I figured that the Epic Store must have 0% fees, but I just checked and Epic charges 12%. I guess that is less than Apple takes, but how does he complain about Apple taking a cut when he also takes a cut? Seems disingenuous.
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Epic Games Asks Supreme Court to Hear Apple Case
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Do they also take 30%? Isn't their problem with the high %, not the cut itself?
According to Sweeney, 12% covers costs with a small profit. 30% is, in his mind, an obscene overcharge.
To his credit, he's also been (mostly) consistent: he hates it on Steam and Google too. And I imagine he dislikes it on the consoles too, but hasn't said as much, probably because his company's Fortnite revenues largely come from sales on Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo, so there won't be any rocking of the boat there.
The thing is, the only reason Sweeney wants to undermine Apple's 30% (and everyone else's) is so Epic can swoop in and take it for themselves. I doubt any of the big players losing their 30% cut is going to mean those savings go to customers, developers, publishers, or whatever. In fact, it was never about doing it for other developers - Epic is clearly after a vertically integrated monopoly on games development, where they take a cut at every step of the process from development (middleware, Unreal Engine) through to retail (Epic Games Store).
This was about creating a vacuum in that 30%, and then Epic inserting their ubiquitous middleware there and jacking the prices up to fill the void.
Do you think this is about Fortnite for epic games? This is about forcing Apple to allow other game stores on the
platform. The epic guy will succeed in the end & they will have to comply.
Why is this an issue for people just don’t install their games store or games?
Something like “Game distribution platform fee” is the term you want to use in a search engine which should lead you to the information. To me, their problem is they see a future where people are using hardware platforms (and their digital downloads) more and more, which reduces their ability to have a cut of that pie. As they weren’t making a huge amount from iOS, they figured they’d have their fight there and use a win in one arena as a precedent to force changes elsewhere.
Essentially, Epic’s problem biggest problem is with the cut. In that, the cut isn’t going to them.
One would THINK that they’d factor in how much it actually costs to run the business, but by giving away millions of games for free, they’ve shown they either don’t know what it means to be profitable OR don’t care about being profitable right now.
Their goal has been to increase the number of developers and users. 12% to him likely doesn’t relate to any idea of actual “profit” other than “It’s less than half of Steam so hopefully developers will flock to us for those extra few percent.”They “hope” to be profitable in the future with their strategy… anything they’re doing now, including the 12% is just to “get bigger”.
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I guess all the money from Fortnite cosmetics is going into lawyer fees now, huh?
Speaking of, they just jacked the price of V-Bucks up.I guess all the money from Fortnite cosmetics is going into lawyer fees now, huh?
I think you misread my comment. I was talking about Epic trying to use EU with some fake issue. The whole USB C has its merit and I understand why EU would push for a standard. Please don’t jump to conclusion. EU is merely the venue after the Supreme Court for Epic to drag this out.
Epic would otherwise has to present its case to EU before EU can decide on anything, whether the issue is considered fake in EU’s eyes or not. That’s why I say “might”, rather than “may”.
If my comment causes you to believe I have drawn any conclusion, I apologise.
My whole point is since EU spearhead the forced USB-C transition on smartphone for Apple, they are not going to be afraid of spearheading further changes to force Apple doing things Apple hate. Those changes may or may not have anything to do with Epic.
It may be good to remember, though, that Apple said lightning would be the connector for the next 10 years. That was in 2012. Having made good on that promise to those hardware vendors, they were primed to switch anyway, not anywhere close to something they “hate”. And, the rest of the industry already had switched. Thus, their crowing about “we made the industry do this” is just taking credit for what was already a foregone conclusion (and other countries with their just created ‘usb-c requirements’ are doing the same). That’s FAR different from trying to force the implementation of something the industry doesn’t find value in.
