pulled from the store or, more importantly, obsolete by the next yearly iOS release. This whole Epic fight has some serious ramifications to the gaming industry.
I guarantee that with Epic Games being pulled from the Apple platform and if this is allowed to stand going forward, Apple’s usefulness as a gaming platform will greatly diminish. Not instantly, but definitely over time. It will definitely erode confidence in iOS and MacOS as a gaming platform.
Lest you think I’m being overly dramatic, I suggest you look at this very long Wikipedia page and see the list of games produced using Unreal for consoles, specifically Unreal Engine 4. Every single one of these games had the potential of making their way to iOS or even MacOS. This hope is now lost. The loss of the Unreal engine on Apple’s ecosystem is a loss to the entirety of Apple’s devices.
If Apple had designs of getting into gaming, they summarily lost that hope in one fell swoop. What’s worse is that other game developers may follow suit and voluntarily pull their engines from Apple’s devices as well, leaving only the smallest and crappiest of game development engines available for iOS devices… firmly dragging Apple’s devices back into the stone age for gaming. The best you can hope are the silly finger swipe games that leave you bored in less than 15 minutes.
Sure, Bethesda, Ubisoft and Activision may continue to maintain their proprietary engines on iOS and MacOS for their specific games, but up-and-coming and existing Unreal console developers alike have lost any iOS portability inroads they might have seen on the horizon.
Though, I suppose this situation is a win for Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles… and consoles in general.
Epic Games Ramifications
I would be remiss without discussing the ramifications to Epic Games, also. Certainly, Epic Games has lost a huge platform for both Fortnite and the Unreal engine … well, two with the additional loss of Google’s Play store. Though, I don’t think that Google has yet rescinded Epic’s developer license for Android. As a result, would-be game developers considering which engine to choose will not choose Unreal if they have eyes on iOS, MacOS or possibly Android (depending on how far Google takes this). For game developers who’ve already chosen Unreal, it’s probably too late to undo that choice. Game developers in the planning stages can reconsider which engine to choose.
Epic Games Unreal engine may not fall out of favor with the game development community. It was formerly an engine developers could rely on, more specifically for a wide range of platform support. With the loss of iOS and Android, that leaves a big hole for the Unreal engine, and Epic Games. That’s basically the loss of every mobile platform! Epic Games chose this battle by not wanting to follow Apple’s greedy rules.
Honestly, I don’t blame Epic. Amazon fought with Apple over these very same rules a long while back. Amazon chose to remove all ability to buy anything via their apps. Though, the Amazon app seems to have regained its ability to purchase junk, but I’ve no idea how they’ve worked this with Apple. Epic should cite Amazon app’s ability to purchase products using a third party payment processor. If Amazon can do this, Epic should be able to as well. It seems that even Apple isn’t following its own “all developers are equal” rules.
Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO, should call out this incongruity in Apple’s “equal” application its app store terms and conditions. If Epic Games is violating Apple’s purchasing rules, then so is Amazon… and so is any other company who is able to offer purchases using their own third party payment processor.
However, that doesn’t leave Epic Games without problems. Without iOS and Android for not only Fortnite, that leaves a huge revenue stream hole for Epic Games. That’s the downside for Epic. That and the loss of being able to license the Unreal engine to would-be iOS and potentially, depending on how far Google takes this, Android developers.
TikTok and WeChat
Beyond Epic, there are other problems brewing at Apple. The problem with Apple’s app store is that it will accept and publish apps from any developer from any part of the world. Yes, even communist bloc countries like China and Russia.
What does this mean for you as a consumer? It could mean spying, malware and theft of your data. Apps like WeChat and TikTok originated in China. These are apps that were intentionally designed and released by Chinese people who live in China and who have no ties to the U.S. and who don’t care about data privacy, your data or anything else about you. They don’t even have to follow United States laws. They want your money and they’ll do whatever they can to get it. They don’t care if they have to step on your toes (or turn on your camera and microphone at inappropriate times) to do it.
Apple has been entirely remiss in this area of vetting apps. Can we trust apps developed and produced entirely in China or Russia? Yet, Apple has published these apps to the App store and still allows them to remain in the store. But… Epic Games, a U.S. based game developer, can’t keep their app in the store because of silly in-app purchases? It’s perfectly okay to allow apps to spy and steal data for communist bloc countries, but it’s not okay for a U.S. developer to want to use a third-party payment processor. Yeah, Apple’s priorities are entirely effed up.
