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Epic Games Has Paid Over $100 Million in Legal Fees to Fight Apple's App Store Rules

djphat2000 said:
Everyone, even the most purest truest, kindest CEO's.. Have to answer to shareholders.
Unless he owns the lion "share" or has board members that are TOTALLY on his side.

This was, is and continues to be a bad business move. He bet big on winning. Had he won, EPIC stood to gain. The savings from the 30% cut (over time) could have been made up the costs for the legal fees "IF", it was won relatively quickly. Especially, in the US. But he mostly lost in the US, even if you count the victory for putting links in the App Store or app to pay directly with the vendor. The cost to get people back??? IDK if you can get them back, since it has been awhile.
He had pole position with Apple. Keynotes, and great demos to show the world how good Apple hardware was. Year in and year out. And EARLY. He literally burnt that.

I remember playing Unreal, and Unreal Tournament on my Mac in the late 90's and early 2000's. Between that and Quake 3, IV (Id), Star Trek Elite Force. Oni, Halo (BUNGIE!!). I had plenty of fun on a computer never really built for gaming. But, I preferred MacOS and Mac Pro's over any intel PC running Windows.
What Sweeny did was literally a kick in the balls as far as I'm concerned. He cared not for the end user that could no longer play the cool games EPIC made. And let's face it. It's not like games are ANY CHEAPER. Yes, Fortnite is free to play. But, he literally saw fit to ruin that for even the Mac desktop users. And still lost out on a billion dollars for his troubles.

I personally don't view that as a good thing. But, that's me.
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And the customers need to stand up to Sweeney’s absolute greed.
 
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Ethosik said:
2.9% of a very small user base that will actually have the app store installed. The person said so themselves, they stopped the Amazon store due to the numbers. Doesn't matter if they take 0% if the time and investments literally means only a dozen sales.
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Oh I see the problem, you're not educated what happened. We are not talking about alternative app stores. The ILLEGAL activity Apple was doing was not allowing developers to specifically in-app purchases from their own app. Now, developers for the USA store can have a button to pay, auto-opens Safari, the user can click Apply Pay, when the transaction is complete, it returns back to the app. 2.9% fee + $0.30 fee. NOT a good deal for $0.99 price items. Those still good for using Apple's in-app purchase system since Apple takes 15% or 30%. But for anything above $2-3, and 9.99 or subscription items, developers can KEEP a lot more $. Hope that makes sense. Nothing to do with alt stores
 
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Art Mark said:
Likely will be reversed. The lack of monopoly makes this a curious place for government intervention. What's next, the X-Box store? Playstation?
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Why would a payment link be reversed
Apple don’t pay epic to sell their products like Walmart does for Coca Cola
epic are treated like an independent company on Apple’s platform that is why it won’t get reversed
 
RebeccaL said:
If Epic just followed the rules just like everybody else. The AppStore is not their store. They have to follow the rules or get out.

If they had, they would have made tons of revenue. Plus spend zero in legal fees.
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So for a company to get better terms from Apple they need to take them to court
That actually says it all in regards to this
 
Analog Kid said:
"But if you look at lost revenue, that's another story. We can't predict exactly how much we would have made on iOS, but in the two years that we were on the platform, Fortnite had made about $300 million on iOS. So you could have projected hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue as a result of the fight."​

The lost revenue had nothing to do with this case. The lost revenue was because Epic violated a totally different clause of the developer agreement. That wasn't a legal expense, it was a gambling loss. They bet Apple would abandon their principles before giving up the revenue stream from Fortnite, and they lost.
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This makes me laugh epic lost
How did epic lose when a judge has ruled that Apple have got to allow payment links & can’t charge 27% commission on it
Epic has managed to get Apple to change the rules & regulations for the whole of the iOS App Store going forward
 
jfreedle2 said:
And the customers need to stand up to Sweeney’s absolute greed.
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How is Tim Sweeney being greedy when all the guy wants is better conditions for his company
So to do that he’s had to take Apple to court because they wouldn’t negotiate so doesn’t that mean that Apple are being greedy by not negotiating in the first place
 
zahuh said:
Fair point! Everything you complained about someone is working on to make it easy to deal with. I assume you don’t have any patience but don’t worry my young eager friend, you’ll soon be very tempted to pay only 2.9% and question the 15% you’re giving Apple. Your message will not age well.
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2.9%? Where did you pluck that from?
I have an idea but I'll refrain from mentioning it.

