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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

>I can't think of any non-emotive motivation for their actions, and I can see plenty of large downsides.

Epic wants to play the long game. They want the Epic Games store on PC and mobile and Apple is half of mobile. Having an opportunity to become the Steam of mobile is a very valuable proposition, especially given that IOS was apparently less than 10% of Fortnite income.

I see it as the opposeite of emotive; it's a cold calculation playing a very long game with hopes of market capture in a scene where no one else seems to care about premium games (including Epic. But who knows how that will turn out over the decade).

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Of course… what’s to stop Valve letting Epic spend all this money on lawyers getting the market set up, and then simply making Steam, with its immense market share, developer support, and positive consumer sentiment, the Steam of iOS?

AFAIK the only reason anyone uses Epic Games Store is for Fortnite. Can Epic really count on that to carry them? It’s been a lasting fad for sure, but all fads end.

Fads end, but some have real lasting power, like LEGO or Minecraft. I haven't played Fortnite but from what I know of it, it may have similar lasting power.

Judging by my nine year old, Epic will be doing fine for some time. They have an ecosystem of other tangentially related games available, including a Lego RPG-type game all built on top of their v-bucks payment system and their account/social network.

Nothing. Having multiple competing stores will be good for the market.

Fortnite's annual revenue was $6 billion last year. Assume operating an app store costs $10 million/year/platform they only need to sell $30 million of Fortnite to break even relative to the world where they're giving Apple 30% of their profits. They're not "competing" with Steam they're doing in-house publishing, which likely saves tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars which would otherwise be free profit for Apple.

>what’s to stop Valve letting Epic spend all this money on lawyers getting the market set up, and then simply making Steam

I'd love to know just as much as you do. Valve just hasn't shown much interest in mobile ever. Even the few games they have on mobile are older games that Nvidia decided to port for them once upon a time. They've shown interest in Linux and VR, but never mobile.

If that demand does exist, and Valve just doesn't want to invest, I can see where Epic wants to come in.

>an Epic really count on that to carry them? It’s been a lasting fad for sure, but all fads end.

I'm not sure. It's a risk but there's multiple ways to approach it. I imagine such a model would have a mix of large f2p games that can advertise itself and premium games to try and attract core gamers or those who do not want to be nickle and dimed by f2p games.

But at the same time that justifies the attempt. Fortnite probably won't last forever, so the need to find a more stable financial stream while they have the money flowing in makes sense.

I always thought Epic wanted to push Apple's button until they showed their true face which, by the way, it seems to have worked wonders on EU upon DMA.

We should be thankful that somebody stuck out their neck and paid the price to challenge the world’s richest corporation this way, regardless of Epic’s motivations.

Like Google in its past “don’t do evil” life, Apple still strongly believes that they are the good guys by default, simply by existing. That kind of culture can make a corporation oblivious to the influence they’re actually having.

I think you misread the comment, no? The comment isn't about Epic, it's about Apple being temperamental & emotional & digging themselves into deeper and deeper trouble.

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