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[Walter Matthau]

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[BeardGawd]

Yeah, that's about right. The other thing is: if Epic really believes serious harm will come to their business as a result, they could always... I dunno, comply? Apple doesn't owe them access to their platform.

I guess Apple has no obligations to their customers right? They should never bend to make their costumers happy? If a huge app/game is unhappy enough with the current policies to risk being banned shouldn’t Apple review said policies? Sure this hurts Epic but it also hurts Apple’s image with their own customers. This is similar to Cable and the haggling on what they pay each channel. Most of the time Cable companies relent (within reason) because it’s not a good look to deny your customers a popular channel. Customers could care less if Apple is getting the percentage they want.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I guess Apple has no obligations to their customers right? They should never bend to make their costumers happy? If a huge app/game is unhappy enough with the current policies to risk being banned shouldn’t Apple review said policies? Sure this hurts Epic but it also hurts Apple’s image with their own customers. This is similar to Cable and the haggling on what they pay each channel. Most of the time Cable companies relent (within reason) because it’s not a good look to deny your customers a popular channel. Customers could care less if Apple is getting the percentage they want.

That is not an obligation that Apple has to its customers.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Yeah, people are blinded by their hate for Epic.
If Epic won it would be a great thing for consumers, publishers and developers - everyone. Except Apple.

I don't think you've thought about the consequences. If there is nothing to be derived from cultivating an ecosystem, no one would bother doing it. Without these well cultivated ecosystems, where would epic be now, how many players would have played Fortnite, etc? While Apple makes a mint on iPhone, most of these platforms do not earn a lot from the base ecosystem. Without their cut of software sales, why would Google bother putting effort into Android. Wouldn't be much point in MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc. building gaming specific devices, not if there is no end-game (from a business perspective). I wonder what would happen to developer profits if they lost all of these ecosystems, would their revenue really rise?

 

[FStubbs]

I don't think you've thought about the consequences. If there is nothing to be derived from cultivating an ecosystem, no one would bother doing it. Without these well cultivated ecosystems, where would epic be now, how many players would have played Fortnite, etc? While Apple makes a mint on iPhone, most of these platforms do not earn a lot from the base ecosystem. Without their cut of software sales, why would Google bother putting effort into Android. Wouldn't be much point in MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc. building gaming specific devices, not if there is no end-game (from a business perspective). I wonder what would happen to developer profits if they lost all of these ecosystems, would their revenue really rise?

Not to sound like a right winger, but keeping in mind we're talking about Tencent (who Epic is owned by)

* Apple - American
* Microsoft - American
* Google - American
* Sony - Japanese
* Nintendo - Japanese

Tencent has incentive to destroy all 5 of these ecosystems.

 

[MrFunSocks]

No one wants "free money for everyone." The moment a legal precedent is created dictating that Apple's 30% cut is unfair, it opens the door to all developers demanding a higher cut for their work, on all platforms. And that's an absolute net positive.

So who decides what's a fair cut? Who decides how much profit a company is allowed to make from their platform that enables all these other companies to make money?

That's my main problem with all this, with all the people that are going against apple on this. It's their platform. They made it. The do not have to let everyone sell things on their platform. They don't have to let you be able to run a store on there and give them 0% cut. They made and own the platform, and you are free to not put your products on it. You're free to go make your own platform. They don't have a monopoly on the market, they just make the most money.

If you legislate out the ability for a platform holder to set rules on their platform, or how they can monetize their platform, you'll just see less companies bother being a platform owner. If they make a platform that gets successful and then the government goes "you have to build the ability for other people to essentially own your platform now and not give you any cut" then why would anyone even bother creating a platform?

 

[Kdad]

Epic, follow the rules you agreed to and Apple will let you back on the store...they've told you this already.

 

[Abriael_GN]

So who decides what's a fair cut? Who decides how much profit a company is allowed to make from their platform that enables all these other companies to make money?

That's my main problem with all this, with all the people that are going against apple on this. It's their platform. They made it. The do not have to let everyone sell things on their platform. They don't have to let you be able to run a store on there and give them 0% cut. They made and own the platform, and you are free to not put your products on it. You're free to go make your own platform. They don't have a monopoly on the market, they just make the most money.

If you legislate out the ability for a platform holder to set rules on their platform, or how they can monetize their platform, you'll just see less companies bother being a platform owner. If they make a platform that gets successful and then the government goes "you have to build the ability for other people to essentially own your platform now and not give you any cut" then why would anyone even bother creating a platform?

