Epic Taking on App Store 30%

Epic officially started a war with Apple today and got kicked off the app store over the 30% fees. Tim Sweeney's twitter has been nothing but Apple bashing for awhile so no surprise.

 

More context: https://www.ign.com/articles/apple-removes-fortnite-from-ios-app-store

 

This should be interesting.

 

Fight, fight, fight, fight!

 

Oh man, I'm so torn over this.

On one hand, I agree that the industry standard 30% cut is a bit exorbitant in some cases and I appreciate that someone with actual clout is using their position to push that in a better direction.

On the other hand... is this the way to do it? Those rules aren't new, and Epic explicitly agreed to them when they put their games on those platforms. It's not Apple who are changing their mind here, it's Epic. And Epic are absolutely smart enough to understand the exact letter of the rules and use them to their advantage - they do it with their dance moves.

I don't know what to make of it, because it comes down to the intent behind it, and nobody but Epic can know what that truly is.

 

That's the BS part. Actually everyone can know what is their intent. When the interest of developers and/or customers align with theirs they like to print a giant sticker and glue it onto their corporate agenda. When they don't they don't give a crap about developers or customers. In other words, they only care about their corporate interests and they are using developers as cannon-fodders. And people smile and swallow it.
It is simple as that.

 

Oh, now we're skeptical of corporations. When Unity says "democratizing game development" obviously their intentions are pure and great.

 

I've criticised Unity's take on democratisation in the past, among many other things. I believe that discussing such things openly is healthy, as it helps to broaden and challenge perspectives. Still, I'm having trouble thinking of any concrete examples of where they've unambiguously contradicted that particular value.

 

Unambiguously maybe not, but ambiguously there are tons of examples, but I don't want to get this thread too much off topic.

To get back on topic, Epic's also suing Google : https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/...awsuit-antitrust-app-play-store-apple-removal

 

Gotta love the way that Epic play the game! They certainly don't take their fortnite money and run.

I think the 30% commission thing is too high - as a small time indie I'm fairly happy with any opportunity to grow, but if I had a game business to run and employees to feed, and 30% of my stuff was taken just to put my product on a shelf, I don't think I'd be happy with that at all. I haven't seen any analysis that says that 30% is the 'right' figure (or any other figure, like 10%, for that matter), and it seems likely it simply persisted from the days when running online stores wasn't all that profitable. In many countries, not even tax is that high.

Anyway, I think the games industry needs a shakeup. We've going down a road of diminishing returns (for devs) and lack of competition (for stores) way too fast and for way too long now. I like that Epic has focused on something and swung the club on it. Personally I can't wait to see more competition, and I hope they do something even more crazy like starting an app store of their own.

 

That was my take on it. Having trouble seeing it end in Epic's favor. Otherwise, this could lead to quite an interesting shakeup, but I'm not sure how much indie & hobbyist developers will benefit at the end, if at all.

It would probably help me to read through the complaint itself... some other time.

 

This is clever.

Do you guys/girls remember this advertisement?

Re-Negotiation of agreements is a thing in business.

Maybe this is not the best way, but why not try it this way and see if it works?

 

Yeah, Epic's not trying to say Apple didn't play by their own rules, they are challenging the rules themselves, and win public support in the process by doing it in the open. Which is a good way to challenge a company like Apple - I'm sure they are very difficult to beat in the courtroom, probably much less so in the court of public opinion.

Epic will win something from this no matter what happens, even if it's just support for a new store.

 

Did Apple not say Epic tried to get a special agreement, or am I mistaken? If so, screw Epic. no one is above the Apple law!

If Epic were genuine in their quest to fight the 30% for all they would have pulled Fortnite from the store without trying to circumvent the developer agreement. I think they were just trying to squeeze an extra few percent and now they've been busted and are trying to cover it up with some story about for the greater good of developers and customers.

P.S.
Apple, Google, Valve, Microsoft, Amazon lower your 30% cut. #FreeDevelopers

 

For accuracy, they implied that what Epic really wants is a "Special arrangement", they didn't say they flat out tried to get one.

Epic denied it for what its worth : https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1294076353965428736

 

The plot thickens : https://www.engadget.com/fortnite-google-play-lawsuit-035741548.html?guccounter=1

 

Who wants to guess tencent is releasing a phone this year? Haha

 

They already did, last year. The Asus Rog 2 phone was co-developed with Tencent AFAIK.

