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Comment by yyyk | Hacker News Reader

The reality of the legal system is that all small companies would just get worn out and forced to settle against Apple, regardless of the justice of their complaint.

No company smaller than Epic could afford to file such a case. I wonder whether any company could become large enough without having some way for people to argue that "it is not the general this particular battle needs".

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Sure, Epic's size is absolutely going to be helpful here. But there are other larger companies that could probably make better cases against Apple if they chose to: Amazon and Microsoft come to mind immediately, with Facebook a possibility given the events of just the last couple of days.

I'm not saying Epic is a bad poster child for this case because Epic is a sleazy company (although from all accounts they kind of are); I'm saying they're a bad poster child because their battle is running up a steeper grade.

Are they arguing that Apple's policies make it impossible for them to split money with authors at the same rate on ebooks? No. How about the policies making it impossible for them to give 100% of event ticket sales to their users and impossible for them to even tell users they'll make less money when people buy tickets on iOS? Nope. Maybe they make it impossible for them to put a client for a streaming game service, period, full-stop, even if Apple got a cut of the money? Negatory.

What does Apple's policies make it impossible for Epic to do, then? Get a higher cut of the revenue from Fortnite's game currency when it's bought on iOS. That's what got their developer account terminated. This is the stand they're taking, the flag they have planted, the hill they are ready to die on: that 70% gross profit on zero marginal cost virtual tchotchkes isn't enough.[1]

Maybe this case will be successful, but my suspicion is that if Apple changes their position, it's going to be either due to regulatory pressure or the ever-increasing weight of the rolling PR disaster they're getting themselves into.

[1] Edited to add: As I wrote, I think it's ultimately about them wanting Apple to be forced to allow the Epic Games Store to be installed on iOS through the Apple App Store, but the case they're bringing is still about Fortnite.

I agree with most of your points. The one question I'd like to return, however, in response to your 70% question is this: does apple deserve 30% of all developer income? That seems steep. I think the 70 % argument is a bit of a red herring. If you think that virtually cost free products should cost less, that's a different argument. But once the price is set, why should get apple nearly a third of it? If anything, lower cuts could result in lower overall prices.

> Does Apple deserve 30% of all developer income?

That's the (literally) billion dollar question, right? Just with a bunch of other questions embedded in it: even if a 30% cut was okay in 2007, is it still in 2020? Aren't there a whole lot of different kinds of in-app purchases? What about subscriptions? Even if you still buy Apple's argument that the App Store isn't just a payment processor and should get more of a cut because of that, aren't there clear cases of in-app purchases where they literally are just a payment processor? I'm skeptical of the strength of Epic's particular case, but I definitely don't want to come across like I think Apple has been showering themselves in glory here. :)

When have ever you seen a price that is based on what someone deserves? In charity only.

In business it never was a case, and why should it be?

Well, clearly it’s profitable enough because companies bend over backwards to launch on iOS.

And Apple doesn’t “deserve” anything anymore than any company deserve anything. Apple built the iOS and iPhone platform, so they can charge based on that.

> ...lower cuts could result in lower prices

I’m not confident that if Apple stopped taking a cut that companies would lower prices.

Sure, but that's because there's no alternative. If you want users to see your app you have to use the system. That doesn't make it right though.

As for your second point, fair, but at least then we could blame them for being money hungry.

Sure there is. You can play the game on PC, Xbox, Switch, Android, etc.

If you want users to see the app you also have to use the iOS system on iPhone. You have to rely on Apple to build GPUs to process your game effectively. Why is the App Store treated so specially?

Imagine if Microsoft would charge for every application that you buy and install? People would shout and scream about monopoly.

If you want to charge people to use your platform there are other methods, e.g. developer licenses.

Your initial comment doesn't change my point, just moves the goal post. If I want to deliver no IPhones, I'm stuck with the system. And you can make the same argument for the Play Store.

I don't think PC/XBox quite fit in the same ball-park. The engagement model is very different on those compared to mobile devices. Which is why video games still cost 60$ but most people won't pay more than a couple of dollars for an app.

I don't think that's the real disagreement we're having though. I think the misalignment is on whether 30% fees are acceptable or not.

Fees were high before the App Store. Verizon VCast (or what ever they were calling it) was taking 70 to 80%. In all this time the percentage has not changed, While you dismiss the console market Apple pours just as much money into maintaining it's iOS ecosystem as any of the console makers.

I don't disagree with that. But again, you have to start somewhere.

30% sounds steep, I agree. But it's also industry standard. See: Google Play Store, Microsoft Store, Steam, Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon App Store, etc.

Doesn't that sound like a market failure? What kind of market supports such a consistent gross margin?

Oh I know, I think it's wrong across the board but you have to start somewhere.

Fair enough. Some companies do have a stronger case. MS and Amazon would however get pilloried here due to... other issues. Not many candidates around (unless some rich entity were to support a company's legal case from the shadows? These things do happen).

My suspicion is that Microsoft and Amazon aren't interested in charging in here because they're much more in "frenemy" positions with Apple; Amazon used to be fairly antagonistic toward the Big Fruit, but they've been more amenable to having their various services work together gracefully over the last few years, and Microsoft has ended up being pretty enthusiastic about Office on iOS. So they probably just figure that it's not worth going to war over.

It's shame that we all just accept today that a sufficiently large enough corporation is above the law. :(

Or, you know, you could get multiple companies working together. Why does it have to be a single company?

Theoretical objections of the sort "this could have been done some other way" are always rather strange, because they tend to ignore the actual fact that it has not been done some other way.

Yes, that would be possible. However, it is difficult to get multiple parties to cooperate and coordinate on an expensive for a long time. It requires a high degree of trust, or some form of legal instrument. Trust isn't very much around these days, maybe some clever legal instrument could have done it?

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