[speleding]

> 3% to keep the app store running is forgivable

Payment processing alone would cost Apple that much. You easily lose 1.5%-2% in payment fees and another 2% in handling fraud and customer support queries about payments.

For example, if a payment for an app is $1.99, Apple now takes $0.60. If a customer calls support to ask a question about the purchase it can cost anywhere from $15 to $30 in call center fees, so it takes 50 purchases to make good on that. If you lower that to a $0.06 take apple would have to make 500 sales for every phone call to support.

People don't realise good customer support is very expensive.

[alkonaut]

If we disregard the app purchase (which few complain about) and focus on in-app purchases now. E.g. for buying fortnite hats or netflix subscriptions, where the in-app purchase is NOT processed by apple, surely that can't give rise to any kind of added costs for apple (customer support, transaction costs)?

[speleding]

In-app purchases are processed by apple as well.

[alkonaut]

No, not when they are angered by apps NOT doing that (e.g. Epic in this case, or netflix/spotify charging for subscriptions outside, etc).

This discussion is about Epic charging for in-app things outside of Apple's control. So apple can't use the argument that they have costs (support, payment) for those transactions.

[speleding]

Users will still call apple if there is a problem. They will not understand the difference between Epic handling some of the payments and apple handling all the other ones. Customer support cost will not go down.

[alkonaut]

When I buy a hat on Amazon Apple gets no cut and I understand that Amazon gets my customer service call if there is something wrong with my transaction.

If I buy a hat in the Epic store (and pay to epic) I don’t see why it would be very different.

Should it matter if I make the purchase in Safari or in another app?

Also: let’s forget the apps for a while. Assume I buy a navigation app for $10 on the App Store and then I visit a website and purchase gps maps for 3 countries to use in the app, for $100 each. Apple isn’t involved in that transaction. Should they claim a cut of the $300 because I can use the maps in the app?

[speleding]

I understand that you understand the difference between Apple, Epic, the payment processor, the credit card provider and your bank. I can assure you most people do not. I've worked in customer service. They will just call Apple.

[ralfn]

No, in-app purchases are forced to BE proccessed by Apple.

Epic would like to proccess these themselves. They dont want apple to turn on their economic output. When you charge money for the work others do -- that's like communism.