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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Apple platform is closed like gaming consoles. Epic almost certainly knew this was going to happen. I think they are trying to build a case for regulatory intervention.

US Antitrust is still in the 80's Chicago School era where antitrust is solely based on consumer benefit and and efficiency. EU has more broad approach where economic power in the public interest is important. It may be up to the EU to change how Apple does business.

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If Epic is planning to rely on US anti-trust intervention, they will be waiting a very long time, even in a best-case scenario situation.

Unless they know something the public doesn't about a prior case file, this stuff takes a long time to be fully investigated and go through the courts.

That's why I think it's up to the EU.

Still won’t be quick. EU has bigger things to deal with right now and even if they do pass something the ECJ would then be involved no doubt.

They don't have to pass new laws for this.

Epic could sue in some EU country or some European game developer might jump in.

This seems like a close and shut case of consumer harm right here.

Apple can argue its 30% surcharge protects consumers from their payment information being tied to each individual product, making canceling easier and buying things safer.

Paypal does the same thing and charges an order of magnitude less.

which I very much agree with.

... and competitors do the same for less than a tenth of that cost. The only thing that allows them to do so is complete control over the ecosystem to shut out all competition.

That's literally the value add Apple is selling. A completely controlled ecosystem not infiltrated by 20 payment middle men. Youre paying a premium for noise filtering.

I pay them so I don't need to make the choice!

If I wanted a different choice I'd buy a different brand of phone.

You mean Really just one different choice, no? I’d like to choose webOS or Windows Phone, but I can’t.

Also, many can dislike this issue but still not buy an Android. It isn’t like this is the only differentiator.

An oligopoly is an oligopoly. Would be redundant to bring in how this one has mediocre products now.

Then let the market decide if they're ready to pay 30% for that, when they can get <1% at larger competitors who are not even allowed on the platform. iOS is so ubiquitous at this point it should be treated by regulators as a platform, not as a product.

Sure and if they believed consumers value that, they wouldn't object to competing with alternative payment options.

If that were the legitimate reason, then they could accomplish the same goal by requiring all in-app purchases to have the option of going through them, rather than exclusively going through them. Then people who cared enough to pay the 30% Apple tax could have that protection, and the rest of us could save a lot of money.

I agree that is a sensible compromise, like login. "If you support our competitors, you must support our implementation to benefit from placement in our index."

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