 

Putting Epic's motives to the side, for me the more important part of this lawsuit seems to be the antitrust portion of it. If you want to put your game on Apple devices, you have to go through their store and agree to their terms. Part of Apple's terms is that you are not allowed to make any money by selling anything at all without paying Apple their cut. That's a form of monopoly.

Imagine if software developers had to pay Microsoft 30% of everything or they could never put any software on a Windows computer. Folks would be up in arms. Yet somehow Apple has gotten away with this in a fashion I have never understood.

 

I'm guessing that this is not about the size of the 30% cut, rather that there's a mandatory app store.

What Epic wants to do is for people to download Fortnite to their devices without having to pay some third party at all. That would probably mean opening a web site on their phone's web browser, and hitting a download button.

If Epic wins this, it's going to benefit them, and all other games that people are interested in downloading without visiting the app store. So Minecraft is going to benefit, and the Xbox pass thingy.

The interesting thing is how this interfaces with things like India forcing Chinese apps of the app store. If Epic wins this, there would be ways around that as well.

 

Epic using anti-competition as a smokescreen to get good PR is just as ugly as Apple getting itself into this current situation in the first place. I would be glad to watch either of the two loses the fight. In the end it's all about who walks away with the money.

If Apple/Google cave and give Epic a special reduced rate, I would not be surprised if they look for the next highest fee-grabber.

BTW Tim Sweeney has bashed Windows Store before with similar rhetorics.

 

This is exactly the same percentage Unity recovers from publishers sales lol

 

If Apple being the sole developer and distributor of iOS doesn't give them the right to set their rules and charge whatever they want (according to Epic's logic), then, by the same logic, Epic being the sole developer and distributor of Fortnite should not give them a right to set their rules, charge whatever they want for V-bucks and take all the revenue.

What if other developers want to profit from Fortnite ecosystem, too, without ever paying Epic anything (much like Epic wants to do with iOS ecosystem), but cannot do so due to Epic holding a monopoly on all transactions inside Fortnite?

If Epic aren't just a bunch of greedy hypocrites, they should allow any third party company to sell their own V-bucks and their own skins inside Fortnite, without ever paying Epic anything.

 

I've no qualms with renegotiating, and applaud the concept of lobbying for improved conditions on behalf of others as well. It's the bit where they deliberately broke an existing agreement and are now acting as if the other party is at fault that doesn't sit well with me.

And any random entity looking to get malware on iDevices.

 

I don't know... It's a public opinion thing. Look at the IGN video in the second post here. It's all pro-Epic, anti-Apple, gamer-oriented rhetoric, which I assume is what this is meant to stir up. Public sentiment against Apple is probably going to be more effective than one developer pulling one product.

Fortnite is big, but Apple's cut is a fraction of sales from just one of many platforms it's on.

If this lasts long enough it could even mean some Fortnite players buying Androids instead of iPhones.

 

I'd argue Godot is democratizing game development more than Unity and Unreal. Almost all of the source code is licensed under MIT, which means Godot is public domain and anyone can use Godot to make any sort of software with no revenue fees.

 

Unfortunate drama.

 

The 30% fees are irrelevant, could be 50% or 1% and wouldn't change anything. This is just a fight because both Apple and Google have designed their systems so a competing app store is basically a non-starter due to anti-competitive practices. This is a similar situation to Microsoft's anti-trust troubles in the 90's. I suspect Epic wants to push an Epic Store on mobile but doesn't see a viable route with the current landscape.

 

I'm a little tired of Epic using scummy tactics (throwing around boat loads of cash) and "epic exclusives" to try and force their way into the market. They are not improving the Epic Store.... they are just making every other service look worse.

"Epic has subsequently filed a suit against Google as well, citing that "Google has eliminated competition in the distribution of Android apps using myriad contractual and technical barriers."

You mean like offering devs guaranteed sales if they go exclusive on Epic for a year? or throwing money at anyone and everyone to get an Epic Store exclusive? Even when they already announced plans to launch on steam?

Apparently Epic don't like when other companies use similar tactics.

Epic is not seeking compensation, but rather "injunctive relief that would deliver... an open, competitive Android ecosystem for all users and industry participants."

Too bad they don't feel the same way when it comes to PC games and the Epic Store.

