I have little to no sympathy for Tim Sweeney and Epic Games. Mr. Sweeney has an estimated net worth of $5.3 billion and the company has estimated revenues of $5 billion for 2020. I'm not complaining that he is rich and I am not. I am thinking much of what Epic wants is to make more more without investing anything and they are well rewarded in their current model. Mr Sweeney has turned childish and taken to arms to save us, the consumer. Balderdash, it does not smell good in that pity party room.
During the pandemic quaratines, players logged billion of hours of usage and the company was taking in $400 million per month. Did Epic help out anyone with a temporary cost reduction? They did give some games away for free, but that is mostly a non-event since in-game purchases are where their money is made in most of their games. The company'sjustification was the you can play for free. Clearly players put out lots of money for new skins and other visual enhancements. How much of those revenues might have helped families in need from losing their jobs?
Assume the IAP cost never existed. Would Epic really be charging $8 instead of $10 for in-game currency. No. Simple human economic visuals would say pricing would never be $8. Who pays $8? It would have been $10 and Epic would be making even more. The argument that they would only charge $8 (or $7, or $6) is only being made as a red herring to throw off the focus from their revenues. The company would work to make as much as they can, and people will pay $10 to get in game cash regardless of how much Epic makes.
I am sure if you ask people, 99% will say they want to pay less for something. The entire application market for mobile games demonstrates the "make it seem free since no one will pay". But once hooked, many people will pay whatever it takes to keep up with the Jones in the game, whether that is $7, $8 or $10. For Epic that means billions in revenue.
My gut reaction is Tim Sweeney is a rich and now spoiled developer who has a burr up his butt that he is willing to spend countless millions to bring satisfaction that he attack his Goliath. He is not setting out to save the developer world. It is his vendetta. His childish video is cute, many will like it, but it certainly paints him in a bad light. Other folks want in on the fight too. Hey Netflix...why don't you invest billions in building out an internet delivery platform....you certainly use enough bandwidth in my neighborhood to impact my video production. But they too complain about IAP costs while benefitting from the delivery systems build by many players. That seems equally disingenuous to me.
It's easy to complain about a strong App Store and a ton of users that a company is working to make money off of. Isn't Epic selling a game a ton of people want and they are looking to create an in-game monopoly to make money off of it. Epic already gave up the build you own approach to stores...it is hard, costly, time consuming, fraught with issues of risk, fraud, malware, review, protection, and much more. Epic is making billions taking advantage of all the distribution options that have take 10 years or more to develop. They invested nothing in it.
So Epic, and others, build something big and win, or work within the system that provides your success and keep building things rather than slaying your enemy by divine righteousness.
