Apple Ready to 'Welcome Fortnite Back Onto iOS' if Epic Removes Direct Purchase After Losing Restraining Order Ruling

[DonutHands]

Anyone take a guess as what to what it costs to run the App store per year?

Im seeing an estimate of $50 billion in App store gross sales for 2019. So 30% of that is $15 billion per year direct to Apple?

 

[Seend1983]

From reading the comments, it appears that Epic Games is slowly but surely losing the PR battle. I remember when this whole drama first broke out, you could see after every several comment there would be one supporting Epic Games. Now the number has swindled. People are beginning to realize that despite Epic's rhetoric trying to frame this as a wider fight for all developers and for 'freedom', whatever that means, they simply want a bigger slice of the profit-pie and the ability to launch their own competing game store ON TOP of Apple's App Store. Apple does all the hard-work so Epic Games can try to free-ride on top of the App Store's success. Crazy how people can rationalize what's clearly a self-serving demand as for the greater good.

 

[Grohowiak]

Judge told Epic if you want back in the store then fix the app. She made this about Fortnite and put a stop on disabling the dev account. Still normal operations for a company in a lawsuit to halt all communications until it is settled.

Epic would NEVER sacrifice fortnite if they cared about it in the first place.
They had lawsuits READY the minute apple acted.
This is a deliberate and prepared action.
By doing so they managed (not sure they even saw this coming as it gives them a massive bullet in the chamber) to get apple to threaten livehoods of people that are completely not related to epic/fortnite. Just devs using a game engine made by epic.
Apple is making money of those devs using unreal YET still they wanted them all out just to stick it to epic.

That's hard core bullying / show of force / coercion whatever you want to call it.

 

[McKodiak]

What experience??
It's a phone that can run apps. A tool.

Watching northern lights for the first time is an experience, browsing safari on a phone at least for me doesn't match that description.

Viewing the northern lights is an experience. So is a nice dump after your morning cup of coffee. Apple sells an experience. The hardware is only the gateway to the experience they sell. Apple's product is the experience. The experience is:
HARDWARE
SOFTWARE
APPLE APPLICATIONS
SECURITY
PRIVACY
PAYMENT MECHANISM
APP STORE
etc..

 

[Grohowiak]

Viewing the northern lights is an experience. So is a nice dump after your morning cup of coffee. Apple sells an experience. The hardware is only the gateway to the experience they sell. Apple's product is the experience. The experience is:
HARDWARE
SOFTWARE
APPLE APPLICATIONS
SECURITY
PRIVACY
PAYMENT MECHANISM
APP STORE
etc..

That's called service and I pay for it.
Experience, rofl.

As for the first part... Like I said. You need to relax bud. High blood pressure is bad for you.

 

[bushman4]

Fortnite in no longer a multi platform game as Apple and Google have banned it. Fortnite popularity and revenue will drop
There are no winners! Not Epic or Apple but the customer is the biggest loser
Lastly, this court litigation will go on for a long time

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Pretty bias article. Discusses why he turned down Warner but went with Tencent instead. Oh and that little lawsuit with silicon knights. But APPLE GOOGLE BAD!!! Fees!!! BADD!! No mention of the Epic Store fees, Unreal Engine fees, Console market and FEES!!!

Epic has fees too? *SHOCK* How much do they charge for all of their goodies? The fee Apple charges probably goes to pay a for lot of things. Epic could charge $9.95, and rape their customers too. This 'Oh, we want to be a 'good company', and while because Apple makes us pay to play, but you can trust us if we win' is silly. I'll bet IF they win, they jack their prices up.

 

[McKodiak]

That's called service and I pay for it.
Experience, rofl.

As for the first part... Like I said. You need to relax bud. High blood pressure is bad for you.

Service is AppleCare.

 

[Seend1983]

Would you be ok with if someone is taking 30% + Taxes of what your earning?

If there wasn't an App Store, there would be no earning at all, 70% or 100%. If Apple flopped and screwed up and the App Store never existed or remained some poorly executed idea, there would be no concentration of customers for Epic Games and other developers to profit from. The 30% policy has been in place since the beginning of the App Store, before Apple became the success it is today. They rode on Apple's success and now want to cut Apple out of the profits. Smdh

 

[Darth Tulhu]

A smart phone is not a theme park- an ultimately trivial source of entertainment. It is the most important computing device in most people's lives, where people conduct a large portion of their work and private business. Taxing people's behavior at a theme park is orders of magnitude different than taxing their entire connected life.