Young? I'm a professional software engineer with 35 years experience and I also have an MBA.
The MBA part of me wishes there was something else as good as the App Store for finding paying users.
Double my income please. Take 15%, hell take 30%! You do know what an affiliate marketing network is, right?
There isn't. The Play store is a poor 2nd in comparison and Amazon's app store attempt was pathetic at best.

There's also the Phantom Menace of Meta behind all of this.
Zuck would just love to not have to follow Apple's strict privacy rules and bring all Meta app users to heal once again.
He could do that through a separate "freedom store". Free to do what he likes with you and your data.
That'll be the next big one. "Facebook & Instagram only available on Meta's new app store".

The ignorance in todays world trotted out like it's a beacon of sanity and enlightenment is just unbelievable...
"Wise men have something to say, fools just have to say something".
 
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DaveN said:
The Epic store. They need to allow add on sellers free access no matter how large the developer. Basically the same terms they demand from Apple.
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Apple does not have to offer their services for free.
 
djphat2000 said:
I would have also hoped he would mention all the end users that had nothing to do with his losing crusade. That could no longer play Fortnite just for the laughs at least. Many of whom may not come back.
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They cannot play because a$$le decided to block them...
 
RebeccaL said:
If Epic just followed the rules just like everybody else. The AppStore is not their store. They have to follow the rules or get out.

If they had, they would have made tons of revenue. Plus spend zero in legal fees.
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Even the iphone is not anymore an a$$le property once it's sold to a customer.
 
xyz01 said:
They'll earn it back by not having to pay 1/3rd of their revenue to Apple going forward.
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That's assuming there are still iOS customers wanting to pay for Epic games. And assuming there are enough of them to cover the cost of this whole multi-year courtroom drama.

We know Epic gave up 70% of a huge pile of money.

Will getting 97% of future sales actually make up for it? I have my doubts. I haven't heard my kids say the word "Fortnite" in years.
 
kenosecon said:
we don't need that game in iOS. just block the dev forever
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You do realize that only 7% of Fortnite customers played on iOS in the first place
This was all about changing the terms & conditions on the iOS app & they have managed to do it by a court order
That’s the point
 
Stuwil said:
This makes me laugh epic lost
How did epic lose when a judge has ruled that Apple have got to allow payment links & can’t charge 27% commission on it
Epic has managed to get Apple to change the rules & regulations for the whole of the iOS App Store going forward
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Because in a cult, you have a different perception of reality. So you always win...
 
It’s really tiresome reading people in this forum defend Apple’s practices here.

Several advanced economies have intervened against Apple’s practices in the App Store & now a judge in Apple’s home market has after epic’s case.

What makes people here think that they know better than people whose jobs are competition regulators and judges etc ?

Could it be that these experts - in multiple markets - are all wrong and that people on this forum are right? Doubtful.

Even if people here who are pure free marketeers are supporting Apple from that principle, even the father of free markets, Adam Smith said that government intervention was sometimes necessary to rebalance the market.

And in the USA, it’s taken sweeney’s cash & expensive lawyers to get to this outcome. Good job that Fortnite - and unreal engine 5 - are so successful.
 
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davide_eu said:
Because in a cult, you have a different perception of reality. So you always win...
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Exactly
If as some people claim that epic have lost then why are Apple trying desperately to overturn the payment links in apps
If it would make no difference to the iOS App Store profits
 
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