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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

Ah, okay. Now I begin to see their goals.

I've been trying to wrap my head around why Epic would shoulder-tackle Apple in the space of app stores, when they have their own app store. Naively, I've been thinking that any ruling adverse to Apple here also impacts Epic's business model---if the government caps app store revenue cuts at, say, 10%, that's a slice off the top of what Epic can charge developers going through its store, too.

But Epic is a game publisher first, app store owner second. A fair and regulated market is a win for them, because it decreases the barriers to competition in the app store space while, on average, probably diminishing store owner cuts, which benefits developers, of which Epic is one. So a more regulated market is a net positive for them.

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It's highly unlikely that a regulator would cap Apple's cut at e.g. 10% like that. Apple is using a monopoly on distribution to enforce a monopoly on payments (and can thus monopolistically set prices arbitrarily) so it is most likely a regulator would force them to allow competition on distribution and payments, and thus allow the market to change the 30% organically, rather than just enforce a different arbitrary cut.

I think it’s worth noting how hostile Epic’s app store is to its customers.

They force you to use it to launch games you’ve already purchased from them, which just means you have to waste processor cycles to wade through a grip of their blaring ads (and can only imagine the data they’re collecting/monetizing from this)

Pure enter through the gift shop.

The dark patterns are egregious as well; a tech-savvy friend bought a game from them so we could multiplayer. I got a call from him 20 minutes later because he was unable to find the game he just purchased, even the transaction went through and it was downloaded.

Turns out they had a “feature” hidden in the preferences that was enabled by default to hide the library of your purchased games from the navigation menu.

I have never experienced that, and I use it since it was purely for the unreal engine, could you provide more details? I'm curious.

For what its worth, the game store sucks and the ue4 assets store works better, which probably shows where their attention is on

But the GPs anecdote shows where their intent is. They are not virtuous advocates for consumers.

Strange that that's an option. Looks like some sort of legacy option so Unreal Engine devs don't have to deal with the store.

Image of the option: https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/epic-games-store-c73/la...

Valve used to be a game publisher first and an app store owner second, too. I'm sure Epic's app store was in part inspired by looking at the immense pile of money Valve is now sitting on due to getting a 30% cut of most PC game money for most of the past two decades.

This is a good analysis but it always seemed so simple to me. If they win this ruling they overnight can make like a billion dollars more a year. Putting resources into this case makes more business sense then any other venture they could try.

Epic scored a lucky (?) hit with fortnite that brought them a lot of cash but I believe their bread and butter is their game engine where do they charge a percentage of the profits. Their store is more of a long-term investment, it might not bring a lot of revenue at the moment but if things go well for them it can easily convert to the top dog.

Epic doesn't take anything until your game makes $1,000,000 in gross revenue. After that they take 5%

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