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Epic Games CEO says Apple's decision to not carry certain games could be a death sentence to those games
- Thread starter Ser_Luke
- Start date
Games wont be cheaper if apple drops the tax. Epic game store has proven that. This is just epic being upset they shot themselves in the foot, and trying to rile up the masses for their own gain.
Yes, two-fold. First, the comparison of mobile devices being ubiquitous in modern society, an important point also made in the US case against Windows with regards to PCs. And second, that console makers subsidize the cost of their platforms through the storefront fees. In other words, consoles wouldn't exist without those fees and devs would have no platforms without their fees supporting the consoles, whereas Apple imposes the fees exploitatively simply because it has control of the platform and can -- purely for its own self-benefit and the detriment of app developers.
Yea, but it's clearly Epics priority to keep it in the news cycle. It doesn't matter if it's a clickbait title or news article, the only thing they seem to care is to keep their fans riled up. Before you know, one of them asks why not just roll back the changes and get Fortnite back on their iOS devices.
There are plenty of ways for console makers to monetize and consoles are no longer the loss leader they used to be. Let's drop the bullshit rhetoric. The fact that the big 3 haven't budged or offered a bigger cut to devs for decades is telling.
Citation needed something fierce on that last part.
Also, not sure why people keep mentioning Microsoft, as of Apple has 90%+ of the market. It's like everyone heard about an instance of a monopoly and then decided it must be similar circumstances with absolutely everything else if someone says the same magic word.
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I have no idea why this argument is supposed to hold legal water at all. Why is it any of Apple's business that console manufactuers are willing to subsidize their hardware? There's no law that says "once you have high enough margins you must change business practices!" AFAIK.
It's also factually wrong since Nintendo famously likes to launch their consoles at a profit and further hardware revisions and manufacturing improvements always bring loss leaders back into the black anyway. By this logic, console manufactuers should be dropping their store cuts later in the console lifecycle, but strangely no one seems to care about that in the context of platform holder profit margins.
No idea why people are for shaking things up with some companies but interested in defending the status quo for others. It's really baffling.
I don't know about his whole statement, but bullshit rhetoric? I was under the impression consoles almost always start as large loss leaders and then as you get further into the gen, especially with some sort of revision or slim type console, only then does the consoles become profitable, but certainly lose money for first couple years. If my understanding of how consoles generally operate, I wouldn't call that dudes claim bullshit rhetoric.
I mean reading his actual tweets in the op i don't think he is wrong. Apples iron fist control of the app store is a bad thing. However, it's obviously a self inflicted would by epic. But honestly I'm happy someone is actually big enough to take apple to court on their app store policies.
I don't have Apple stock nor do I have any Apple products (I don't own an iOS or Mac device, tbh I'm too poor for either since Apple stuff is always pretty high priced products).
There's more important things than my "pocket books" but that argument doesn't make sense anyways because:
* a smaller cut prevents gift cards from existing because they then lose money for the company due to gift card legislation in the US. This is why Epic doesn't offer any Epic Games gift cards - because they can't eat that kind of loss across the entire system on 12%.
* a smaller cut prevents the company from eating higher merchant surcharges, as there are some merchants used in foreign countries with cuts that already hit 12+%. These are not common, but the lower in cut you go (like the guy above who suggested 5%) the more common it gets. 30% cut is also used to eat these fees so the consumer doesn't have to pay them if they use one of these merchants, which they do have to pay them on Epic.
* there's no proof that a smaller cut leads to lower base product prices. Metro Exodus costs the same on EGS that it does on Steam. For that matter, basically every game on the EGS costs the same that it does on Steam if they're on both platforms, even though Steam has an 8-18% higher cut. I get you probably think this is the case because Tim Sweeney said it and they lowered the prices on Fortnite, but those price lowerages on Fortnite are not stated to be permanent anywhere and can easily be taken back if they win the court case against Apple, and other non-Epic products on his platform are not cheaper due to his lower cut.
So my pocket books aren't really changing then, eh?
In the end, I'm against Epic here for 4 reasons:
* They weaponized kids with their marketing on this. Utterly disgusting behavior. I don't know how anyone can side with them after this alone.