Blah, blah, blah.

The "platform" they have made is worth absolutely nothing without the developers making apps for it.

Taking one-third of their revenue is ludicrous, and should be shunned under every angle, on all platforms.

 

[MrFunSocks]

Blah, blah, blah.

The "platform" they have made is worth absolutely nothing without the developers making apps for it.

Taking one-third of their revenue is ludicrous, and should be shunned under every angle, on all platforms.

But those same developers are worth nothing if there is no platform for them to release on. The argument goes both ways.

Again - who decides what is a fair cut then? Who decides how much revenue a company can take for hosting and building and maintaining the platform that allows others to sell their product?

 

[Kaleinc]

Blah, blah, blah.

The "platform" they have made is worth absolutely nothing without the developers making apps for it.

Taking one-third of their revenue is ludicrous, and should be shunned under every angle, on all platforms.

The "car" you own is worth absolutely nothing without people driving it. So Uber will be using it at night and a 5% cut for me cause I'm much less greedy than apple.

 

[GhostOfTsu]

I don't think you've thought about the consequences. If there is nothing to be derived from cultivating an ecosystem, no one would bother doing it. Without these well cultivated ecosystems, where would epic be now, how many players would have played Fortnite, etc? While Apple makes a mint on iPhone, most of these platforms do not earn a lot from the base ecosystem. Without their cut of software sales, why would Google bother putting effort into Android. Wouldn't be much point in MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc. building gaming specific devices, not if there is no end-game (from a business perspective). I wonder what would happen to developer profits if they lost all of these ecosystems, would their revenue really rise?

That's how Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo makes their money. It's their business model. If they can't get a cut from software then they will just stop making consoles. All the 3rd-parties depend on them for revenue so they will stop investing in gaming too. Only cheap mobiles and indies would be left.

Blah, blah, blah.

The "platform" they have made is worth absolutely nothing without the developers making apps for it.

Taking one-third of their revenue is ludicrous, and should be shunned under every angle, on all platforms.

Look at that, we have a Sweeney fan here. You must be the only person who is actually rooting to get the Epic store on all his devices.

The lawsuit is not about the cut anyway. Sweeney wants Epic and ONLY Epic to get 100% of the revenue from iOS and the Play Store. Sweeney is not your Robin Hood here. Sorry.

You really showed how clueless you are in this thread. We'll see how much developers make when they have nowhere to release their games.

 

[Abriael_GN]

But those same developers are worth nothing if there is no platform for them to release on. The argument goes both ways.

So you think it's fine for the platform holder to gouge developers? That doesn't sound like something that goes "both ways."

Again - who decides what is a fair cut then? Who decides how much revenue a company can take for hosting and building and maintaining the platform that allows others to sell their product?

Quite obviously, platform holders have been allowed to ask for a draconian cut for too long.

Look at that, we have a Sweeney fan here. You must be the only person who is actually rooting to get the Epic store on all his devices.

Unlike you sad iPhone fanboys, I don't have a single Epic game on my devices, don't play Fortnite, and don't have a horse in this race. All I care about is that Apple receives a blow and is forced to make conditions more favorable for developers, creating a legal precedent that other platform holders will be forced to follow.

 

[MrFunSocks]

Quite obviously, platform holders have been allowed to ask for a draconian cut for too long.

Draconian cut? WTF do you even mean by that. Nothing "draconian" about charging a fee.

You basically just want developers to not have to pay platform holders cuts, but you still want and expect platform holders to provide the platform for them, and no doubt you want them to continue to update and improve it too?

So I'll ask for a third time - who decides what is a fair cut?

 

[Kdad]

So you think it's fine for the platform holder to gouge developers? That doesn't sound like something that goes "both ways."



Quite obviously, platform holders have been allowed to ask for a draconian cut for too long.



Unlike you sad iPhone fanboys, I don't have a single Epic game on my devices, don't play Fortnite, and don't have a horse in this race. All I care about is that Apple receives a blow and is forced to make conditions more favorable for developers, creating a legal precedent that other platform holders will be forced to follow.

So you want the law to dictate the fees a platform holder can charge? So you want the app store treated as a utility? And, you want platform holders to be forced to carry competing stores at this lower rate (again like a utility being forced to allow resellers).?

If apple is being anti competitive or monopolistic, fine...fix those issues...but treating them as a utility isn't an approach I'd agree with.