"Rather than tolerate this healthy competition and compete on the merits of its offering, Apple responded by removing Fortnite from sale on the App Store, which means that new users cannot download the app, and users who have already downloaded prior versions of the app from the App Store cannot update it to the latest version," Epic's legal complaint reads"

Oh lordy the rank hypocrisy from Epic. The exact thing could be said about Epic themselves.

"Rather than tolerate this healthy competition [Steam, GOG, etc] and compete on the merits of its offering, Epic responded by swinging their corporate dick around, throwing buckets of cash at anyone and everyone in order to get them to go exclusive on the Epic Store in order to starve the market and force customers to use their store."

Epic is getting a taste of their own medicine and apparently it's quite bitter.

 

Disallowing third party stores because you control the operating system is not the same thing as paying for exclusives.

 

Epic funded Godot too, by the way.

https://linuxreviews.org/Godot_Game_Engine_Awarded_$250k_USD_Grant_From_Epic_Games

I like what Epic is doing with their money.

And speaking of other services, Steam successfully wrecked their own client without any assistance from Epic Games. UPlay added a new clause that allows the to wipe your library if you haven't logged for six months. So other services often deteriorate on their own.

 

To be honest I don't care about Epic's motives here, I'm just glad Apple gets some well-deserved pushback from someone with the money to fight a proper lawsuit against them.

It's one of those monumental classics they show to students in advertising related courses. Brilliant idea to parody it this way.

What???? I have a bunch of games on uplay and I often don't log in for longer than 6 months. Are there any additional clauses to that?

 

No, that is why I said "similar". My entire point rests on Epic being hypocritical. They might be different scenarios but the moral reasoning is the same.

Epic claim Google is eliminating competition in the distribution of Android apps using myriad contractual and technical barriers.

Well Epic is eliminating competition in the distribution of PC games using myriad contractual and technical barriers

They are complaining about a practice they are actively involved in using. "Rules for thee, not for me".


"Rather than tolerate this healthy competition and compete on the merits of its offering"

Epic complains that Google/Apple are not "competing on the merits of their offering" yet that is exactly what Epic Store is doing. I don't know what it's like now but I remember when

- no shopping cart feature
- no user reviews for games
- terrible layout and UI
- having to buy each game individually because you can't bulk-buy games

and now Epic wants to cry because google and apple "aren't competing on the merits of it's offering." Well neither is/was epic. They were just throwing cash and everyone and anyone. They have no right to complain here.

I never said they were the same. I said the very things Epic is now complaining about are practices they used themselves and they don't like it and that amuses me.

 

It's not so much the tactics rather the fact that Epic are trying to have their cake and eat it too. If I steal a car from someone, and then the car is stolen from me... I don't really have the right to complain about it.

I'm not saying the other services are inherently better but Epic was (with no doubt in my mind) attempting to get around the "compete on the merits of your software" with buckets of money. So, when another company gets around "competing on the merits of your software" by kicking Epic off their app store.... well then Epic have nothing to complain about.

 

Here's the information:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ubisoft/comments/gki0vg/if_your_uplay_acc_inactive_6_month_ubisoft_will/

Google does that.

Here's the difference - Epic Store is neither a hardware platform nor an operating system. If they were running one of a kind hardware or operating system, the comparison would be justified. But they are not doing that.

Basically, there's a difference, I believe, between being entitled to have software in specific launcher, between being barred from publishing to specific OS.

I'm not seeing it this way. Epic is the only company that I feel positive about these days, although I may be biased due to personal reasons.

 

Also....

I really like things this way.

Steam has a web of mechanisms designed to bait you into spending your money, and some of them were designed by satan. I accumulated an insane amount of games as a result, and I don't even have a poor impulse control.

So, not having a cart, not having reviews, not having community, not having achievements is something I enjoy. Because community is a cesspool of insults, reviews are often trollish, and even if I buy 25 games at once, I probably won't play them all right away, so all of it will be largely wasted money.

So, in epic store, you can kinda stop and think it over. If you check things, you judge if they're good or bad by artwork, and head elsewhere to check reviews. It is a slower process, but I actually enjoy it, because you take your time instead of going into "buybuybuy!" craze. Discounts are infrequent, but they're fairly well done. You can buy a game you really want at a discount, instead of rushing at the sale.

Did I mention I like what epic is doing with their money.