Well, we will never know the true internal discussion of this issue. And, assuming Apple does say lightning is for the next decade in 2012, wouldn’t it makes more sense to switch last year rather than dragging on for another year? Yes, they design their new device quite some time ahead of launch, but they should’ve known regardless.
Nevertheless, unless the internal discussion record got leaked out, forced by the court (exceedingly unlikely), or somehow Apple decide to release, the true reason behind 2023 USB-C switch will forever be a mystery.
That is exactly how it works and why Apple takes a cut. Developers have no connection to refund anyone's purchase.
That’s my point as to why Apple has a cut baked in their agreements. But people here just think Apple does nothing and shouldn’t get a cut.
I am very happy Apple does all my payments/refunds/ customer support. Makes my life much easier and I gladly pay for that.
Unfortunately (for Epic) it's not quite that simple; there are a lot of moving parts.
While they could technically do as you suggest, the results would be subpar: even without deploying via Apple's Mac App Store, the preferred method for developing Mac software still requires devs to obtain a digitally signed certificate from Apple, which they can only do through Apple's developer program. Well, Epic is explicitly banned from rejoining that program by Apple, since Epic intentionally broke their original developer agreement by creating that backdoor in Fortnite allowing them to make changes to the game, post install, and then used it to push out a separate in-game purchase system which very explicitly broke Apple's rules.
Thus, in order for Epic to get their software to run with no blessing at all from Apple, they would have to release it with no certificate. The default behavior when launching such apps on a Mac is to present a warning dialog box that tells users that this software can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. Individual users can of course change their security settings to get around this warning -- or, if someone is a particularly savvy user, they might already know that they can just right click (Control click) on the app and select Run to get to an alternate dialog that permits the user to bypass it -- but most users either won't know how to do such things or won't be interested in deviating from the norm to use that app, because clearly anything that spawns a security dialog box == bad juju.
Besides... most dedicated Mac users have moved on from Fortnite -- and most dedicated Fortnite players don't even know the first thing about Macs, let alone care that they can't play Fortnite on one. The two user bases had a small overlap for a period of time, but that time has effectively passed... and at this point, the lawsuit hardly has anything at all to do with Fortnite. It's more about precedent for future dealings than it is anything at all practical for the near-term.
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Well, we do know that Apple did not “hate” USB-C as it was already being used on many devices. Plus, the EU said all smartphones must have USB-C by December 28, 2024.
(“Hey, Apple, we want to take credit for having you switch, when are you planning for USB-C?”
“2023.”
“Ok, we’ll say 2024 so just in case you can’t make it, we can still claim that we made you do it.”
”Fine. But this is the date we’ve been planning for years, so, yeah.”)
Now, I’m curious when were all other smartphones in the EU using USB-C… must be a way to find that. Because if everyone other than Apple has been on USB-C for 3 or 4 years, it could be said that the EU was dragging their feet. Either that or, waiting for Apple.
If this was something Apple “hated”, we’d be getting USB-C next year, right before the deadline.
It won’t forever be a mystery, folks involved are just waiting until they retire to release the book they’ve been writing.
Well, we do know that Apple did not “hate” USB-C as it was already being used on many devices. Plus, the EU said all smartphones must have USB-C by December 28, 2024.
(“Hey, Apple, we want to take credit for having you switch, when are you planning for USB-C?”
“2023.”
“Ok, we’ll say 2024 so just in case you can’t make it, we can still claim that we made you do it.”
”Fine. But this is the date we’ve been planning for years, so, yeah.”)
Now, I’m curious when were all other smartphones in the EU using USB-C… must be a way to find that. Because if everyone other than Apple has been on USB-C for 3 or 4 years, it could be said that the EU was dragging their feet. Either that or, waiting for Apple.
If this was something Apple “hated”, we’d be getting USB-C next year, right before the deadline.
It won’t forever be a mystery, folks involved are just waiting until they retire to release the book they’ve been writing.
Actually… come to think of it, Apple may be involved in pushing for the USB-C design standard.