 

[ThatOneGrunt]

Sorry. I absolutely love iOS and app store the way it is. Last thing I want is for the OS to be opened up for side loading. If I wanted that vulnerability, I would have bought an Android phone.

 

[Abriael_GN]

Draconian cut? WTF do you even mean by that. Nothing "draconian" about charging a fee.

You basically just want developers to not have to pay platform holders cuts, but you still want and expect platform holders to provide the platform for them, and no doubt you want them to continue to update and improve it too?

So I'll ask for a third time - who decides what is a fair cut?

Your entire post is a strawman. A cut should be there, but 30% is absolutely excessive. The status quo needs to be shaken, and Apple being brought low in this dispute is a good chance as any.

Who decides? Certainly not Apple, because as we have seen, if left free to charge whatever they want, they charge one-third of developers' revenue, and that's pretty literally crazy.

 

[Kdad]

Sorry. I absolutely love iOS and app store the way it is. Last thing I want is for the OS to be opened up for side loading. If I wanted that vulnerability, I would have bought an Android phone.

Fyi...you have to actively seek out and agree to the risks prior to sideloading...everytime. I'd guess over 90% of Android users don't sideload.

 

[Kdad]

Your entire post is a strawman. A cut should be there, but 30% is absolutely excessive. The status quo needs to be shaken, and Apple being brought low in this dispute is a good chance as any.

Who decides? Certainly not Apple, because as we have seen, if left free to charge whatever they want, they charge one-third of developers' revenue, and that's pretty literally crazy.

So what is the exact ok fee? And how did you determine it?

 

[GhostOfTsu]

Unlike you sad iPhone fanboys, I don't have a single Epic game on my devices, don't play Fortnite, and don't have a horse in this race. All I care about is that Apple receives a blow and is forced to make conditions more favorable for developers, creating a legal precedent that other platform holders will be forced to follow.

I don't have an iPhone and never had one.

Once again, it's not about the cut. Epic wants to bypass the iOs store and Play store for 100% profit then he will want to bypass the PSN store, Xbox and Eshop. What do you think will happen then? Uplay and Origin will get on too. It's not worth it anymore to be a platform holder.

Apple and Google will be fine, not Sony, Xbox and Nintendo. The gaming industry as we know it is done.

Who decides? Certainly not Apple, because as we have seen, if left free to charge whatever they want, they charge one-third of developers' revenue, and that's pretty literally crazy.

I don't know what is your fixation with Apple. They all charge the same 30% even STEAM, PSN, Xbox, Walmart etc. This is the industry standard. Apple didn't decide that.

 

[MrFunSocks]

Your entire post is a strawman. A cut should be there, but 30% is absolutely excessive. The status quo needs to be shaken, and Apple being brought low in this dispute is a good chance as any.

Who decides? Certainly not Apple, because as we have seen, if left free to charge whatever they want, they charge one-third of developers' revenue, and that's pretty literally crazy.

There's nothing strawman about it lol. You just throwing that term out there doesn't make it true.

So Apple shouldn't be allowed to decide what they charge on their own store? Who should? You haven't answered that. Is 30% crazy for the ability for developers to make 70%? For literally creating and maintaining the platform and selling the hundreds of millions of devices, is 30% crazy?

 

[Sakura]

I guess Apple has no obligations to their customers right? They should never bend to make their costumers happy? If a huge app/game is unhappy enough with the current policies to risk being banned shouldn’t Apple review said policies? Sure this hurts Epic but it also hurts Apple’s image with their own customers. This is similar to Cable and the haggling on what they pay each channel. Most of the time Cable companies relent (within reason) because it’s not a good look to deny your customers a popular channel. Customers could care less if Apple is getting the percentage they want.

And customer's couldn't care less what percentage Epic has to pay. Epic is off the App-store of their own will. They knew breaking the terms would get them kicked off. Apple has already said they would put them back on if they removed their shenanigans. The right way to go about this is to maintain the status-quo until the case provides a resolution, but Epic is the one preventing that.

Your entire post is a strawman. A cut should be there, but 30% is absolutely excessive. The status quo needs to be shaken, and Apple being brought low in this dispute is a good chance as any.

Please explain why 30% is excessive without just describing how it is "big" or "almost a third". Those aren't arguments for it being too much. Clearly it isn't hurting devs because they continue to choose to be on the market and are raking in the money. I could just as well say the prices these devs charge for fake in game money, that cost next to nothing to make, just so you can buy loot boxes, is excessive.

Who decides? Certainly not Apple, because as we have seen, if left free to charge whatever they want, they charge one-third of developers' revenue, and that's pretty literally crazy.