 

I know Google does that and it's wrong. I also know the only reason Apple is doing this is because they want a cut of the money and Epic found a loophole around it.

I used to have a positive view on Epic but after their store stuff I just see them as being hypocrites. They want Apple/Google to compete on the merits of what they offer.... but Epic didn't want to do that with the Epic Store (no shopping cart, no user reviews, can't bulk-buy games) and resorted to money in order to get people using their product.

So now they are claiming foul play I find it quite amusing because it's like someone punching you and, when you punch them back, they claim foul and say physical violence is wrong.

But I think this comes down to a personal opinion. if you have a positive view of Epic then you might be willing to overlook certain small things. If you have a negative view then you might actively search for stuff or blow things out of proportion because you just don't like them.

 

I'm not exactly fighting for Epic here, and I don't think that they have any kind of altrustic motive here, but I do think that their store having a 12% cut as opposed to Steam's 30% cut is very pro-developer, even if it is very barebones from a consumer standpoint. Right now, Epic knows that Fortnite is not a permanent gravytrain. They are spending hard in the short-term to invest in the long-term. It makes sense to spend their money to "catch up" to Valve, Google, and Apple (from a storefront standpoint,) so I don't begrudge them that. But yes, the store is pretty wack, I won't deny.

 

The thing is Epic does a lot of good stuff. They bought quixel and that is free for Unreal users. They also have grants/funds for small studios/developers. The fact that they are (to some degree) adding more competition in the market is great. Steam needs more competition.

However, I just can't get past the exclusivity stuff as it comes off as "make your competition look worse" instead of "make our product better". When you do that you actively damage your competitors and users are a casualty in this war.

"Awesome game coming out now! That character you want to play as is an exclusive on Xbox!"

Well I have a PS4. Why am I being punished for not having an xbox?

"But you don't have to buy the Epic Store... it's just another platform you can use."

I still think exclusivity has this impact regardless of the fact that you don't have to pay for the epic store.

Epic store, steam, uplay, EA origin (there are too many split services!)

It's what happened to streaming. Nextflix was king and then competition came in/ Good, right? More competition is always better. Then the "exclusivity" started. You can only stream XYZ on Disney, oh you want to watch "Show 52" ? Well it's only on Hulu. Like documentaries? Well Discovery are starting their own service so you will have to sign up to their service".

If i was Epic I would have offered a lower fee for devs, offered some kind of "guaranteed" payment because the store is new but I would not have asked for exclusivity. They should be able to publish the game on steam, GOG, or on their own website. But I think most people would agree that would mean not many people would use Epic. I understand the "between a rock and a hard place" situation but still disagree with the process they used.

If what Epic offers is truly better than steam users and devs will use the service. I hate the idea of waiting an entire year to play a game unless I use the epic store. It's not really a choice at that point - more of an ultimatum. "Use the epic store or you can't play your favourite upcoming game for 1 year".

I mean they added a shopping cart to their roadmap... the store (at launch) was seriously under-cooked and it seemed like they were happy to give a barebones experience because they know people would have to use the epic store.

 

But that's exactly how Steam acts. They have anti-competitive rules like "you can't set lower prices for your game on different stores than Steam" or they could block your game.
https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1090663312814157824

Steam lowered its cut, but only for the biggest games. If a small developer barely making living out of games, you still pay 30% cut. Although successful titles pay 20%. It's pure "F*** you, developers, we just wanted to stop AAA companies from making their own stores".
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30...rketplace-revenue-split-new-rules-competition

Steam still doesn't allow for publishing how many units you have sold there. They hide whatever information they can. I never could understand why? Is it some trick preventing gov/people from calculating how rich Valve is?

Steam also pays for its market share. It allows registering game bought for nothing in some Humble Bundle, but they never do such bundles on their store. Developers may earn a meaningless amount of money on bundles, but Steam is happy - this strategy keeps their market share and 30% cut from all other sales

Steam was the first digital store. We don't remember how much people hated Steam for requiring download games from the internet... Like people did hate EGS initially, although now they have all the internet services to complain about their first world problems. Hate spread well on the modern internet, much better than in 2003.
And Steam client was initially a junk. It wasn't born in all glory and features we have now, this cost time to develop.

