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AFAIK Sweeney isn’t against stores taking a cut he just sees the 30% as egregious. V-Bucks whilst costing nothing to create are exchanged for things that did c

AFAIK Sweeney isn’t against stores taking a cut he just sees the 30% as egregious. V-Bucks whilst costing nothing to create are exchanged for things that did cost money to create and as a means to fund the existence of the game itself.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> V-Bucks whilst costing nothing to create are exchanged for things that did cost money to create and as a means to fund the existence of the game itself. Right, but the only scarcity of the "good" is that which Epic creates. If more people have V-Bucks, then current skins are less exclusive and become less valuable. I don't think the cost of V-Bucks has an impact on consumer buying power, except in the most pedantic sense. I don't mean to imply that The Emperor Has No Clothes; the less revenue Epic gives to Apple, the more revenue Epic has to improve Fortnite for their customers. Rather, I think this all speaks to the paucity of the US's current antitrust standard. As long as Facebook is "free", they can be as anti-competitive as they like, and prices will not increase. But consumers pay in other ways—with their data, with their eyeballs, and by missing out on products that never had the chance to exist.
makomk 6y ago
Epic are not Costco and the amount they charge for items is not simply designed to repay what it costs to create the items and the game - in fact by all accounts they're raking it in. I'd be very surprised if they hadn't carefully tried to optimize their pricing based on what they expected to give the most revenue, which of course would lead to a pricing model very much like the one they actually had prior to this PR stunt where the pricing is independent of whether Google or Apple or Sony are taking a cut, and the amount taken by the platform only affects how much of that price Epic get to keep.

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AFAIK Sweeney isn’t against stores taking a cut he just sees the 30% as egregious. V-Bucks whilst costing nothing to create are exchanged for things that did c

by meheleventyone 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> V-Bucks whilst costing nothing to create are exchanged for things that did cost money to create and as a means to fund the existence of the game itself. Right, but the only scarcity of the "good" is that which Epic creates. If more people have V-Bucks, then current skins are less exclusive and become less valuable. I don't think the cost of V-Bucks has an impact on consumer buying power, except in the most pedantic sense. I don't mean to imply that The Emperor Has No Clothes; the less revenue Epic gives to Apple, the more revenue Epic has to improve Fortnite for their customers. Rather, I think this all speaks to the paucity of the US's current antitrust standard. As long as Facebook is "free", they can be as anti-competitive as they like, and prices will not increase. But consumers pay in other ways—with their data, with their eyeballs, and by missing out on products that never had the chance to exist.
makomk 6y ago
Epic are not Costco and the amount they charge for items is not simply designed to repay what it costs to create the items and the game - in fact by all accounts they're raking it in. I'd be very surprised if they hadn't carefully tried to optimize their pricing based on what they expected to give the most revenue, which of course would lead to a pricing model very much like the one they actually had prior to this PR stunt where the pricing is independent of whether Google or Apple or Sony are taking a cut, and the amount taken by the platform only affects how much of that price Epic get to keep.