[dep_b]

260 million earned by Apple by charging the 30% commission on 116 million users means Apple received US$2.24 per user and then has to deduct all costs of running the App Store before a profit remains. And this is just for Fortnite, a profitable game.

All of the games and apps that are either not profitable or are free also need to be paid from the money earned on whales like Fortnite.

They now want Apple to serve 116 millions of users updates that usually run into the hundreds of megabytes for games without paying more than US$100 a year.

Epic runs it's own game store on 12% commission, but most of those games are paid and games are the biggest earners in any App Store, so only the most profitable category.

[andy_ppp]

But Apple’s costs are tiny compared to their margins, this isn’t logical as Apple can’t lose money on anything in the App Store, they didn’t invest in making the games did they? They are rent seeking to juice up their profits, it’s a great scam but I’d rather they concentrate on selling more hardware than ripping off developers.

[dep_b]

If Epic itself cannot do it for less than 12% selling only the best earning category and serving barely any free games when they're trying to _prove_ that it can be done for less than 30% apparently running an App Store isn't as trivial as most people at HN make it appear to be.

Also the 30% "rent seeking" happens on any platform Epic is on except the PC and Mac. They tried to go around the Google Play Store and pivoted on that decision.

I would like to see the % go down, I think they can run it for 20% without much trouble but when the kickback on titles goes down the price of the hardware goes up. So you can have a "cheap" Playstation with expensive games or an expensive Playstation with cheaper games.

[andy_ppp]

>>> Epic itself cannot do it for less than 12%

What makes you think this? How do you know they cannot do an App Store for less than 12%? Also there is such a thing as economies of scale - the app store probably sells many times more things than the Epic version.

You seem to mistakenly think the cost of selling X items on an App Store has a cost that is "cost of app store per thing" * "number of things sold". This isn't true, the cost of the App Store is fixed and has almost NOTHING to do with number of things sold.

I just think using your market dominance to squeeze developers who provide services for your users is kind of sick. Apple should be providing the App Store for free and thanking developers for selling so many phones, not ripping people off.

[dep_b]

> What makes you think this? How do you know they cannot do an App Store for less than 12%?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_Store "Epic Games had settled on a 12% revenue cut for titles published through the store"

> This isn't true, the cost of the App Store is fixed and has almost NOTHING to do with number of things sold.

OK so you say the whole % of sale model is completely wrong and people should just pay a fixed fee to be in the App Store? Explain it to Epic please.

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/tony-hawks-pro...

45 euro means they cash roughly 5.40 on the sale of this item at 12%. The item is a game comparable in size so has comparable hosting fees as Fortnite in the iOS App Store. Yet charge more than twice as much to host it, not changing the fee even if they have more than 117 million people that buy it.

So what's really fair to you?

-------

Can't reply anymore, so I'll update here instead:

It's fairly simple. Fortnite and Tony Hawk are comparable AAA game titles, with the same amount of updates, same download size, etcetera. Yet Epic manages to milk the double out of each sale of Tony Hawk because of it's retail price. But retail price has _nothing_ to do with the cost Epic has to distribute Tony Hawk (as you argumented so well).

Epic pays a bit more than 2 bucks to Apple to host their AAA title, but couldn't turn a profit on it's own store if it had to distribute Tony Hawk for the same amount of money.

[andy_ppp]

I am tempted to give up but let's maybe explain one more time:

1) The value that Epic have decided to charge for an App Store has nothing to do with the costs of running an App Store.

2) I said no such thing about a fixed fee - I said your mental model for understand the costs of selling something on an App Store is mistaken. Once the store exists your costs are largely fixed, I don't need to explain it to Epic - they do not represent my views and they can charge what they want on their app store.

3) Why do you think hosting costs loads of money - it's virtually free at the scale of Epic or Apple? It has nothing to do with the charges and each sale.

4) I explained what I think is fair for Apple - be grateful for the huge developer community and stop trying to charge people for content built outside of each app (i.e. you can't buy books on the amazon app or audible due to this stupid profiteering). You can't even purchase Netflix from the Netflix app due to Apple wanting a cut.

Anyway, I think I've tried to explain why you're not correct about the maths on the value/costs App Stores create for Apple and running them like a protection racket due to market dominance is ethically wrong.