Apple’s values at this point are entirely suspect. What Apple has done to Epic is retaliation. It has nothing to do with propriety or consumer safety. It has to do with ensuring Apple’s revenue remains intact. If it were about consumer safety, Apple would have not only re-reviewed WeChat and TikTok for appropriateness the moment the President called them out, they would have been removed from the store.
This is where we learn Apple is not about propriety, it’s about making money. Losing the ability to make money from Fortnite (and by extension the Unreal engine) is way bigger of a deal than allowing Tencent and ByteDance to use their respective apps to potentially spy on U.S. consumers.
Here’s where consumers get lost in the mire and murk of it all. Apple’s silly hide-everything-from-everyone ideals allow this sort of behavior from developers to fester. Developers get to hide behind Apple’s veil of secrecy and “wall of friendliness” so that apps like WeChat and TikTok can flourish without consumers being the wiser.
Yet, here we are. Chinese and Russian apps are infiltrating Apple’s store with careless abandon, some of these are taking the Internet by storm, like TikTok. ByteDance rolled the big one with TikTok and now they can roll out spying measures if they wish, assuming they haven’t already.
I look on anything coming out of China as suspect. Most products coming out of China are third rate products that fall apart as soon as you sneeze on them. Many are counterfeit or are a stolen designs from an original product created outside of China. Clearly, China’s ability to innovate is limited. Instead, Chinese engineers must reverse engineer an existing design that originated outside of China only then to build their thing based on that existing design. Copying is said to be the highest form of flattery, but in this case it’s intellectual property theft.
With products that don’t need the Internet, such as a toaster oven or a microwave or a fridge, other than their possibility of falling apart or harming you physically, they can’t steal personal data or spy on you. Like physically harming you with junk appliances from China, downloading apps from an app store can be equally harming to you. They can steal keyboard input, turn on microphones and cameras at inappropriate times, grab your photos… they can even monitor which apps you use and watch your movement around the city via GPS on your phone. There’s so much data they can collect about you, including the contacts in your phone book.
By installing one of these communist bloc apps, there’s literally a mountain of data they can learn about you from your device. Spying? That’s literally an understatement.
Apple has given the communist bloc countries carte blanche access to U.S. owned devices through iOS. Google has done the same with Android. Worse, both Apple and Google are doing absolutely NOTHING about this. Treason by U.S. companies? That’s an understatement. They not only allow these apps to be published, they’re endorsing them… and some of Apple’s and Google’s own developers may even be using these apps personally. Talk about inception.
Spying
Spying was formerly thought to be about covert operatives running around gathering intel with crude and rudimentary devices in black garb. Today, it can be done in broad daylight using every person’s very own cell phone right in their hand.
Need access to listen in on a conversation at a specific GPS point… I can just hear someone say, “Let’s see which of our apps are on devices close to that location.” Yeah, this is a real thing. Simply enable the microphone and possibly even the outward camera and BOOM, you’ve got access to immediate intel relayed instantly back to you in real-time.
Yeah, that’s the danger of social apps like TikTok and WeChat. They can be used to eavesdrop on anyone anywhere. You only need to give access to the camera and microphone and boom, they’ve got access anywhere the app owners wish.
Apple can thwart this possibility potentially, but only if they add some heavy restrictions for when and how these devices may be used. Like, for example, these devices can only be enabled when the app is the front most active app and the screen is on (i.e., the user is accessing the screen). Even then, access to these devices should always require positive confirmation to use them every single time. Without positive confirmation, these devices cannot be enabled remotely.
Otherwise, spying is already here. Nefarious apps can listen in on what you are doing without your knowledge. They may even be able to switch on the camera and stream video data back to whomever. Yeah, bad news here.
Malware
Many people think malware means software that intends to cause malicious harm to your device. It doesn’t only mean that. Malware covers a lot of territory including spyware, malicious software, ransomware and many, many other types.
Any type of software designed to subvert your device for someone else’s use is considered malware. Don’t limit your thoughts to only software that intends to erase or destroy data. It doesn’t end there. It begins there. It ends with any software of malicious intent, including any software that is designed to spy on you, steal your data, copy data from your device or attempt to get you to do things that might compromise not only your phone, but also your personal finances.
