Epic officially started a war with Apple today and got kicked off the app store over the 30% fees. Tim Sweeney’s twitter has been nothing but Apple bashing for awhile so no surprise.
This should be interesting.
Fight, fight, fight, fight!
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Oh man, I’m so torn over this.
On one hand, I agree that the industry standard 30% cut is a bit exorbitant in some cases and I appreciate that someone with actual clout is using their position to push that in a better direction.
On the other hand… is this the way to do it? Those rules aren’t new, and Epic explicitly agreed to them when they put their games on those platforms. It’s not Apple who are changing their mind here, it’s Epic. And Epic are absolutely smart enough to understand the exact letter of the rules and use them to their advantage - they do it with their dance moves.
I don’t know what to make of it, because it comes down to the intent behind it, and nobody but Epic can know what that truly is.
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That’s the BS part. Actually everyone can know what is their intent. When the interest of developers and/or customers align with theirs they like to print a giant sticker and glue it onto their corporate agenda. When they don’t they don’t give a crap about developers or customers. In other words, they only care about their corporate interests and they are using developers as cannon-fodders. And people smile and swallow it.
It is simple as that.
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Oh, now we’re skeptical of corporations. When Unity says “democratizing game development” obviously their intentions are pure and great.
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I’ve criticised Unity’s take on democratisation in the past, among many other things. I believe that discussing such things openly is healthy, as it helps to broaden and challenge perspectives. Still, I’m having trouble thinking of any concrete examples of where they’ve unambiguously contradicted that particular value.
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Unambiguously maybe not, but ambiguously there are tons of examples, but I don’t want to get this thread too much off topic.
To get back on topic, Epic’s also suing Google : https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368363/epic-google-fortnite-lawsuit-antitrust-app-play-store-apple-removal
Gotta love the way that Epic play the game! They certainly don’t take their fortnite money and run.
I think the 30% commission thing is too high - as a small time indie I’m fairly happy with any opportunity to grow, but if I had a game business to run and employees to feed, and 30% of my stuff was taken just to put my product on a shelf, I don’t think I’d be happy with that at all. I haven’t seen any analysis that says that 30% is the ‘right’ figure (or any other figure, like 10%, for that matter), and it seems likely it simply persisted from the days when running online stores wasn’t all that profitable. In many countries, not even tax is that high.
Anyway, I think the games industry needs a shakeup. We’ve going down a road of diminishing returns (for devs) and lack of competition (for stores) way too fast and for way too long now. I like that Epic has focused on something and swung the club on it. Personally I can’t wait to see more competition, and I hope they do something even more crazy like starting an app store of their own.
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That was my take on it. Having trouble seeing it end in Epic’s favor. Otherwise, this could lead to quite an interesting shakeup, but I’m not sure how much indie & hobbyist developers will benefit at the end, if at all.
It would probably help me to read through the complaint itself… some other time.
This is clever.
Do you guys/girls remember this advertisement?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
Re-Negotiation of agreements is a thing in business.
Maybe this is not the best way, but why not try it this way and see if it works?
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Yeah, Epic’s not trying to say Apple didn’t play by their own rules, they are challenging the rules themselves, and win public support in the process by doing it in the open. Which is a good way to challenge a company like Apple - I’m sure they are very difficult to beat in the courtroom, probably much less so in the court of public opinion.
Epic will win something from this no matter what happens, even if it’s just support for a new store.
Did Apple not say Epic tried to get a special agreement, or am I mistaken? If so, screw Epic. no one is above the Apple law!
If Epic were genuine in their quest to fight the 30% for all they would have pulled Fortnite from the store without trying to circumvent the developer agreement. I think they were just trying to squeeze an extra few percent and now they’ve been busted and are trying to cover it up with some story about for the greater good of developers and customers.
P.S.
Apple, Google, Valve, Microsoft, Amazon lower your 30% cut. 
#FreeDevelopers
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For accuracy, they implied that what Epic really wants is a “Special arrangement”, they didn’t say they flat out tried to get one.
Epic denied it for what its worth : https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1294076353965428736
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The plot thickens : Epic lawsuit claims Google blocked 'Fortnite' deals with OnePlus, LG
Who wants to guess tencent is releasing a phone this year? Haha
They already did, last year. The Asus Rog 2 phone was co-developed with Tencent AFAIK.
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Putting Epic’s motives to the side, for me the more important part of this lawsuit seems to be the antitrust portion of it. If you want to put your game on Apple devices, you have to go through their store and agree to their terms. Part of Apple’s terms is that you are not allowed to make any money by selling anything at all without paying Apple their cut. That’s a form of monopoly.
Imagine if software developers had to pay Microsoft 30% of everything or they could never put any software on a Windows computer. Folks would be up in arms. Yet somehow Apple has gotten away with this in a fashion I have never understood.
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I’m guessing that this is not about the size of the 30% cut, rather that there’s a mandatory app store.
What Epic wants to do is for people to download Fortnite to their devices without having to pay some third party at all. That would probably mean opening a web site on their phone’s web browser, and hitting a download button.
If Epic wins this, it’s going to benefit them, and all other games that people are interested in downloading without visiting the app store. So Minecraft is going to benefit, and the Xbox pass thingy.
The interesting thing is how this interfaces with things like India forcing Chinese apps of the app store. If Epic wins this, there would be ways around that as well.
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