[brendoelfrendo]

Epic has already demonstrated that they wouldn't treat others this way if the roles were reversed; they have their own Epic Games Store, where they take a 12% cut on any third-party games sold [0]. They explicitly called out Steam, which takes a 30% cut like Apple (for the first $10 million in sales, at least; Steam operates on a tiered model) [1]. Cynically, this is because they wanted to eat Valve's lunch in a space where Valve is the dominant player. But ultimately, that's exactly Epic's point here: on PC, it is possible for someone to introduce a competing platform, while Apple prevents such an ecosystem on iOS.

[0] Side note: I do think that Epic is guilty of anticompetitive practices here, because if your game uses the Unreal Engine, they roll the 5% engine royalty into that 12%, giving a huge advantage to using their product on their store: https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/4/18125498/epic-games-store-...

[1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/3/18123649/valve-steam-reven...

[judge2020]

Epic is by no means turning a profit on the Epic store right now.

It's like calling out the taxi companies for being more expensive while Uber and Lyft are still subsidizing rides with VC and IPO money.

[brendoelfrendo]

Yes, they do make a profit: https://gamerant.com/epic-games-store-revenue-split-explaine...

"Sweeney also said that Epic Games makes approximately 5% profit from that 12%, and this could grow to 6-7% as the store grows."

They chose 12% specifically as a balance between profit and undercutting the competition.

[judge2020]

That's profit from game sales, which doesn't necessarily mean profit on a scale of the entire store when you account for paying developers, running the servers, getting content to users via CDN, etc. Once Epic is on-par with steam[0], i'd at least expect a 20% epic tax.

0: https://twitter.com/shroudschair/status/1120464329239867392?...

[user5994461]

If they don't turn a profit it's only because they're paying millions of dollars to game developers to use the epic store and remove their game from steam.

[MaxBarraclough]

> Epic has already demonstrated that they wouldn't treat others this way if the roles were reversed

That's not really the same role. Epic are currently pushing hard to drive adoption of their store, whereas Steam's position is already entrenched, as is Apple's.

As mFixman points out, Epic also lack the monopolistic position that Apple have over iOS devices.

[mFixman]

Except that this is a completely different thing.

1) You can install programs in Windows without Epic's permission.

2) Epic allows their games to be distributed through Steam or other platforms.

[brendoelfrendo]

That was my point? And it's also the entire point of Epic's lawsuit against Apple?