* I believe stores should be able to take whatever cuts or charges they can get away with. If other companies don't like it, they'll go to other stores. If consumers don't like that, they'll get angry and force the store to change. So what Epic is doing here is basically what I'm okay with, except the way they went about it is really shitty because a) the bullet point above this one about kids b) they forcefully did a change that knew that would get them banned and then complained about getting banned and c) they went to court over it to try to forcefully get it changed over their self inflicted wound, when they should have just peacefully left the service. People do this in real life with other stores ALL THE TIME. Companies stop selling products at X place, move over to Y place peacefully.
* Epic's solution to this problem isn't making Apple lower their cut, they want to implement an alternative payment method that bypasses Apple directly and gives them 0% and make that payment method the best. That's so ridiculous Epic would never allow it on their own platform. No store would agree to sell other people's stuff and get 0% back. Are you kidding me?
* Epic is extremely hypocritical and are completely ignoring Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo who all take the same cut, do similar services, provides similar value to Apple as a product distributor, have the exact same type of ecosystem, and also make their own hardware. They just gave these platforms cheaper prices like the PC platform has without bypassing their payment methods, even though these console platforms are no different than Apple's. (e: The two counterarguments by Tim on this make no sense either btw. Apple devices aren't anywhere near 90% marketshare like Windows was, and Apple also lowers the cost of manufacturing their new devices yearly by the 30% cut no different from how console makers do)
At the end of the day, Epic is doing this because they know iOS is important (33% of the Fortnite population is on iOS), and they want all the services Apple provides through their iOS without having to pay Apple for anything.
I just said that consoles aren't the loss leaders they used to be.
Console makers have established the 30% cut since the last 40 years. We cannot be working with the same economics given how the developer market has evolved over this time. It's rarely justified nowadays. So let's talk about the middleman cut, but this conversation has to happen everywhere, not just limited to specific platforms.
You're mixing up the storefront fees with the licensing fees. Online storefronts for console games have only meaningfully existed for about a decade. The fee that is charged there is to keep pricing in line with retail (as well as to line the company's profits, of course). Like, if MS suddenly decided not to charge 30% on digital Xbox purchases, you'd see the death fo retail games overnight.
Huh? He was worried Microsoft was trying to turn Windows into something like iOS where all apps must go through an official store. Just because Microsoft gave up on trying to make Windows a closed platform does not mean he was a hypocrite. He's only praising Windows now that Microsoft has committed to keeping Windows open.
Retailers are already suffering, the market is increasingly shifting to digital. Things are already heading in that direction.
How is Apple "the" monopoly? Google has a lot more market share then Apple.
"Smartphones running the Android operating system hold an 87 percent share of the global market in 2019 and this is expected to increase over the forthcoming years. The mobile operating system developed by Apple (iOS) has a 13 percent share of the market."
On the tablet market Google sells more then Apple too.
"Of the 36.6 million tablets shipped in Q1 2019, 9.9 million units were iOS-based, 21.6 million were Android-based and 5 million were Windows-based tablets."
Google sells more Chromebooks too.
"Chromebooks' market share jumped to 51% from 40%. Apple products, mostly iPads but also laptops and Mac desktops, declined to 24% from 32%. Windows-based machines remained steady at 23%."
"Smartphones running the Android operating system hold an 87 percent share of the global market in 2019 and this is expected to increase over the forthcoming years. The mobile operating system developed by Apple (iOS) has a 13 percent share of the market."
On the tablet market Google sells more then Apple too.
"Of the 36.6 million tablets shipped in Q1 2019, 9.9 million units were iOS-based, 21.6 million were Android-based and 5 million were Windows-based tablets."
Google sells more Chromebooks too.
"Chromebooks' market share jumped to 51% from 40%. Apple products, mostly iPads but also laptops and Mac desktops, declined to 24% from 32%. Windows-based machines remained steady at 23%."
If it was just to keep the pricing in line with retail then why not charge the 30% and let the publisher/dev keep the extra profit but have a rule to keep price parity? That will still keep the pricing in line with the retail so this argument doesn't make sense to me.
I mean, claiming that Apple has a "monopoly" over their own platform is a bit of a stretch. They have a minority of the smartphone market. By Epic's logic Nintendo has a "monopoly" because they control the Switch store, and Sony has a "monopoly" because they control the PS store, and Microsoft has a "monopoly" because they control the Xbox Store, and Epic loves all those walled gardens and works closely with all those console vendors.
…why? Are they the morally superior billion-dollar corporation?
