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If you could choose between 30% of a billion dollars, or 15% of twenty billion, which would you pick? There are externalities to each choice, of course, but th
by 015a 5y ago
If you could choose between 30% of a billion dollars, or 15% of twenty billion, which would you pick?
There are externalities to each choice, of course, but the correct answer is, actually, the obvious one. Apple is not in the right on this one, from any perspective. If they care about their users and developers: they'd drop the commission. If they cared about their revenue and investors: they'd drop the commission.
Fortnite's protest should have been the wake-up call for the people dead asleep at the wheel of their App Store division. Epic very likely would have stayed on the App Store indefinitely at 15%; the issue has metastasized, and now Tim Sweeny has taken the stance of "alternate payment frameworks or nothing", but I'd bet every dollar I've got that if Fortnite's IAPs were at 15% before they left, they'd still be on the App Store. Everything is about money at the end of the day; Apple doubled-down, so now Epic had to double-down.
Imagine a commission so reasonable that Netflix could sell its subscriptions there; that Amazon could sell books; that Fortnite could (maybe) return, and the next triple-A gaming hit that hadn't even considered mobile because of the commissions. That's the money Apple is leaving on the table. These companies WANT their products to be easy to buy; nothing makes that easier than App Store IAPs. There's a number that could work for everyone, but Apple comes to every negotiating table with their fingers plugged in their ears yelling "nah nah nah I can't hear you 30%"
Apple's App Store policies throughout the 2010s will go down in history as the biggest blunder big tech has ever made. I am absolutely certain of this. They're throwing away an empire that could last a hundred years, because they think they're invincible. Tim Cook literally said, under oath, "we don't know how profitable the App Store is". They've publicized proudly about how they employ five hundred whole people to do hundreds of thousands of App Reviews. This is not malice or greed; its complete and total incompetence. Why are investors not OUTRAGED at Apple's leadership?!
- raverbashing 5y agoFor real, obviously you're right. I wonder how much of this hard-headedness is on the App Store division and how much of it is Tim. Or just Apple Hubris. The only way the 30% would make sense is if publishing on the App Store was free. But of course it isn't, you need to pay a yearly fee for that.
- paulmd 5y agoI actually think it’s the exact opposite and Epic would have picked a fight with Apple even if the fees were 15%. This isn’t about fees and it’s not even (just) about Apple - Apple is just a relatively unsympathetic defendant for them to fire their opening shot. As noted, Microsoft fees are 30%, Google fees are 30%, etc, and yet Apple was singled out (with those companies actually jumping onto the lawsuit against Apple too). This is, more generally, about prying the Apple platform open, and other similar platforms like it. Remember, Epic didn’t start this suit over anti-steering clauses, the real goal here was epic getting their own third party store, which means they don’t have to pass an Apple review before being able to request permissions that let them mine data/etc. Thats a way bigger prize than (checks notes) 30% of 12 million dollars.
- stoobs 5y agoNail on the head, this is entirely about Epic wanting carte blanche access to a lot more eyeballs and wallets so they can ram in as many v-bucks purchases or whatever into the applications and funnel as much cash their way as possible. This was never about fairness for all developers, it was always Epic wanting a bigger slice of the pie factory.