It's not easy to explain to the client saying apple take 30% while normal credit card fee takes 5% to 8%.
You should rethink your argument, cause no one is comparing Apple to a credit card issuer. It’s not like Apple forces you to pay with Visa, which hypothetically takes 8%, when Amex hypothetically takes 5%. Paying through Apple’s store, you can still use Debit or Credit, or buy gift cards... the credit card comparison is really out of place (just as an aside, if the card linked to your Apple ID is a credit card, then the credit card issuer will take a percentage, which I assume (though I may be wrong) comes out of Apple’s 30%, and not out of the dev’s 70%, since Apple is the ones operating the payment system)
Well you need an actionable cause before you can bring a case to court. You can’t sue on a hypothetical outcome.
You don’t need the willfully break TOS to challenge it’s validity in court, I don’t think.
So yeah I don't think most of you discussing EPIC vs Apple know how most of these free to download games work and how the Apple App Store ruins their income stream. Its not about wanting the store to be free, it coming up with something that doesn't involve the Apple store from taking 30% of Microtransactions. Its the way the store works.
I do think most of us do. No income stream is ruined either. The business model – or income stream if you will –is completely irrelevant; why should a developer that makes its income from charging a price for the download of its app pay the cut, and a dev that makes its income from microtransaction shouldn’t? There is a cost to making business. In Apple’s ecosystem (and in Sony Playstation’s, Microsoft Xbox’s, Nintendo Switch’s, Google Play Store’s, ...) that cost is 30% of what is sold through that specific platform (nothing precludes users from buying their in-game currency on their PC/Mac, which doesn’t use any of the aforementioned platforms). If they were to sell physically, it’s be the price of printing media, distribution, plus the seller’s cut, which would amount to more than 30%, and probably wouldn’t include a lot of the things Apple offers its developers.
In my opinion, Epic proved pretty clearly that Apple doesn’t have a monopoly when it comes to gaming devices (when they just listed to their players all the other places where they can play the game’s new season) which also demonstrates that they don’t have enough market influence to brute force apps into their ecosystem regardless of the TOS. If they did, Epic would’ve had no choice but to stay in the App Store. Any game developer is free to develop for any other platform if they don’t agree with Apple’s TOS. Epic was already making bank before developing the mobile version of Fortnite.
I say “when it comes to gaming devices” 'cause personally, I think phones are now so multi-usage and compete with so many different types of goods that you can’t simply say they have a monopoly without looking at each market separately. Do they have a monopoly in video distribution when you can buy blu-rays, or buy digital copies on a variety of other stores, or stream directly to your TV (through your cable company, or a streaming box, etc) or your computer? Do they have a monopoly in book distribution when you can buy physical books, or buy books for a kindle, or go to a library? Do they have a monopoly in the gaming space when you can play games on a PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC (I won’t put Mac, cause... really?), stream them via Stadia, etc? ...
In order to argue that Apple has a monopoly in any of these, you have to further qualify the segment: monopoly in video distribution? No. In digital video distribution? No. In digital video distribution on mobile platforms? Still no. In digital video distribution on a mobile platform that happens to be iOS and where the actual purchase takes place directly on said device? Ding ding ding. With that logic, you can always further qualify your segment until you make it so overly specific that you create a monopoly. Admittedly, in gaming you don’t have to get quite as specific, since you can’t buy a game elsewhere to then play on your phone, but you can certainly buy a digital game elsewhere and play it elsewhere. You can even play it on another mobile platform... the court will have to decide how specific they want to be, but it seems a reach to me... even if you take apps as a whole, you can develop apps/applications/programs for iOS, macOS, Windows, Android, Linux, etc. So even then, no one is forcing anyone to develop apps for iOS if they don’t like the TOS.
... Do they have a monopoly in mobile operating systems? Nah. Are they in a Duopoly? Yeah, sure.