Apple has always been going on about USB 1 and 2 as being too big for their devices and all the mini, micro etc too confusing.
More importantly, it’s Thunderbolt.
They have been pushing for a fast highspeed connector for a very long time: first with FireWire and then Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt had the miniDP port design before adopting the USB-C design for Thunderbolt 3 back in 2015/2016. This was way before USB C was as common as now. Actually that was just before or around the time USB C standard was finalized. Apple was its early adopters.
Apple has had its eyes on the USB C design and using it for a while.
Does hold some merit. How do you make sure folks are less likely to be perturbed about finally turning off the lights on lightning? You make sure that there’s a very wide number of non-Apple USB-C products in the marketplace. By now, everything is either USB-C or has a USB-C cable. Sure there’s the compatibility thing to wade through, but that’s nothing for someone who really wants to take advantage of the port.
I guess I could be misinterpreting the rules, but they way I read it was that newly introduced smartphones had to use USB-C by that date and older models were grandfathered and could still be sold, which would mean Apple didn’t even have to switch until the 2025 models. No matter what date they switched, though, both sides would complain because, even more than cat videos, that is what the internet gives people most!Well, we do know that Apple did not “hate” USB-C as it was already being used on many devices. Plus, the EU said all smartphones must have USB-C by December 28, 2024.
(“Hey, Apple, we want to take credit for having you switch, when are you planning for USB-C?”
“2023.”
“Ok, we’ll say 2024 so just in case you can’t make it, we can still claim that we made you do it.”
”Fine. But this is the date we’ve been planning for years, so, yeah.”)
Now, I’m curious when were all other smartphones in the EU using USB-C… must be a way to find that. Because if everyone other than Apple has been on USB-C for 3 or 4 years, it could be said that the EU was dragging their feet. Either that or, waiting for Apple.
If this was something Apple “hated”, we’d be getting USB-C next year, right before the deadline.
It won’t forever be a mystery, folks involved are just waiting until they retire to release the book they’ve been writing.
As you suggest, actual motivations are often speculative, at least until the "tell-all" book is released -- but then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. So, which "cigar" are we looking at in this case?
Prior to the EU passing their new legislation, Apple had protested, saying that "the proposal would hurt innovation and create a mountain of electronics waste." And subsequently, after the new law passed, Apple expressed resignation about the change, noting that, "We think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to not have a government be that prescriptive."
So sure; it's easy to suggest that maybe Apple would have gone all-in on USB-C anyway; even Apple's protestation clearly leaves at least a little wiggle room for that interpretation. The real question is, would they necessarily have done it as soon as they did, absent legislation? Even given that they ultimately beat the deadline by over a year, I'm still not convinced that this so readily matched up to their existing plans.
I think that the explanation can easily be much less complex than your proposed narrative: rather, when the writing was on the wall, Apple chose to act quickly and decisively in order to minimize the risk of disruption to their business. And to me, that more than adequately explains why the iPhone 15 series uses USB-C.
We do know, for sure, that Apple didn’t decide, in 2022, to release a USB-C smartphone in 2023, these decisions are made years ahead of time (especially considering that USB3 support is built into the A17 Pro chip). Based on what we know from past releases, we’re talking about a 3-4 year lead time, maybe more. So, by the time the EU said “Two years from 2022”, Apple was already locked into a 2023 release.
And, others put it better than I could, when Apple says “the proposal would hurt innovation and create a mountain of electronics waste,” they are indeed talking about the current state waste, but they’re referring to innovation being hurt in the future. USB-C is not a ‘forever’ port. Eventually something better WILL come along and, unless this is rescinded, this limits the adoption of anything new and better. Apple doesn’t hate USB-C, they disapprove a mandate that restricts Apple’s ability to deliver better solutions worldwide.
I have no doubt that in 2026, they’ll be talking about how they forced Apple to use USB on their laptops due to their mandate.