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Apple Earned Over $100 Million From Fortnite
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Simple free market. Why is this so misunderstood? I don't think it requires an MBA to understand this. Also given every single app-store is like this. Apple built, researched, designed, and maintains a full ecosystem. This ecosystem is not idle nor static. They actively employ people to manage this ecosystem and enhance it. It does not bloody matter if they charge what the market will pay for their product. As stated, the market decides. Moving this to court is foolish and frivolous.
Has EPIC considered Apple could counter and say, if they lose, Apple can charge less in the EPIC game itself to buy their v-shmucks for in-app purchase? How stupid is this?
Do you say that about Walmart? They don’t deserve a fraction of what they get for providing a place for other companies to peddle their goods?
Your feelings don't matter though. And your blaming the wrong end of the problem here. Business is to make profit. That's it. they don't have to care much about anything else. So long as they don't break any laws, they can make that profit as they see fit in the most efficient way possible irregardless to anyones feelings.
You are free to use an Android device. Maybe one made by Huawei would suit your needs?
One thing that struck me about switching to MacOS/iOS dev was the INCREDIBLE breadth and depth of framework apis and developer tools built out, then documented and demonstrated via super thorough WWDC training materials and courses.
And these apis (and the Swift language) are undergoing constant rapid development (with VERY little abandonment of frameworks or backwards compatibility, indeed actually a huge effort put in toward future compatibility).
And you can see SO much of this effort is done purely for the public API access. They would spend many tens of thousands fewer dev-hours if they were only doing it for the private apis and apps.
And this isn’t even to mention their dedication to accessibility (across so many stripes) that they practically hand you for free and regularly reinforce from the framework architectures right up to their developer training materials.
It is absolutely true to say that Apple develops a LARGE part of nearly every app on their store. And without those hundreds of thousands of Apple developer hours, the app-makers themselves would be on the hook for a stupidly massive undertaking to get anywhere NEAR the functionality they have.
And these apis (and the Swift language) are undergoing constant rapid development (with VERY little abandonment of frameworks or backwards compatibility, indeed actually a huge effort put in toward future compatibility).
And you can see SO much of this effort is done purely for the public API access. They would spend many tens of thousands fewer dev-hours if they were only doing it for the private apis and apps.
And this isn’t even to mention their dedication to accessibility (across so many stripes) that they practically hand you for free and regularly reinforce from the framework architectures right up to their developer training materials.
It is absolutely true to say that Apple develops a LARGE part of nearly every app on their store. And without those hundreds of thousands of Apple developer hours, the app-makers themselves would be on the hook for a stupidly massive undertaking to get anywhere NEAR the functionality they have.
x = 0.3y (where x is Apple's commission and y is the total of in-app purchases)
$100,000,000 = 0.3y
$100,000,000/0.3 = y
$333,333,333 = y
$333,333,333 - $100,000,000 = $233,000,000 as kennyt72 said 👍
Not at all the same.
This would be like Sony selling a Playstation 5 on Walmart.
Not only does Walmart want a fee (App Store "app" fee) for Sony selling the PS5 there, but it also wants a fee for every online purchase the customer makes with their PS5 (App Store "subscription" fee), all because the PS5 was sold on Walmart. And Sony doesn't have any alternatives either, they HAVE to use Walmart or not sell at all because Walmart is all that is offered (much like how App Store is the only alternative for iOS).
See how bad the system actually is?
If Apple did either of the following:
- lowered the subscription cuts by a lot (say to 5% or lower)
- allowed other stores than only App Store to operate on iOS
everything would be fine. But they're not. And probably won't. Bad for the consumer. Bad for the developers. Good for Apple though..
Apple deserves every single dollar.
If we're going there, neither does Epic. It's mostly for skins and battle passes. They could do it for much cheaper.
Apples $100m is basically all profit (they essentially have no incremental costs) whereas Epic has to cover all the hosting and developer costs from their $233M, so probably actually making less money than Apple. This underpins Sweeny’s claim that Apple makes more money from gaming than anyone in the industry despite never making or distributing games.
If you sell something in a walmart, walmart isnt entitled to 1/3rd of the revenue you get from a continued business relationship beyond the initial sale
Aren’t App Store app downloads hosted by Apple? Or are you referring to Epic’s game servers?
Am I the only one that feels the most disturbing part is how much people are paying for in-app purchases?
Gotcha. It would be interesting to see a cost breakdown of how much a company saves on the app distribution itself given that’s handled in Apple’s end. That’s why I was actually impressed with the intial opening of the App Store’s fee structure because that cuts a lot of infrastructure costs for *small* developers. So much so that it allows individuals to create and distribute an app, where distribution at the time was a prohibitive cost for many.
Except it's hardly a free market.
This is EXACTLY why Epic is bringing up ecosystem-locking topics into this. When Apple says iMessage on different platforms "will hurt us more than help us", they're reinforcing that Apple starts to look like a monopoly when they lock users in.
An iPhone owner can't just go on Epic's website and download Fortnite, skipping over Apple's servers entirely. The app MUST be served from the App Store. And Epic can't host their own payment systems for DLC - that also MUST go through the App Store, where Apple takes their cut.
Apple knows exactly what they are doing here - locking in users, forcing apps that use any serious level of hardware support to go through the App Store, and take a 30% cut on services that don't cost Apple anywhere near that much to support.
Anyone here saying Apple fairly earned $100m on DLC purchases for a game is insane, and is just supporting further corporate control over the smartphone market. What happens when Apple says you have to pay them a fee to change the details on your digital SIM? After all, APPLE built the phone, the digital SIM card, the software that manages it. Only makes it fair, right?
What about on the Mac? What happens if Apple says only Mac Store apps can be launched on the device? And anyone who wants to use their Office subscription, or Spotify services, etc. have to pay the Apple tax (either through the App Store directly, or through the developer's payout). After all, Apple built the hardware and the software right? Only fair!
Apple owns the ecosystem just as other companies do as well. Everyone will charge for usage and access. This is not a free resource. It is absolutely fair for Apple to make money on their platform. True for any platform or ecosystem whether tech or not.
Google, Playstation, xbox. I think all those have the same 30% but apple is the one epic is bitching about.
Except they didn't. Apple and Google only hosted small components of the larger app. Many large apps do this, and then allow the end user to download the rest of the content while the app is loading/being set up.
This allows for Epic and other game devs to manage the assets easier than having to push small updates which take days to be approved on devices.
They don't own my mac or my phone, so no, they don't own the whole ecosystem. They appear to own you on the other hand
What if Epic removed EVERY SINGLE Apple framework api call? What if 100% of their app was built by them?
It would take them YEARS longer to develop. And even if they did go through all that effort, it would not have NEAR the parity of experience iOS users expect (persistence, memory management through app states, energy use, networking, etc, etc, etc). An enormous chunk of the app that brought in that $330M was developed by Apple.
No getting around that.
And that's not to mention the frictionless experience of those IAP purchases. If it were not so simply linked to the credit card on file with the Apple account, if the users had to sign up with their (or their parents') credit card on another service, how many of those IAPs wouldn't have occurred? Frictionless purchasing is a stupidly large moneymaker. This is well understood in the commerce industries.
The 'App Store' is the very end of a LONG line of application, developer, and distribution tools that Epic availed themselves of, and which they agreed to pay for through Apple's openly stated model.
If Epic wanted to use the BARE MINIMUM of Apple's services to open an otherwise 100% custom app on the iPhone, then and ONLY then could we talk about the fair cut Apple deserves for that.