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Comment by rndmze | Hacker News Reader

finger crossed.

Fortnite is not really the hill I have seen this battle take place. For example Apple also rejected the satirical app of a Pulitzer winning journalist (it does not make their app good but suggests that the content was probably not just a fart joke).

Still, people should be able to install whatever they want on their phones, without Apple playing walled garden.

It is not good for devs getting squeezed by the platform owners, it is not good for people being able to install whatever they want, and quite frankly it is not good for freedom of speech either.

I am not including Google here since their policy is a bit more defendable, you can sideload apps without too much trouble, I even believe that Epic uses that mechanism to do not have to pay the 30%.

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Epic has the massive financial war chest to see this through, though. If anyone can afford to push this through the legal process, it's Epic.

This will cost Epic more money than it will Apple. Either company can end up dragging the legal battle on for years. In the meantime Epic's game won't be available on Apple platforms. By the time that battle is over, the game is probably not popular anymore.

That's what I thought of Fortnite over a year ago, it's proven to have surprising longevity and seems to be rivaled only by Minecraft for capturing the attention of young people.

Honestly Fortnite has been consistently popular for a few years now. I'm betting on it becoming another Minecraft type of game where it could be still popular in 5-10 years from now.

Fortnite grosses hundreds of millions of dollars on the App Store [1]; every dollar spent is a cut Apple counts toward its $10B+ annual gaming revenue numbers [2]. It is not an understatement to say that Fortnite, as a single application, is responsible for single-digit percentages of Apple's gaming revenue (which, while small as a whole, is a TON of money).

This move hurt Apple, full stop. It will likely cost them somewhere in the range of $50-$200M per year. You can quote me Apple's annual revenue, but I know what it is. Fortnite's contribution to it is small, but its probably far, far larger than most people here realize.

Of course, it hurts Epic more on the short term. But, long term, maybe Fortnite gets to come back at a lower rate; maybe they'll get to use their own payment processor; maybe the courts will actually work, and they'll force Apple to allow competing storefronts, which would enable the Epic Games Store to release on iOS, earning huge revenue for Epic.

And what's more: Epic's bread and butter has always been Unreal Engine, which is charged at a rate of 5% of a game's revenue (above $1M I believe, below that its free). Unreal is absolutely used for iOS game development. If Epic can win even a lower rate for all game devs, it amplifies their iOS earnings on Unreal; more money in the devs pockets means more money in Epic's pocket.

Epic's warchest is massive; its not just Fortnite, but also money from Tencent. They have the support of their massive community, including impressionable adolescents. They picked a time just weeks after Tim Cook was torn apart by Congress for allegations of antitrust. They're joining the ranks of Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and every other company that Apple has screwed over with their policies. They can fight this out, and its hard to say what the exact outcome will be, but whatever it is, Apple will not like it. Apple is on the wrong side of history.

[1] https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/fortnite-hits-1bn-in-...

[2] https://www.cultofmac.com/632642/apple-worlds-fourth-largest...

I just re read strategy letter V [1], and combined with your post, I now realize that reducing the 30% fee for developers is essentially making a "complementary good" (publishing on iOS) cheaper for developers. That makes unreal more valuable.

Thanks for clarifying that framing for me.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Google has also removed Fornite from it's own store[0] so it's guilty of the same screwy policies as Apple.

[0]https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368079/fortnite-epic-an...

The difference, of course, is that Android is an open platform and users still have multiple different options of installing Fortnite if they wanted to.

I feel its different.

Google (and Apple) should have a say in what they sell in their storefronts. Suggesting that they have to carry any application submitted to them, law permitting, is taking the situation too far. Even demanding that applications submitted through the store use their IAP frameworks, at the 30% fee, feels alright to me.

The line is drawn at "is that store the only option". In Google's case, it isn't. Epic, and Android itself, has a road ahead of them getting users into alternative storefronts, but Android has the capability, and I think we're headed in the direction of alternative storefronts being the norm. This is especially true given that Google really does not control the hardware; Samsung has been working with Microsoft a lot lately, and being a Galaxy S20 user, I get a strong feeling that Samsung's relationship with Google is not a happy one.

I wouldn't underestimate Epic here. They've already succeeded at securing cross play from xbox and playstation and are strongly motivated to keep their app on iOS.

Given the money at stake, they are also strongly motivated to do it without paying Apple's 30% ransom

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