Yikes. It's a metaphor to represent Epic's role in Apple's environment. it's not meant to be that deep philosophically.

"Taxing their entire connected life" is an exaggeration if you're taking Epic's side here. The iPhone was a HUGE success WITHOUT the App Store and third-party apps. Apple's first-party software AND ecosystem is why were all here.

Apple SPENT MONEY to open THEIR hardware and software ecosystem up to third-party devs for two inseparable reasons, in order:

1. To drive Apple hardware sales by enhancing the user experience
2. To create a new (additional) revenue stream for Apple by attracting third-party developers to Apple's huge and prone-to-paying-for-apps installed base

 

[Pootie Tang]

No, Epic still has to pay income taxes. So how about your employer takes 30% and then what is leftover, the federal and state taxes are also taken out. Could you survive?

There are corporations that pay zero federal corporate taxes. "Earlier this year, ITEP reported Netflix and Amazon paid no federal taxes. Other companies on this list include Chevron, Delta Airlines, Eli Lilly, General Motors, Gannett, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Halliburton, IBM, Jetblue Airways, Principal Financial, Salesforce.com, US Steel, and Whirlpool."

 

[TiggrToo]

Would you be ok with if someone is taking 30% + Taxes of what your earning?

No. But that’s not what this is about so your post is irrelevant. The 30% isn't any form of tax, it's operating costs.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

But they have access to you. Without the iPhone, how would they distribute games to you via the iPhone? I'm not really sure why this is difficult to understand. Do you think because you don't or haven't bought something on Amazon, or stayed at a specific AirBnB that they haven't curated a user base?

It's difficult to understand your way of thinking because if I haven't bought Fortnite or have an Amazon or AirBnb account, I am NOT one of their users, no more than everyone with a mailbox at their house is a user of every business in the country just because they are able to receive mail or purchase goods through the mail.

 

[Grohowiak]

Service is AppleCare.

Apple care is part of the deal that they have to honor in case something that they manufacture / sell stops performing as advertised.
Usually it's a crappy "experience" to begin with since you had to go there in the first place out of necessity. They handle it nicely though so gotta give them lots of credit here. Love apple store service.

I don't buy AppleCare+ for experience. I buy it in case I need something fixed. My money in exchange for their service.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

No. But that’s not what this is about so your post is irrelevant. The 30% isn't any form of tax, it's operating costs.

That's hilarious! I can see 30% of $10 maybe working out, but 30% of MILLIONS of $$$ being operating costs, just to host an app and process payments (which costs about 2-3%)? In app purchases don't involve Apple at all, except for Apple forcing Epic to use them as a payment processor. Anyone who makes a product has a choice how to have their payments processed.

 

[DanTheMan827]

Here are my thoughts...

Did epic self-inflict these "wounds"? Yes, most definitely.

Do I think the 30% is too much? No, not really.

Do I think Apple should allow apps from outside sources? Absolutely

Just because there would be apps from outside sources doesn't mean that developers would outright leave the App Store, there's a huge userbase there.

Sideloading is and always been for those for are technically inclined and can accept the risk, it wouldn't affect the App Store much at all...

Epic tried direct distribution to android users and it failed with them deciding to go back onto the Google Play store for the exposure

Users own the hardware yet they have absolutely no control over what runs on said hardware, so they don't even have the option of switching to an alternative without paying hundreds or even over $1,000 for a device.

 

[mannyvel]

For the naysayers out there, let's go to the real world.

Company X builds a retail store and sells your product. They mark up your product by 30% and buy it from you at a lower price.

This is actually how retail works. Most retailers try to get 30%.

The difference, in this case, is that online publishers have to factor the markup into their pricing because they set the retail price. They get confused because they say "Hey, I set my price at $10 but Apple is only giving me $7.70." But if it was a product you'd sell your thing to the store for about $7.70 the retailer would sell it for $10 (assuming a 30% markup).