Apple has (many) problems and I think their cut is usurious, but Epic is being pretty hypocritical here. They're buddy-buddy with all the console manufacturers and their equally walled gardens. They think they can just clutch their pearls and say "#FreeFortnite" and ride a wave of anti-Apple sentiment to having the Epic Games Store on the iPhone. A lot of people find the way Epic is trying to get gamers to "rise up" in their defense to be profoundly cynical and perhaps even more dangerous than anything Apple is doing with the App Store.
Neither company is our friend, but only one is pretending to be. That feels gross to me.
…why? Are they the morally superior billion-dollar corporation?
Apple has (many) problems and I think their cut is usurious, but Epic is being pretty hypocritical here. They're buddy-buddy with all the console manufacturers and their equally walled gardens. They think they can just clutch their pearls and say "#FreeFortnite" and ride a wave of anti-Apple sentiment to having the Epic Games Store on the iPhone. A lot of people find the way Epic is trying to get gamers to "rise up" in their defense to be profoundly cynical and perhaps even more dangerous than anything Apple is doing with the App Store.
Neither company is our friend, but only one is pretending to be. That feels gross to me.
We shall see, since if the rumours pointing to both the Series X and PS5 Disc Edition being $600 turn out to be accurate, it'll mark the second generation in a row whereby everyone was very close to breaking even on launch day. Given that'll span the smart end of a decade, that'll probably render that component of Epic's argument invalid.
From my high level understanding of the case, I don't think there's any way Epic can win in a manner that won't be immediately applicable to consoles. Ultimately, Epic's argument hinges on software being developed for a specific operating system (in this case, iOS) should be considered a market for competition purposes. That would immediately be applicable directly to consoles, since all PS4 games are, by definition, software for the PS4 OS.
I understand that they are, but that has nothing to do with what I said. If Xbox 360 launched with a digital storefront that was 30% cheaper than retail, retail would have died over fucking night. If they charge the same amount and 10-15% more goes to pubs than currently at retail, retailSTILL dies over fucking night, retail copies wouldn't be worth the loss to the pubs.
Either way you want to look at it, what you're saying and I was quoting was blatantly untrue: Licensing fees are NOT the same as the supply chain/storefront fees, which is what we're talking about here.
Tim Sweeny trying to spread fear about companies that might act as agents for government's censorship efforts while also tweeting an article which uses a made-up (somehow evil) China/Apple flag is too much irony for a single tweet. How can you tweet all of this and somehow forget that your own nickname is "Timmy Tencent".
Yes. Apple already said that's all they need to do. Epic can even continue their lawsuit and collect damages if they win. If this is really hurting Epic, then it's entirely self-inflicted at this point.
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Why should the platform holders and developers care if retail dies out? Because if it does it means more profit per games sold for them.
Tim Sweeney caught on film...
Hahahaha. This gif and its use is hilarious to me.
None of that matters legally and if it did Apple will come straight back and say game consoles are also marketed as and with ubiquitous features. Like being able to watch videos or watch Netflix on PlayStation.
The law does not care about 'subsidizing the cost' with trying to nail down an anti-trust case, so that argument trying to shield the consoles is not going to work at all. Hell predatory pricing to lock out competitors is anti-trust behavior.
Like literally the same arguments apply to consoles if you apply the Epic standard that they claim in their lawsuits.
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Tim Sweeney caught on film...
lol, this should be the first post!
And I've said the economics have changed. I didn't say 30% was unjustified before. The market is responding to the current reality.
"In the real world, when one store makes a crappy decision about which products it stocks, it's not a big deal - you just go to another store and buy it."
Hey Tim, what other store can I go to to buy Ooblets? Or is your walled - er, sorry - "curated" garden more acceptable because it's temporary.
Hey Tim, what other store can I go to to buy Ooblets? Or is your walled - er, sorry - "curated" garden more acceptable because it's temporary.
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Didn't he or someone involved with the EGS say they wouldn't allow crappy games on the store? The games Epic deems "crappy" deserve to die?
I don't think it was Sweeney, but an Epic representative.
*Edit*
Editing to correct myself. It WAS Tim Sweeney.
It's also hilarious because (much to many developers' chagrin) Apple allows almost literally everything on the store short of like creepy porn games. It's not like they're trying to be the arbiter of taste here. It's depresssing how many shitbox clones of popular games, many times using the originals' copyrighted materials, make it on to the App Store.
A lot of developers actually wish the App Store was more heavily curated.
Next time maybe don't try to cut out the company giving your product access to a massive worldwide platform, Timmy.