However, the days of overt malware are firmly over. Now we’re seeing a new wave of software that makes itself appear legitimate by offering seeming legitimate services, but which have malware belying that happy-go-lucky façade. It’s the software version of social engineering. They trick you in believing you’re getting a real legitimate app, but underneath, these apps are doing things they shouldn’t be doing.
This is a new wave of bad news rolled into one app. No one can know the ultimate intentions of an app producer. Hopefully and trustingly, we put our faith into the developers hands to “do the right thing”, to be upstanding and give us an app that does only what it claims.
Unfortunately, we’ve moved into an era that’s now firmly gone beyond this. If you’re getting an app from a U.S. developer, you can pretty much be assured that what the app says that it does, it actually does do… and nothing beyond that. That’s a given because U.S. companies must follow U.S. laws. With apps coming from China or Russia or Cuba or Vietnam or even North Korea (don’t kid yourselves here), you have no idea what their ultimate motives for producing that app are. Worse, they are not required to follow United States laws. Yeah, and that’s the problem in a nutshell.
Apple and Google’s trusting nature
These communist countries not only see the dollar potential wrapped up in these apps, but they also see the spying potential above the dollars. Not only can they divert U.S. dollars outside of the country to fund who-knows-what, they can steal your data and spy on you, too.
Why? Because Apple and Google are far too trusting and let them do it. They believe that developers will be good neighbors and not do untrustworthy things. Apple and Google are both trapped into believing that everyone will follow United States laws. Naïve! Unfortunately, that trusting nature is now being used against both Apple and Google… though, Google more than Apple by these communist countries. Google devices way outpace Apple’s devices in market share. In 2019, Apple’s devices made up just ~13% of the market, where Google’s Android devices made up a whopping 87%! Together, Apple and Google make up close to 100% of the market, with the small remaining percent running other mobile operating systems (yes, there are a few).
For Google’s saturation reason, it’s no wonder why malware authors are targeting Google over Apple. It’s a simple matter of low-hanging fruit. Google’s fractured stores and litany of device problems has led to where we are. Malware authors can have a field day with Google’s devices because they can take advantage of these tinier stores with much reduced release restrictions. It’s easy, then, for small indie developers to release malware onto Android… far too easy. It’s much more difficult to do this same thing on Apple devices. That is, until you realize exactly how developers are outwitting Apple’s far-too-trusting nature.
Once not-so-upstanding developers understand they can disguise malware underneath a legitimate service, they can then push that service out to app stores (with Apple’s blessing) and get people to use it, in similar form to TikTok. In fact, perhaps the app was even released without the malware to have the appearance of propriety (and to pass Apple’s initial scrutiny). Then, after enough momentum has been reached, the app developer can then slowly release updates containing bits of malware at a time. As far as I know, Apple doesn’t put the same level of scrutiny into app updates as it puts into new app listings. Apple’s hands off approach to updates means the author can slip bad features into updates under Apple’s and our noses and none will be the wiser.
Security Considerations
You always have to really think 🤔 about what apps you have installed and why you’ve installed them. More than that, you need to find out who specifically is developing your apps and where they are in the world. You might be surprised to find that the author doesn’t live in the country where you reside. If the author isn’t in your country of residence, they don’t have to follow your country’s laws for, well, anything.
Of course, you never know what an app author intends by writing and releasing an app. Even the money making aspect on the surface may not be the actual agenda. Hopefully, the app’s purported use case (making money) is the only reason the app exists. Unfortunately, subversion seems to be becoming more and more common in apps, particularly those that may not be developed in the same country where you reside.
For example, someone who develops an app in China doesn’t have to follow the laws of any other country than China. Meaning, if the app developer decides to include spyware, no laws will apply to that developer other than Chinese law. Even then, since they weren’t spying on Chinese citizens, they likely won’t be seen as having violated any Chinese laws… even when spying on citizens in other countries. Because the U.S. can’t apply laws to Chinese citizens, any spying that may have taken place is damage already done. The only action that can be taken is banning the app entirely from the U.S., just as Trump had wanted to do with TikTok.