And Apple did build that store: it's called the iPhone, and it's one of the most valuable retail properties in the world.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

It matters because unreal engine gives jobs to a lot of developers so that they can develop for iOS.
Apple didn't got after epic on this. They went after everybody that uses their game engine so fortnite on it's own has nothing to do with it.
It was a spark that created a reaction showing a massive power push from apples part threatening livehoods of many people completely unrelated to this case just so they can stick it to epic.

This is not complicated.

Epic started this by:

Violating the rules they agreed to, thus denying Apple their due and agreed-to tax for using Apple's environment to conduct business.

Until you can accept that fact, there is no point in discussing this further with you. Too much straw for me to handle.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

The move by Epic was a dick move, no doubt. But I also agree that 30% is awfully high. I’m part of a marketplace that takes around that and I’m cheering for epic so that hopefully Apple lowers its fees causing a domino effect in other marketplaces/industries.

Yeah, I remember the prices in the Apple Book Store being an issue a few years ago. The idea of paying retail printed book prices for a package of binary digits is crazy. I haven't looked at book prices lately, I hope they are more realistic. I can see wanting to make money, and can see where some of the costs are coming from, having such an extensive network of computer centers to support their 'cloud' system, but some of the fees do seem higher than they should be. Which brings up a point, Apple is supporting their data centers, and all that bandwidth I'm sure with that money. Epic doesn't have that to the level Apple does I'm sure.

Epic shot themselves in the foot, but...

 

[quatermass]

Google, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all do the same thing, so why is everyone just complaining about Apple?

Because Apple.

 

[Grohowiak]

This is not complicated.

Epic started this by:

Violating the rules they agreed to, thus denying Apple their due and agreed-to tax for using Apple's environment to conduct business.

Until you can accept that fact, there is no point in discussing this further with you. Too much straw for me to handle.

Nobody is denying what Epic did and the judge sided with apple on it for obvious reasons but if you think that THIS is the whole pickle of what epic is trying to achieve then clearly there's nothing to discuss lol.

This is just act 1 of a very long drama and it will take years till we actually know the end result whether apple will be forced to change their rules or not cause clearly this is the end game here. Not some fortnite lol

 

[btrach144]

While both are large corporations, I'm rooting for the smaller corporation. I hope Epic makes as big as a stink about this as possible but most importantly, goes to court ready to win.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Anyone take a guess as what to what it costs to run the App store per year?

I'm seeing an estimate of $50 billion in App store gross sales for 2019. So 30% of that is $15 billion per year direct to Apple?

I'd also love to know what it costs per IAP transaction.

If I wanna turn $20 into Fortnite V-Bucks... Apple gets $6 from that transaction.

If I wanna turn $100 into Fortnite V-Bucks... Apple gets $30 from that transaction.

Either of those transactions take the same millisecond of processing time in Apple's data centers. There's no difference in the actual activity. And while the banks are involved for the monetary portion of the transaction... it's all digital and it happens instantly. All money is digital these days... we're not sending Apple a physical $20 or $100 bill that they have to do something with.

It just seems a little weird that Apple gets a flat 30% no matter how small (or how big) the transaction is. I'm finding it hard to believe that Apple needs $30 from a $100 in-app purchase.

On the other hand... those are Apple's rules and everyone should obey them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[D4vidrim]

I have a question: if I own a Dell laptop running Windows 10 and download an application from the Edge browser who should get credit for that sale? The app developer? Microsoft? Dell? My ISP? According to Apple (and its defenders) anything you download from the App Store should be credited to Apple and thus Apple should get a cut. But is that really the case, especially when Apple’s App Store is the only place you can get an app?

Many, many entities. Microsoft and Google will get some money for advertisement or for development tools or for their services offered to the company who developed your app, maybe PayPal will get some money, depending on how you bought your app.
Microsoft didn't build its ecosystem like Apple did, Google and Facebook also built their ecosystem with different approaches.
All of them get money in different ways. Sorry if you can't compare one to one every thing.

 

[Realityck]

Anyone take a guess as what to what it costs to run the App store per year?

Im seeing an estimate of $50 billion in App store gross sales for 2019. So 30% of that is $15 billion per year direct to Apple?

Isn't the costs leveraged against other Apple services? If you stream something from Apple Music versa Apple TV + is not the same large server farm providing the Apple Store operation? We talk about the 30% with the store but you now have subscription models used for Music and Video streaming. Whats paying for what here?