Epic must have to buy exclusives titles if wants to be relevant. There's no way around this.
- Consoles must offer exclusives to sell you hardware.
- Google Stadia should offer exclusives from day one, but they were like "we think different than gamedev company" and it basically failed.
- GOG doesn't offer exclusives. GOG is good guys, no one can deny it. They never became a major storefront able to undermine Steam's position and promote cut lower than 30%. And GOG's profit is very humble.

EGS is developer-friendly first while Steam is user-friendly first, somewhat dev-friendly. Although opening gates to every developer literally killed discoverability. It's still nice to users, I can't blame anybody complaining about EGS usability.

If Epic wants to break industry standards, they need to go this way.
They won't succeed without building a consumer base, and that's why they need to spend gazillions on free games. More people creating accounts, installing a launcher - that's the first date.
And they need to pay for exclusives, otherwise nobody would come to a new store if all the games are on a Steam.
It's confirmed that gamers mostly don't care about developers receiving 88% cut. I mean, some of them care, but mostly it's no difference to them - they can't see it, can't smell it. It's super hard to change habits...

It takes years do shake broken standards of the industry. And probably like half of billion dollars spent on EGS.

Epic needs to make things they may don't like.
- I'm pretty sure that would be very happy if buying timed store exclusives would appear pointless. They would stop it instantly and perhaps they plan to.
- They definetely don't like going to court with Apple and Google. It's a war now.

 

I don't think that is anti-competitive. They aren't saying you can't publish your game outside of steam. In fact, enforcing a "same" price on all platforms means money isn't an incentive to go to Steam or Epic. It purely comes down to which platform is better.

It's like regional pricing. Why should I pay more than someone in a different country? seems weird to be honest.

Yeah Steam's cut has always been way too much. Same for Google and Apple too for their app stores. I like that Epic was offering a much smaller cut as it benefits developers a lot. I just think they went the wrong way about gaining their share in the market.

That is due to Steam keys where developers can give away stuff in bundles (unless I am wrong). It's not the same as value paying developers to publish an exclusive on Steam.

True. However, they did it in a dirty way. They did not go to devs and say "hey, if we give you some money would you make a game specifically to be sold on our store?" (bearing in mind they could have done this years before the store went public).

They went after popular games that had already made an announcement to release on Steam. So when Epic comes along and throws a boat load of cash in order to stop that game being on Steam - you can't blame people for seeing Epic as the bad guys.

I mean I guess it's all pointless in the end. We are talking about giant corporations fighting other giant corporations because they aren't making enough millions on top of the millions they already make.

 

Yeah Steam is a totally different situation. You can publish on Steam, on the Windows store, on the Epic store, on your own website, without any significant barriers from the operating system. If you don't like Steam's terms, use someone else, because you actually can use someone else.

How do you publish your IOS app without the App Store though? The answer is you basically can't, at least not in a manner your average iPhone user would be willing or able to walk through. Android is a little easier, though enabling developer options to do so is likely intended to scare off your customers from using anything but their Play Store.

Microsoft got nailed for bundling IE, competing unfairly with Netscape. Imagine if in addition Microsoft outright prevented Netscape from being installed or required users to walk through developer option warnings to do so?

 

AFAIK this is all due to Epic circumventing ApplePay and letting users buy VBucks directly so I can hardly feel sorry for them. 30% is ridiculous but it's epic. Surely they could have negotiated a deal (5%/7%) considering how much they would be guaranteed to make... and if not then suck it up like all other people wanting to put their stuff on iOS. "We will only make 70 million instead of 100 million." good lord.

And Epics attempt to frame it like 1984 and Apple ushering in a dystopia is insulting. They are attempting to manufacture outrage and get people fighting for them when it's really just two corporate giants arguing about money.

 

What did Steam do to in your opinion "wreck their client"?

 

By making it not just iOS and using any other mobile store, of which there are many. Apple only have a "monopoly" on their own devices, not on the mobile market in general.

MS we're already operating on nearly everyone else's devices, though. They weren't just making Netscape play by their rules on PCs they manufactured, they were messing with how Netscape were able to do business with other computer and software creators.

That's backwards. Enforcing that Steam must have equal or lowest price is directly preventing price competition from other platforms.

I've purchased a bunch of stuff on their store and I don't care about it's lack of features.

Buying games takes 10 seconds, I buy one or maybe two, a cart makes no difference. User reviews are less important when your collection is curated, quality stuff in the first place, so I think that's far more important.

