Not defending Epic but can someone tell us what the “tremendous value” it’s receiving from the App Store is?
"Epic, says Apple, has used more than 400 of Apple's APIs and frameworks, five versions of the Apple SDK, has had its apps reviewed more than 200 times, and has pushed more than 140 updates to Apple customers.
Apple says that it also provided advertising each time Epic released a new season for Fortnite, offering "
free promotion and favorable tweets" to more than
500 million end users."
I can't say if that was tremendous, but it's a lot more than they do for most other developers.
(Which they really can't do, there is only so much space to promote and lots and lots of apps).
Why has Apple done so much? Because they know it's a huge moneymaker and they get a cut.
Would Epic make money if Apple didn't promote them? Yes. But I bet it'd be a lot fewer people (at least 20% less, as that's the magic number).
I'd guess there are developers that would let Apple take a 50% cut for that much free promotion, and I bet those developers would make a lot more in the long run.
Apple speaks as though any money derived from an app on the App Store belongs to Apple and we should be bowing down and thanking Apple for giving 70% of it to developers. That’s totally unfair considering the only way to distribute an app for iOS is via Apple’s App Store. Developers have no choice.
That's LITERALLY the deal the EPIC agreed to. No one tricked them into it.
What if Apple's AGREED cut had been 15% and then saw how much Epic was making and said, "we're going to up that to 30% now"?
Developers have no choice.
Sure they do. They do not have to develop for Apple devices.