GF:There's a holy grail in every industry. For energy, it's nuclear fusion; for medicine, it's a cure for cancer; for space exploration, it's faster-than-light propulsion. The holy grail of anything is by definition difficult, expensive, or simply the stuff of science fiction. Perhaps that's why we want it so bad.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney promised to continue his fight against Apple. He also said he'd put Fortnite on Steam if it lowered the 30% fee.
Apple has a right to not allow Fortnite on its store and platform. Epic intentionally broke a contract, and publicly gloated about said infraction.
Unless I'm missing something, but what gives epic the right to host their game wherever they want and dictate the cut that storefronts charge for this service? Without these storefronts they wouldn't make any money.
But I've not been following all these cases closely so correct me if I'm wrong.
Exactly this.
Epic can easily just go ahead and make their own Android storefront like they did on PC but they won't instead they want to use Google's and not have to pay for the privilege of doing so.
No correction needed. You've summed up the issue Apple has with them and I have with them. Epic has gotten bigger and has become greedier. And willing to break rules to get what they want. But act as though they are in the right.
It would be like my walking into a retail store with my products and telling the company that I'm going to sell my products and services inside there and that they will not charge me a fee or have to lower that fee to my benefit. I'd throw them out and never look back.
They are trying to kill Apple's cut and dictate what others can charge them for setting up shop in other stores.
I like UE Tech. But in this instance, F em.
Exactly shadow. I'm not understanding epics logic. Go try that sh at Walmart mart and see what they tell you, Costco, or any store. They sell shelf space essentially.
"Unless I'm missing something, but what gives epic the right to host their game wherever they want and dictate the cut that storefronts charge for this service? "
It has been rumored that Netflix and Amazon did this exact same thing, lower the cut of the product that they sell on the app stores. Epic probably thought they were big enough to do the same
"Without these storefronts they wouldn't make any money."
Without Google/Apple storefronts Epic would just make their own. A lot of kids like fortnite and they would install the Epic store to play it. Problem solved.
People tend to forget that the app stores are in a symbiotic relationship with the developers. Without the developers Apple/Google don't get paid the billions in fees they charge. The developers need the app store to get their 70% cut of the product they generated.
If another store came along, that charged less fees, developers would test the waters and probably leave Apple/Google store, eventually. This is what Apple and Google don't want, free market choice.
Free market choice hasn't changed much on the PC platform. Steam is still the number one digital store. Epic is so far behind it's not funny and they still haven't made any profit whatsoever.
This all started with Epic breaking the ToS of the Apple store by circumventing their payment system so Epic could get 100% of the profits.
There is only one bad guy here and it's not Apple or Google. It is their stores and Epic will play by their rules or have their games banned forever.
“Epic CEO: Apple Is Next after Google; We'll Put Fortnite on Any Store (Even Steam) Without 30% Fee“
These companies that allow your games on their store are bringing you million upon million of users so they should get some cut, possibly 15% or even 10% would be acceptable.
The problem is that Epic decided on their own one day they were too good to pay Apple's 30% royalty (that's consistent across most digital marketplaces).
Should it be lower? Absolutely. But Epic acted selfishly and stupidly; they risked the future of Unreal Engine on Apple platforms, and Fortnite got removed from a platform with hundreds of millions of devices and users that love buying anything on the App Store.
Who knows, if they didn't cut off that huge revenue stream and launch expensive self-serving lawsuits, maybe they wouldn't have had those layoffs
Yay another overly rich company suing another overly rich company. Bet when they win all these cases, that your still spending the same amount of money on your skins and whatever other bs they sell on fortnite. These guys aren't looking out for the consumers interest only their own.
By chance if they do the opposite of what I said I'll eat it, but this is the same publisher that couldn't even bother to bring a aaa title to physical release. Fking j offs
After laying off numerous employees, Tim Sweeney, the company’s founder and CEO, sent an email about the situation. The 52-year-old businessman clarified why the layoffs happened and even shed some light on the future of Fortnite.
Good on them doing this at least.
“we’re offering a severance package that includes six months base pay and in the US/Canada/Brazil six months of Epic-paid healthcare. We’re offering to accelerate people’s stock option vesting schedule through the end of 2024 and are giving two additional years from today to exercise the options. In the US we’re also offering to vest any unearned profit sharing from their 401k. And we’ll provide benefits including career transition services and visa support where we can.”
Would be "too much" for us, but probably it's "not enough" for the greedy bastard...
Epic makes way too much money to have to lay people off of the spent that money smartly. Tim wasted money on exclusives for their store when it could have gone to paychecks for people.
Epic put all their eggs in one basket with fortnite, they should have continued with the development of unreal tournament and got that game going as an arena shooter that's free to play with a huge cosmetic cash shop.
But your CEO knows what their doing.... laying off people so the board doesn't see exactly how much you stuck. The usual playbook.
A new South Korea law forces Google and Apple to allow developers to implement alternative payment methods in their apps to Tim Sweeney's delight.
I hope UE4 improves on the plastic looking characters and add some color/better detail...