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Epic Games Pays Apple $6 Million as Ordered by Court
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Do the full math. Not just what you see. Lower the price of something, more likely people will make the purchase. That only leads to increased revenue for Epic at Apple’s expense. Since Epic already has in-house systems for payments and processing, they will be saving money overall. So the actual amount of savings isn’t passed on the consumer. Only the portion the customer sees. This is is called “economies of scale” which is something only mega corps can achieve.
And what does Apple get out of this? How will they get compensated for all their cost for having Epic in the App Store? The only party who takes a hit from this arrangement is Apple. Not Epic. If this was about the consumer or the small devs, Epic wouldn’t be appealing the ruling. The ultimate goal is for Epic to have their storefront so that they can get commission out of games that are hosted in their own platform.
Apple is the one who gets the short end of the stick. And small devs indirectly as the victims of unintended consequences.
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Wrong…
Epic has reduced vbucks by 20% when purchased through Epic store. They did this last August, PR stunt or altruism?
Cry me a river. Apple is the most profitable corporation in the entire world. A slight reduction in profits wouldn't cause Apple any problems.
Firstly I’m not sticking up for Epic, this isn’t a defence.
I edited my original post, not sure if you’ve seen it but I think it looks like this.
The usual price of 1000 vbucks is 7.99.
The iOS IAP purchase price was 9.99, take 30% off, and that comes to 6.99 effectively.
So rather than thinking Epic pocketed the extra $1 - think they lost an extra $1 when using Apple system as the normal price is 7.99.
I think their gamers on other platforms might have got upset if they charged Apple users directly the 6.99 price, when they normally charge 7.99…
Edit for terrible typing.
Extra clarity:
Epic got 7.99 from everywhere but iOS where they were only getting 6.99, until they listed the Direct purchase option for 7.99.
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70% of something is way better than 100% of nothing. Epic lost tens of millions of users when people couldn't play on iOS devices. I get that they want more money but there are other ways of getting people to pay that don't break the rules of the store.
The fact that the ruling allows for Apple to terminate Epics Unreal dev account is grounds for his dismissal. Whilst he’s within his right to argue for a better deal, has exposed an unrelated arm of the business to retaliation by engaging in corporate terrorism.
What about all the money they will be saving by having everything in-house and the extra revenue they would be generating from partially discounting the prices? Calculations don’t end with eliminating the cost you pay to others.
Will Epic give more discounts as they save more and make more? The answer is no.
I did see your edited post. Doesn’t change my point. The full math includes the whole operational cost and savings. Not only the few itemized points you insist on explaining.
FYI, Epic’s 1 dollar “loss” actually led to making hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to having access to millions of paying iOS customers. When you spend money to make money, it’s called cost of doing business. Epic wants the access to these paying customers in their own terms. That term is “asking for something for the cost of nothing”.
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Yes. Epic is a publicly owned company and you can most likely find their quarterly results in their investors relations page. You can examine their financials and get insights into their operations, costs, profits and losses.
All good, I removed the post. We were talking from slightly different angles, but all sorted now. Thanks for the discussion
Thank you and I appreciate that you are a reasonable commenter.
How do you remove posts here? Sorry, I am new. Is there a delete comment button somewhere or do I need to just edit it?
I would like to remove it as well like you did. We did settle out of court after all 😊
Epic is a megacorp itself but they have a problem paying their fair share.
So your logic is “Apple is big, therefore it’s ok to abuse it by stiffing it”? If that was the logic courts used, Apple would have lost every single lawsuit it was involved in including this one with Epic.
What are You talking about? That is THE argument. Calculations end with how much they save by not using Apple payment. They will pass on their costs of business, and will round to nearest whole dollar for your convenience, because math hard.
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You would be right if Epic didn’t demand being reinstated in the App Store with all their wishes to be delivered in silver platter.
Having access to millions of paying iOS customers while demanding to have your own storefront AND your own payment systems goes into category of paying $0 while reaping all the benefits. How does Apple get ROI on their innovations when Epic wants to conduct its business on iOS by hosting and charging devs by having them on their own platforms but not on the App Store?
If the money that Epic DOESN’T spend leads to increased revenue and profits, that’s a plus in any financial statement. Epic would have to pass way more than just 30% on to the customer to actually be able to say “they passed all the savings on to the customer.”
So no, the calculations DO NOT stop with 30% since Epic would directly benefit from having their own storefront, their own revenue stream, their own operational process while being on Apple’s platforms and using Apple’s paying customer base.
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It’s always been obvious to me that Epic want to have their apps on the App Store, even their own App Store on iOS devices and not have to pay apple a cent.
Look at how they behaved with Google. When Fortnite first launched on android it wasn’t available on the play store. You had to side load it from Epics website. Which is possible on android. In this way Epic kept all of the profits but were not breaking any rules. About a year later they decided they would have their app on the Google play store. They obviously felt they could get more customers this way. They put fortnite on the Google play store and agreed to pay the 30% cut. Then they pulled the exact same stunt as they did with apple. They put their own in app payment methods directly in the app. This obviously breeched the terms and conditions and the app was removed from the store. This however shows that they want all of the benefits of using Apple and Google’s App stores but don’t want to pay for it. The fact that on android they can bypass the play store altogether and that there are also alternative app stores. Yet these bozos thought they should get their app on the biggest App Store and pay nothing.
Why? What makes this 6 million different than the other billions they make each month? This money didn’t come easier than the others, on the contrary.
Epic on the other hand, make it seem like they don’t need to earn more money, since they promise to give 100% of the savings to the consumers… so we should ask Epic to pass on all future profit that exceeds their 2020 profit to charity.
(or, realise how much BS that statement is)