I think their store is great.

Can you give an example of a technical barrier?

And if by contractual barriers you're referring to exclusives, they're buying those from devs fair and square. If a dev thinks it's better to take Epic's terms than not it's 100% their fair call.

- - -

To reiterate my first comment, I am torn on this. Challenging the 30% status quo is good. The methods and stated goals with it... not so much.

 

They introduced garbage update with shelves and thumbnails that made steam look like origin. Also, it apparently runs on javascript, with worse performance than before and eats much more memory than before. It made dealing with library more difficult and made UI less informative.

Lots of people complained, steam didn't care and kept the change.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/dqwzyy/why_do_people_hate_the_new_ui_so_much/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/dpf378/new_steam_ui_megathread/?limit=500
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1644304412654956239/

It used to be a good software, with clear UI, now it is something you have to tolerate, because all your gams are in there.

 

I'm interested in discussing how much of a cut would be reasonable for digital distributors. I know Apple profits from their 30% policy, but I don't know by how much. I'm not even sure if it can be known after factoring in infrastructure costs, their marketing, support, services, loss from hosting free apps, R&D, and so on. I can speculate that it's still a whole lot, but without knowing it's hard to say whether 20%, 15%, or whatever would be more reasonable. I do know that 30% seems to be where almost every digital distributor settles; maybe it's industry-wide price-fixing, but I can't help but think that if it was sustainable to go lower there would be more competition there. The only company I know of that competes on cut is Epic themselves, and it's not hard to believe they're loss-leading to claw people away from Steam.

I am pretty suspicious of Epic's business moves. Their modern stunts are cavalier, and they've historically been litigious and tactically brutal. They behave like opportunists.

Many developers have legitimate complaints to make about Apple's arbitrary enforcement of their policies, and the question about whether the owners of a distribution platform should be able to sell goods that compete with their own customers needs to be addressed. But I don't for a minute think that Epic doesn't just smell blood in the water around antitrust and are trying to pounce while the time is ripe. Sony and Microsoft have curated their console marketplaces for ever. Why has never Epic never objected to their 30% cut and absolute ecosystem control? If Epic scores a win here somehow, is there any reason to think they'll keep pursuing their noble crusade against their investors, like Sony?

So what are some viable solutions?

1. Apple is forced to "jailbreak" its platform? But this is a unique selling point for customers of iDevices: hands-on quality curation and a security guarantee. Should Apple be forced to compromise its design principles and value proposition to the majority when there are other more popular platforms for customers to consider if they don't like it? Anyway, Epic are suing Google too, so it's not like sideloading is what this is about.
2. Apple don't get a cut of software services sold in the app store that are sold elsewhere (i.e. online)? What's to stop app developers from shifting exclusively to external IAP APIs, compromising Apple's security vision and dodging their fee?
3. Reducing the cut? How much is reasonable? Should a limit then be imposed on all retailers, or at least digital distributors? If there's a limit, at what point does that exert negative pressure on the auxiliary value that these storefronts can add in terms of promotion, social networks, common APIs, etc? Does reducing the cut even address Epic's complaint?

There have got to be other options, but it's not helpful to pretend that it isn't complicated, and that right now Epic is trying to make their grievance seem simple for their own greedy convenience.

 

The requirement to download the Epic Store client in order to access a game is a technical barrier. Just like requiring users to create an account before they can post on Unity. It's a technical barrier that you must comply with in order to do what you want (post/play a game)

Epic's complaint "Apple says we can only do ABC if we follow XYZ" ABC - be on the store | XYZ = apple's TOS

My complaint "Epic says I can only do ABC if I follow XYZ" ABC - buy and play a certain game | XYZ = their requirement that I download the epic store

If Epic wants to complain that Apple is using a "technical barrier" (requiring a 30% cut) and that is unfair... then they also have to accept that providing their own technical barrier (requirement to download the epic store client) could be viewed in the same light.

Each company is saying "you either use our service and agree to our terms... or you can go elsewhere to get what you want". The only difference is apple wants a cut of your revenue and Epic wants you to use their client.

 

30% made sense in the early days of the store when getting on the store and getting a promotion from the platform holder almost guaranteed success. Now though, you must pay 30% to be on the store and in apple's case, pay more to show up at the top of a search for your game, even if the search 100% matches your game title.... They don't just take 30% anymore...