I think it's ridiculous that you think it sounds ridiculous. If people actually cared about this stuff, there would be a massive market opportunity for a compet

I think it's ridiculous that you think it sounds ridiculous. If people actually cared about this stuff, there would be a massive market opportunity for a competitor to make a product that satisfied people's demands. But they don't, so there isn't. Most of the noise in the community is from people who just enjoy seeing Apple squirm and probably aren't even an Apple customer anyway. Meanwhile the entities spending real money to lobby governments on this issue actually only care about getting around Apple's increasingly consumer-protecting app review process — they tolerated the 30% fee right up until the very same month that Apple started forcing developers to inform users if they were tracking users between apps. They want side-loading so they can track you, not so they can extract more money from you. Because they know they won't. Yes, entities like Epic might be able to sell apps with a lower marginal cost (not a lot lower, as they'll be handling stuff like fraud and refunds themselves, and Apple is still entitled to a software license fee) but the simple act of requiring consumers to enter their credit card number into an app is going to reduce transaction completion rates. I'd be willing to bet by at least 30%.