Every mobile device user must remain on their toes. You can’t assume that Apple’s closed store nature will protect you from spying or data theft (all forms of malware). Apple is way too naïve for that. Instead, you must do the research yourself. Determine who develops an app you intend to install. Find out where they live in the world. If they live in a country where you do not, your local laws will not apply if the developer includes illegal activities in your place of residence. This means they can do a lot of nefarious things and never be caught at it, particularly if they live in a country like China.
If you want to safeguard your own data, don’t install apps without knowing where the author lives. No, not Android and not even on iOS devices. No, not even on… and especially not on company owned devices.
In this day and age of anyone and everyone who can design and build an app basdd anywhere in the world, we’ve firmly come to a time where our devices can be used to spy on us and those around us simply because we’ve installed a random app.
It’s now only a matter of time before government policies catch up with this technology trend and new laws begin emerging which intend to hold device owners responsible for treason when an app spies on and funnels data outside of your country of residence.
In answer to the article’s primary question. No, neither Google nor Apple is better at protecting our devices from malware. However, while the overt malware may be less common on Apple devices, Apple’s and Google’s trusting nature is now firmly subverting our devices for foreign spying activities… particularly when these apps are designed to intentionally use the camera and microphone.
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Gaming Breaking Bugs Series #1: Fallout 76
With this series, I intend to start calling out video gaming’s game-breaking-bugs as I find them and boy are there a lot to report with Fallout 76. Here is report I recently filed with Bethesda. Let’s explore.
Report
Re: Enemies not dying after multiple shots.
It is truly becoming impossible to play Fallout 76. That’s not an exaggeration. I’m using various ranged weapons and it can literally take 2, 3 even sometimes 4 (or more) shots to actually kill an enemy that should die in 1 shot. This MUST be solved. Combat is intrinsic to this game. When combat doesn’t work, then the game is broken.
How this problem manifests…
It begins when you attempt to VATS shoot an enemy. It doesn’t matter where you shoot the enemy, but the head is usually the place where combat fails most often. I have a bloodied Lever Action and a bloodied Pipe Bolt Action Pistol. I’ve also had this problem occur with various melee weapons. So, it’s not limited to any specific weapon or type.
You begin by using VATS on the head using Concentrated Fire. Take the shot. The shot connects. The thud sounds. The enemy’s health bar drops to 0. Then, inexplicably, the health bar instantly recovers to full health and the enemy is alive to lunge or shoot at you. Not only that, the failed shot alerts the enemy to your presence. You can perform this action multiple times in a row to the same effect. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Ghoul, insects, a Super Mutant, dogs or a robot. This broken combat mechanic affects every weapon type and every enemy type.
To 100% reproduce this bug, sneak your way into The Whitespring Golf Club, head to the left on the upper level. Then as you come through the door, there is an enemy that spawns right near the back left window in a corner.
Once you have cleared the rest of the ghouls in that room, stand by the entry hall area and attempt to VATS shoot this specific Ghoul in the head. It may take 2, 3, 4 or more shots before it will die. Targeting the limbs or torso sometimes works around this game breaking bug, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes using a scope instead of VATS works, sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s one thing if the shot misses entirely, it’s completely another when the shot connects, makes a thud noise, shows a 1200 damage number also showing the enemy health bar dropping to zero and then the enemy’s health bar magically recovers fully? No, these are NOT legendary enemies.
This combat issue needs to be resolved pronto as this is literally a game breaking combat bug.
Expected Behavior
When you shoot an enemy and the bullet is recognized by the game engine as connecting, then the enemy needs to take the required amount of damage and/or die if health reaches zero. This combat bug is entirely unacceptable.
Enjoy this bug as this series has many more coming. If you have experienced this specific combat bug, please leave a comment below.
Can Trump actually ban TikTok?
There are two sides to this question. Let’s explore both sides.
Technological Ban
Could TikTok actually be technologically stopped from working? Yes, and to be honest, it wouldn’t take that much effort, though it will take some time. Let’s explore how this works.
Domain Name Service (DNS)
DNS is a fundamental internet service that maps Internet names, like google.com, into an IP address, like 8.8.8.8 (which is Google’s DNS server IP address, actually). When you type in a name into the address bar of your browser, DNS converts that name into a numeric IP which is how your browser then connects to and serves you (and your browser) that web content.
