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Comment by isodev | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. It was quite clear from the beginning this is more about Epic's bottom line than the interest of users or developers.

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And how are those two not related? Epic is a developer, therefore their bottom line is literally in the interest of developers. Furthermore, if a company has less fees to deal with then they can charge lower prices for the same product.

I doubt they'd charge much less. The price is mostly determined with what they believe people will pay.

They literally offered a sizable discount when they pulled this stunt.

The whole stunt was planned by Epic well in advance. Offering an outside payment option without lowering the price would have undermined their entire argument.

Make no mistake, when the dust settles, consumers will pay the same amount, but Epic will get to keep more of it.

There is nothing wrong with Epic wanting to increase its margins, but doing so under the rubric of helping the customer does get under my skin a bit.

That was a stunt.

Yes, Epic is a developer. So too is Tim Cook a user; does that mean that what's in Tim Cook's interest is in the interest of users, in general?

This doesn't logically follow; Epic's interests do not necessarily align with the interests of all developers, and they certainly don't necessarily align with the interests of users.

In particular, the whole point of this is that Epic wants to be more than just a developer: they want to be a platform owner, and run their own App Store. Most developers can't even dream of that—and probably wouldn't want to.

So what? Assuming that the battle does lead to an enforced (either via court or legislation) opening of the App Store or to massively reduced pricing for developers, the net outcome for users and developers is still positive.

One might even argue that it did need Epic as one of the largest mobile software vendors to challenge Apple both in PR and the courts. Small developers have complained without any effect whatsoever for years about the App Store restrictions (especially adult/otherwise "not family friendly" content, or wishing to use an HTML renderer that is not full of bugs) or Apple booting out their existence with no reason or way of appealing.

Apple lowered fees to 15% for smaller developers thanks to this fight. So regardless of their motives epic picking this fight is a good thing.

Sure this is a "win" but just like Apple being pro-privacy it is all PR and only luck that it is a good thing for users too.

Isn't the "luck" in that case the spirit of having a competitive market?

In an effort to stifle off regulation, the self-interest of giant corporations are aligned with their otherwise powerless developers - even if coincidentally.

If the duopoly wasn't under scrutiny, this "luck" would have run out as there would be no real viable competition.

If the person or company suing Apple needs to have no ulterior motives, you'll never get a lawsuit, let alone a successful one. The court isn't going to care about hypothetical accusations, the lawsuit has to be brought by someone who was materially harmed by Apple's behavior. Epic pulled their stunt to set up a blatant example of what they believed to be inappropriate behavior, and on at least one count the court agreed with them.

Basically, the only way we would ever see action on this in the US is if a big player - like Epic - pulled a stunt like this to force their hand. As the evidence in the case showed, Apple was happy to try and pay people off to prevent them from filing a case like this, they offered Epic a sweetheart deal and eventually caved to pressure from Amazon.

Of course, but Epic's bottom line isn't necessarily mutually exclusive to the interests of users or developers.

I disagree. We know an open market lowers prices for consumers.

Do we?

As I saw it, Epic's initial actions here were basically over the percentage of the pie they get to take, not reducing the size of the pie.

Yes we do, it is one of the guiding principles of free markets. But the US is going into a direction of giant all powerful corporations smothering any competition.

People love Apple I know but if other companies start doing this hopefully they'll reconsider.

I don't think it's very good for their bottom line. I'm pretty sure if they were a public company then their CEO would have been ousted by now.

According to the court disclosures, their iOS revenue wasn't as big as you'd think (less than 10%, iirc). If that's gross revenue, it would mean the net revenue is considerably lower. Once you factor in the costs to earn that revenue - maintaining the iOS client, OS-specific online services, etc - it probably wasn't too hard for them to stomach the hit, especially since the potential upside was pocketing more revenue in the future.

They were also making a larger scale play here, they want to get rid of 30% cuts in general, which means they get to keep more of their Android revenue and likely more of their revenue on PlayStation and XBox (The court case revealed that Sony is basically charging extortion money to allow cross-platform play.)

Of course? No company is a charity.

The perfect situation is when a companies' bottom line is in alignment with the interest of users and developers.

> It was quite clear from the beginning this is more about Epic AND Apple's bottom line than the interest of users or developers.

FTFY

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