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While I broadly agree with your sentiments, Epic's issue here isn't the percentage commission per se. It's the fact that both Stores do not allow apps that cir
by nmfisher 6y ago
While I broadly agree with your sentiments, Epic's issue here isn't the percentage commission per se.
It's the fact that both Stores do not allow apps that circumvent Apple/Google's payment systems for in-app purchases (and in Apple's case, the fact that side-loading is prohibited, forcing you to use the App Store for any software you want to run on portable Apple devices).
If you took a favourable interpretation, a 30% commission only becomes anti-competitive once Apple/Google take away any alternative.
That being said, I don't agree with that and I'm still not clear what the legal basis for that argument is. I'm leaning towards Epic losing this one mightily.
- judge2020 6y agoOne of their points in court was attacking the 30% since they do, indeed, love the traffic the App Store brings them (since not all players found Fortnite via EpicGames.com). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24669192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24669192
- nmfisher 6y agoOf course they're going to attack the 30% as too high. Obviously, their best outcome is reducing that percentage to zero. But to get there, their argument obviously can't be "Apple is a monopoly allows it to extract 30%, which is too high, so we want it reduced to zero". That's not going to work. Rather, they get it to zero by saying "Apple is a monopoly and prevents competition by banning apps that implement their own payment processing system, so leave the 30% as-is but let any app implement its own payments". So the actual percentage, and the restriction against accepting payments outside Apple IAP, are two slightly different concerns. Reducing the percentage to 20% would obviously be a net financial win, but it's definitely not their main objective.