You would think so, but actually a company can't sue another for antitrust violations unless they show evidence that they were injured — and the injury has to pass a two-prong test [1] to be covered.
That being said, the government can investigate without a lawsuit. But just because the government investigates, that doesn't guarantee the government will prosecute; a lawsuit guarantees prosecution, unless it's so baseless it gets thrown out by the court (which Epic's hasn't been).
Hence why Epic took a step that would obviously result in a ban: they needed the correct type of evidence of injury in order to sue.
They showed that Apple forcing iOS apps to use their Payment Processor is bad for consumers by providing an alternative that is 20% cheaper. Which is what got them banned.
So why can't Epic (or any other company) provide you that option with a 42% premium (to cover Apple's 30% cut) and allow users to buy direct from them? Then if you wish to trust Apple more with your card details, you can pay more for the privelege. Or you can save some money, but potentially increase your risk by going direct.
I've always hated that Apple seem to think they know better than anyone else; you can't do as you wish on their platforms because you might be stupid.
I mean, that’s exactly why I have an Apple device.
No, wait, not that I’m stupid. Though I’m sure some people would call me that.
It’s that they make the decisions for me. I’m specifically paying a premium to delegate the responsibility for making those decisions to them.
I spent years running Nexus devices (since before they were Nexus... still have my ADP1 in a drawer) on Cyanogenmod and LineageOS. At some point I got busy and didn’t have time for my phone to be a hobby or even a thing I had to think about and chose to delegate those decisions to Apple rather than Google because they generally seem to lean more toward privacy-conscious decisions and making money on hardware and apps rather than decisions to support violating my privacy and making money on advertising.
I already paid more for what I agree is a privilege by buying an expensive Apple phone. If you don’t like the rules, then don’t sell here. I’m cool with that. Leave my walled garden alone. I’m comfortable in here.
But those aren't mutually exclusive. You can stay in the walled garden if you wish, and people who are comfortable with the risk can go outside. Choice; something Apple thinks its users are incapable of making sensibly.
Or, again, many people have made that choice and are fine with the situation. If you don't want the locked down device you can just not buy an Apple device?
The action that triggered these events is that Epic chose to sell some items at a higher price via the Apple store to cover the 30% "tax" and make it clearer to consumers that they are paying a premium to the middleman, or at a lower price via in-game currency (which could be purchased elsewhere) directly in the game.
Offering this consumer choice is what lead to Fortnite being banned.
Steam isn't manufacturing computers. This is about Apple the computer manufacturer. It's unfair for them to lock their computers/phones down so people can't install software without Apple's permission.
The App Store is more or less a red herring here (relevant only to the 30% fee being too much).
Is it though? There's no legal precedent that would allow for software vendors to force device manufacturers to allow their software to be run on the manufacturer's hardware. Otherwise we'd see Android on iPhones, legally-mandated Facebook integration on everything, custom car firmware etc.
Of course a competing App Store can offer lower prices, they don't bear any of the costs for developing and managing the iOS ecosystem Apple spent billions over a decade building (that many other companies lost fortunes failing to compete against). They can just popup a virtual store in someone else's successful established platform and access a market of 1B+ credit cards they had no hand in creating where they can dictate their own margins for selling virtual goods - somehow feeling entitled to get a free ride on the massive development & maintenance infrastructure costs that is subsidized by the App Store.
Strange most other markets don't just let everyone to sell their products (physical or virtual) on their markets at no cost [1].
Apple profits handsomely from the iOS ecosystem every time someone buys an iPhone to access it, or buys a Mac because Apple won't allow building iOS apps without one, or pays the annual developer program fee. They don't need to triple or quadruple dip to be the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Apple here is no different than the Telcos wanting to avoid only being paid for just being dumb pipes.
If everybody else is making money building on that basic service they want a piece of that pie too.
iOS is a major cost to develop that's given away for free, continually invested in, advanced, developed & updated. Apple is allowed to have more than one business model on the platform they built, which was their primary focus that reshaped the company at a great opportunity cost to their other businesses. Ultimately the Company bet paid off & became successful against a number of incumbents who lost fortunes trying to compete in Mobile OS's. The App Store is now one of their major sources of revenue for having built a successful platform (a category they helped pioneer).
The nominal annual fee is a cost for accessing the dev tools only, it's in no way a royalty-free cost to sell products on one of the most lucrative markets in the world - that's what their standard royalty % (unchanged from the outset) covers.
You dont just get the current OS that's on the phone, but also the upcoming ones for the next 5-6 years[0] for free. A phone bought in 2015 still gets updates.
> iOS is a major cost to develop that's given away for free
Are you sure it's free? The only way to buy ios, is to buy a device running it. It would seem reasonable that part of the premium you pay for eg an iPad is equivalent to an oem license for ios?
I think the point is that competition will prevent them from doing that. And it worked: in response to Epic's lower rates, Steam also cut their rates. If Epic raises the rate to 30% they'll be more expensive than Steam, and won't be able to compete.
Fortnite is not required to be on Steam for there to be competition in the game store marketplace. As a game developer on PC, if you don't like Valve, you can switch to Epic, regardless of whether Fortnite is there or not — and Valve has no policies prohibiting you from doing so if you want to (unlike iOS, where Apple prohibits alternate game stores). You might sell fewer games because it's less popular, but that's not due to any anticompetitive action on Valve's part — and it may not matter that you sell fewer games, because Epic may pay you enough for exclusivity that you make up the difference anyway. The "injury" that Epic is trying to prove with Apple is that game developers are injured by lost sales due to Apple's policies, or lost revenue due to Apple's cut, and that this is due to Apple's anticompetitive policies that (literally do) prohibit competing stores from existing and offering developers an alternative. Game developers are not injured — at least, not in the terms usually used in antitrust cases — by Fortnite only existing on the Epic store and not on Steam.
You might argue that consumers are somehow injured by Fortnite existing on the Epic store but not on Steam. But I think that's pretty hard to prove, at least under existing antitrust law: Fortnite is free, and its microtransactions are not particularly more expensive than competitors, and if you don't want to play Fortnite because you don't like the Epic store for some reason, there are dozens of competing battle royale shooters on every platform Fortnite runs on (and, now, even platforms Fortnite doesn't run on). Where is the lack of competition? Or the injury?
Epic's case centers on injury not to consumers, but to developers. That case is easier to make, and it's the case they care about because they operate a game store that doesn't exist on iOS due to Apple's policies — and a game engine business that operates on a 5% revenue share model, which naturally would increase its profits if Apple stopped taking a 30% tithe from developer revenues in the first place. They're perfectly willing to sacrifice Fortnite Mobile, a comparatively small amount of revenue, temporarily if it gets their other business streams more income in the future.
They lowered prices as part of a calculated stunt. If Apple is suddenly turning over 20% of the purchase price to devs, why would the devs lower the price when they're getting an extra 20% at the same price point?
This is the correct take. Generally speaking, the prices set by Epic before this stunt likely approximated the highest price which didn't reduce aggregate spending.
That being said, the government can investigate without a lawsuit. But just because the government investigates, that doesn't guarantee the government will prosecute; a lawsuit guarantees prosecution, unless it's so baseless it gets thrown out by the court (which Epic's hasn't been).
Hence why Epic took a step that would obviously result in a ban: they needed the correct type of evidence of injury in order to sue.
1: https://www.businessjustice.com/the-elements-of-antitrust-in...