This same system applies to all apps including apps like TikTok. When you launch an app on your phone, the app then uses DNS to resolve its service into an IP address which then connects to, for example, TikTok’s servers to begin serving you (and the app) its content.
DNS is the Achilles heel of the internet. It is both a cornerstone and a single point of failure. If DNS fails, then apps fail to connect to their required services.
This is the first touch point where Donald Trump could target. Donald Trump can mandate that the registrar who operates the domain tiktok.com drop serving DNS for this domain… assuming it operates within the United States (hint, it doesn’t).
Further, the secondary non-authoritative DNS system (those servers operated by your ISP or phone provider) relies on caching (or temporary memory storage with expiration timers). So long as the timer hasn’t reached zero, DNS will continue to serve content for that domain based on what’s in the cache rather than asking the authority each time (much faster performance). However, most domains have, at most, a 24 hour countdown timer on cached data. At the end of that 24 hour period, the cached data must be renewed into the cache. If the registrar has disabled DNS resolution for a domain, the cache will fail to renew and the service will go offline.
What that means is that as caches around the Internet slowly expire after the domain registrar has pulled the DNS plug, TikTok will stop working.
The difficulty with this request is which registrar handles this domain. It appears that the tiktok.com domain is operated by the registrar ename.com. Visiting the ename.com registrar’s domain shows that it’s written in Chinese. Since this domain and its IP space is registered and operated outside of the United States, Trump may find it hard to get the registrar to do anything for him.
Even still, Trump could request (via executive order) U.S. based Internet Service Providers to block the tiktok.com domain from being served within U.S. bordered DNS servers. See ISP blocking below for more on this.
App Store
Donald Trump can further request both Apple and Google to remove the TikTok app from each respective app store. This action doesn’t stop the app from working for those who have downloaded it already, but it does stop new users from downloading it. It also means no more app updates for this app.
When Apple or Google release a new operating system update, they can then stop the app from working entirely. In fact, these OS creators could, in fact, wipe the app from any remaining devices with it still installed. However, they can also simply block the app from launching. However, this part can only work if Apple and Google release updates that explicitly perform this operation and that both of these companies agree to doing this in the first place.
Internet Service Provider (ISP) Blocking
The third avenue that Trump can seek requires ISPs to block network access to TikTok’s servers within the United States. This requires contacting and requesting this action of many ISPs all throughout the United States, including all phone carriers like AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. This is a long tail request and could take weeks to see roll out. This one also has a low probability for success as ISPs are notorious for not wanting to be told what to do or how to run their networks. This particular request is not one that will work quickly or, indeed, at all in some cases… until the DOJ brings action against ISPs that refuse to comply.
In addition to blocking access at the network level, he can also request DNS blocking for the tiktok.com domain within United States DNS servers operated by ISPs. Basically, an ISP double whammy… assuming ISPs agree (or are forced to agree) to these terms.
App remains functional?
For a time after Donald Trump requests DNS and network IP blocking, the app could remain functional on devices that have it downloaded. Why? Because DNS has up to several day caching in combination with the fact that network IP blocking can be circumvented by the use of a VPN. Though, exactly how many kids are going to run out and buy a VPN service just to use TikTok is unknown.
If Donald Trump can get all four actions lined up (the first three at least) as follows:
- App removal
- IP network blocking
- DNS blocking at the registrar
- Secondary DNS blocking within U.S. ISPs
Then, the app may stop working as early as 24 hours for many and for as long as a week for outliers. It is also dependent on how long it takes for each of these steps to be completed. Some companies require long convoluted internal processes and testing to avoid inadvertent screw ups before changes are allowed to proceed.
All of these technical measures are ALL doable. They will all work IF everyone complies (and that’s a tall order).
The most damaging of these four banning steps is seeing Tiktok removed from the app store. If Trump can get the app removed from the stores, this cripples TikTok’s ability to gain new users. That means that for a time, users who have already downloaded the app can continue to use it. But, as they buy new phones, restore their phones before it was installed or if they accidentally delete the app, the app is gone forever. No more TikTok on that phone device.
Removal from the app store also means no more updates. As Apple and Google roll out OS updates, they can invalidate TikTok’s functionality. An OS update can see a small banner pop up that says something similar to “This app is no longer compatible with this device” and prevent it from launching. The only option the user has at that point is to delete the app and move onto something else. If you can’t launch the app, then it’s useless.
