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Epic's most likely goal here is to use their muscle to get a discount in both the Apple & Google distribution fees. Quite sure they will settle something like t

Epic's most likely goal here is to use their muscle to get a discount in both the Apple & Google distribution fees. Quite sure they will settle something like this out of court and noone will be the wiser. To paint this with a Securing Lasting Freedoms for All headline is a farce of the most disgusting variety.

hinkley 6y ago
My inner cynic thinks this is an attempt to paint themselves as outcasts and use it to convince their audience to jump through hoops to give them even more money. But if nothing else, I now understand why Kindle is so 'stupid' as to not have a way for me to buy a book without bouncing out to amazon.com and clicking half a dozen buttons. They don't have a choice. As we were discussing recently with Amazon comingling, the whole notion of retail is that you take on some of the liability of the product, logistics and inventory management risks, in exchange for a big slice of the profits. I'm curious if there's any way that a large vendor on the Apple or Google app stores could make it more of a partnership, split more of the risks and the rewards. I'm just not sure how you'd swing that. If the app store is down, that's all on Apple or Google. If the Steam portal in the App Store is down, that is going to reflect on Apple/Google more than it does on Valve, or Paradox games. You can't split curation, billing is iffy. Advertising, maybe, but how much does Apple really do/provide? I've said before that I think Apple should lower their margins on the App Store, but I'm not sure how you would make that fly politically. The margins on their other units are at least that high, and all companies end up paying lip service to their least profitable division even if it's important. Put $30m into new materials science for the Apple Watch 9 case, or put $25m into a facelift for the App Store? Decisions, decisions...

hinkley 6y ago

My inner cynic thinks this is an attempt to paint themselves as outcasts and use it to convince their audience to jump through hoops to give them even more money. But if nothing else, I now understand why Kindle is so 'stupid' as to not have a way for me to buy a book without bouncing out to amazon.com and clicking half a dozen buttons. They don't have a choice. As we were discussing recently with Amazon comingling, the whole notion of retail is that you take on some of the liability of the product, logistics and inventory management risks, in exchange for a big slice of the profits. I'm curious if there's any way that a large vendor on the Apple or Google app stores could make it more of a partnership, split more of the risks and the rewards. I'm just not sure how you'd swing that. If the app store is down, that's all on Apple or Google. If the Steam portal in the App Store is down, that is going to reflect on Apple/Google more than it does on Valve, or Paradox games. You can't split curation, billing is iffy. Advertising, maybe, but how much does Apple really do/provide? I've said before that I think Apple should lower their margins on the App Store, but I'm not sure how you would make that fly politically. The margins on their other units are at least that high, and all companies end up paying lip service to their least profitable division even if it's important. Put $30m into new materials science for the Apple Watch 9 case, or put $25m into a facelift for the App Store? Decisions, decisions...