If left free to charge whatever they want... they charge the industry standard? Literally crazy indeed.

 

[ReBurn]

Apple is not in a dominant position in any of the business areas they compete in. Yes, they are VERY successful, but you can't assert that Apple is in any way a monopolistic position when there are competitors in each and every business area that have more market share than Apple.

And you also can't punish Apple strictly for hoarding cash, or say that because they have those cash stores that they should offer their services for free to others.

Well, I'm not punishing Apple for anything.

Apple is the only player in the iOS app delivery market. They do not allow competition when it comes to delivering apps to their phones or tablets. They have 100% market share when it comes to delivering apps to those devices. That's a monopoly by any standard. I'm not sure how you're missing that.

Contrast that with Android where there are multiple app stores and customers have the ability to side load apps onto the devices they own.

Apple can say all day every day that they do what they do for security and safety of their customers, but a blessing from Apple to publish an app is little more than them checking your app to make sure you can only make money with it the way Apple says you can. That's where the piles of cash come in. There's a market on their devices that's worth billions and they don't allow competition. They enrich themselves at the expense of people who, once they buy a device, have no control over how apps reach it. And they've resorted to retaliation against publishers to protect it.

Governments are already after them. It's only a matter of time before Apple has to allow others in.

 

[DigitalScrap]

Apple is the only player in the iOS app delivery market. They do not allow competition when it comes to delivering apps to their phones or tablets. They have 100% market share when it comes to delivering apps to those devices. That's a monopoly by any standard. I'm not sure how you're missing that.

Actually, that is not a monopoly by any standard, much less under the legal definition of one.

You can't just make up markets like the "iOS app delivery market".

 

[MrFunSocks]

Apple is the only player in the iOS app delivery market. They do not allow competition when it comes to delivering apps to their phones or tablets. They have 100% market share when it comes to delivering apps to those devices. That's a monopoly by any standard. I'm not sure how you're missing that.

Thankfully that's not how monopolies work. I can't walk into McDonalds and buy a hungry jacks whopper from a secondary store inside mcdonalds that's run by hungry jacks/burger king that pays $0 to mcdonalds while mcdonalds has to do all the work, can I? No? But McDonalds have a monopoly on McDonalds, that should be allowed!

 

[Graciaus]

I fail to see how 30% cut is suddenly horrible when everyone does it. Also don't see how it would benefit a consumer if it was lowered by a change in law. You aren't going to get cheaper or suddenly better games. All that would happen is a publisher would make more money and the platform holder might not bother to improve much or at all.

 

[pasterpl]

How is this injunction helping the little guy they’re fighting for?

It’s almost as if the real reason behind this is they want more profits, but needed to find a way to try and manipulate the public to get behind them.

my suspicion is that epic was looking for ways to increase profits as fortnite players growth slowed down and epic games store is not bringing as much as they would ave hoped, so they have looked at “easy” ways of increasing revenues without a huge effort, they have looked at these “royalties” they have to pay to platform holders (google, Apple) and make a stupid decision to start fight with trillion dollar companies, and use fortnite players as cannon fodder

just to be clear, I don’t give a f*ck about epic or Apple, but I think epic is wrong in this argument, they have signed contract, then they have purposely breached terms of it trying to force Apple to change their policies with a public ”name and shame“ campaign. This is now how you do business, if they didn’t like the terms, they should have started negotiating with Apple about changing these.

 

[EliTheIceMan]

70% > 0%

cowards

This

 

[Birgitte2004-2]

Thankfully that's not how monopolies work. I can't walk into McDonalds and buy a hungry jacks whopper from a secondary store inside mcdonalds that's run by hungry jacks/burger king that pays $0 to mcdonalds while mcdonalds has to do all the work, can I? No? But McDonalds have a monopoly on McDonalds, that should be allowed!

People "have a Monopoly" in their own home, so I should be able to move in to a room if I want to, rent free. And just think, it'll be great for everybody except the greedy homeowner! Homelessness problem instantly solved, if only people weren't so greedy.

 

[notseqi]

Uhh..

Ever heard of Xbox?

Because that's exactly how Xbox works.. outside of physical sales, but they take an $8-10 cut of all of those too lol

Not to forget that they don't allow 0-priced DLC. What was the game again, Shovel Knight/Plague Knight DLC? Was free everywhere else, now twenty dorrars!

 

[Sophist]

Those Epic Store exclusive contracts not gonna pay themselves