This step, by far, is the simplest step to banning an app. It only requires two touch points: Apple and Google. That also assumes that both Apple and Google would be willing participants in this action. They may not. If they choose to challenge Trump’s legal authority to request such actions.. that leads me into the second half of this article.
Legal Authority
I guess the biggest question on people’s mind is, “Does Donald Trump have the authority to ban an app like TikTok within the US?” The short answer is, “I’m not sure”. Trump’s executive authority powers do allow him to write and execute executive orders.
Wikipedia states of Presidential Executive Orders:
Article Two of the United States Constitution gives the president broad executive and enforcement authority to use their discretion to determine how to enforce the law or to otherwise manage the resources and staff of the executive branch. The ability to make such orders is also based on express or implied Acts of Congress that delegate to the President some degree of discretionary power (delegated legislation).
the Wikipedia article further goes on to state:
Like both legislative statutes and regulations promulgated by government agencies, executive orders are subject to judicial review and may be overturned if the orders lack support by statute or the Constitution.
That means that an Executive Order can be challenged via judicial review and may be overturned if unconstitutional or lacks support by statute. And, lacking support by statute may be Trump’s biggest hurdle.
However, the Patriot Act gives the government and, in general, the President broad powers with regards to national security. If he deems TikTok a threat to national security and deems it illegal surveillance, it may invoke clauses under the Patriot Act which would allow him to write an Executive Order supported by the Patriot Act.
Yes, this is all convoluted and tenuously threaded, but it may have enough binding weight to hold together under scrutiny via judicial review.
That’s not say that TikTok is in any way performing surveillance via its app. But, seeing that it was an app developed in China, it is entirely possible that it does contain illegal surveillance mechanisms, otherwise known as spyware.
TikTok as an App
TikTok may seem an innocuous app on the surface. You use it to create a funny small video clippets (ha, just coined a new term) and then upload it for all to see. What you don’t know is whether this seeming innocuous app is spying on you when you’re not using it. You must give this app permissions to your microphone, camera, location and possibly other access. The app can turn on these devices at any time it so chooses, even if when you’re unaware. If you have given any other access permissions, such as access to your Photo Gallery, Clipboard, Contacts or other points of permission, it may have blanket access to far too much private information about you that it can feed to China.
Even if you have installed TikTok once, that data may have been shared back to someone in China. You have no idea exactly what this app is doing under-the-hood. The same can be said of many apps in the app store. However, China is under no obligation to uphold data privacy laws in the United States. If your child has installed the app, it could feed all manner of private data about your child back to China.
U.S. Company?
TikTok apparently has a U.S. presence, but if that presence doesn’t have a hand in the creation, maintenance or dissemination of the app itself, the U.S. arm may not be violating any laws if the app does unsavory things outside of its stated and intended purpose.
Even though it seems TikTok does have a U.S. presence, the company itself seems to be heavily backed by Chinese companies. Since the President’s announcement regarding a potential TikTok ban, this company has quickly attempted to divest its Chinese interest from TikTok and allow it to become a wholly owned and operated U.S. business. That may be too late for this company and this app.
Honestly, sharing tiny entertaining videos of your silly antics is really not an essential part life. It’s fun to watch, but it’s overall something to be watched and forgotten. In other words, none of the content on TikTok is in any way meaningful or, indeed, useful. It is briefly funny content that might elicit a few laughs and then you are encouraged to move on to the next.
What Wish is to trashy Chinese merchandise, TikTok is to trashy occasionally funny clippets. They’re both cut from the same cloth, but cut from different ends. I’ve watched many TikTok videos and I find most of them no more entertaining than watching a TV commercial. TV commercials are, in fact, better filmed and many times better written.
Ultimately, if TikTok is banned, it won’t be missed in the long run. Oh, it will be immediately missed by the tweens and teens alike who rely on that sort of thing to get through the boredom of their day, but even this age group will quickly forget and move onto the next app.
TikTok is ultimately another social media fad riding a temporary wave that will eventually surf its way into the next app fad, and far away from TikTok. A Presidential ban may simply speed this process up exponentially and cut short TikTok as a fad.
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Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
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